1877 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



249 



lur %eimh 



-Luke, 



Do good aiMl lend, hoping for nothing again 

 «; 35. 



fjHE above may sound like rather novel ad- 

 vice to be given for the purpose of mak- 

 ~^ in» money, but I do verily believe it 

 would, if fully carried out in the true spirit 

 in which cur Savior uctered it, prove one of 

 the most efficient modes of money making that 

 has ever been devised ; and many are the men 

 of great wealth who have all their lives been 

 i!u the habit of giving generously, whenever 

 they saw an occasion where money would do 

 the recipient good, and not harm. Perhaps 

 little has been known about it, btcause they 

 gave for the express purpose of doing good, 

 and not that the deed might be heralded 

 abroad. It pains me to hear hard things said 

 about those who get large wages ; that they 

 get it by dishonest means, that their employers 

 pay them so much because they will uot scru- 

 ple to use falsehood, etc. I believe it is a rule 

 that will hold good almost invariably, that 

 where an employee tells falsehoods for his mas- 

 ter, he will very soon tell them to his master; 

 and I can scarcely imagine an employer that 

 would prefer a hand who he knew would tell 

 fa'sehoods for expediency. Everybody loves 

 truth ; I do not know of a single exception, 

 and yet why, O why, are we all so untruthful \ 

 On page 108 I spoke of a Bible cla^s that I 

 liad started in the jail. For some time the: 

 »Joys sefiined to be rather annoyed than ; 

 otherwise, audi many times seriously ques- 

 tioned whether it were well to keep on after 

 «ny humble fashion. Bye and bye, the three 

 prisoners succeeded in removing a stone from 

 the jail and tscaped. They were captured 

 however, and brought back just in time to 

 avoid missing a single Sabbath Bible class, 

 and I meditated quite a little in regard to 

 what was my duty in the matter; should I 

 say anything to them about their adventure of 

 the week r I finally decided to say nothing, 

 but to go on with my work precisely as if 

 nothing had happened, only I took particular 

 pains to draw from the iesson a strong moral 

 on the importance, beauty and safety of bow- 

 ing humbly to circumstances as we find them, 

 and of obeying the laws of God, and the laws 

 of our land. About that time one of them, 

 the ringleader in the jail breaking and the on- 

 ly one who would probably have to go to the 

 State prison, seemed to soften somewhat. I 

 dually found him willing to talk, and willing 

 to speak of his former life, but he continually 

 insisted that the fault was in some one else, 

 and not in himself, all through his checkered 

 life. He had b^en wronged, first by one and 

 then by another, so he said, and the provoca- 

 tion was so great that he thought he was ex- 

 cusable, nay, he even thought he would do the 

 same thing again, under like circumstances. 

 I read to him about rendering good for evil, 

 and going back over his history, asked him 

 what he supposed would have been the result, 

 had he consented to being imposed upon, as he 

 stated it, and to having his rights trampled 

 on now and then for the sake of peace. I tried 

 to tell him of the beauty of the life of a peace- 



maker, and of the glorious victory that can 

 be achieved by heaping coals of fire on the 

 heads of those who despitefully use us. He 

 admired bravery and daring, and I lent him 

 the history of Moody's early work in Chicago. 

 Strangely enough, he had heard Moody while 

 in Chicago, and little by little, he began to 

 lose his hold on old things. It was a happy 

 day for me, I assure you, when he consented 

 to plead guilty, and go to the penitentiary 

 again — he had served out one term before — if 

 the laws of our land made it right that he 

 should. Then his eyes began to open, and he 

 saw how he had all his lile wronged innocent 

 people, saw that the world he had all along 

 called hard and unfeeling, had used him far 

 better than he deserved, and with an entire 

 new purpose in life, he declared that should 

 God see fit to restore him to liberty, he would 

 try to make amends for his past misdeeds. 



At his trial, instead of trying to make him- 

 self out an innocent man, he plead guilty, and 

 was sentenced to 60 days imprisonment only. 

 During the 60 days his Bible was his constant 

 companion. He is now at liberty, and has 

 been in my employ for the past two weeks, is 

 a most excellent hand, goes to our mission 

 Sabbath schools on Sunday, and to our young 

 people's prayer meeting during the week, and 

 bids fair to be an entirely new man. His old 

 companions are left entirely, and his evenings 

 are spent at home with friends who are most 

 deeply anxious that he should continue in the 

 new path in which he has started. 



Now I will teil you why I have mentioned 

 this much of him. When he told me freelv 

 of his old life, I asked him to tell me if he 

 I could, when and wheie he tirst did that which 

 J he knew to l)e wrong. It was in using a pair 

 of scales that he knew weighed falsely. The 

 first time he did this, he said he felt so badly 

 about it that he did not get over it for many 

 days. I need not tell you that this cheating 

 in weighing was done solely for the purpose 

 of getting more money, or rather for getting 

 money faster. Did he really get more money 

 in the end? Pretty soon he could cheat with- 

 out feeling troubled at all about taking the 

 hard earnings of the poor innocent women 

 who sold him their poultry. Did you ever try 

 to raise chickens to sell, my friend? If you 

 are a woman, and have many household cares 

 to weary and exhaust your strength, you can 

 fully understand how these sisters of yours 

 toiled for the hard earned pennies that two 

 strong men unfeelingly appropriated by false 

 weights. Chickens die and get lost as well as 

 queens, and you who know so well about the 

 vexatious and trials of selling queens for a 

 dollar, perhaps had better try getting dollars 

 by the chickens, if you would get a fair view 

 of the injustice my friend was addicted to.' 

 Just contemplate how far he had strayed from 

 the sentiment conveyed in the little text, "Do 

 good and lend, hoping for nothing again." 

 Does that leave any chance for selfishness? 

 Suppose jthese two had traveled about the 

 country with the purpose of doing all the good 

 they could as their first and primary object, 

 and making the getting of money secondary ; 

 which plan would have been most profitable ? 

 Do you-not guess how their business turned 

 out ? In a very short time they li'aveled only 



