The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-04-11

move the world" good cheer has been
the bait and lever which have moved
the world.
1t does seem as though time is
given to repeating itself every few
cycles. The bull of the Irishman who
said, =" should have been very
handsome man if they had not
changed me in the cradle" ;"<now this
comes from Don Quixote; and Ger
vantes found it in the Greek litera-
ture of the fourth century before the
Christian era; and the Greeks bor-
rowed it Of the Egyptians centuries
before. We find it thus with the
Hibernicisms telling of the Irishman
that carried around brick as
specimen of the house which he had
to sell''; of "the Corkonian who shut
his eyes and looked into the glass to
see how he would look when he was
dead;" of the Far Downer that bought
crow, alleging that "crows are re-
puted to live two hundred years, and
he was going to prove it," of son of
Erin that met a friend who said to
him: "Why, sir, l heard that you were
dead" "Well," says the man, Il sup
pose you see that | am not" "Oh!
no" says he, II would believe the man
who told me great deal quicker
than you;" of the Irishman walking
to London with an Englishman who,
turning to Pat said, "Where would
you be, if you had your just deserts?"
Pat replies, Walking to London
alone, sir;'' of the fellow of the En-
erald Isle who fell down a coal shaft
and his comrade peering into the
darkness, cried out, mike are you
dead?" "No," was the reply" "But I
am spachlees."
All these and many others of the
Celtic land have been traced back to
the time of Plato and Socrates. The
story of Cinderella and the Slipper
reaches into traditional lore before
the birth of history. Bulwer took
the incidents of his Roman stories
from legends of the dark ages. The
fable of Sully's meeting young lady
attired in green from head to foot,
coming down the backstairs leading
to Henry's apartment, and being
asked by the king, as he entered his
chamber, if he had not been told that
his majesty had fever and could
not receive visitors that morning, re-
plies, "Yes, sire, but the fever is gone.
l have just met it on the staircase.
dressed in green" This same thing
is told of Demetrius, the cynic, and
his father.
We read of Dean Swift's describ-
ing the intense heat of a certain sum-
mer to some friends, saying ''It was
so hot that he was obliged to take off
his flesh and sit in his bones"
"Why," exclaimed young woman in
his presence, "Mr Swift, how did
you do that!" Something very SINH
lar to this was rife at the time of the
Pharaohs. The anecdote of the spi-
der's teaching Robert Bruce perse-
verance while he was lying on the
floor almost disheartened, is the
same lesson the spider taught Ia
merlane by the Tigris river. So it is
facts do repeat themselves, which is
as true of the serious as of the hu-
morous.
Cicero speaks of having seen the
whole of the Had, which contains as
many words as the New Testament,
written so fine and on SO small a
piece of parchment as to be put into
a walnut shell. We have seen the
Lords Prayer and the Declaration of
Independence inscribed on the face
of quarter of dollar, which could
be read only by the aid of powerful
microscope. From this experience,
we can but infer that the microscope
was in use when the Iliad was writ
ten in so small compass. Then in
further proof of this, magnifying
glasses have been found in the ruins
of Nineveh. Rawlinson discovered
in the debris of the same old city a
stone ten by twenty inches square,
indited with complete mathemati-
cal treatise, which cannot be read
without a strong magnifYing glass.
Humboldt's Cosmos speaks of the
Chinese one thousand years before
the Christian era, having magnetic
carriages to guide them across the
plains of Tartary. The old Romans
used movable type to mark their
pottery and endorse their books. The
stereoscope was known to Euclid,
which was similar to the one of the
present day. A tunnel was made
under the Euphrates twenty-five
hundred years before the Thames