1904 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1167 



they do not get all out of Gleanings that 

 they might, I would recommend this plan of 

 reading, or study, rather, for study it neces- 

 sarily is. If read for a time in this way its 

 value will be multiplied, especially to the 

 farmer bee-keeper, who must use his spare 

 moments to the best possible advantage, and 

 yet who particularly needs just such concen- 

 trated knowledge as may be gathered from 

 this and similar publications. 



By the way, what has become of the 

 "brushed swarm " advocates of two seasons 

 ago? Undoubtedly many were led by the va- 

 rious articles on the subject printed in Glean- 

 ings and other bee- journals to try that plan 

 of management. I should like to know if 

 any have persisted with the system; and, if 

 so, when they supersede their queens, and 

 how often. This appeared to me as the prin- 

 cipal drawback, for of course the old queen 

 is brushed along with her bees. I have been 

 expecting something on this subject before 

 now, but so far have been disappointed. 

 Mrs. Millie Honaker. 



OUR 



HOMES, 



BY A.I. ROOT. 



Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity; 

 therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with 

 the oil of gladness above thy fellows. — Heb. 1 : 9. 



From childhood up I have been fond of the 

 magazines. I used to read Harper's almost 

 as long ago as I read the Scientific Ameri- 

 can; but even when a boy I used to get in- 

 dignant at the ghost-stories because the 

 magazine left them or chronicled them as if 

 they were real facts. Later in life there 

 were other things that seemed to me not 

 exactly in the line of righteousness. Re- 

 cently magazines have become much more 

 plentiful, and so cheap they are now found 

 in the homes of people in very moderate 

 circumstances. A magazine is different from 

 a newspaper inasmuch as it is expected to 

 be edited with more care. The news given 

 is supposed to be more reliable; and as the 

 editor has a v/hole month to prepare it, the 

 stories are supposed to be of a higher order, 

 the work of our best-educated and talented 

 men and women. There are Christian peo- 

 ple, I am well aware, who object to fiction, 

 but perhaps not as many now as there used 

 to be; and the whole world now recognizes 

 the value of choice fiction. It sends home 

 ti'uths, many times, that could not be gotten 

 before the people in any other way. Well, 

 for years past I have been tried and often- 

 times indignant because of certain features 

 of the fiction of the present day. We have 

 now a large number of ten-cent magazines. 

 They are offered for sale everywhere. I 

 think they have largely taken the place of 

 the ten-cent dime novels, and may the Lord 

 be praised for it. But although these mag- 

 azines contain so much that is gi'and and 



good, and although they contain now and 

 then some splendid temperance articles, 

 there is one feature in them that is lacking 

 —at least I have not been able to find a real 

 wide-awake magazine, up to the times, that 

 is not more or less faulty in this respect. 

 The inclosed clipping from a daily newspa- 

 per tells it better than I can: 



ALCOHOL INFLUENCING THE LITERATURE OF THE DAY. 



Philadelphia, Dec. 1.— The National W. C. T. U. 

 adopted a resolution as follows: "We deplore the ten- 

 dency of modern writers of fiction to assume that the 

 bottle and the pipe are necessary adjuncts of many of 

 their characters, and we recognize the statments of Dr. 

 Crothers, the well-known authority on inebriety, 'that 

 the use of alcohol is influencing the literature of the 

 day.' " 



I am not sure that the brewers' combine 

 pay certain men for writing stories that 

 would probably find their way into the aver- 

 age magazine; but I have suspected many 

 times they were doing this. When you are 

 traveling and have to wait for a train, a 

 magazine comes in very nicely. You start 

 in with a story, and it opens up with so 

 much skill, and is so entertaining, you men- 

 tally thank God for the magazines with 

 their able writers. The hero of the tale is 

 pictured as one of the bright able men of 

 the day. He does many things that we can 

 not help admiring; but pretty soon he in- 

 vites all hands to a bar somewhere for 

 drinks; and the magazine article weaves it 

 in with such rare skill that one is almost 

 persuaded it were the thing to do under the 

 circumstances. Blasphemy and foul oaths 

 are brought in in the same way. No wonder 

 the boys of the present age are encouraged 

 to think it is the proper thing to swear 

 ("until the air is blue") under certain 

 provocations. Pipes and cigars are brought 

 into the story in the same way. When I 

 express my indignation to the younger ones 

 of our family because of such a mixture of 

 vileness and indecency they reply, ' ' O fa- 

 ther, you must not expect every thing of a 

 periodical that does not claim to give us re- 

 ligious literature. Sort out the good and let 

 the bad go, or skip it." 



There is one particular magazine that be- 

 gan a grand work in exposing the iniqui- 

 ties of our great cities. Our minister has 

 frequently mentioned this magazine in a way 

 that would lead his hearers to think it was 

 one that the whole family should read; and 

 yet in one number there were stories that 

 seemed to indorse in strong terms not only 

 whisky, tobacco, and gambling, but there 

 were stories to the effect that prize-fighting 

 might be all right under certain circum- 

 stances. The great world does not always 

 know what good reasons (?) the prize-fighter 

 might have for following his profession. A 

 little further on in the same story this same 

 hero was represented as excusable for en- 

 couraging something worse still. When I 

 called our pastor's attention to the perni- 

 cious effect of these very ingeniously writ- 

 ten pieces of fiction he said he had not no- 

 ticed it until I pointed it out; and he seemed 

 to think it was not a matter of very great 

 importance after all. Well, he may be right. 



