Posts from July 2022

Yiddish folklore offers a telling tale about gossipers and rumormongers. One such man told so many malicious untruths about a local resident that he became overwhelmed with remorse and went to his neighbor begging forgiveness. “Sir,” the penitent man pleaded, “Please tell me how I might make amends.” His neighbor replied, “Take these two feather pillows; go to the public square and there cut the pillows open. Wave them in the air. Then return that we may at once settle…

And those twelve stones, which they took out of Jordan, did Joshua pitch [set up] in Gilgal. And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land. For the Lord your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over, as the Lord…

In 1884 a young man died. After the funeral his grieving parents determined to establish a memorial to him. With that in mind they met with Charles Eliot, president of Harvard University. Eliot received the unpretentious couple into his office and asked what he could do. After they expressed a desire to fund a memorial, Eliot, noting the appearance of the couple impatiently said, “Perhaps you have in mind a scholarship.” “We were thinking of something more substantial than that—perhaps…

In addition to serving as the 25th President of the United States, William F. McKinley achieved the rank of major in the Union Army during the Civil War and served two terms in the United States House of Representatives. During one of his congressional campaigns he was followed from place to place by a reporter for a paper of the opposite political party. The reporter was shrewd and persistent; always at work, quick to see an opportunity and skilled in…