Part 37

She wants a word of appreciation once in a while. She chills under the surveillance and parsimony of an eagle-eyed, meddlesome husband.

She's a sweet bird, and sweet birds and hawks don't nest well together.

Where the hawk and the dove are in the same cage, the feathers will fly.

As I came through the park this morning, I saw a pair of robins who had the right idea. They shared home responsibilities and did fine team work. I think they were mighty happy, too; daddy red breast looked mighty proud as he hustled worms for the family breakfast.

Mama Robin looked down with loving eyes at her hubby, and the little baby robins sang a chorus of joy at the very privilege of living in such a home.

Worry will fly out of the window the moment the husband and wife lay their cards on the table and play the open hand. The moment one or the other keeps a few cards up their sleeve, then worry and trouble come back.

The moral of this is, husbands and wives: live together, get together, stay together, play together, save together, grow together, share together. Travel the same road; don't take different paths.

50.

To-night I am in the Ozarks, and old Mother Earth is passing through the belt of meteoric dust--that great mysterious sea in the universe through which we pass every year about the middle of November.

I look out into the night and marvel at the countless stars in the infinite black void, and wonder how closely those stars may be connected with humanity. That they are connected, I have no doubt, for truly, "the sun, the moon, the stars, and endless space as well, are parts, are things, like me, that cometh from and runneth by one grand power of which I am in truth a part, an atom though I be."

How many stars are there? Well, let's get ready to appreciate number. I can see about 3,000; with opera glasses I could see 30,000.

Franklin Adams some years ago photographed the whole canopy with 206 exposures. He counted the stars by mathematical plans, and published his finding that there were 1,600,000,000 stars. That number is just about the number of humans on this earth. So, then, there is one star for each of us.

Each of those stars, practically speaking, is larger than the earth. It is thought that many of them may have human beings who think and reason like we do. Multiply the 1,600,000,000 population on this earth by any portion of the 1,600,000,000 stars that may have thinking creatures on them; multiply that total by the millions of years and millions of generations that have passed out of existence.

Think of these numbers and limitless boundaries, and then tell me, if you can, that one little man on one little star we call Earth has a strangle-hold on truth, and that his viewpoint, his ism, his little dogma, his narrow creed, is all-sufficient, all-right, all-inclusive.

Verily, little protoplasm, you have another guess. We can, by experience and tests, prove two and two make four. We can by practice and experience prove that love, kindness, help, gentleness, sympathy, cheer and courage bring happiness.

These are tangible things that fall within the province of human experience. But when one wee Willie with sober face tells you and me and others that he has the truth about the definite, full workings of God's plans and purposes, I think of the greatness of 1,600,000,000 stars, each with 1,600,000,000 humans, and of the unnumbered generations gone by, and say that verily, we must live TO-DAY and do the best we can to-day in act and thought and word.

Yesterday is dead; to-morrow is unknown. Where we have been, where we will be, we know not. Where we are to-day, we know, and only God in His omniscience knows the final answer as to our future estate.

He will take us and hold us and place us in His keeping and according to His purpose, even though we do not or cannot follow or believe any one of the little man-formed creeds, isms or cults as the measure and rule for our beliefs.

Those stars testify to the certainty of God, and I believe in Him.

51.

When a man by his brains, or by a fortunate combination of circumstances, rises to a position of prominence, he becomes a target for the envious and a pattern for the imitator. Emulation and envy are ever alert in trying to steal the fruits of the leader or the doer of things.

The man who makes a name gets both reward and punishment. The reward is his satisfaction in being a producer, a help to the world, and the glory that comes from widespread recognition and publicity of his accomplishment. The punishment is the slurs, the enmity, the envy and the detraction, to say nothing of the downright lies which are told about him.

When a man writes a great book, builds a great machine, discovers a great truth or invents a useful article, he becomes a target for the envious many.

If he does a mediocre thing, he is unnoticed; if his work is a masterpiece, jealousy wags its tongue and untruth uses its sting.

Wagner was jeered. Whistler was called a mere charlatan. Langley was pronounced crazy. Fulton and Stephenson were pitied. Columbus faced mutiny on his ship on the very eve of his discovery of land. Millet starved in his attic. Time has passed, and the backbiters are all in unmarked graves. The world, until the end of time, will enjoy Wagner's music. Whistler and Millet's paintings attract artists from all over the world, and inventors reverence the names of Fulton and Stephenson.

The leader is assailed because he has done a thing worth while; the slanderers are trying to equal his feat, but their imitations serve to prove his greatness. Because jealous ones cannot equal the leader, they seek to belittle him. But the truly worth-while man wins his laurels and he remains a leader. He has made his genius count, and has given the creature of his brain and imagination to the world.

Above the clamor and noise, above the din of the rocks thrown at him, his masterpiece and his fame endure.

And compensation, the salve to the sore, makes the great man deaf to the noise and immune to the attacks of the knockers.