Harvesting the Sun

1896

When we sit in front of a coal fire and enjoy its generous warmth, do we realize that the heat and light of the burning coal are really sunshine that has been stored up for ages? Such is the fact. Centuries ago the sun shone on the earth, the plants and trees grew, fell, and grew again; they were covered by geologic deposits, and acted upon by great heat and pressure, until in the course of years and ages these broad layers of organic matter were transformed into coal. The coal thus represents the work done by the sunshine years ago, and when it is burned the imprisoned solar energy is loosened again.

Our system of power production depends upon this presence of energy. But coal is a wasteful source of energy. Even the best engines do not utilize over 10 per cent of the calculated energy of the heat of coal. And, besides this it is an inconvenient thing in many ways; it has to be mined, freighted and stored. Can we not find some more economical way of using the sun's energy?

During the last few years the great progress in electrical science has enabled man to utilize the solar heat in a thriftier way. During its day's work the sun draws up a large amount of water from the oceans and damp earth. By the action of its rays plant life flourishes, and plants draw from the ground and evaporate into the air large amounts of water. Thus an oak tree of average size, with seven hundred thousand leaves, lifts from the earth into the air about one hundred and twenty-three tons of water during the five months it displays its foliage. This evaporated water, sooner or later, falls as rain, and by the action of gravity begins to flow downward. Thus the great rivers are fed. Round and round incessantly goes the water lifted by the tireless sun to fall when deserted by him, and again to fall and run seaward as long as it may exist upon this earth.


Peculiar to the Locality

Some interesting discoveries have recently been made about animal life on the Hawaiian Islands. It appears that all the land and fresh water shells are peculiar to the locality. Nor is that all. Fifty-seven out of the seventy-eight species of birds, and seven hundred out of the one thousand species of insects do not exist in any other portion of the globe.

Man's Mental Power House

1914

On Proper and Wise Use of Brain Depends Individual's Value to the World

The brain is our mental power house; its electric product is thought, and our sanity is determined by the mental voltage we carry.

So long as we are live wires, so long as we transmit power, radiate love, give out sympathetic warmth, think individually and act collectively, we establish our right to live.

The lazy man, as has been frequently observed, us not only as useless as a dead man (and takes up more room), but he is a clogging drag upon the wheels of progress.

The man or woman blessed with imagination or anticipation possesses a sort of prophetic vision, a kind of instinct, so that they look upon life with prescience, strength of character and courage. This possession is not a gift of chance, but a cultivation that comes with useful activities.

Inspiration is the indicator of well-being in our mental power house — it is a by-product of labor, for without labor it merely becomes a mental dribble, a wasting (without renewing) of mental vitality. Inspiration is therefore the result of laboring, and when properly applied it is followed by achievements of great worth. Allied to labor, it expands its force. Unallied, it is soon exhausted.

Nuggets — "Genius is Inspiration"

1907

Genius is inspiration. Talent is perspiration.

Do not measure your enjoyment by the amount of money spent in producing it.

Education turns the wild sweetbrier into the queenly rose.

A vigorous initiative and strong self faith make up the man of power.

Be sure that the honors you are striving for are not really dishonors.

What men get and do not earn is often a curse instead of a blessing.

You can purchase a man's labor, but you've got to cultivate his good will.

Ignorance itself is a disease, the deepest, most treacherous and damning malady of the soul.

Worry poisons the mind just as much as a deadly drug would poison the body and just as surely.

While you stand deliberating which book your son shall read first, another boy has read both. — Success Magazine.

A Virginia Mountaineer's Influence Over Wild Animals

1896

An Extraordinary Power

He Can Summon at His Will Snakes, Squirrels and Wild Birds From Their Retreats

If Kipling were here, writes a Rockbridge Alum Springs (Va.) correspondent of the New York Tribune, he would write of another and elderly Mowgli, local genius of this green valley, with its cordon of hills and outlying rocky summits. Thomas Hostetter is his name and his age is absolutely uncertain. He thinks he is about eighty-five years old. The wrinkles on his bronzed face rival in number and complexity those of Loti's mummy. His eyes are small and deep set. He lives somewhere among the crags and blackberry bushes several miles to the north of this place, in the neighborhood of Collierstown, Va.

He suddenly appeared here the other morning with a well-fingered and timeworn fiddle slung over his shoulder, and a huge kohinoor of an alum diamond in his hand. He said he paid $10 for his violin ever so many years ago in Lexington. He seemed confident of the value of the gem, which only stern necessity compelled him to sacrifice for $1, and which the writer bought in the hope of drawing him out. He said his wife was dead. His nine children were all married or scattered. He had never been to a city and was absolutely unversed in knowledge of any life but one — that of the deep wood, with its multitude of silent creatures. Their habits and language were an open book to him. The old man had innumerable little packages of rattlesnake rattles stuck into every conceivable receptacle of his clothing. It seemed that the snakes had come to regard him without animosity. He had acquired an insight into their habits, and when he did not see them with his worn-out eyes he simply sat down on a log and beguiled them out of the nooks and crannies to his feet. He had no Hindoo "tomtom" wherewith to charm the snakes, and apparently exerted no influence upon them other than that which close sympathy always begets. Doubtless they had learned to regard him much in the light of a sorely overgrown and distorted brother.

