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GLEANINGS IN BEE CQLTURE. 



June 1. 



Our Homes. 



Honor thy father and tliy mother, that thy days 

 may be loug iipou the land which the Lord tliy God 

 givetli thee. 



Remember the sabbatli day, to keep it lioly.— Ex. 

 20 : 12, 8. 



I suppose every reader of Gleanings could 

 give me, without hesitation, the full name of 

 both his father and mother; but if I should also 

 ask for his mother's full name before she was 

 married. I am afraid some of you would hesi- 

 tate and think a little before answering ; then 

 if I should ask for the full names of your grand- 

 fathers and grandmothers there would be still 

 more perplexity; and I find there are quite a 

 few children nowadays who can not tell me 

 very much about their grandfather and their 

 grandmother; and when we come to call for 

 facts in regard to the great-grandfathers and 

 yreafc-grand mothers, the average American boy 

 or girl is obliged to admit that very little is 

 known about them. If we attempt to go back 

 still further, most of us, even members of large 

 families, are obliged to admit at once that we 

 know very little in regard to our ancestors, es- 

 pecially on the mother's side. The fashion of 

 naming boys after their father makes it, of 

 course, a little easier to follow along in the line 

 of people of the same name; but from the fact 

 that a girl has her father's name until she is 

 married, and no longer, soon obliterates nearly 

 all chance of tracing the genealogy on the moth- 

 er's side. But there comes a time in the life of 

 almost every person when he begins to be cu- 

 rious as to the stock of humanity from which he 

 descended. Now, do not call this idle and un- 

 profitable questioning. We should all, to a cer- 

 tain extent, have family pride. But young 

 people rarely think much about that until they 

 get to be, say. of an age when they may be par- 

 ents themselves. Then there is usually much 

 inquiry. The inquiring mind of a child fre- 

 qtiently turns in this direction; and since the 

 age of photography almost every household 

 contains the pictures of the whole family, away 

 back to the time when the daguerreotype was 

 first invented. For instance, I have my father's 

 and mother's piclures, taken when they were 

 between thirty and forty years of age ; and 

 there is somewhere lying around, may be up in 

 some old garret, a picture of your humble ser- 

 vant, made by the daguerreotype process when 

 he was just about fifteen years old. I am, how- 

 ever, afraid that nobody could tell exactly 

 how old he was then, nor at what date the pic- 

 ture was taken. If, as I surmise, he was about 

 fifteen, it was taken in 18.55, or about then. I 

 remember the children coming from school, 

 greatly excited, saying that Mr. So and So had 

 a machine that you could look into and see 

 yourself, as in a looking-glass; and that, by a 

 beautiful new discovery, he made the picture 

 stay in the looking-glass after you had gone 

 away, and that the picture could be kept for 

 your relations to look at. I believe the school- 

 children were invited in to see the process. A 

 piece of silver plated copper was buffed and 

 polished until it was really a silver looking- 

 glass, and you could see yourself in this little 

 square silvered copper plate; and, wonder of 

 wonders! after his diflferent manipulations with 

 the various chemicals, the picture actually did 

 stay. Then the artist put it into a little book- 

 like case lined with velvet; and, oh dear me! 

 wasn't it a treasure to be carried about and ex- 

 hibited ! Of course, the good-looking girls soon 

 had their pictures taken; and some boys who 

 were not so good-looking nor as well-mannered 

 as they might have been got possession of these 



pictures, and showed them around on the sly, 

 when they had no business with them at all. 

 What a lively business the picture business was 

 at that time! and how the photographers did 

 take in the dollars! The whole thing has now, 

 however, notwithstanding the wonderful mod- 

 ern improvements, become so commonplace that 

 a good many artists complain that they can not 

 "make a living." Well, the picture business 

 did a great deal toward helping us all to keep 

 in mind our ancestors, and to remember the 

 diflferent ones who, perhaps, were called away 

 early in life. 



By the way, almost all my life I have been 

 curious to know when they commenced calling 

 a boy after his father. When did people start 

 out calling every boy Smith. Brown, or Jones, 

 just because that was his father's surname? 

 You need not tell me that people always did 

 that way, for in that case we should all be Ad- 

 ams — not only in disposition but in name. You 

 have all heard about the astronomer who said 

 that there ought to be a planet in the solar sys- 

 tem further than any then known, and that, for 

 certain reasons, it ought to be in such a place ; 

 and when the telescope was directed to that 

 point, the planet Neptune was discovered. At 

 the time I went through Mammoth Cave, and 

 saw the bats and the bat guano I said, "Look 

 here, friends, an expert antiquarian ought to be 

 able to tell us from the accumulation of bat gu- 

 ano pretty nearly how many years bats have 

 been roosting up overhead as they do now." 

 Well, I am not an antiquarian, and I do not 

 know much about this business of ancestry; 

 but I have sort o' concluded all to myself that 

 people have been named after their fathers as 

 they are now — well, lefs say less than a thou- 

 sand years. The New Testament indicates 

 pretty nearly that their fashion was a different 

 one from what we have now : but when it was 

 that a boy was given a name not hitched on to 

 his father's name at all I can not tell. If any 

 reader of Gleanings can suggest to me some 

 book or encyclopedia whtre this thing is ex- 

 plained I should be very much obliged. One 

 more thought along this line: 



With the present state of affairs my impres- 

 sion is we shall have to cease, before very long, 

 calling boys after their father. For instance. 

 Root is not a very common name. I now re- 

 member when there were very few Roots any- 

 where except near relations; but now the Roots 

 are becoming quite common here in Medina. I 

 have a brother in Tempe, Ariz., whose initials 

 are J. H. R.: and until recently our agent over 

 here at the station wrote his name J. H. Root. 

 He writes it so still, for that matter, but he is 

 not living in Medina now. If any of you have 

 two or more people in the same town whose 

 given name and surname are exactly alike, 

 trouble comes; but when the middle initial is 

 also exactly the same, there is no end of confu- 

 sion if both parties are at the same postoffice. 

 And this reminds me that we have just lost 

 almost $100 worth of comb honey. It was ship- 

 ped to H. Meyer, St. Louis, Mo. Well, now, 

 Henry Meyer, commission merchant, St. Louis, 

 Mo., is a straight man — reliable and responsi- 

 ble; but his namesake rented a little room, put 

 in a table and chair, paid *2..50 rent in advance, 

 and then had honey, and nobody knows what 

 else, sent in to him, taking advantaee of the 

 good man's reputation; and now Mr. H Meyer, 

 of 210 Olive St., can not be found. 



Perhaps I had better explain a little more in 

 regard to the above transaction. An inquiry 

 came to us in regard to comb honey. The letter 

 was signed " H. Meyer, 210 Olive St., St. Louis, 

 Mo." On reference to Dun's and Bradstreet's 

 Commercial Reports, one of the clerks found 



