18 THE ACORN Clark Gems Being a few extracts and sayings of pith gathered from a lecture given by Prof. S. H. Clark, of Chigago University, at our town, on February 19, on the subject of Literature and the Community." In literature we find our ideals in life. Literature may make or mar the child that reads it. One is measured by what one reads or what one does not read. What you look for is your measure to an inch and no man may deceive himself. A community is measured by what it reads. The character of a community is measured by the quality of men it chooses to represent it. How much can I get out of school? (Too often the remark of students.) Seek leisure for higher things that which is best and highest. We can get everything we seek for, if we pay the price, and the price is charged in spiritual liberty. What do you work at when you don't have to work? What do you think of when you don't have to think? You are judged by the neighborhood you want to live in. The test is, of any literature, does it make life larger and better. Earth has no balsam for mistakes. The ideal is the eternal in the practical. We cannot rise higher than we think. There is no higher stimulus for the higher thinking in a community than contact with true literary art. Not what we remember but what we become is the only test. Man must love something. The way to drive gossip out is gossiping about a good book. Be on friendly terms with a good book. Culture is the leaven for the commercial lump. The purpose of culture is not to enable us to get riches, but to enable us to get along without riches, for culture, the friendship with the best, is riches. THE ACORN 19 Miscellaneous Bill Nye's Cow Advertisement. Bill Nye, the humorist, once had a cow to sell, and advertised her as follows: "Owing to my ill health, I will sell at my residence, in Township 13, Range 23, according to Government survey, one plush raspberry cow, age eight years. She is of undoubted courage and gives milk frequently. To a man who does not fear death in any form she would be a great boon. She is very much attached to her present home with a stay chain, but she will be sold to anyone who will agree to treat her right. She is one-fourth short-horn and three-fourths hyena. I will throw in a double barrel shot gun which goes with her. In May she usually goes away for a week or two and returns with a tall, red calf with wabbly legs. Her name is Rose. I would rather sell her to a non-resident. Ex. To Bring Boston Seventy Miles Nearer New York. After more than two hundred years of intermittent discussion, the project of a canal to cut the base of the Cape Cod peninsula at last gives tangible promise of realization. It is announced through the public press that the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad has withdrawn its opposition to the enterprise, which is to be financed by August Belmont and Company, with Wm. Barclay Parsons in charge of the engineering. The proposed canal will run from Buzzard's Bay on the south to Sandwich on the north, a distance of eight miles, and will be completed, it is claimed, within three years, at a cost of $10,000,000. It will shorten the inside water route from New York to Boston, by way of Long Island Sound, by seventy miles', and will enable the coastwise traffic to avoid the perils which lurk in the fogs and storms of Cape Cod, one of the most dangerous parts of the Atlantic coast. It has been estimated that 23 per cent of the losses along the coast between Norfolk in Virginia and Maine occur off Cape Cod, which ranks second to Hatteras only as a point of risk. In twenty years 150 wrecks stand to its account. Cerebro-Spinal Meningitis. A considerable anxiety is felt throughout the state, particularly throughout Salt Lake City, Ogden and Provo, concerning the rapid spread of Cerebro-spinal Meningitis. It threatens to become an epidemic. Particularly serious is this disease because most of the patients succumb in just a few hours. The disease is the result of bacteria, which attacks the spinal cord. Physicians agree that many cases have been induced by a mental condition caused by fear. A prominent physician of Salt Lake City has given out a remedy which he believes will check the ravages of meningitis in most cases. He removes a few cubic centimeters of nervous matter from the spinal cord in the lumbar region and injects air into the space thus formed. The oxygen in the air is fatal to the life of these bacteria.