DECEMBER 1, 1916 



1135 



A. I. Root 



OUR HOMES 



Editor 



Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have 

 entered into the heart of man, the things which God 

 hath prepared for them that love him. — I. Cor. 2:9. 



Ye shall teach these my words to your children, 

 speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, 

 and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest 

 down, and when thou risest up : that your days 

 may be multiplied, and the days of your children. — 

 Deut. 11:19, 21. 



I have before mentioned that, about 

 sixty years ago, when but a boy in my teens, 

 I started out to "educate the people (?)" 

 by going around to schoolhouses and giving 

 entertainments with electricity and chem- 

 istry with a home-made apparatus. I have 

 lately been reminded by an old friend of 

 years ago that in one of those lectures I 

 declared that if we had an electric wire 

 clear around the globe electricity would 

 make the circuit in about eight seconds. 

 Well, just now our town of Medina is in 

 a sort of jangle in regard to the best method 

 of lighting the village by means of elec- 

 tricity; and there has been so much mis- 

 understanding and unnecessary criticism 

 that my son Huber wrote a lengthy article 

 for the Medina Gazette in regard to elec- 

 tricity and the different methods and plans 

 for lighting towns and cities, etc. Well, 

 Huber's talk about "alternating currents," 

 etc., went beyond my depth, and I inter- 

 viewed him in regard to the matter. A 

 little later a grandson, only sixteen years 

 old, gave his old grandfather some further 

 instructions in regard to electricity, espe- 

 cially alternating currents. When I was 

 his age, sixty years ago, I built a little 

 motor that would produce an alternating 

 current, but I did not know it. At the 

 time, I thought an alternating current 

 would be no good, and so I spent consider- 

 able time and study in converting the al- 

 ternating current into a direct current. 



Well, both son and grandson took con- 

 siderable pains to instruct me in regard to 

 the advantages of the alternating current. 

 For instance, with this sort of current the 

 electric impulse goes to the end of the cir- 

 cuit and back ever so many times in a 

 second. Wynne says, in fact, that an al- 

 ternating current ("60 cycle") will go from 

 New York to San Francisco and back again 

 sixty times a second. 



Xow, that is about all I have to say in 

 regard to electricity just now. I have 

 mentioned it because it emphasizes the 

 fact that particular traits are inherited. 

 Both of my sons and all of my grandsons 

 have inherited more or less my early craze 

 for electricity, chemistry, etc. Last eve- 



ning Wynne came over to bon-ow my little 

 specimen of radium. By the way, I have 

 forgotten to tell the readers of Gleanings, 

 as I did about once a year for several years, 

 that " radium still radiates." Well, Wynne 

 tells me it has been lately discovered that 

 radium does not keep on radiating for ever 

 and ever. He says it has been demonstrat- 

 ed that radium will play out or bum out 

 in about 2500 years! So radium is not 

 perpetual motion, after all. Well, now for 

 the moral to the above. 



The good traits in the father, as well as 

 the evil ones, go along down thru the gen- 

 erations. Lady Eglantine's disposition to 

 lay eggs, as we might say, everlastingly, 

 bids fair to be inherited not only by her 

 progeny but by her sister's progeny. By 

 the way, I am going to have a big story 

 soon about the way those Eglantine pullets 

 lay eggs. In view of what I have been say- 

 ing, shall we not still more earnestly con- 

 sider that the things we do while here on 

 earth follow after us away down thru un- 

 told generations. 



Well, friends, the above is only a preface 

 to what I wish to say in this Home paper. 

 In our issue of Nov. 1 I mentioned three 

 remarkable answers to prayer, and what 

 came of it as the years went by. I am 

 going to tell you still another, which I 

 think I have mentioned already in years 

 past. 



About forty years ago, after quite a trade 

 had been built up in queens, tested and un- 

 tested, and also in queens imported directly 

 from Italy, we had continual trouble about 

 finding somebody fully competent to take 

 care of our queen business. It needed a 

 man who would not only be careful about 

 making mistakes, but one on whom we could 

 depend on being absolutely truthful. If 

 he killed a particular queen by carelessness 

 it was of the utmost importance that he 

 should report the full facts in regard to the 

 matter, as letting another queen take her 

 place in order to avoid exposure might do 

 somebody a great wrong. I wanted above 

 all a sincere and earnest Christian to carry 

 out my ideas and plans for the queen-rear- 

 ing apiary. After repeated disappoint- 

 ments, caused, perhaps, a good deal because 

 I could not give the apiary the personal 

 attention it needed, I said one night as we 

 were ready to retire, " Sue, we shall have to 

 ask God to send us, or point out the way 

 for us to find, somebody who can take 

 charge of this exceedingly important branch 

 of our business." In fact, I do not know 



