1893 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



399 



Ourselves and our neighbors. 



Where shall wisdom be ft)und?— Job 28:12. 



I hope our readers are familiar with the last 

 half of the :.'8th chapter of Job. I thought I 

 was familiar with it; in fact, it used to be in 

 one of our old readers; and lean remember of 

 the big scholars reading it in school before I 

 was old enough to be s^^\v to read it myself. 

 But some way or other it needed — at least for 

 myself— about fifty years of experience in hu- 

 man life before I was prepared to comprehend 

 this talk about wisdom. Let us take a verse at 

 a time. "But where shall wisdom be found? 

 and where is the place of understanding?" that 

 is, where are we going to get wisdom? We be- 

 gin to comprehend the value of wisdom when 

 we have had only a very little experience in 

 this world. A baby creeps up to the stove and 

 puts out Its hand. Mamma says. "Burny, 

 burn!" The tones of her voice and the look of 

 alarm in her face tell the young aspirant for 

 wisdom of the danger. Ileopens his cunning lit- 

 tle mouth, and with his blue eyes gazes into the 

 maternal face. He looks at the stove, and then 

 looks at his dimpled, uplifted hand. If he has 

 the average spirit of Young America, in his de- 

 sire to investigate these strange things that 

 are coming up all around him he often touches 

 the stove just a little to see what dire conse- 

 quences will follow. By and by he learns, per- 

 haps through the medium of a sore finger, that 

 the tire is an excellent thing to warm up the 

 pink toes, but that it is a dangerous thing when 

 either toes or fingers get too much of it. 



"Man kuoweth not the price thereof; neither 

 is it found in the land of the living." We can 

 riot biiy wisdom with gold. It can be gotten 

 only by experience. Books are a great help to- 

 ward wisdom: but a man who reads his books, 

 and does not put his knowledge into practice, 

 is the laughing-stock of humanity. In the 

 same way. character can not be bought with 

 money. Some of our millionaires have tried it. 

 The world is almost as ready to laugh at a mil- 

 lionaire who imagines his gold is going to 

 make character when his acts are selfish, low, 

 and bad. as the man who thinks books may 

 answer without experience. 



"The depth saith, It is not in me; and the sea 

 saith. It is not with me. It can not be gotten 

 for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the 

 price thereof. It can not be valued with the 

 gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, nor the 

 sapphire." The sacred writer, in this beautiful 

 oriental language, emphasizes the fact that wis- 

 dom is better worth our labor and pains than 

 all the precious things that are valued by kings 

 and princes. He goes on: "The gold and the 

 crystal can not equal it; and the exchange of it 

 shall not bo for jewels of finegold. Nomention 

 shall be made of coral or pearls, for the price of 

 wisdom is above rubies. The topaz of Ethiopia 

 shall not equal it, nor shall it be valued with 

 pure gold." 



After the above enumeration the writer comes 

 back to a parallel question to the one in which 

 our text is found; namely, " Whence, then, 

 Cometh wisdom ? and where is the place of un- 

 derstanding?" People long to be wise; in fact, 

 a great many of us take a good deal of pains to 

 make it appear that we are wise. Once in a 

 while somebody makes himself ridiculous — at 

 least to a few who happen to know — by iissum- 

 ing that he knows what lie does not know. The 

 most of us have seen people undertake to teach 

 bee culture when they did not know, or had 

 reason to suppose, there was no bee-keeper 

 around. Some of our great professors have 



made blunders in this very line — even Agassiz 

 and Tyndall. 



I have mentioned to you that, in my early 

 days, electricity was a great hobby of mine. 

 At a time when I was pretty well posted in the 

 science as far as it had made progress, a physi- 

 cian who stood well in our town was summoned 

 to try to bring a child to life that had got hold 

 of a cup of whisky and drank enougn to kill it. 

 Somebody suggested that electricity might 

 bring about animation. A crowd of townspeo- 

 ple were very curious about the strange little 

 instrument that made such a buzzing. Now, 

 although the doctor failed in bringing the child 

 to life, he thought that, notwithstanding, the 

 occasion and the crowd would afford him an ex- 

 cellent opportunity for airing his wisdom. He 

 attempted to give a full explanation to the 

 crowd in regard to the coils of wire and the 

 battery attached. Batteries and coils were at 

 that time my daily companions; and as my ap- 

 paratus wasall home-made—in fact, the work 

 of my own boyish hands— I knew a good deal 

 more about it "than the doctor did; but his talk 

 on that occasion not only gave me a disgust for 

 that particular doctor, but it came pretty near 

 disgusting me with doctors as a whole. If that 

 man knew as little of the human body as he 

 did of the apparatus before us— a machine that 

 was the work of human hands— how should he 

 be able to help anybody in (iny emergency? No 

 doubt he wanted wisdom; but he did not want 

 it bad enough to make honest explorations in 

 the science before he attempted to teach others. 



" Whence, then, cometh wisdom, and where 

 is the place of understanding?" At one period 

 of my life I was for some time somewhat skepti- 

 cal in regard to Bible teachings. As it began to 

 be known, I was thrown more or less into the 

 companionship of those who openly questioned 

 the existence of God. These people admitted 

 that there were a good many things to be learn- 

 ed in this world of ours; there were hidden 

 mysteries on every hand; and although human 

 intelligence had gone A great way, and had ac- 

 complished a great deal, yet these very people 

 were (if they were bright enough) forced to ad- 

 mit that there were unexplored mysteries in 

 every direction. In fact, these people caught a 

 glimpse of the fact that what man does know is 

 but very little indeed compared with what he 

 does not know and may never find out at all. 

 Then comes the question, " If /inm«?utjy does 

 not know, and is perhaps incapable of knowing, 

 who does? Who is there, and where is he. this 

 wonderful intelligence that looks on it all and 

 knows it all ?" " Where is the place of under- 

 standing? seeing it is hidden from the eyes of 

 all living, and kept close from the fowls of the 

 air." Here, again, is a mystery. The fowls of 

 the air know a good many things that we know 

 nothing about at all. A few days ago as I stood 

 in the street, some strange familiar sounds 

 struck my ear. For a while I tried to imagine 

 where it was or when it was that I had heard 

 those strange sounds before. Other peoi)le were 

 listening. The sounds came from the heavens 

 above. By the time I had turned my eyes up- 

 ward the people began to call from one to an- 

 other, "The wild geese! see the wild geese!" A 

 great flock of them were stretched out like a 

 letter A; and as they moved leisurely through 

 the heavens, away up high in the air, they 

 seemed to be talking to each other on the way. 

 What were they saying? All the sages in the 

 world can not answer. Where were they going? 

 They were going north, because it was spring- 

 time; but we do not know just where, and we 

 can not tell where they got their intelligence 

 that it was safe for them to once more seek 

 their northern home. The strange sounds that 

 revived forgotten memories made me think of 



