Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/604

 PROPAGATION OF THE GOOD

Great minds that are full of light; great hearts that are full of love—their light will go out into the ends of the earth, and their shining unto the ends of the world.

A recent history of the steam engine says Stephenson knew "that if he could get his engine perfected, the rest would take care of itself." Certainly! That man who discovered the lucifer match did not have to force it upon poor men, shivering in the cold and frost of winter. When James Watt has an engine that will lift coal out of a mine, he does not have to insist that it be accepted by laborers bowed to the very ground by sacks of mineral. Let Gutenberg get his printing-press, and all these copyists, weary of writing, and the millions of men hungry for knowledge, will greet his printed page with shouts and cheers. Get your seedless orange, and it will take feet unto itself and travel over the world. Get the new palm, the new peach or pear, and millions will stretch out their hands pleading for it. Get Luther—the new Germany will follow. Get Livingstone, and the Dark Continent will soon be full of light. Get your Pilgrim Fathers—the republic will tread closely upon their heels. Get your twelve apostles, and you will soon have a New Jerusalem, a new Antioch, a new Ephesus, a new Rome. Get your new Pentecost for the American churches, and you will have a new era and a golden age of industrial peace and commercial prosperity.—

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PROPAGATION, PROLIFIC

The May-flies, in their flying stage, make up for their frailness and feebleness, their inability to feed—they have really no mouth-*parts and do not eat at all in their few hours or days of flying life—by existing in enormous numbers, and millions may be killed, or may die from very feebleness, and yet there are enough left to lay the eggs necessary for a new generation, and that is success in life for them. Nothing else is necessary. Their whole aim and achievement in life seems to be to lay eggs and start a new generation of May-flies.—, "Insect Stories."

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Property, Church—See.

Property, Unvalued—See.

PROPHECY

There have been many uninspired prophets, but Joan of Arc was the only one who ever ventured the daring detail of naming, along with a foretold event, the event's precise nature, the special time-limit within which it would occur, and the place—and scored fulfilment. At Vauchouleurs she said she must go to the king and be made his general, and break the English power, and crown her sovereign—at "Reims." It all happened. It was all to happen "next year"—and it did. She foretold her first wound and its character and date a month in advance, and the prophecy was recorded in a public record book three weeks in advance. She repeated it the morning of the date named, and it was fulfilled before night. At Tours she foretold the limit of her military career—saying it would end in one year from the time of its utterance—and she was right. She foretold her martyrdom—using that word, and naming a time three months away—and again she was right. At a time when France was hopelessly and permanently in the hands of the English she twice asserted in her prison before her judges that within seven years the English would meet with a mightier disaster than had been the fall of Orleans. It happened within five—the fall of Paris. Other prophecies of hers came true, both as to the event named and the time limit prescribed. (Text.)—, Harper's Magazine.

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In the "Autobiography" of Albert Pell, that fine old English gentleman whose whole life was devoted to the reform of the English poor-laws and to the general uplifting and improvement of the condition, moral, social and political, of the English agricultural laborer, it is related that one of the first well-known men whom he met as a small boy was Wilberforce, who used to stay with his father, Sir Albert Pell, in the country.

When one of Pell's friends was an infant in arms, his nurse was swept by an election mob to the very foot of the York hustings at a famous contest for the county in which