The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-03-16
NO SUCCESS WITHOUT WORK.
The CREATOR DOES NOT GIVE
CHROMOS TO THOSE WHO
SEEK KNOWLEDGE.
INTERESTING LECTURE BY JENKIN
L. JONES ON THE COST OF AN
IDEA.

"The infinite never sells his wares below
cost said Jenkin Lloyd Jones at Golden
Gate Hall last evening. HE offers no
chromos to tempt subscribers for the jour
nal of knowledge, a journal illustrated by
the pencil of experience"
Mr.. Jones lecture was the second in a
popular course being given under the
auspices of the Woman's Auxiliary of the
Second Unitarian Church, and bore the
title, 1.-The Cost of an Idea"
Continuing, the speaker said: "More
and more as you read the heart secrets of
mother nature viii you discover that con-
fiict is her method and struggle is her song.
Progress unfoldS her banner only upon the
battletields of God"
cit is an expensive thing to live. This
is true, from Caliban, who, from toe to
crown, finds his skin filled with pinches,
up to Goethe. who said Each bonmot has
cost me purse OF gold.
can idea is the most expensive article
that human being can invest in. 1t is
expensive because, first it is a hard thing
to get; and second, it is a troublesome
thing to hold after you get it. You must
find an idea, as Angelo did, who, when re-
buked for wasting time over trit1es, replied,
'Trifes make perfection, and perfection is
no trife' Would you know the secret of
literary power? You must find it as Dante
found it-walking up and down the streets
of Florence, so lean and miserable that
jolly peasants whispered, There goes the
man that's been in hell.
GLOW long did it take you to write that
splendid sermonY inquired a hattering
deacon of old DR.. Lyman Beecher, after
one of his great efforts. About forty
years. was the all too truthful but pithy
reply.
BY the thorn road and none other
Is the mount of vision won.
"'Most OF the great ideas have compelled
their early possessors to beg and cringe or
starve and die. Of all the solitudes that is
the greatest which calls for man to live,
as Lowell says, In the silent desert of a
great new thought
''N hat is the reward of an ideaP Is not
science quite confident now that the race
started out way back and way down there,
without hat, coat or boots, without horse,
pillow or gun, without so much as Jack.
knife, without even pocket to put them
in, and through the triumph of ideas man
now enjoys the umbrella, Arctic overshoes,
weatherproof house and a waterproof
coat, the telegraph, steel pens, the mill
stone, the rocklng-chair, icecream mince
pies laughterl tin cups, Spaulding's glue,
the telephone, the needle-gun, and last but
by no means least when we take them in
in all the breadth and depth of their mean
ing, the gentlemen's paper collar and the
ladies patent adjustable skirt supporters.
wind sun and frost file the sides and
chisel the heights of mountains, and the
time will be when they are not; but an un-
seen and intangible idea endures forever.
Grecian power is gone, but Greece is still
young In the songs of her Homer, in the
beauty OF her Venus de Milo and in the
writings of Plato, that are still the
epitome of Libraries"
One accent OF the Holy Ghost
The needless world has never lost.