130 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Feb. 15 



difficulty. What would be the effect on hu- 

 manity should one spend his whole life in 

 the way I was prompted to do, rather than the 

 other way? 



Before giving the second illustration let 

 me say the dear children, as well as Mrs. 

 Root, have often objected to that portion of 

 these Home papers where I tell of my own 

 temptations and impulses toward selfishness 

 and wrong; and God knows it is no pleasant 

 task to admit I am tempted to be selfish. 



I give you these conflicts just as I give you 

 my fights against the wild animals that de- 

 stroy my chickens, t at you may in like man- 

 ner come out victorious against the foes of 

 honest industry. 



My old father was, while on the farm, 

 greatly interested in raising and selling colts. 

 Well, when he was making a sale he was so 

 careful to tell the purchaser the faults as 

 well as the good qualities of the horse in 

 question, that we children used to tell him- 

 he overdid the matter, and made out the 

 horse worse than he really was. I hope it 

 was true (bless his memory) that he was 

 more concerned about being strictly honest 

 than he was about getting a good round price 

 for his hose fKsh 



Now I hope you will excuse me for going 

 into the details pretty fully of a simple little 

 transaction, for there are important principles 

 involved in it. 



I was away from home, in a town where I 

 was not very well acquainted. I had an im- 

 portant letter to mail and was out of stamps,* 

 and, still worse, but little money to buy them. 

 It was just before the holidays, and there 

 was so much mail and so many packages 

 that extra help was called into the office. 

 The additional help was only a schoolgirl, 

 evidently; but I presume the postmaster de- 

 cided she could preside at the stamp-window, 

 even if she had but little experience with 

 money and making change. I laid down a 

 coin, and asked for 25 two cent stamps. Aft- 

 er a little time in counting the stamps, she 

 handed them over to me with two coins — a 

 half-dollar and a quarter. Let me digress a 

 little right here. If I should tell you of some- 

 thing I had dreamed, no one could tell wheth- 

 er I told the exact truth or not. Only God 

 could tell. In the same way, when I tell you 

 of the conflicts that went on in my own 

 mind, only God knows whether or not I am 

 truthful. ' As near as I can remember, it was 

 in a somewhat absent-minded way I took the 

 coins and the stamps and went over to anoth- 

 er part of the office to mail the letter. As I 

 was dropping the letter in the box I was 

 aware my spiritual nature was waking up. 

 The "alarm," or, if you choose, conscience, 



Erotested, and I looked at the coins in my 

 and. I went back to the girl and said: 

 "Did you not make a mistake? Twenty- 

 five two-cent stamps would he fifty cents." 



"Oh! I gness I did," she replied, and I 

 gave her back the quarter. 



Nothing particularly wrong in the above, 

 is there? I would gladly stop here; but I can 



* I had lost a check I was expecting to get cashed at 

 the bank. 



not, and be truthful. I put the half-dollar in 

 my pocket and started to go away; but the 

 "emergency brake " came down harder than 

 ever. My impression, when I laid down the 

 coin for the stamps, w.is that it was only . 

 cts., but when 5U and 25 also came back with 

 the stamps, I tried to persuade myself it must 

 have been a dollar after all, and decided to 

 let it go at that; but when I was just about to 

 step out at the doorway I recalled that I had 

 searched my porkets just before going to the 

 office, and declared there wasn't a "whole 

 dollar" in my possession. The conflict in 

 my heart probably lasted only a second or 

 two; but one may at times go over a good 

 deal of ground in a second. 



Satan, at least once, tried to tempt our 

 Savior. On this ocasion I can imagine he 

 tried to argue with me in something tlie same 

 way. He made three different points or rea- 

 sons why I could honestly keep the coin I 

 was fingering. First, he said, "In these 

 busy times it isn't necessary to count the 

 change you receive. It looks small. Push 

 it in your pocket and go ahead with business. 

 If anybody gives you too much, it is his af- 

 fair, not yours." 



Secondly, he put in, "You are not taking 

 the girl's money — of course you wouldn't do 

 that, but what is 50 cts. (that you need badly) 

 in Uncle Sam's vast domain with his tons of 

 stamps and dollars?" The above is a pretty 

 tough confession for A. I. Root, is it not? 

 Perhaps I have got it a little strong, just as 

 my ola father used to do in selling his colts; 

 but the thought did cross my mind at least 

 faintly. The conductor on a railway was 

 once dismissed because he was "color- 

 blind." He had gradually failed to see any 

 difference in the "color" of the money be- 

 longing to the company and that belonging 

 to himself. While I fingered the coin and 

 procrastinated, the color of Uncle Samuel's 

 stamps and money seemed different from 

 that belonging to individuals. 



My friends, this same "color blindness" 

 that I have been descr bing will wreck our 

 whole nation and send the whole of human- 

 ity to the bottomless pit if we can not get 

 cured of it. Lastly, he suggested that, per- 

 haps, I really did have a dollar in my pocket, 

 and the girl was right about it. I suppose 

 this is possible, but not at all probable under 

 the circumstances. What ought an honest 

 man and a Christian do when it seems impos- 

 sible to decide absolutely whom the dollar re- 

 ally belongs to — your neighbor (or, perhaps, 

 the great public), or yourself? In a case 

 like tnis, where j^ou alone must decide, what 

 shall you do? Listen to the proniptings of 

 the "emergency brake "and say, "God help- 

 ing me, I will suffer wrong, rather than do 

 wrong, to the end of my days." 



I went back once more to the stamp-win- 

 dow. 



"I fear, my friend, you have made still 

 another mistake. Do you remember what 

 coin I gave you for the stamps?" 



"Why, I supposed it was a dollar — was it 

 not?" 



"I am sure it could not have been a dol- 



