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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



July 1 



nal said you could make your fowls tame by 

 making it a practice to go into their roosts 

 after dark. Put your hands on them and 

 talk to them. They will very soon learn that 

 you do not always come into their domicil to 

 wring their necks or to "frighten the day- 

 light" out of them. The same is true with 

 sitting hens. You can very soon teach a sit- 

 ting hen to be perfectly quiet, without any 

 ruffling up of her feathers or striking at 

 your hands, by patting her on the back and 

 talking to her. I know this by experience. 

 When I found it necessary down in Florida 

 to put flea salve on the head of each one 

 of my fowls, I succeeded in getting them 

 accustomed to being handled, in a very 

 little time. With the above illustration I do 

 not believe you will think me superstitious 

 when I tell you it is my firm conviction that 

 the man who has family prayers * every day 

 in his home will not only have better chick- 

 ens, but he will make more money with his 

 chickens and with all the rest of his domestic 

 animals. Godliness certainly is profitable. 

 Well, if this is true with chickens, how much 

 more true is it with the children of the house- 

 hold? The great Master said, "Ye are of 

 more value than many sparrows." The boy 

 or girl who is growing up in your home, and 

 listening to family prayers, is of more conse- 

 quence than all the chickens in the world. 

 If it pays you to take time and pains to win 

 the confidence of a sitting hen, how much 

 more does it pay to win the confidence, rev- 

 erence, and respect of that boy or girl! At 

 one time in my life our children, during my 

 absence, wanted to disobey some of my or- 

 ders. I think it was something I had been 

 very emphatic about. One of my daughters 

 in her letter of explanation said something 

 like this: 



"Now, please, father, do not be angry for 

 our having decided to do this." 

 I think I wrote back something as follows: 

 "Bless your heart, dear child, have you 

 forgotten that your father professes to have 

 ' been born again '? The old A. I. Root, of 

 whom you perhaps have a dim recollection 

 away back in your childhood, is, he hopes, 

 dead and buried, I and the new A. I. Root, 

 who has taken his place, can never consis- 

 tently be angry — at least very long — at one 

 of his own children, and more especially 

 when you have decided that you were fully 



*When I say "family prayeri " I do not mean 

 lengthy ones such as some of us used to listen to away 

 back in childhood. In askinsr a blessing at the table it 

 sometimes seems best to have only a single sentence, 

 say something like this: " Lord, bless our food and the 

 undertaking that lies before us. Bless the new day 

 and all it shall bring forth. Amen." And I think that 

 such a brief recognition as the above is better than 

 none at all. Talk to God in your own way, without any 

 effort to copy after other people, and when you go to 

 bed at night, and are tired and sleepy, long petitions, 

 it seems to me, are out of place. After your Bible-read- 

 ing, which had better be in the morning, when you 

 have the best use of all your faculties, it is often well 

 to take time to remember to ask God's help in the af- 

 fairs of our State and nation— say the temperance work, 

 getting good men into office, banishing cigarettes, etc. 



t Seeing that ye have put off the old man with his 

 deeds, and have put on the new man, which is renew- 

 ed in knowledge after the image of him that created 

 him.— Col. 3: 9, 10. 



justified in taking the step you have taken." 

 "He that ruleth his own spirit is greater 

 than he that taketh a city." 



Just one more point in closing. We are 

 often tried and vexed by our domestic ani- 

 mals, and sometimes with our neighbors; 

 but when something happens so they are 

 suddenly removed, we are often sadly and 

 painfully reminded that they had good qual- 

 ties as well as bad. Where a man under the 

 influence of anger takes the life of a domes- 

 tic animal he often suffers from remorse aft- 

 erward. But this is nothing in comparison 

 with the remorse that one feels who takes 

 the life of a fellow-being. There is some 

 satisfaction in coming out ahead of your rival 

 or opponent, especially if you kill him with 

 kindness. A vicious sitting hen can be made 

 a friend instead of an enemy, as I have sug- 

 gested. In the same way a troublesome 

 neighbor may be cured by "heaping coals of 

 fire " on his head in the way of repeated 

 kiftdnesses. Satan gets into a man's heart, 

 and persuades him that he has been greatly 

 abused; and under such circumstances one 

 might be led to take the life of another. 

 You can scarcely pick up a daily paper with- 

 out an account of this sort. I suppose very 

 few of the readers of Gleanings nave had 

 any personal experience of the remorse one 

 feels when he takes the life of a fellow-being. 

 There is a kind of satisfaction in an honest 

 struggle with a rival; but where does the 

 satisfaction come in when he is dead and 

 gone for ever, especially in a case where 

 you have been instrumental, more or less, 

 in taking away that life? Jesus said, "Love 

 ye your enemies; do good to them that hate 

 you; bless them that curse you, and .pray 

 for them that despitefully use you." On 

 what a glorious thing it is to conquer all the 

 ills that beset us as a nation by spreading 

 the gospel of Christ Jesus! And this re- 

 minds me of a letter which has just come 

 through the mails. It comes from the neigh- 

 bor who has charge of my chickens in my 

 Florida home. See p. 386 of the last issue.- 

 Here is what he writes: 



SOME GOOD NEWS FROM OUR FLORIDA HOME, AND 

 THE NEWS IS NOT ABOUT CHICKENS EITHER. 



Mr. Root: — I did not know I was writing for GLEAN- 

 INGS when I wrote about the " old yellow hen ; " but 1 

 now send you a few items of vastly more importance. 

 Knowing that you are always interested in religious 

 and temperance work I will give you a little outline of 

 what the Culpepper tent meetings have done for the 

 Manatee section, as the influence of these wonderful 

 meetings 'or perhaps I had better say wonderful ment 

 has reached over all Manatee Co., and produced re- 

 sults that are substantial in church and general lines. 



There were about 190 who gave their names for 

 church membership in the different churches. The 

 Presbyterian received about 20, the Baptist upward of 

 50, the Methodist about 75 in Bradentown; in Manatee, 

 the Methodist about 10 and the Baptist about the same, 

 besides numerous additions in Palmetto, Cortez, and 

 Braden River churches. 



The temperance standard has also been lifted high. 

 At a temperance meeting on Sunday afternoon they 

 had about 1100 white bows ready to pin on to people 

 who would go up and get them, and they did not have 

 enough to go around. How is that for a place of about 

 1000 population? But, of course, you understand that 

 people were here from all this section. 



A number of our most prominent business men have 

 come out and joined different churches, and two of 

 our drugstores have quit selling whisky, so they say. 

 It means a great deal to our town, which is just getting 



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