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Scalawag on the Web Sectory 11
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From today the regeneration of our fleet begins. From today Ottoman hearts must again rejoice. We must work hard now for the strengthening of our navy. We must know that our fleet, which till yesterday was lifeless, is no longer in incompetent hands and under the leadership of lazy minds. New Turkey has intrusted her navy to iron hands. At the head of our fleet is Djemal Pasha, whose naval successes it is unnecessary to mention. The commander of the fleet is the Chief of the Naval Staff, Arif Bey, and in command of the light flotilla is Capt. Muzzafer Bey. Likewise the commanders and the other officers of the two new battleships are chosen among the fittest. This is the beginning of a new era for our navy. In addition to this we must say that we are expecting good results from our political activity. Talaat Bey and Halil Bey have left for Bucharest, where they will try to find a solution of outstanding serious questions. At the same time they will have an opportunity to exchange views with Rumanian statesmen. It is unnecessary, in our belief, to exalt the significance of this mission. We think, however, that a wise and moderate policy, strengthened by a good army and navy, will go far in bringing good results.
And so the word became the fundamental idea of the Christian life: the grace of God was the power that floods the whole of the earlier teaching of the gospel, before the conflict with the ungracious and suspicious world began--the serene, uncalculating life, lived simply and purely, not from any grim principle of asceticism, but because it was beautiful to live so. It stood for the joy of life, as opposed to its cares and anxieties and ambitions; it was beautiful to share happiness, to give things away, to live in love, to find joy in the fresh mintage of the earth, the flowers, the creatures, the children, before they were clouded and stained by the strife and greed and enmity of the world. The exquisite quality of the first soft touches of the gospel story comes from the fact that it all rose out of a heart of joy, an overflowing certainty of the true values of life, a determination to fight the uglier side of life by opposing to it a simplicity and a sweetness that claimed nothing, and exacted nothing but a right to the purest sort of happiness--the happiness of a loving circle of friends, where the sacrifice of personal desires is the easiest and most natural thing in the world, because such sacrifice is both the best reward and the highest delight of love. It was here that the strength of primitive Christianity lay, that it seemed the possession of a joyful secret that turned all common things, and even sorrow and suffering, to gold. If a man could rejoice in tribulation, he was on his way to be invulnerable.
In the trees that line one of the main streets and fashionable drives leading out of Washington city, and less than half a mile from the boundary, I have counted the nests of five different species at one time, and that without any very close scrutiny of the foliage, while in many acres of woodland, half a mile off, I searched in vain for a single nest. Among the five that interested me most was that of a blue grossbeak. Here this bird, which, according to Audubon's observations, in Louisiana is shy and recluse, affecting remote marshes and the borders of large ponds of stagnant water, had placed its nest in the lowest twig of the lowest branch of a large sycamore, immediately over a great thoroughfare, and so near the ground that a person standing in a cart or sitting on a horse could have reached it with his hand. The nest was composed mainly of fragments of newspaper and stalks of grass, and, though so low, was remarkably well concealed by one of the peculiar clusters of twigs and leaves which characterize this tree. The nest contained young when I discovered it, and though the parent birds were much annoyed by my loitering about beneath the tree, they paid little attention to the stream of vehicles that was constantly passing. It is a wonder to me when the birds could have built it, for they are much shyer when building than at other times. No doubt they worked mostly in the morning, having the early hours all to themselves.
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