1898 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



523 



put over his toolhouse, " Do not touch these 

 tools — I neither borrow nor lend"? It is 

 true, he might escape some of the annoyances 

 that you and I have (I guess that is right, 

 dear brother, is it not ?) but he does not enjoy 

 life. He never feels hke swinging his hat and 

 giving a big boyish hurrah out of the exuber- 

 ance of his spirits because he has found such 

 a text as I have found. By the way, do you 

 ever hear of anybody committing suicide be- 

 cause he was so clever and accommodating, 

 and always helping other people ? Far from it. 



Sometimes people do good and lend, mostly 

 from motives of policy. The}' take a sudden 

 streak — that is, when they are candidates for 

 office, or when you commence trading at their 

 store, or something of that sort. But that is 

 not according to the Savior's teaching. No- 

 tice the last clause — '' hoping for nothing 

 again." You are to do these things because 

 you love humanity. You are not to consider 

 whether it will pay or not. If people are in 

 trouble, if you are a Christian you will enjoy 

 helping them out of trouble. In great cities 

 folks have a fashion of paying no attention 

 whatever to what is going on, providing the 

 " going on " does not bump them or hinder 

 them in any way. Such people do not often 

 see others who are in trouble. vSometimes I 

 have thought that this ignoring of others was 

 getting to be a fashion in the countrv. God 

 forbid ! 



Then there is another part to this beautiful 

 little text. In that wonderful closing part of 

 the 2.5th chapter of Matthew, Jesus says, " In- 

 asmuch as ye have done it unto one of the 

 least of these." Now, when you "do good 

 and lend, hoping for nothing again," with the 

 proper spirit in your hearts, letting reason and 

 common sense guide you ( as a matter of 

 course), you are doing good to Christ Jesus 

 himself. Yes, you are really "lending unto 

 the Lord." 



Let us now go back to the second of the two 

 cards I have quoted. The man who wanted us 

 to send Gleanings had evidently received a 

 dollar from some friend or acquaintance. He 

 had been requested to send the dollar to us. 

 The dollar is lost. Now, suppose The A. I. 

 Root Co. had held him down to the new rul- 

 ing, and told him that Gleanings would not 

 be sent to anybody unless the money was paid 

 over first. I am afraid that, under the circum- 

 stances, friend Hill would have lost faith in 

 humanity. He might have said, " If this is 

 the way the world goes, I do not think I shall 

 try to accommodate people anymore." You 

 see, this man was really acting as agent for 

 us — in fact, was helping to extend the circula- 

 tion of Gleanings, and should have had a 

 commission for so doing ; but had I not inter- 

 fered I am afraid he would not have had even 

 a word of thanks or not even words of s^-mpa- 

 thy for the lost money. This illustrates quite 

 vividly the difficulty of making rules that will 

 fit all sorts of cases. The clerk in charge of 

 the subscription department — in fact, a clerk 

 who has charge of any department — should 

 have discretionary power to "do good and 

 lend," whenever it seems to him it is the 

 right and proper thing to do for the general 



welfare and prosperity of the business. Every 

 one who is employed in any sort of business 

 ought to have, above all things, a kindly and 

 generous feeling toward his fellow-men. He 

 ought to be anxious, not only to be just, but 

 he ought to have authority to be generous, es- 

 pecially in cases like the one given above. 



It is a pretty hard matter, too, after you 

 have consented to do a favor for a neighbor 

 by sending his dollar to headquarters, to 

 know, when the money is lost, that you have 

 got to stand the loss. Of course, the dollar 

 may be recovered. I wrote our friend that, in 

 case it could not be found, he might send us 

 fifty cents if he thought proper, and we would 

 stand the rest of the loss. Notice, he offered 

 to send the money over again in case it is not 

 found. Perhaps it may be well right here to 

 say that there has been a good deal of trouble 

 during the past year on account of loss of 

 money sent in a letter, and a good many times 

 there have been hard feelings. vSome will 

 add, " Oh ! I guess the money got to your of- 

 fice all right. If you would overhaul your 

 clerks, or open the letters containing money 

 yourself, I think there would be no trouble." 

 We have had a few such letters, but not many 

 of them. So many more of them have been of 

 the other kind that my little text shines out 

 sharp and clear. This is not only a happy 

 way of getting along in the world, but it is re- 

 ally the most profitable way to do business. 

 When my attention was first so strongly di- 

 rected to that little text, " Love ye your ene- 

 mies, do good to them that hate you," I said, 

 ' ' Those words came from heaven and not 

 from earth." I said they were not man's 

 words, but that they were the utterances of 

 divinity ; and I say again, dear brother and 

 sister, that, even though good business men 

 do tell you that the best way is to neither bor- 

 row nor lend, the words I have emphasized so 

 strongly to-day are words dii'i>ie and not hu- 

 man. 



Just as soon as our last strawberries were 

 picked we commenced plowing them under 

 for potatoes. And, by the way, I learned by 

 the Weather Bureau crop reports that it is now 

 getting to be quite customary to follow straw- 

 berries with potatoes. A few years ago people 

 expressed surprise when I told them I could 

 get nice potatoes when put in as late as after 

 strawberry-picking was over. If we have a 

 dry time as the strawberry season winds up, 

 it is hard on berries : and, as a general thing, 

 it is a somewhat difficult thing to work the 

 ground. Upon the hill bj- the windmill it took 

 us a good while to plow and fit the ground, 

 and do it right ; but down by the creek-bottom, 

 on that piece where everybody told me I was 

 wasting my money ten 3'ears ago in trj-ing to 

 fit it for crops, the ground just worked up 

 beautifully; and, by the way, that piece al- 



