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I passed all the other courses that I took at my University, but I could never pass botany. This was because all botany students had to spend several hours a week in a laboratory looking through a microscope at plant cells, and I could never see through a microscope. I never once saw a cell through a microscope. This used to enrage my instructor. He would wander around the laboratory pleased with the progress all the students were making in drawing the involved and, so I am told, interesting structure of flower cells, until he came to me. I would just be standing there. "I can't see anything," I would say. He would begin patiently enough, explaining how anybody can see through a microscope, but he would always end up in a fury; claiming that I could too see through a microscope but just pretended that I couldn't. "It takes away from the beauty of flowers anyway," I used to tell him. "We are not concerned with beauty in this course," he would say. "We are concerned solely with what I may call the mechanics of flowers." "Well," I'd say. "I can't see anything." "Try it just once again," he'd say, and I would put my eye to the microscope and see nothing at all, except now and again a nebulous milky substance—a phenomenon of maladjustment. You were supposed to see a vivid, restless clockwork of sharply defined plant cells. "I see what looks like a lot of milk," I would tell him. This, he claimed, was the result of my not having adjusted the microscope properly, so he would readjust it for me, or rather, for himself. And I would look again and see milk. I finally took a deferred pass, as they called it, and waited a year and tried again. (You had to pass one of the biological sciences or you couldn't graduate.) The professor had come back from vacation brown as a berry, bright-eyed, and eager to explain cell-structure again to his classes. "Well," he said to me, cheerily, when we met in the first laboratory hour the semester, "we're going to see cells this time, aren't we?" "Yes, sir," I said. Students to the right of me and left of me and in front of me were seeing cells, what's more, they were quietly drawing pictures of them in their notebooks. Of course, I didn't see anything. "We'll try it," the professor said to me, grimly, "with every adjustment of the microscope known to man. As God is my witness, I'll arrange this glass so that you see cells through it or I'll give up teaching. In twenty-two years of botany, I—" He cut off abruptly for he was beginning to quiver all over, like Lionel Barrymore, and he genuinely wished to hold onto his temper; his scenes with me had taken a great deal out of him. So we tried it with every adjustment of the microscope known to man. With only one of them did I see anything but blackness or the familiar lacteal opacity, and that time I saw, to my pleasure and amazement, a variegated constellation of flecks, specks, and dots. These I hastily drew. The instructor, noting my activity, came from an adjoining desk, a smile on his lips and his eyebrows high in hope. He looked at my cell drawing. "What's that?" he demanded, with a hint of squeal in his voice. "That's what I saw," I said. "You didn't, you didn't, you didn't!" he screamed, losing control of his temper instantly, and he bent over and squinted into the microscope. His head snapped up. "That's your eye!" he shouted. "You've fixed the lens so that it reflects! You've drawn your eye!" Another course I didn't like, but somehow managed to pass, was economics. I went to that class straight from the botany class, which didn't help me any in understanding either subject. I used to get them mixed up. But not as mixed up as another student in my economics class who came there direct from a physics laboratory. He was a tackle on the football team, named Bolenciecwcz. At that time Ohio State University had one of the best football teams in the country, and Bloenciecwcz was one of its outstanding stars. In order to be eligible to play it was necessary for him to keep up in his studies, a very difficult matter, for while he was not dumber than an ox he was not any smarter. Most of his professors were lenient and helped him along. None gave him more hints, in answering questions, or asked him simpler ones than the economics professor, a thin, timid man named Bassum. One day when we were on the subject of transportation and distribution, it came Bolenciecwcz's turn to answer a question, "Name one means of transportation," the professor said to him. No light came into the big tackle's eyes. "Just any means of transportation," said the professor. Bolenciecwcz sat staring at him. "That is," pursued the professor, "any medium, agency, or method of going from one place to another," Bolenciecwcz had the look of a man who is being led into a trap. "You may choose among steam, horse-drawn, or electrically propelled vehicles," said the instructor. "I might suggest the one which we commonly take in making long journeys across land." There was a profound silence in which everybody stirred uneasily, including Bolenciecwcz and Mr. Bassum. Mr. Bassum abruptly broke this silence in an amazing manner. "Choo-choo-choo," he said, in a low voice, and turned instantly scarlet. He glanced appealingly around the room. All of us, of course, shared Mr. Bassum's desire that Bolenciecwcz should stay abreast of the class in economics. For the Illinois game, one of the hardest and most important of the season, was only a week off. "Toot, toot, too-tooooooot!" some student with a deep voice moaned, and we all looked encouragingly at Bolenciecwcz. Somebody else gave a fine imitation of a locomotive letting off steam. Mr. Bassum himself rounded off the little show. "Ding, dong, ding, dong," he said, hopefully. Bolenciecwcz was staring at the floor now, trying to think, his great brow furrowed, his huge hands rubbing together, his face red. "How did you come to college this year, Mr. Bolenciecwcz?" asked the professor. "Chuffa chuffa, chuffa chuffa." 　　