ether ajar with a certain kind of vibration by shooting up into it strong electric impulses, then I can plant yonder in the distance another instrument keyed to that particular kind of vibration, and it will pick out its own from the ether, quivering, as it is, with an infinite number of vibrations. Just as when you run the scale of the piano in a room, each object responds to its own note. When you touch D a certain lampshade will shiver in answer. That is its note. It knows its own vibration, and is silent to all others.
This, then, is what is transpiring now among men. A code of signals being arranged, one here sends up his request or prayer into the heavens, speaks into space. The whole hemisphere of ether is set quivering. Another yonder, a thousand miles distant, picks out of space the syllables of that prayer, one by one, and then throws back through space the answer. Nothing so marvelous as this, so near spiritual conditions, has ever before entered the heart of man. It is not surprizing that the air is full of prophecies, dreams and visions. One says we will yet be able to carry in a pocket, like watches, little vibrators, so that we can communicate with our distant friends without wires or towers, or skilled operators, as readily as we take out our watch and tell the hour of the day. Others, in this prophetic madness, say we may yet learn the vibration of the planets, and fling off into space our "All hail" to Mars and Venus.—James H. Ecob.
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Communion Between Man and Beast—See Kindness to Animals. COMMUNION NOT BARRED A board knocked from a dividing fence sometimes leads to pleasant associations, but they are possible with the boards all on. We can look over or through. And souls can thus, even without effort, live together while the bodies are kept apart. Fences, high and barbed, can not separate kindred spirits.—United Presbyterian.
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Communion with God—See God Surrounding the Soul. Community's Interests Before Personal Interests—See Convictions, Strong. COMPANIONS, EVIL A farmer's corn was destroyed by the cranes that fed in his field. Greatly annoyed, he declared that he would find a way out of the trouble. A net was set in which the cranes were snared. There was also a beautiful stork among them who had been visiting with the cranes, and had come to them from a neighboring roof. "Spare me," plead the stork. "I am innocent; indeed I am. I never touched any of your belongings." "That may be true," answered the farmer; "but I find you among them and I judge you accordingly." The only safe way is to keep out of bad company.
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Comparative Religion—See Christianity Superior. COMPARATIVE, THE Vernon L. Kellogg writes about an ant dragon that he once observed, thus: He was an ugly little brute, squat and humpbacked, with sand sticking to his thinly haired body. But he was fierce-looking for all his diminutiveness. Remember again that whether a thing is big or little to you depends on whether you are big or little. This dragon of the sand-pit was little to us. He is terribly big to the ants.—"Insect Stories."
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COMPARISONS, APT The Chinese call overdoing a thing, a hunchback making a bow. When a man values himself overmuch, they compare him to a rat falling into a scale and weighing itself.—Chambers's Journal.
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Compass—See Bible.
COMPENSATION
Judge Noah Davis, when asked by a company
of American brother lawyers as to the
comparative advantages of different periods
of life, replied, with his usual calm simplicity
of manner, as follows:
"In the warm season of the year it is my delight to be in the country; and every pleasant evening while I am there I love to sit at the window and look upon some beautiful trees which grow near my house. The murmuring of the wind through the branches, the gentle play of the leaves, and the flickering of light upon them when the moon is up, fill me with an indescribable pleasure. As the autumn comes on, I feel very sad to see these leaves falling one by one; but when they are all gone, I find that they were only a screen before my eyes;
