PATTERN
But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them.
—II Tim. 3:14
4271 Just Stay By His Side
The Christian Herald once carried an article about a senior executive of one of the largest banks in New York City. He told how he had risen to a place of prominence and influence. At first he served as an office boy. Then one day the president of the company called him aside and said, “I want you to come into my office and be with me each day.” The young man replied, “But what could I do to help you, sir? I don’t know anything about finances.”
“Never mind that! You will learn what I want to teach you a lot faster if you just stay by my side and keep your eyes and ears open!” “That was the most significant experience of my life,” said the now-famous banker. “Being with that wise man made me just like him. I began to do things the way he did, and that accounts for what I am today.”
—Our Daily Bread
4272 “It Doesn’t Hurt, Paetus”
Cecina Paetus, a Roman noble, was convicted of treason, and ordered to take his own life. He was not a man of iron nerve, and he hesitated. Arria his wife, who had remained at his side throughout the trial, seized the dagger and plunged it to the hilt in her own breast. Then, handing it to her husband, she exclaimed with her expiring breath, “Paetus, it does not hurt.” He hesitated no longer!
4273 A Charge To “Mayflower” Pilgrims
John Robinson gave this charge in 1620 to the Pilgrims as they were about to board the Mayflower for America:
“I charge you before God that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ. If God reveals anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as you were to receive any truth by my ministry, for I am verily persuaded that the Lord hath more truth yet to break out of His Holy Word.”
4274 Honorable Public Scavenger
A very long time ago, in Greece, some politicians thought to play a joke on one of their numbers and got him appointed Public Scavenger. Instead of being embarrassed he decided to show what a man could do with such a lowly assignment—if he tried. Unsanitary conditions which had encouraged pestilence for decades were eliminated. Habits of cleanliness were promoted. Civic pride was stimulated. In a few years people came to look upon the office of Public Scavenger as one of honor and responsibility and thereafter only men of great ability could aspire to the post.
4275 Those “Result” Stories
In my work on the staff of a large newspaper, I am required to ask for result stories from advertisers who have achieved their purpose through the Want Ad columns of our paper. People who spend money to advertise are always glad to tell us when they have sold a piece of furniture or have found their pet dog through the “Lost and Found” column. These little “success items” repeatedly encourage other persons to use our Want Ads. Our paper sells a great deal of advertising space by publishing result stories.
—Mabel C. Doyle
4276 Imitating Each Other Or Christ
In the British Museum a Greek writing tablet, earlier than the Christian era, is shown. It is the classical equivalent of a child’s copybook. The headline has been written by the master. The scholar has traced the second with his eye upon the first; but afterwards each line is a reproduction, not of the first writing, but of the last. Consequently, each line shows a wider divergence from the pattern than the one before.
Is not this one cause of the broken character of our holiness—that we imitate one another, or reproduce our familiar inperfections, instead of portraying the fair likeness of Jesus Christ? “He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also to walk even as He walked” (I John 2:6).
—Christian Victory
4277 She Got Mona Lisa Face
A Tokyo girl had saved money to go to Paris to see the “Mona Lisa” painting. But when she heard that the painting was visiting Tokyo, she went to see it. Then she went to a plastic surgeon with the $500 she had saved to make her face look like the painting!
4278 The Proving Of King Humbert
When the late King Humbert of Italy came to the throne, Naples, one of the chief cities of the newly-made kingdom, was in a state of barely-suppressed insurrection against the monarchy. Politicians were advising stern measures, which Humbert would not allow, when the dreaded cholera broke out, and raged with sudden deadly fury among the Neapolitans. The young king, fired with the noble resolve to prove to his disloyal subjects his devotion to them, started alone, unmoved by the remonstrances of his ministers; and went through the crowded hospitals of Naples, ministering to his subjects with his own royal hands; and many dying people looked or breathed prayers, and thanked him brokenly for his marvelous self-sacrifice on their behalf.
After a while the plague was checked, but it left Naples a conquered city; conquered by the love and pity of the king it had once refused; and, after, the noble Humbert had no more loyal subjects than those to whom he had proved himself a king indeed.
—A. Bernard Webber
4279 Footprints
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
4280 How Raikes Made Her Kneel
It is said that Robert Raikes, the founder of Sunday-schools, one day visited a family in which was bad-temper, obstinacy and sulkiness. Every effort for her improvement was fruitless.
Mr. Raikes talked seriously with her, and told her that her first step must be to kneel down and ask her mother’s pardon. She resisted all entreaty, and he proposed to humble himself for her. Kneeling before the mother, he asked for forgiveness.
The stubborn girl, seeing Mr. Raikes on his knees on her account, burst into tears, fell upon her knees, and asked her mother’s forgiveness for herself. From that hour she became an obedient and gentle child.
—Walter Baxendale
4281 This Field Was Plastered
Benjamin Franklin learned that plaster sown in the fields would make things grow. He told his neighbors, but they did not believe him and they argued with him to prove that plaster could be of no use at all to grass or grain.
After a little while he allowed the matter to drop and said no more about it. But he went into the field early the next spring and sowed some grain. Close by the path, where men would walk, he traced some letters with his finger and put plaster into them and then sowed his seed in the field.
After a week or two the seed sprang up. His neighbors, as they passed that way, were very much surprised to see, in brighter green than all the rest of the field, the writing in large letters, “This has been plastered.” Benjamin Franklin did not need to argue with his neighbors any more about the benefit of plaster for the fields. For as the season went on and the grain grew, these bright, green letters just rose up above all the rest until they were a kind of relief-plate in the field—”This has been plastered.”
4282 Franklin’s Street Lighting Idea
When Benjamin Franklin wished to interest the people of Philadelphia in street lighting, he didn’t try to persuade them by talking about it; instead, he hung a beautiful lantern on a long bracket before his own door. Then he kept the glass brightly polished, and carefully and religiously lit the wick every evening at the approach of dusk.
It wasn’t long before Franklin’s neighbors began placing lights in brackets before their homes, and soon the entire city awoke to the value of street lighting and took up the matter with interest and enthusiasm.
—Sunshine Magazine
4283 The Stepladder Case
A wealthy woman was being sued for a big sum by a maid who had fallen off a small stepladder. There before the jury’s eyes stood the plaintiff’s prize exhibit, the ladder itself, alleged to be rickety and unsafe. Lloyd Stryker, the attorney for the defense, a rugged, big-shouldered hunk of a man, was extolling the ladder’s sound construction. To prove his point on the ladder, he jumped on it. It practically exploded all over the courtroom.
Stryker picked himself up. “You see, gentlemen,” he said quietly, as though he had planned it that way, “you see how solidly that stepladder was built? A big fellow like me had to jump on it with all his weight to break it.” He won the case.
—Life
4284 Epigram On Pattern
• Example is better than precept.
—English Proverb
• The crab tells its young ones to go straight.
—Malay Proverb
• No man is completely worthless. He can always serve as a horrible example.