The writer came across him one dewy morning seated crosswise on a log with a six-foot rattler coiled contentedly at his feet. Not until the stranger appeared on the scene did that flickering tongue protrude or those angry eyes glitter. The two seemed to be simply enjoying a quiet wood talk as the claw-like hand of the man stroked down the diamond patches on the snake's shiny back. Hostetter apparently did not think this situation at all out of the common. He had known rattlesnakes and blacksnakes and moccasins so long and so intimately that any loss of sociability between him and the reptiles would have seemed strange to him. So powerful was his influence over the coiled serpent at his feet that a little further endearment even reconciled the snake to the writer's presence at a reasonable distance.

When in the woods at night Hostetter always sleeps by the side of a convenient fallen tree, and it is no unusual thing for him to wake up in the morning and find a poisonous reptile slumbering between his legs or warmed into deep sleep on his body. He said that the blacksnakes in the mountain meadows actually coil themselves around the legs of cows and milk them, and that the cows actually grow fond of this unnatural milking and come to the same spot in the field each day at the same hour and low for the snakes.

Uttering an inarticulate sound, midway between a sob and a groan, Hostetter sent the snake into the bushes.

"Let me see you bring a squirrel into your lap."

He sat down on the spreading roots of a pine tree and gave utterance to a subdued chorus of chirrups and squeaks in minor keys, and soon the wood seemed to be filled with the pattering of little feet, and the queer old man became the motionless centre of a cluster of bushy brown and gray squirrels. They raced up and down his legs and arms, sniffed at the opening of his bulging pockets, and only avoided the smoke of his pipe. Again, with a sound half inarticulate and a half gesture, he dismissed the nimble footed throng.

"Can you call the wild turkeys, Hostetter?"

The old man seated himself again with his back to a tree, and the writer wandered off into the deep shadows. Scarcely was this done before a familiar "gobble, gobble" was heard, and then after five minutes silence the notes were repeated. A twig snapped and soon through the leaves the beady eyes of a wild turkey peered with hanging comb and one foot lifted. Again a low "gobble, gobble," and the leaves divided and the stately bird strutted directly to a place beside the old man and stared without blinking into his face.

Electricity in the Home

1901

Many devices are now available for use in the home. They include small hand lamps which light at the touch of a spring; a pocket lamp and battery made flat like a folding camera; ornamental candles with miniature lights at their tip; a tiny lamp attached to the front of a clock, and small lamps for decorative purposes.

A current is introduced in a house to supply power for flat irons, curling irons, coffee mills, ice cream freezers and sewing machines, and heat for chafing dishes and tea kettles. Telephones are replacing speaking tubes in most of the new mansions and also to connect with stables and other outbuildings.

If power from a waterfall or windmill is available the owner of a house can install an electric plant of his own at small cost. In many large country houses the dynamo is run by a gasoline engine. — St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

How to Deal With the Turks

1920

The Allied military demonstrations in Constantinople will be watched with keen attention, says the St. Louis Star, as it is a test, under extreme circumstances, of the theory that the Turks can best be controlled by leaving their capital in Europe. If the influence of the Allies in Constantinople restrains Turkish outrages in Asia Minor, the principal argument for leaving the Turks in their present capital will be justified. This, however, does not cover the situation.

Renewed outrages against the Armenians, coupled with defiance of the Allied police forces in Asia Minor, call for drastic restriction of Turkish power. The Turks should have no army and no armament. The covenant of the League of Nations provides for supervision by the league of sales of arms and munitions in "countries in which the control of this traffic is necessary in the common interest." Surely, Turkey, judged by its long record of massacres and unjustified wars, is such a country.

The one thought of the Allied powers, in settling with Turkey, should be to put an end, once for all, to the terrible conditions which have prevailed in the Near East since the Ottoman Turks broke out of their own Turnanian home nearly a thousand years ago. The Turks must be made impotent to carry on their policy of slavery and slaughter. The United States, while this problem is being settled, cannot legitimately stand aside and treat it as an affair of Europe. It is a world problem, and our concern.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 20, 1920, p. 6.

Nature's Secrets — Possibilities of Solar Power

1920

Man gets to feeling pretty smart at times, but nature still has a great deal to teach him if she only would, says the Ohio State Journal. A scientist in the employ of the National Electric Lamp Association at its great plant in Cleveland devoted the entire season last year to studying the lightning bug in the effort to find out how that interesting creature makes light without heat. He failed to discover the secret, as had many another scientist before him.

