SEPTEMBER 1, 1914 



OUE HOME 



Continued from page 619, Aitg. 15. 

 What hath God wrought? — Num. 23:23. 



Just a word more about the "blowing-up" 

 that my neighbor gave me when I broke up 

 the horse-trade. Well, the blowing-up he 

 gave me, deaa- friends, did not hurt me a bit. 

 It did me good. I had the good sense to 

 keep my mouth shut while he was abusing 

 me, but I made some strong resolutions. If 

 it had been expressed in words it might have 

 been something like this : " Look here, old 

 fellow, the time may come when I can buy 

 you out, slick and clean, with all your boast- 

 ful bravado, etc." And his talk and the 

 jeers of the crowd spuri-ed me on to take 

 better care of my customers and business 

 than I had ever done before. I told you 

 there were two otlier jewelers doing a fair 

 business in our little town at the time I 

 started ; but I tried so hard to please and to 

 be honest and square, that in two or three 

 years' time one of the other places was 

 closed up in bankruptcy, and a little later 

 the other establishment was glad to sell out 

 to me, saying the town was not big enough 

 for two jewelers. 



In our previous issue, through some mis- 

 take in type I said the little quarterly I 

 staiied in 1873 was changed to a semi- 

 monthly. It should have said monthly, as 

 (tleanings was not published as a semi- 

 monthly till 1891. In those days it was 

 quite the fashion for rival journals or news- 

 ]3apers to pitch into each other. May God 

 be praised that this kind of work has mostly 

 gone by. 



Not long after our journal was started, 

 glucose was largely used for adulterating 

 honey before we had any pure-food laws 

 abolishing that sort of business. At this 

 time a story was stai'ted to the effect that 

 my yields of honey were secured by feeding 

 the bees glucose. The only foundation for 

 this stoi'y was that I made some experiments 

 m feeding gu-ape sugar in place of cane 

 sugar to bees. The grape sugar then on the 

 market was of such a quality that the bees 

 did not care very much about it, and would 

 take it only when there was a dearth of 

 honey. It could be fed in the open air with- 

 out inducing robbing, etc. Well, the editor 

 of the American Bee Journal got hold of it 

 and occupied a large part of one issue of his 

 paper in showing up the inconsistencies of 

 the editor of Gtleanings in Bee Culture. 

 As soon as I read it I sat down and wi'ote a 

 reply to be published in Gleanings. I had 

 just learned to manage a typewriter, and I 

 had one of the first m?ichines ever made. I 



liad just finished my reply to the unkind 

 attack, and it made a strip of paper a yard 

 long or more. I was just reflecting that it 

 would occupy all the space in my forthcom- 

 ing issue, and began questioning whether it 

 would be profitable or wise to take so much 

 space in defending myself from a personal 

 attack. Just then my good pastor, the Rev. 

 A. T. Reed, passed in front of the stoi-e. I 

 called him in, showing him briefly what the 

 American Bee Journal had said. Then I 

 showed him my long string of copy, and 

 asked him to read it. He took it in his hand 

 vvliile he smilingly looked at me and said 

 something like this : 



" Mr. Root, I do not think I need to read 

 this. Whenever it requires such an amount 

 of sjiace to reply to an atttack on us, some- 

 thing is wrong. If I were you I would put 

 that reply in the waste-basket. If you make 

 any reply at all, boil it down to a few brief 

 sentences." 



I had enough faith in the wisdom of my 

 pastor to follow his advice. I took the an- 

 swer that had taken so much time and brains 

 to prepare and threw it into the waste-bas- 

 ket, and my reply to the attack was just one 

 sentence about as follows : "Our good fiiend 

 of the American Bee Journal has failed to 

 consider that the glucose and grape sugar of 

 commerce are widely different, even if the 

 chemical composition is pretty nearly the 

 same." Then I forgot about the matter, and 

 went on with my business. A little time later 

 a beekeepers' convention was held in Michi- 

 gan, and I attended it. Wliile I was there 

 shaking hands with a crowd of beekeepers, 

 Prof. A. J. Cook, then of the Micliigan 

 Agricultural College (another of God's no- 

 blemen), came up into the crowd, and, put- 

 ting his hand on my shoulder, said: 



" ]\Ir. Root, I want to congratulate you on 

 having had the grace and wisdom to reply 

 to a lengthy and unkind attack in just one 

 single sentence." 



There you have it, friends. A good and 

 honest man never needs a great string of 

 words to defend himself before the world ; 

 and if people right and left would go to 

 their pastor for advice when they are getting 

 into a quarrel it would avert a world of 

 trouble, especially if they are willing to take 

 the advice as I did. 



My department of Our Homes, or reli- 

 gious talks, as they have been called, have 

 brought me in touch with a great lot of good 

 men and women. Thirty years or more ago 

 our little journal came into the hands of a 

 poor invalid, Mrs. L. C. Axtell, of Roseville, 



