42 



(•LEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Jan. 1 



What makes people die before their time? what 

 stands in the way of their living to be a hundred 

 jears old? Mr. Terry and others suggest that it 

 is thinking too much about what we eat, and 

 spending a great part of our lives in collecting 

 together a ^^r<'<3/ z'flr/V^^' of things to eat. May 

 God help us in this kind of overcoming The 

 Sunday School Times hits emphatically on one of the 

 things that make people die early. Let me quote: 



Every fit of temper controlled, every?orderly habit learned, 

 every patient bit of work held to and carried out, strengthens the 

 mind, he declares; and every passion yield d to, every careless- 

 ness and disorderly trait indulged, is a real mental danger. We 

 can hsip to build up our own minds, or we can help to break 

 them down. 



I think there is no question that the above is 

 right. A quarrel with your neighbor, especially 

 a long-standing quarrel, shortens the lives of both 

 parties. Overcoming a temper that has not been 

 properly controlled is one of the things that are 

 needed to enable us to live to a good old age. 



There is another evil that sends people down 

 to their graves prematurely. It is fostered and 

 fed by intemperance. Some of you may smile 

 when I suggest that going to theaters and circuses 

 tends to shorten one's life aside from the evils of 

 being up late nights and wasting money. Let me 

 give you a clipping from the Cleveland Plain 

 Dealer, from a sermon by Gypsy Smith, who has 

 just closed a series of meetings in Cleveland: 



I have been asked what my views are on the whisky question. 

 Why, any fool ought to know where I stand. I would choke the 

 devil with the last bottle. When the saloon-keepers go to the 

 poorhouse, the others now there will get out. 



I have been asked about divorce. You know what I think. 

 The sooner you Americans remedy your divorce laws the sooner 

 your nation will be secure among the great nations of the earth. 



My views are just as sound on the theater question. The Lord 

 would not have sat and giggled at a woman in tights. Would 

 you like to see your sister or daughter in tights? Then don't pay 

 to see another man's child. 



The divorce business, without question, short- 

 ens lives, not only of the father and mother who 

 are concerned in it, but of the poor children who 

 are thus deprived of one or both of the parents. 

 But it is the last paragraph in the extract from 

 Gypsy Smith to which I wish to call your atten- 

 tion. I fear that there are thousands of other- 

 wise good people, perhaps many of them church- 

 members and heads of families, who do not real- 

 ize that cultivating or encouraging a disposition 

 to want to " see a woman in tights " shortens 

 one's life. May God bless Gypsy Smith, and 

 help him to teach and preach throughout a good 

 long life. 



Here is something else in the same line that I 

 clip from the Woman s National Daily-. 



WOULD HANG "AFFINITIES." 



The man who leaves his wife for an " affinity " might be hang- 

 ed if the Rev. James T. Marshall, pastor of the Second Presby- 

 terian Church in Oak Park, III., had his way. " The common 

 murderer would make a good Christian Endeavor president in 

 comparison with the men who suddenly discover affinities in 

 wives of other men and put their discoveries in practice," he de- 

 clared in a sermon on " The Seventh Commandment." " For 

 the wretch who in hunger steals, for him whain anger strikes a 

 blow, for him who falls under the temptation to drink, let us 

 have charity. But for the low, libidinous leper who deserts his 

 wife and seeks to cover up his nastiness with such adulterous sen- 

 timentality, let us keep nothing but vitriolic phials of wrath. 

 They are the worst enemies of decency and order, and should be 

 lashed to the uttermost limits of the law. It is to be hoped that 

 our judges will realize their privileges." 



Dr. Beaumont, who recently addressed an au- 

 dience under the auspices of the Medina Y. M. 

 C. A., asked the question in his speech why our 

 penitentiaries need constant enlarging, and that, 



to \ to take in boys between 16 and 25. Said 

 he, " What means this terrible and great accession 

 to the ranks of boys from 16 to 25 who must be 

 accommodated in our penitentiaries?" Then he 

 gave us the figures to show that these boys came 

 from the cities, where there are many open sa- 

 loons. Then he added that a startling propor- 

 tion of them are children of divorced parents — 

 children of the men and women whom Satan has 

 persuaded have not found their " affinity. " Amen 

 to what Dr. Marshall has told us. 



Education is a great thing — yes, it is a grand 

 thing; but some of the great benefactors of the 

 race have not had a chance to get an education — 

 at least they had but a limited chance in child- 

 hood; but let not any of us be discouraged be- 

 cause our environments in early life seem to have 

 been unfortunate. Here is what the Sunday 

 School Times has to say in regard to it: 



A half-witted child of God sharing a cup of cold water knows 

 more of real happiness in that instant than a brilliant-minded 

 " grafter " or cynic or atheist knows in a life-time. The will to 

 do, not the brains to know, is the secret that is within the reach 

 of all. 



Now, then, friends, are you not ready to en- 

 list under the banner mapped out from the three 

 texts I have given you? " Not by might nor by 

 power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." Let 

 us hold on to the promise that it is God's plan 

 still that the meek shall inherit the earth; and 

 then, engraven on a slab of stone that Moses, that 

 great warrior, carried, were the words, " Honor 

 thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be 

 long on the land which the Lord thy God giveth 

 thee;" and surely there will be no divorces, nei- 

 ther shall there be any accession from the ranks 

 of young men on the way to the penitentiary. 

 And, finally, it will be the true, steady, temper- 

 ate men — those who have " oi'ercome " all selfish 

 and evil habits, that shall be delegated, by over- 

 coming evil, to have power and to I'ule over the 

 nations. 



DR. MILLER TELLS US SOMETHING MORE ABOUT HIS FIRST 

 VISIT TO MEDINA, O., IN 1871. 



Dear old Friind: — After the lapse of so much time it is not easy 

 to recall every thing in clear sequence; but as nearly as I can re- 

 member I'll tell you a little about it. 



My first visit to Medina was not in 1874, but in the summer of 

 1871— see A. B. Journal, Vol. VI., 1871, page 74, column 2. 1 

 think it was in the after part of the day, and I stopped at the ho- 

 tel and then went to call on you. You insisted on my stopping 

 with you, went to the hotel with me and got my grip, and I was 

 with you until I left the next day. 



You mention Gleanings as being started. Was it not start- 

 ed a year or two later? 



You are right. The first issue of Gleanings 

 was sent out in January, 1873. 



You give more or less the impression that I went to your place 

 deliberately planning to influence you toward things of righteous- 

 ness. 1 am not sure that I had any other thought in going there 

 than to learn something about bees. Incidentally there came 

 the opportunity to say something to you, and, according to my 

 habit, I embraced the opportunity, although I think that perhaps 

 I did talk to you with more plainness and earnestness tnan usual, 

 for I thought there was unusually good soil for sowing the seed. 



Now it seems an ungrateful thing to do, to make you trouble 

 to revise your memory, but I know you'd rather have things 

 right. 



Besides the above. Dr. Miller corrects some of 

 the statements I made in my write-up of our first 

 acquaintance that happened so long ago: 



old Friend: — And that " old " doesn't refer to the number of 

 years you have lived, but to the number of years I've counted 

 you as a friend. Let's see — 1871 from 1908 leaves 37 — thirty- 

 seven years " since first we were acquaint," more than an aver- 



