Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/594



584; Dickens, 567; Haggard, 481; Crawford, 415, and Henty, 402.

After fiction came biography, of which 1,227 volumes were read; history followed with 953 volumes; religion with 792, and poetry with 205. Of books in foreign languages, German led with 1,686 volumes, Hebrew was next with 1,259; Italian third, with 1,067, and French last, with 545.

What intelligence and vitality is enclosed in the walls of prisons! But it is, at least, something of a comfort to realize that men's lives no longer drag out in the silence and neglect that once attended punishment. Now the influences of the outside world reach them, conveying still some sense of fellowship, for many, of coming opportunity. (Text.)—The Reader Magazine.

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Prisoner, A, and His Liberty—See.

PRISONERS, EMPLOYMENT FOR

The Maryland Prisoners' Aid Association have established a woodyard and novelty manufacturing shop at No. 311 North Street, Baltimore, where steady employment is furnished those desiring to start anew after liberation from penal institutions. Like all work of this kind, the new plant is conducted with the idea of defraying its own expense, and not to realize profits.

All the machinery in the woodyard, which, in full operation, employs twenty men, is driven by electricity. The principal product is kindling, manufactured from cordwood shipped from Anne Arundel County. The wood is unloaded from cars alongside the sawmill, where it is cut, split and loaded on wagons ready for delivery.

An important feature of the plant is the shop on the second floor, where light cabinet articles of all descriptions are manufactured. Many of the men going to the Aid Society for help in obtaining employment are of a mechanical turn, and these are given positions in the shop. In charge of a skilled cabinet-maker and woodworker, John McVauley, tables, chairs, magazine racks, umbrella-stands, settees, stools, upholstered furniture and miscellaneous household articles are turned out for which the men are paid wages about equal to the rates paid by manufacturing plants.—Baltimore Sun.

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PRIVACY, LACK OF

Korean homes are in a sense open to all the world. Any one who pleases may try the door, push it open, and come in. He needs no first acquaintance, and no introduction. An ordinary Korean guest-room is free to all the world. On the other hand, the inner quarters are separate, and for a male traveler to venture there would be a breach of the most sacred law of society. Into this outer room come gentlemen of leisure, tramps, fortune-tellers, Buddhist priests, all mankind, in fact. Here is located the high seat of the master. As you live in this guest-room, you feel the fearful lack of privacy. You are as tho encamped on the open highway, under the gaze of all men. If you write a letter, the question is, to whom are you writing it. "Why do you write thus and thus? What reference is here? Who? When?" These are the questions that are asked by those who look over your shoulder, without any breach of proper form or infraction of the eternal law that governs things.—, "Korea in Transition."

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PRIVATION, COMPARATIVE

While her husband was still lying in prison for debt, the Archbishop of York asked Susannah Wesley:

"Tell me, Mrs. Wesley, whether you were ever really in want of bread?"

"My lord," she answered, "strictly speaking, I never did want bread. But then I had so much care to get it before it was eaten, and to pay for it after, as has often made it very unpleasant to me; and I think to have bread under such terms is the next degree of wretchedness to having none at all."—, "Wesley and His Century."

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PRIVILEGE

In "The Gospel of Life," Charles Wagner writes this sound wisdom:

Never is knowledge more touching or art more radiant than when they illumine the brow of the obscure. I am quite familiar with the fact that there are certain privileged ones of the earth who believe that this kind of good is reserved for them, that these are meats too delicate to be set before common folk. Scandalized at seeing the people walking about in the Louvre or in the halls of the Hotel de Ville, some one said to me one day, "Do you think that it was for these people that Puvis de Chavannes painted his ceilings?" "I don't know as a matter of fact," I said, "whether it was for them that he painted them. But I know another ceiling more beautiful than are these of earth;