The Golden age. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1906-1915, July 19, 1906, Page 6, Image 6

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6 Worth Woman's While Getting Off With the Car. As we sat at our window unconsciously taking in the pleasant view our eye was attracted to two wo men leaving a street car a block away, They took so long about it, descending laboriously, first one and then the other, and swinging around at the rear. If the motorman, supposing sufficient time had been given for the stop, had started the car, one or both must have been thrown. Why, we marvelled as we watched them, do not people learn to get off with the car? It were such a simple thing to remember, and to forget it were certain danger —at some time. A good per cent of the accidents and disasters which occur are due to this very carelessness, and would never have been, with just a little thougth, a little cultivation of habit—a re minding of self to step forward rather than to the rear in leaving a car. Withdrawing our gaze, and filled with thought of how typical the little incident was of our attitude toward life, it fell on a field of grain bending before the wind. Ah, we thought, the slender stalk of rye never thinks of standing before such force; it 'goes down with the first show of resistance, to raise its head safe and unharmed in the next moment! So with the young oak in the forest—did it at tempt to hold out against the elements it were snapped in twain, and promptly there was an end of it. So with all nature, which breasts the storm by giving way before it. An incident came to us of a man climbing the Weisshorn, above the Zermatt Valley, accompanied by two guides, one of whom stood aside to let him be the first on top. Exhilar ated by the thought of the grand view awaiting him, and unmindful of the high gale that was blow ing on the other side of the rocks, the traveller sprang eagerly up, and stood erect to take in the prospect. But the guide, seeing his danger, pulled him down quickly. “On your knees, sir,” he cried, “you are not safe there except on your knees!” If we could take what comes, simply accept it without resistance or pulling against! It does seem that in leaving a car the most natural thing, the line of least resistance, were with the car. Instead of that, we go jn exactly the opposite directon—the slight impetus that (when we’re inclined rearward) throws us off our feet, would only carry us on did we go ahead. It is hard sometimes to be submissive to the hand of God, to recognize the untoward conditions of our lives as His will for us; but to bend were better than to break—to resist Him were to be snapped asunder more surely than the blade of wheat or the young tree; to bow before the inevitable is to lift us up again safe, the stronger even for the encoun ter. She Did Not Want to Be Disagreeable. Think of one out of every eight hundred and fifty persons in the United States being deaf! More than eighty-nine thousand deaf people in just one of the countries of earth! Don’t you sometimes take your chair out on to the lawn, and just divesting yourself of every care, let the sweet soft sounds of the world about you, the tiny chirp and buzz of insects, the stir of the breeze in the branches, the twitter and call of birds the very something that you feel to be the pulsing of life which you can hear though you cannot see— do you not, with your feet in the sweet, cool grass and the green boughs reaching down to you, feel yourself soothed, made happy in a sort of quiet eestacy? Or, returning from the wild country spot you sought as relief from the city’s din, aren’t the familiar noises grateful to your ear again, the roar of the streets with their traffic and ceaseless mov ing, the innumerable sounds of life in all its tense fullness? The veiy things you longed to leave, The Golden Age for July 19, 1906. By FLORENCE TUCKER how are they now welcome to you! But when are the familiar sounds so pleasant on the ear as in the dead watches of the night when we alone hold vigil? “It is not yet one o’clock,” we say, “or the street cars would not be running.” And later on, we know it is about two, for the train is just coming in . And when the rumble of the first car ter’s wheels so cheerfully breaks the stillness, we say, “It is almost day break!” This thing of sound, sound—it is life itself! And yet to nearly ninety thousand people all the fierce joy and pain of life that is given out in cries or laughter, is as though it were not, except as their eyes see. The world to them is but a pantomime, an endless succession of moving pictures. The oth er day at high noon in the busiest street of a popu lous city, just at the time when the air is thickest with all the sounds that stir the blood and quick en the pulses, we met in passing two deaf mutes. Down the thoroughfare they came, intent upon the talk their hands were nervously spelling out, on their faces the strained look these unfortunates weai’ when greatly in earnest, and looking neither to right nor left. Strangers to the place they ap peared to be, and as our eyes turned to follow them sadly, we thought. To