OCR Text |
Show H The Way Of The World ADISTINGUSHED financier was called from New York to Scranton, Penn., last week, by H a friend. Arriving there, the two, with a H third friend, Went to a laboratory to witness a H chemical test. Then something went wrong with Hj a furnace, the place was filled with noxious H fumes under1 which this financier became deathly H ill, and, despite all redem'les, he died the next H H Later the fact was developed that the visit to H Scranton was to witness the transmuting of base H into precious metals. H The verdict must be that there was nothing H strange about that death, for have not men died H by thousands and millions trying to do that same H thing to get something precious from something H I essentially base? H In one way or another is not that the business H of most men? H- Not always through chemicals or Are, but H with the same design. The old alchemists wore Hi out their lives chasing the same dream. They H did not succeed, but they made many most valu- H able discoveries. Many people wear out their H lives in the same pursuit without knowing it. H "What is the honest farmer's work but to try, H through the chemistry of the soil, the moisture Hfl and the sunbeams to cause one grain of wheat H to multiply into a hundred? H The teacher lakes the wild boy from the H street when his brain seems to be entirely base, H and touches that brain with the inspiration of a H little learning and lo, something more precious H than gold begins to spring from it; it becomes H a fountain and distills gems through a long life. H The life of the world rests upon labor. In his H laboratory a humble man works night and day, M week in and out, until his hair grows (gray, when M suddenly his thought takes a material foviu; out 1 of the soulless iron there comes a respiration, and he knows that what he has done, in effect transfers trans-fers half the world's work from the weak arms of flesh to responsive arms of, steel and that now it will be possible to redeem the wilderness and regenerate the earth. Cou'd any other transmutation transmuta-tion of metals work so great a miracle? A great war smote our country some years ago. The soul of one woman was on fire. All the motherhood in her breast went out in yearning for native land. So the days went by; her heart was all the time calling to her intellect to do something some-thing to help in the distress, and finally the brain responded and a solemn, triumphal hymn was born of that brain and found expression in human words, and those words were sung by the camp fires; they nerved heroic hearts under the battle canopy; they made the final psalm that the soldiers sang as they furled their battle flags and took up the songs of peace. Do not blame men that their minds are ever seeking to transmute trans-mute something into something higher and more precious, for through that all progress has come to the world. |