Covenanter Witness Vol. 54 - Rparchives.org

you'
power."
up."
The Editor's Page
ARE YOU WATCHING YOUR INSTRUMENT
PANEL
A letter to my beloved grandsons and to all other
grand young people who read the Witness
My calendar tells me that it is time that I
should be saying 'thank for the very much ap
preciated pictures you sent me at Christmastime.
Of course, I would rather look at your real faces than
at your pictures but at this distance I will have to be
satisfied with the pictures. I like them because they
show that you are being neat, keeping yourselves
clean and that you are able to look people straight
in the eye. If you hold to that standard all your lives
you will have clean lives.
Did you ever think that everybody's face is the
instrument panel of that person I suppose you know
what the instrument panel on your Daddy's car is
and why there is such an array of instruments. There
is a thermometer, a speedometer, an ammeter and an
odometer, etc., all of which words end in meter. That
is a word that means measure. The thermometer
measures the heat, the speedometer measures the
speed, and the ammeter measures the electricity. All
of these are connected with different parts of the
car to show the condition of the car and to tell the
driver just how things are going under the hood.
People's faces likewise are connected with dif
ferent parts of their nervous and their emotional sys
tems and whenever things are going wrong it regis
ters in their face or if things are going very good, it
likewise registers there.
Let us look at some of those instruments and
see if we have like instruments in our faces. First,
think of the thermometer. When one starts his car on
a cold morning there is no heat registered on the
thermometer but after the car has run a little while
the finger points about half way up. That means that
the car, has now gotten warm enough that it will
furnish heat to the car and will also soften up the oil
and is at a good temperature for running on the road.
If a fan belt breaks or the radiator runs dry, or the
oil fails to circulate, then the thermometer goes up
and indicates danger.
People's faces likewise have thermometers. If
one has a quarrel at home before starting out for
school or a man for his office then it shows unpleas
antness in his face. Perhaps his face is very red and
that shows that something isn't quite right inside.
As the thermometer warns the driver so our red
faces may warn other people to be very careful how
they handle us and to be very
careful about what
they say ; there may be trouble ahead.
Now let us look at that ammeter. That is the in
strument that tells whether electricity is being
stored in your battery or whether your battery is
giving off more electricity than is being stored ; and
the battery ought always to have the reserve charge
in it so that when electricity is needed for lights or
starting and especially for starting on a cold morn-
164
ing, it will not run out of electricity before things
get to going good. When you go to school and study
your books or listen to your teacher or to other peo
ple who have something worthwhile to say, you are
storing up in your mind some force for future use.
Someone has said "knowledge is
The more
you have in your mind the more you are able to win
friends and influence people. So it's a good thing to
keep reading and listening and observing and finding
out all that you can so that you will have a good mind
well stored with power. On the other hand, when you
talk, especially if you talk without knowing what you
are talking about, you are giving off either that re
serve power or a lot of reserve nonsense. If there is
nothing in your mind there will be nothing in the
things you say. So boys, watch your ammeter ! Keep
it busy storing. After awhile you will have a face
that shows very much intelligence like the faces of
people who are prominent, the men of distinction.
Now for the speedometer. That word means
measuring your speed. You often have heard the
words, "Hurry Up, hurry up, hurry That means
we haven't got enough speed on and sometimes peo
ple tell us to slow down, be calm
that means we are
going too fast. A speedometer is put there to teach us
moderation. Someone has said that there are two
people that are a danger on a highway. There is the
boy who is under twenty and is driving over sixty
and there is the man who is over sixty and is driving
under twenty. It's a good thing neither to be too
slow nor to be too swift. But I am not telling you not
to be fast enough to be efficient. One can get so fast
that he ceases to be efficient and becomes a nuisance.
A boy may hurry through his homework so fast that
he doesn't know anything the next day. Watch your
speedometer and try to keep out of other people's
road and on the other hand, try not to be a danger or
a menace to yourself. The life you save may be your
own. If there are figures on your speedometer that
register up to 120 miles per hour, don't consider that
that was where the manufacturer meant for you to
drive your car. There are some people who can run
a mile in very close to four minutes but while they
are running those four minute miles they may be
cutting years off the end of their life. Your Grandpa
knows. His heart tells him now to go slow ; he never
did run the mile in four minutes, however.
There is more on that speedometer than just the
indicator of speed. There is a dial there which regis
ters the amount of miles a car has run from the time
it was sold until the present time, and perhaps your
car, at least some cars, have a tripometer. That
means the dial that measures the number of miles on
or the number of miles you have gone in a
day. You set it at zero in the morning or at the be
ginning of a trip. This also is like the trip-ometer in
your trip
our face. If you have worked very hard some day you
will be very tired at night and the tiredness will show
in your face, in your eyes and in your muscles. When
you feel that way it's a good time to take a rest.
Don't overdrive your car in a single day nor drive
yourself until you are dead tired.
COVENANTER WITNESS