The potential power which falls on the decks of a battleship in the sunshine of an August day, if it could be harnessed and utilized, would drive the ship vastly faster and farther in a day's journey than its great engines can drive it. The problem of harnessing presents, thus far, the insurmountable difficulty. When that is solved, as probably it will be someday, people will heat their houses with stored sunshine and gas shortages and coal strikes will be matters of perfect indifference.

Nature is jealous of her secrets, but she has grudgingly given up some and she will give up more as time goes on for she cannot resist forever the blandishments of the endless race of wooers whose hearts and intellects are concentrated upon finding out what else she knows.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 20, 1920, p. 6.

The Body Perfectly Obeys Your Rapid Brain

1922

YOUR POWERS

Lulu M. Cargill, clerk in the New York post office, takes from Nina E. Holmes of Detroit the title of "champion letter sorter of the world."

Miss Holmes attracted attention by sorting 20,610 letters in eight hours, or nearly 43 a minute. Miss Cargill sorts 30,215 letters in eight hours, which is better than one a second. And she sorted the first 23,500 letters without pause. Then she stopped for a cup of tea. Sorting a letter means picking it up, reading the address, recalling the postal route to reach the address, then tossing the letter into the proper bag.

Miss Cargill is 26 years old. She has been a postal clerk only three years.

Miss Cargill, you reflect, must have wonderful co-ordination of body and mind. A brain that works with lightning swiftness has automatically perfect teamwork with a body that perfectly obeys her rapid brain.

The body is a collection of machines, each trying to work cooperatively for the good of all. It is a more perfect system of government than man has been able to devise.

Miss Cargill, judging from her work, has what scientists would call "an extraordinary well-balanced system of endocrine glands."

In the so-called "efficient" person, the body glands speed up when needed and slow down when the energy of the body is required by the other glands.

In a boy who is growing too rapidly, as a result of abnormal activity by the pituitary gland in the brain, the other glands slow down and surrender part of their share of the body's energy. With most of his energy devoted to growing, the lad is apt to be otherwise languid.

Or, for example, you suddenly are in danger, which requires a quick use of reserve energy. The word is telegraphed through the blood. The message is sent out by the adrenal glands, which stand guard as a mobilizer of reserve energy. Other glands slow down, as if saying, "If the adrenals fail in this emergency, we all perish."

The heart responds to the adrenals and rushes blood to the arms or other parts of the body that have to meet the danger. This rush of blood is why "the face goes white" in a time of peril.

The crisis met and conquered, the blood rushes back to normal distribution through the body. The other glands "come to life." The sudden change makes the person, calm in or, half-collapse "after it's all over."

—The Bridgeport Telegram, Bridgeport, Connecticut, Sept. 26, 1922, p. 3.

Genghis Khan's Dominions

1897

Mrs. Mary Shears Roberts, in her series of "Historic Dwarfs" in St. Nicholas, writes of Casan, who was in the service of Genghis Khan. Mrs. Roberts says:

After the great Mongolian had conquered China, Persia and all central Asia his empire became one of the most formidable ever established. It extended from the Pacific ocean on the east to the river Dnieper in European Russia and was a wider realm than Egyptian, Greek or Roman conqueror ever knew. The kings of Armenia and Georgia, the emirs of Persia, the grand dukes of Russia and numerous other potentates were compelled to pay tribute to Genghis Khan, and they were all obliged to make the long journey to Karakorum in person or by their representatives.

This town, the capital of the largest empire that ever existed, was little more than a city of tents. It afterward became the residence of the famous Kublai Khan, as Marco Polo tells us, but every vestige of it has disappeared.

Genghis Khan at last retired from active service to lead a quiet life in the enjoyment of the wealth he had acquired at the expense of so much toil and blood. The numerous khans and generals were commanded to return, and they came back encumbered with the spoils of war. They all assembled on a vast plain some 20 miles in extent, and, according to one historian, even this great field could scarcely contain all the tents of the countless hosts. The emperor's quarters alone were six miles around. An enormous white tent capable of containing 2,000 people was spread over his throne, on which was carefully placed the bit of black carpet used at his coronation.

Felling Tree Costs $60,000

1920
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Farmer's Act Puts Heavy Losses on Power and Factory Plants

JACKSON, Mich., May 20. -- When a farmer near Frankenmuth, Saginaw County, cut down a tree the other day it cost about $60,000, according to officials of the Consumers' Power Company.

The tree fell across a main transmission wire, causing a short circuit that turned loose 146,000 volts that were being produced by the company's Au Sable power plant. Abut 50,000 factory workers in Flint, Saginaw and Bay City lost a quarter of a day when their machines stopped for lack of power.

The factories lost about $52,000 in "dead" time, it is estimated, and the Consumers' Company fixes its loss at $8,000 in damage to equipment.

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, May 22, 1920, page 4.