In his mission field, a certain missionary had to do many things for himself and his family. When the baby grew too big for the carriage he started to build a bed for the child. After he prepared the wood, he glued the mortised pieces and was ready to complete the bed. His wife thought it too cold to work in the shed so he brought the materials into the kitchen and started to work. When the bed was finished, the baby was brought to the kitchen and placed in it while his parents gazed admiringly. Suddenly the father had a disquieting thought. Suppose the bed would not go through the door! Quickly he measured bed and door and found the bed one inch too wide to pass through.
Aboard a United States submarine in enemy waters of the Pacific, a sailor was stricken with acute appendicitis. The nearest surgeon was thousands of miles away. Pharmacist Mate Wheller Lipes watched the seaman's temperature rise to 106 degrees. His only hope was an operation. Said Lipes: "I have watched doctors do it. I think I could. What do you say?" The sailor consented. In the wardroom, about the size of a pullman drawing room, the patient was stretched out on a table beneath a floodlight. The mate and assisting officers, dressed in reversed pajama tops, masked their faces with gauze. The crew stood by the diving planes to keep the ship steady; the cook boiled water for sterilizing. A tea strainer served as an antiseptic cone.
I have a venerable friend who has a sweet spirit that reflects long living with the Saviour. While he was staying in a large hotel in the South, he spoke to his waitress about her soul and she began to justify herself before him. She told him about her character, how hard she worked, and how she took care of an aged mother. Day after day as she waited on him, three meals a day, she would tell him more about her good deeds. After about two weeks of this, my friend said to her one morning, when the rush was over and few people were left in the dining room, "Mildred, will you bring me something special from the kitchen?" "Why, certainly, I'll get you anything you want." The old saint of God then carefully described his order. He wanted a pancake that was cooked on one side and not touched on the other.
If I ask if you would be willing to take a drink of the finest spring water - the purest water that could be obtained by any chemical standards of analysis - you might answer that you would certainly be willing to drink such water. Then suppose I tell you that I have not said a word about the glass into which the water is to be poured. That should give you pause, for the glass in which that pure spring water is conveyed to you has just been emptied of diphtheria culture from a medical laboratory, and multitudes of deadly germs are spread through the water. Now will you take a drink? You refuse, of course.
In 1947, a rumor spread that the Ford Motor Company would give a Ford in exchange for every copper penny dated 1943. The rumor spread so fast that Ford offices throughout the country were jammed with requests for information, and in spite of a telephone strike, thousands of inquiries came in by telephone as well as by telegram and mail. Washington also reported that a large volume of queries had been received at the offices of the mint. It all turned out to be a joke. The statistics of the mint show that in 1943 there was no copper available for coinage and that 1,093,838,670 pennies were minted of steel-zinc, but that the number made of copper was exactly zero.