1900
A Storyette
Written for The Ram's Horn
By VINCENT Van MARTER BEEDE
Queer, isn't it, that the more hole you take away, the more hole there should be! Just as queer is the fact that the more of oneself he gives away, the more he has. It takes a long time to find this out. The general run of us seem to be born greedy. Nurse sets us down at the table, and what a gobbling takes place. With what jealous eyes do we watch Tommy for fear his slice of bread have more area, or greater thickness of jelly upon it, than ours.
Two little cousins met in the hallway. The laughing cousin saw in the hand of the petulant cousin a stick of candy — a gay, red-and-white stick. Big eyes of want glowed at the stick. Advances the laughing one; frowns and retreats the petulant one. Says one of the mothers, "Why, Winnie, aren't you going to give Ruddy a taste?" "No!" :— then, after a fierce inward battle — "He can have just one tuck." The laughing one was now open both as to eyes and mouth. Alas for that tuck! It was of such vast proportions as to comprise seven-eights of the stick. No wonder a tangled heap of kilts was the result.
"Disgusting little wretch, that Ruddy!" you say. Quite right. But in this world there are a number of Ruddys and Winnies, big and little, are there not?
Number 1! Dear, darling Number 1!
Supposing Congress were to declare a Day of Unselfishness. Weeks before its coming ministers would tell of it in their pulpits, teachers from their desks, fathers under the evening lamp. Newspapers would jest over or extol it; men would shake their heads in anticipation of it. The first holiday of the kind is clear as crystal — a real, warm-hearted, flower-steeped May day. The President in his Proclamation has implored the people prayerfully to endeavor, in every detail of the day's pursuits, to think first of the neighbor and secondly of self. Thousands, hundred-thousands, millions of folks sneer at the suggestion, daubing another coat of love-proof varnish on their withered hearts. Millions of people, on the other hand, can try very little harder to be more unselfish than usual on this day; they have been trying so hard these many days! There are still the millions who will try to look out for Number 2 on this day.
Egbert does lend Albert the new fishing-rod — and even the new reel. Jenny takes the Poore family out driving, queer old clothes and all, in preference to the Chummy Crones, her four-cornered club of very special friends. Mrs. Flitter actually decides to have her boy at home from boarding-school for the holidays, even though he is such a nuisance; and Marcus Magnate, the Coal King, omits to foreclose on the mortgage of the Widow Peters.
If there is any of the fabled music left in the spheres, it is sounding today. There is a swelling cry of hope, and love, and gladness, from Atlantic to Pacific, from Gulf to Border, and the sky is smiling — yes, laughing. Trade is good, very good; the children are very well today, thank you; and Grandmother's rheumatiz is much improved. Pessimists and croakers are crawling into their holes and pulling the holes in after them.
Glory of glories, the day after the Day of Unselfishness is another Day of Unselfishness! And the day after the day after that is a good deal like the legal one! And never again will this land be so selfish as it was before the dawning of that Day.
Only a dream. The bubble has burst. Never mind: cannot each one of us, in communion with that little Christ-child who showed us, and is now showing us, what love can do, what unselfishness can be — cannot each one of us quietly celebrate a Day of Unselfishness — and many another Day like it?
—The Ram's Horn, Nov. 17, 1900, p. 7.
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Monday, March 31, 2008
Monday, May 14, 2007
The Success of Clairvoyants
1879
In a paper in the July Scribner on "The Delusions of Clairvoyance," Dr. George W. Beard, of New York, writes as follows:
The practical success of clairvoyants, public and private, is the result of these three factors: 1, guess-work reduced to a science and an art; 2, coincidences, and 3, trickery.
Guessing is at once a science and an art — a science, because it may be regulated by certain principles. The familiar "guessing game" illustrates what can be done by guessing scientifically carried out; with the privilege to the guesser of but twenty chances, he may yet, beginning with the kingdom to which the article belongs, reach the most minute object before his list is exhausted. Success in this game, as all who have played it know, depends much on practice. Clairvoyants devote their lives to the practice of this game, for they play it with every victim they meet.
The subject of coincidences is one that has excited far less attention among the students of history or of human nature than it deserves; little, indeed, has been written upon it. Among those who have given the subject any thought, the most erroneous impression prevails that it can be brought under the laws of pure mathematics. In the life of every active human being are frequent, almost daily occurring coincidences, which those who give any attention to them may, if they choose, make the basis of most absurd delusions. Usually we give no more attention to these occurrences than an exclamation of surprise, and then forget all about them. We are talking of a person whom, perhaps, we rarely meet, and have not seen for a long time; suddenly he appears. A thought — out of the ordinary course, it may be — enters our mind; we express it, when behold! the same thought has just been passing through the mind of our friend. We meet with a certain experience, and then we remember, or fancy we remember, that the same experience has happened to us in a dream. Of all these daily and hourly happening coincidences, clairvoyants skillfully avail themselves, and in that direction they are aided by the ignorance and eagerness of their victims.
The trickery of clairvoyants consists mainly in the art of making their victims unconsciously reveal, by word or look, facts of personal history, and then, at the proper time, in re-imparting the information to them. In this way they gain the credit, even among persons of keen intellect, of being endowed with divine powers.
In a paper in the July Scribner on "The Delusions of Clairvoyance," Dr. George W. Beard, of New York, writes as follows:
The practical success of clairvoyants, public and private, is the result of these three factors: 1, guess-work reduced to a science and an art; 2, coincidences, and 3, trickery.
Guessing is at once a science and an art — a science, because it may be regulated by certain principles. The familiar "guessing game" illustrates what can be done by guessing scientifically carried out; with the privilege to the guesser of but twenty chances, he may yet, beginning with the kingdom to which the article belongs, reach the most minute object before his list is exhausted. Success in this game, as all who have played it know, depends much on practice. Clairvoyants devote their lives to the practice of this game, for they play it with every victim they meet.
The subject of coincidences is one that has excited far less attention among the students of history or of human nature than it deserves; little, indeed, has been written upon it. Among those who have given the subject any thought, the most erroneous impression prevails that it can be brought under the laws of pure mathematics. In the life of every active human being are frequent, almost daily occurring coincidences, which those who give any attention to them may, if they choose, make the basis of most absurd delusions. Usually we give no more attention to these occurrences than an exclamation of surprise, and then forget all about them. We are talking of a person whom, perhaps, we rarely meet, and have not seen for a long time; suddenly he appears. A thought — out of the ordinary course, it may be — enters our mind; we express it, when behold! the same thought has just been passing through the mind of our friend. We meet with a certain experience, and then we remember, or fancy we remember, that the same experience has happened to us in a dream. Of all these daily and hourly happening coincidences, clairvoyants skillfully avail themselves, and in that direction they are aided by the ignorance and eagerness of their victims.
The trickery of clairvoyants consists mainly in the art of making their victims unconsciously reveal, by word or look, facts of personal history, and then, at the proper time, in re-imparting the information to them. In this way they gain the credit, even among persons of keen intellect, of being endowed with divine powers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
