Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/653



entered the room the children rose and remained standing until father and mother were seated. (Text.)

(2772)

REVERSED ATTITUDE

The moral health of some could be restored only by turning their thoughts and inclinations upside down, as patients are treated according to this description:

In France, when a patient is under chloroform, on the slightest symptom appearing of failure of the heart, they turn him nearly upside down—that is, with his head downward and his heels in the air. This, they say, always restores him; and such is their faith in the efficacy of this method that the operating tables in the Paris hospitals are made so that in an instant they can be elevated with one end in the air, so as to bring the patient into a position resembling that of standing on the head.—Scientific American.

(2773)

Reversion of Nature—See. REVIVAL  In some neglected church-yards there are old inscriptions so moss-grown and weather-beaten that they can no longer be easily deciphered. So there are men who in early life were marked by high and noble principles, which the wear of the world has almost destroyed in them. They need a thorough regeneration to revive the old lines and ideals of duty and character. (2774) Like pneumatic tires, the Church needs to be "pumped up" by special efforts from time to time. The same is true of the individual. Pneumatic tires, whether on a bicycle or an automobile, always become more or less deflated in the course of time, even when there is no puncture and the valves are perfectly tight. All cyclists and chauffeurs know that a tire needs pumping up, from time to time, to keep it hard and rigid. This is because the enclosed air constantly tends to escape through the envelop; the phenomenon, which is due to what chemists call osmose, is quite complex and is worth attention. (Text.)—Cosmos.

(2775)

Reviving the Forgotten—See.

REVOLUTION, CAUSES OF

It becomes us to watch carefully against crowding society to that point of compression where the mass of men have nothing to lose and little to live for, with the balance rather in favor of dying. Then the last argument, the bayonet, fails against a people whom it is of no use to kill. They are the innumerable majority. A citizen soldiery sickens at the work of slaughter, and like the soldiers of France in the Revolution, will walk over to the mob, guns and all. Then, what are you going to do? How far are our great cities from that condition? Go through the "slums" and see. Look at the wan faces leaning from high windows for a breath of what is not the air of heaven. See the pallid little children in broken rocking-*chairs sitting out on the balconies of the fire-escapes, or the five-year-old holding the two-year-old from falling out as they lean over the window-sill. Coming on the elevated road through such a scene one sultry evening lately, the writer saw a woman sitting near a window with a look of unutterable sadness; and, while we looked, a stout man in shirt sleeves came across the room, stooped down and kissed her. She looked up at him pitifully but despairingly, shook her head, and began wiping away the tears. Then the swift train whirled us from where hearts were breaking. It is ill for such men to reach the point where they know that no toil, no frugality, no self-*denial can make things any better to-morrow, or next year, or ten years hence—that no work of arm or brain can lift his face from the grindstone, and that this—or worse—is all the inheritance he can leave his children. Then the sight of a carriage with gold-caparisoned horses, a flash of a diamond, or the sweep of a silk dress will make that man clench his fist. Thousands of such will pull down a Bastile with their bare hands. And in the midst of all this, social leaders withdraw into a little clique and parade and proclaim their fewness—they are "the Four Hundred."—, The Statesman.

(2776)

Reward for Service—See.

REWARD, RIDICULOUS

During the heavy rains and floods in the cantons of Geneva and Vaud at the end of January (1910), a Swiss railway gate-*keeper at level crossing named Allaman, hearing an unusual hissing sound, walked