236 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Juiste 



tion, and that I would not tell him what my 

 goods cost, but could I say it in kindness ? 

 Could I sell him the pin truthfully, in the 

 same way in which I would urge him to be- 

 come a Christian? I wish to digress a little 

 on this point. Shortly after this, a wholesale 

 jeweler with whom I dealt much, called on 

 me. I knew he had been suddenly convert- 

 ed, a year before, and had been very active 

 in the Young Men's Christian Association. 

 I bought a bill of goods of him. but he did 

 not say a word on tbe subject of religion. I 

 spoke of it, and asked him if he could go on 

 with business and tell the whole truth 

 square and sharp. lie rather evaded it, and 

 finally confessed that he could not. 



Said he, "Mr. Root, I would have lost a 

 sale of $800.00 worth of goods yesterday, if I 

 had stuck to the whole truth on some gold 

 rings. Other dealers warranted them full 

 18k., and he would not buy them, unless I 

 did the same. Neither would he buy some 

 other goods he wanted, unless he could have 

 the rings at the price named. If other peo- 

 ple would be truthful I could be so, too, and 

 get along ; but a man would starve on the 

 road, who attempted to tell all lie knew 

 about his goods. It cannot be done." 



"Then cannot a jeweler be a Christian?" 



"I do not see how he can." 



"If that he the case, I shall stop being a 

 jeweler from this minute ; but. my friend, I 

 cannot for a moment think that truthfulness 

 in business can be carried to such an ex- 

 treme, as to injure the business in the long 

 run." 



This man failed in business soon after, 

 paying but a small amount on the dollar. It 

 is a terrible thing to lose all one's property, 

 but a far more terrible one, to me, to lose 

 that approving voice of conscience also, that 

 I am sure to hear after having tried hard all 

 day to be truthful, even though I have not 

 succeeded as I would wish. 



Another great fault, connected with this 

 one, soon began pushing its hideous propor- 

 tions prominently into view. It is an easy 

 matter comparatively, for me to be frank 

 and truthful when I am in an even temper ; 

 but when disturbed or thrown off my track 

 by a little opposition, the case is quite a dif- 

 ferent one. When arguing or disputing, or 

 when rudely contradicted, my usual good 

 sense seems to desert me, and under the in- 

 fluence of strong excitement, if I allow my- 

 self to talk at all, I am very sure to feel af- 

 terward, that I have gone wide of the mark, 

 which I have set up for a standard. From 

 the time of my conversion up to the present, 

 I have been obliged to keep saying to myself 

 morning, noon, and night, almost, "Look 

 out ! look out ! look out I" 



Over and over again, have I been obliged 

 to ask God to forgive me for being so care- 

 less as to let Satan entrap me in this one 

 way, and I have asked the forgiveness of 

 those around me for the same offense, until 

 I am almost afraid to ever do it again. I 

 shall come to this again further on. 



It comes very natural for me to boast of 

 what I am doing, or can do, and this, with a 

 natural tendency to exaggerate and a sort of 

 careless recklessness of consequences, in 

 the course of years, had developed into a 



habit of making statements that might, with 

 a very good show of justice, be denominated 

 abominable falsehoods. Eor instance, if 

 some one asked how much honey my whole 

 apiary was yielding in a day, I would be 

 very apt to say 500fts. This would make 

 quite a sensation, and visitors coming down 

 to view the proceeding would be pointed to 

 a colony on the scales and told that was an 

 average colony, and there were a hundred 

 just like it. It would all look fair and 

 straight, but actual weight might show a 

 great deal less than 500ifos. Perhaps there 

 might not be a hundred colonies, and a large 

 number might be rearing queens and so get- 

 ting no honey, the one on the scales also 

 might be much more than average, and fi- 

 nally, deducting the daily loss from evapora- 

 tion of the honey, the weighed colony might 

 not have gathered 5fibs. of real honey. To 

 have it sound large, I was interested in hav- 

 ing it as high as it could be made to seem. 



Now to illustrate what I am trying to get 

 before you, suppose, for some reason, I 

 wanted a neighbor to shut his bees up for 

 one day during the height of the season, and 

 should agree to pay for all the honey they 

 would probably gather during that one day. 

 If you please, say the number of colonies 

 was precisely the same as mine. I should 

 then be interested in making the daily pro- 

 duct as low as possible. Well, how much 

 would the difference be between the two es- 

 timates ? By examining myself on such 

 questions as the above, that is by standing 

 aside, and estimating things from two stand 

 points, I discovered myself to be a very un- 

 reliable individual. I discovered, too, that 

 the habit had grown to be so much a part of 

 me, that it seemed very doubtful that I could 

 ever learn to be as truthful and accurate as 

 some people without such temptations are. 

 Worst of all, when I was cornered up, and 

 my fault was plainly shown me, the disposi- 

 tion was so strong to stick to my first state- 

 ment and bolster it up by all sorts of excuses, 

 that I almost despaired at times, of ever be- 

 ing able to come anywhere near what I felt 

 that God demands, and which society also 

 demands. In the little book called the Gos- 

 pel Hymns, there are four lines that run thus : 



"Have we trials and temptations ? 



Is there trouble anywhere ? 



We should never be discouraged, 



Take it to the Lord in prayer." 



I had sung this so much, it had got to be 

 almost a part of myself, and I used to go to 

 the Lord in prayer so often with these trials 

 and troubles, that I sometimes wondered if 

 he never tired of hearing so much from one 

 who, it seemed to me, made such very slow 

 progress. I did make progress though, and 

 I grew in wisdom's ways from the very day 

 when I first called on my Savior to help me. 

 It was not long before I was cheered by 

 hearing my friends remark that I had grown 

 so modest in my statements that I had not 

 fairly represented things, and that I had not 

 really done myself justice, by my modesty. 

 Little did they know what a battle had been 

 fought and how I had prayed over these 

 things, thinking over and over again I 

 should never reach my ideal of being accu- 

 rate and truthful. What a happy, happy 