them it is but half a visit to the great metropolis—they see, but alas, they do not hear! A bird singing in a near tree charmed us, thrilled our soul to keenest joy. We turned to one whose hearing is but poor, “Do you hear the bird sing ing?” “No”—he smiled—“it is years since I’ve heard the birds!” And then the song seemed to be hushed, and a cloud to have dimmed the sky, as it fell on our heart, this consciousness of what so many of God’s creatures are denied. But never did we so realize it until it was our fortune to 'have a neighbor who was almost stone deaf. We used to sit and look at her as she sat on her porch gazing out on the pasers-by, the carriages and wagons and wheels, and the endless succession of cars which so diverted her. No sound of any could she hear, and no thoughts were suggested ex cept through her eyes—of all the words of all the people so near about her she could catch not one. A friend dropping in for a little visit could reach her only with straining through a trumpet, and— alas! that she should feel it so—“ Not many people like to talk through a trumpet,” she said. You might ring her door bell, and ring and ring, with the message she would like most of all to have, and though she sat just inside, she would never hear; her own telephone rang, but in vain for her— ah, and the voice of her own child calling from outside to be let in, was lost in the dead silence! Often she slept in the house alone, and had one forced his way in at midnight to rob and murder, she would never have heard; had the flames roared about her and the roof fallen in, she would not have known until she saw and felt. She was a brave woman—aloneness had no terrors for her— but bravest of all, when she sat with her own blood friends around her, and saw their pleasant talking together, their interchange of interest and sym pathy, and comprehended not one word except as some one paused to explain; yet with no impatient questionings, or demands to be told things. We have seen her sit as the laugh went round at some sally, and smile as pleasantly as though she knew what it was about. Such dignity, such control, such utter unselfish ness we have rarely known—it was heroic. Fancy yourself like that, and you will realize how impos sible. We spoke of it once, and told her how passing wonderful it was to us that she could do it, and her answer was this: “I have always felt that it was bad enough to be deaf—and I didn’t want to be disagreeable!” Ah, what lessons they teach us, these who have been bereft of our commonest blessings! Perhaps sometimes we think we are self-denying, or imagine that most beautiful virtue of consideration to be ours, but never can we realize our own shortness until we measure with one who has lost what we still have—and yet has what we have not. Catherine Von Bora’s Wedding Ring. Any who have been so fortunate as to have read the chronicles of “The Schonberg-Cotta Family,” that delightful old story of Martin Luther’s life, and his love for the beautiful Catherine von Bora, must be pleased at this description of their wed ding ring: “Martin Luther’s wedding ring was discovered in 1529, in a second-hand shop in Geneva, by Mme. Michael Girod, and is now at Waldenberg. It is made of silver gilt, and is believed to have been designed by the celebrated painter and goldsmith, Lucas Cranach, and probably was wrought with his own hands, for he was one of the three men se lected by Luther as witnesses of his marriage. The design is complicated, and includes the several sym bols of the Passion. “In the center is a figure of the crucified Sa vior; on one side is the spear with which His side was pierced, and on the other side the ladder used at the crucifixion. The pillar to which He was bound and scourged. There is a leaf of hyssop, the dice with which the soldiers cast lots for His garments, three nails, a crown of thorns and other symbols connected with the last act of the- Atone ment, so grouped as to form a cross with a tiny ruby at the joint, which represents a drop of blood. It is inscribed, HI. Martino Luthero—Catharine Bora, 13 June, 1559.’ Luther’s bride was Catherine von Bora, one of nine nuns, who, under his influ ence, resigned from their order and became Pro testants.” Who Is My Neighbor? Thy neighbor? It is he whom thou Hast power to aid and bless, V Whose aching heart or burning brow Thy soothing hand may press. Thy neighbor? ’Tis the fainting poor, Whose eye with want is dim, Whom hunger sends from door to door; Go thou, and succor him. Thy neighbor? ’Tis that weary man, Whose years are at their brim, Bent low with sickness, cares, and pain, Go thou, and comfort him. Thy neighbor? ’Tis the heart bereft Os every earthly gem; Widow and orphan, helpless left; Go thou, and shelter them. Thy neighbor? Yonder toiling slave, Fettered in thought and limb, Whose hopes are all beyond the grave; Go thou, and ransom him. Where’er thou meet’st a human form Less favored than thine own, Remember ’tis thy neighbor man, Thy brother or thy son. 0, pass not, pass not heedless by; - - - Perhaps thou canst redeem c The breaking heart from misery; Go, share thy lot with him. —Selected,