Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/793

 VIEW-POINT.

In a poem, "The Mountain," Edwin Markham shows how differently a mountain affects different minds:

Each builds his world forever, dark or bright, And sits within his separate universe. The shepherd sees in this green mountain top Place where his sheep may wander and grow fat. What to the drover is this lilied pool? A hollow for his swine to wallow in. Gold-hunters find upon this rocky peak Nothing but ledges for their ringing picks. But to the poet all this soaring height Smokes with the footsteps of the passing God!

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See ;.

View-point Changed—See.

Views, Contracted—See.

VIGILANCE

Richard III went out at twilight to reconnoiter; he found a sentinel fast asleep at the outposts. The King promptly stabbed him to the heart and left upon his breast a paper with the stern inscription, "I found him asleep and I leave him so."

Sooner or later death, or something equally to be feared, overtakes every man who forsakes his duty and falls asleep at his post. (Text.)

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Vigilance in Nature—See.

VINCIBLENESS

Men are like timber. Oak will bear a stress that pine won't, but there never was a stick of timber on the earth that could not be broken at some pressure. There never was a man born on the earth that could not be broken at some pressure—not always the same nor put in the same place. There is many a man who can not be broken by money pressure, but who can be by pressure of flattery. There is many a man impervious to flattery who is warped and biased by his social inclinations. There is many a man whom you can not tempt with red gold, but you can with dinners and convivialities. One way or the other, every man is vincible. There is a great deal of meaning in that simple portion of the Lord's Prayer, "Lead us not into temptation."—

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VIRTUE IN POOR GUISES

I believe that virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen. I believe that she and every beautiful object in external nature claims some sympathy in the breast of the poorest man who breaks his scanty loaf of daily bread. I believe that she goes barefoot as well as shod. I believe that she dwells rather oftener in alleys and by-ways than she does in courts and palaces, and that it is good, and pleasant, and profitable to track her out, and follow her. I believe that to lay one's hand upon some of those rejected ones whom the world has too long forgotten, and too often misused, and to say to the proudest and most thoughtless, "These creatures have the same elements and capacities of goodness as yourselves; they are molded in the same form, and made of the same clay; and tho ten times worse than you, may, in having retained anything of their original nature amid the trials and distresses of their condition, be really ten times better." I believe that to do this is to pursue a worthy and not useless vocation.—

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VIRTUE NOT TO BE COERCED

The most temperate crowd of men I know is in Sing Sing. There isn't a single thief in the Raymond Street Jail. But pull down the walls of Sing Sing, and then you will discover the difference between a man whose virtue depends upon a wall and the man whose goodness depends upon a will.—

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VIRTUE, TIRING OF

We have come to a time when multitudes are tired of law, and duty, honor, justice, and the old solid and substantial virtues of the fathers. Now and then this rebellious mood voices itself in the lips of some restless youth who exclaims boldly, "I hate the very word duty." Men are become like the cattle in the clover-field, that once the appetite is satisfied, tire of walking around knee-deep in rich, luscious grasses, and stick their heads through the fence, to strain toward the dog's kennel in the dusty lane. It is a singular fact that a colt in the field, up to its ears in clover, as soon as it has eaten and