Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/820



Working Hard—See.

Working Men and Church—See.

WORKING TOGETHER

Faraday, the distinguished chemist, says:

The change produced by respiration so injurious to us (for we can not breathe the air twice over) is the very life and support of plants and vegetables growing on the surface of the ground. These latter absorb carbon—the leaves taking up the carbon of the air to which we have given it in the form of carbonic acid, and grow and prosper. Give them a fine air like ours, and they could not live in it, but carbon and other matters make them grow. All trees and plants get their carbon from the air, which carries off what is bad for us and at the same time good for them—disease to the one is health to the other. So we are made dependents not only on our fellow creatures but on our fellow existers as well, all nature being tied together by the law that makes one part conduce to the good of another. (Text.)

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WORKING WITH GOD

It may not be our lot to wield The sickle in the ripened field; Nor ours to hear, on summer eves, The reaper's song among the sheaves.

Yet where our duty's task is wrought In unison with God's great thought, The near and future blend in one, And whatso'er is willed is done. (Text.)

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Workmanship—See.

WORKS DESTROYED

When Thomas Carlyle was writing his famous history of the French Revolution, and when he had the first volume ready for the printer's hands, he one day loaned the manuscript to John Stuart Mill, his intimate and admiring friend. This friend's servant girl, seeing the pile on the library floor one day, and wanting some kindling, unceremoniously put the whole of it into the stove and kindled the fire with it. Thus the priceless labor of many years was in a few moments swept away.

Mill came himself, pale and trembling, to break the news to the author. When he heard it, his spirit fairly broke down under the terrible disaster.

If the loss of a book is such a calamity, how unspeakably terrible will it be to have the works of one's life-*time burned? There are men of whom the divine word says, "They shall be saved, but their works shall be burned."

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Works, Immortality in One's—See.

WORLD IMPROVING

In the old days the bee-master to reach the honey killed the bees, but now he contrives to spare the bees, who continue to live on and share their own sweetness. A similar transformation is being effected in the hives of human industry. There is an attempt to get more justice, fairness, and even mercy, into commercial rivalries; to substitute some plan of cooperation for the existing competition, if that is possible. That glove-fights are being substituted for prize-fights is indeed a slow approach to civilization, yet the thinnest gloves are a concession to the rising sentiment of humanity; so in business, modern society is getting rid of certain naked brutalities of antagonism, and giving to reason and compassion a larger place. With aching head and aching heart, thousands to-day feel that the struggle for gold and bread is bitter enough; yet a better spirit slowly emerges, tempering the fiery law.—, "The Transfigured Sackcloth."

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World, Need of the—See.

WORLD NOT INDISPENSABLE

During the latter portion of his life, declares a writer in Everybody's Magazine, Emerson seemed to live much in the world of souls, and came back with difficulty to take cognizance of physical affairs.

At the time of the Millerite excitement, he was walking one day down Bromfield Street, Boston, when he met one of his friends, who remarked: "This is the day when the world