Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/61



is in the moral world, deceiving the very elect. (Text.)—, "The Transfigured Sackcloth."

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BEAUTY FROM FRAGMENTS

May not God find ways to gather up the fragments of wasted lives and reconstitute them in His own image, as this great artist reconstructed the window:

In a certain old town was a great cathedral in which was a wondrous stained-glass window. Its fame had gone abroad over the land. From miles around people pilgrimaged to gaze upon the splendor of this master-*piece of art. One day there came a great storm. The violence of the tempest forced in the window, and it crashed to the marble floor, shattered into a hundred pieces. Great was the grief of the people at the catastrophe which had suddenly bereft the town of its proudest work of art. They gathered up the fragments, huddled them in a box, and carried them to the cellar of the church. One day there came along a stranger, and craved permission to see the beautiful window. They told him of its fate. He asked what they had done with the fragments. And they took him to the vault and showed him the broken morsels of glass. "Would you mind giving these to me?" said the stranger. "Take them along," was the reply; "they are no longer of any use to us." And the visitor carefully lifted the box and carried it away in his arms. Weeks passed by; then one day there came an invitation to the custodians of the cathedral. It was from a famous artist, noted for his master-skill in glass-craft. It summoned them to his study to inspect a stained-glass window, the work of his genius. Ushering them into his studio, he stood them before a great veil of canvas. At the touch of his hand upon a cord the canvas dropt. And there before their astonished gaze shone a stained-glass window surpassing in beauty all their eyes had ever beheld. As they gazed entranced upon its rich tints, wondrous pattern, and cunning workmanship, the artist turned and said: "This window I have wrought from the fragments of your shattered one, and it is now ready to be replaced." Once more a great window shed its beauteous light into the dim aisles of the old cathedral. But the splendor of the new far surpassed the glory of the old, and the fame of its strange fashioning filled the land.—Grace and Truth.

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BEAUTY IN COMMON LIFE

I saw in an art gallery a group of well-*drest people admiring a picture of some Spanish beggars. The beggars were unkempt, deformed, ugly, but the artist had seen beauty in the group, and his imagination made the scene appeal strongly to the passerby. How many of those people, think you, would ever stop to look at a group of beggars, not in a picture, but in life? Would they have the imagination, apart from the artist, to feel the appeal of real men and women in real need and see beauty and grace of form beneath rags? And yet it is possible for all of us to be artists and see common life transfigured with a beauty and grace divine.—

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Beauty, Insensitiveness to—See.

BEAUTY PERVERTED

One of the most beautiful sights around Ispahan, in Persia, is a field of poppies—those pure white flowers—stretching away for miles. But the poppy is often the source of a curse and misery. Before the poppy is ripe the "head" is scratched at sunset with a kind of comb in three places; and from these gashes the opium oozes out. Next morning it is collected before sunrise, dried and rolled into cakes ready for use or market. Its growers are enriched by the traffic, but the ground is greatly impoverished. And the users of opium? Why, it is death to them.

Too often, as with the poppy, beauty becomes a curse, and blessing a bane. (Text.)

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Bed, Taking Up the—See.

BEER, EFFECT OF

I was at a hospital when an ambulance came tearing to the door, with a man whose leg was crusht from mid-thigh down. He was placed upon the operating table, restless and moaning. "Oh, doctor," he said, "will it kill me?" and the good, blunt man of science answered, "No; not the leg, but the beer may do you up." And it did. The limb was removed quickly and skilfully, but the clean aseptic cut had really no chance to heal, because the general physical degradation of beer no surgeon's knife can amputate. When life and death grip one another, beer stabs life in the back.—

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