Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/657

 vider, and there can be no life and no blossom where there is no root connection.—.

(2790)

ROTE VERSUS REASON

Soon after I had left school—and when I was a freshman at college—I made the acquaintance of a young man of about my own age who possest a most marvelous memory, while he also showed most marvelous mental density. He had occasion to pass examination in Euclid, as we all of us did at the university at those times, and one would have said that he would have been singularly successful in these examinations, for, tho he had only read through our college Euclid once, he could recite or write out the whole of it; or, if preferred, he could begin at any point where one might start him and reproduce any quantity verbatim et literatim—atque punctuatim—so far as that was concerned. But not only was he utterly unable to understand a word of it all, he had not even brains enough to keep his real ignorance of Euclid to himself. He was always forgetting the good old rule ne quid nimis, and as he did not know where to stop in his marvelous recitations, the examiners naturally came to the conclusion, perfectly justified by the facts, that he knew his Euclid by heart, but knew nothing about geometry.—, New York Mail and Express.

(2791)

ROUTINE

Commenting on the well-known dislike of the late Russell Sage for vacations, Forest and Stream says: "An office dig who digs voluntarily is as uneasy and as unhappy on a holiday as were those Pennsylvania mine mules which, on the occasion of the coal strike, were for the first time in many years lifted to the surface and turned out into the green fields in the sunlight. The poor creatures were in actual pain until they got back again into the darkness and the close atmosphere in the mine. The trouble with them was, that their whole nature as surface-dwellers had been supplanted by the attributes common to moles and the blind fishes of Mammoth Cave, and they could not stand in the open air and the light. So with a human being under the obsession of inordinate money-getting. The loss of time is only one component of the restlessness which attacks him after he gets away from the rut. His nature has become so molded and restricted to the ruling passion that he has lost capacity for finding employment in other things, least of all in vacation surroundings and vacation ways."

(2792)

ROYALTY

Where was the real royalty as between the two individuals mentioned in this historic incident?

It was arranged by his friends that Doctor Morrison should be presented to George IV that he might bestow a copy of the Chinese Bible upon His Majesty. Who would not have liked to witness the interview! On the throne sat "the handsomest prince in Christendom, the finest gentleman of Europe" (so his courtiers told him), but whom Thackeray dubs "a monstrous image of pride, vanity and weakness," who had lived sixty-two years and done nothing but invent a shoe-buckle; who had spent hundreds of thousands, nay, millions, on mere sensual gratification. Fifty thousand dollars a year, we are told, it took to clothe that royal back. Before His Gracious Majesty stood the son of a farmhand, Robert Morrison, twenty years his junior, who had lived simply and given largely; who had found out a useful thing to do, and had worked at it so faithfully that he had raised himself to be the equal of the greatest man in the realm.

Robert bent the knee and presented the Chinese Bible to his sovereign, which gift His Imperial Highness was pleased to accept. But it is to be feared that His Imperial Highness' morals were no more benefited by the Chinese than by the English version.

(2793)

Royalty, Spirit of—See.

Royalty Unrecognized—See.

Royalty's Kindness—See.

Rubbish—See.

Rudeness, Reaction of—See.

Ruin, Spiritual—See.

RUINS UTILIZED

A news item from Gainesville, Fla., says:

English and Eastern capitalists have bought a site here and it is said will invest $2,000,000 in mills for the manufacture of