"M'father sent me," said the football player. 　　"What's on?" asked Bassum. 　　"I git an 'lowance," said the tackle, in a low, husky voice, obviously embarrassed. 　　"No, no," said Bassum, "Name a means of transportation. What did you ride here on?" 　　"Train," said Bolenciecwcz. 　　"Quite right," said the professor. "Now, Mr. Nugent, will you tell us—" If I went through anguish in botany and economics—for different reasons—gymnasium work was even worse. I don't even like to think about it. They wouldn't let you play games or join in the exercises with your glasses on and I couldn't see with mine off. I bumped into professors, horizontal bars, agricultural students, and swinging iron rings. Not being able to see, I could take it but I couldn't dish it out. Also, in order to pass gymnasium (and you had to pass it to graduate) you had to learn to swim if you didn't know how. I didn’t like the swimming pool, I didn’t like swimming, and I didn't like the swimming instructor, and after all these years I still don't. I never swam but I passed my gym work anyway, by having another student give my gymnasium number (978) and swim across the pool in my place. He was a quiet, amiable blonde youth, number 473, and he would have seen through a microscope for me if we could have got away with it, but we couldn't get away with it. Another thing I didn't like about gymnasium work was that they made you strip the day you registered. It is impossible for me to be happy when I am stripped and being asked a lot of questions. Still, I did better than a lanky agricultural student who was cross-examined just before I was. They asked each student what college he was in—that is, whether Arts, Engineering, Commerce, or Agriculture. "What college are you in?" the instructor snapped at the youth in front of me. "Ohio State University," he said promptly. It wasn't that agricultural student but it was another a whole lot like him who decided to take up journalism, possibly on the ground that when farming went to hell he could fall bake on newspaper work. He didn't realize, of course, that that would be very much like falling back full-length on a kit on carpenter's tools. Haskins didn't seem cut out for journalism, being too embarrassed to talk to anybody and unable to use a typewriter, but the editor of the college paper assigned him to the cow barns, the sheep house, the horse pavilion, and the animal husbandry department generally. This was a genuinely big "beat," for it took up five times as much ground and got ten times as great a legislative appropriation as the College of Liberal Arts. The agricultural student knew animals, but nevertheless his stories were dull and colorlessly written. He took all afternoon on each one of them, on account of having to hunt for each letter on the typewriter. Once in a while he had to ask somebody to help him hunt. "C" and "L", in particular, were hard letters for him to find. His editor finally got pretty much annoyed at the farmer-journalist because his pieces were so uninteresting. "See here, Haskins," he snapped at him one day, "why is it we never have anything hot from you on the horse pavilion? Here we have two hundred head of horses on this campus—more than any other university in the Western Conference except Purdue—and yet you never get any real low down on them. Now shoot over to the horse barns and dig up something lively." Haskins shambled out and came back in about an hour; he said something. "Well, start it off snappily," said the editor. "Something people will read." Haskins set to work and in a couple of hours brought a sheet of typewritten paper to the desk; it was a two-hundred word story about some disease that had broken out among the horses. Its opening sentence was simple but arresting. It read: "Who has noticed the sores on the tops of the horses in the animal husbandry building?"

Written by Tom Mach To learn more about Tom Mach please visit tommach.com Most people are probably familiar with the “Good Samaritan” story in the Bible. It’s the one Jesus told about a traveler who is beaten, robbed, and left to die on the road. A priest comes by, sees the man, but walks on. So too does a Levite who sees the dying man. But a Samaritan sees the man, binds his wounds, and takes him to an inn, asking the innkeeper to take care of him, giving me money for his troubles. Unfortunately, there is a great shortage of good Samaritans in today’s world. While part of it may be our preoccupation with ourselves and our busy lives, another part may be due to fear of litigation. I recently received the following from a Twitter friend named Ruoxu from China. Here’s her story: Hello, I want to tell you about a situation involving compassion in China. A few years ago, a famous lawsuit was started by an elderly lady. She was struck by a car and plummeted to the street. A young man came to her aid and took her to a hospital. However, instead of thanking him she sued him, claiming he was the one responsible for her injuries. Since there were no witnesses or other evidence conflicting with her testimony, the court rules that the young man must compensate for her injury because ‘generally speaking, people in China have rarely helped someone in situations like this.’ This ruling all but killed any compassion people may have felt for others. After the lawsuit, most people were convinced that helping someone in desperate need was dangerous. A few days after this happened, a Chinese newspaper reported that another elderly lady fell down in the street, but this time no one came to help. She was left there in the street, severely injured, and died. Peng Yu is the name of the young man who wanted to be compassionate. His “crime” in helping out the elderly lady was to pay her 45876.6 yuan as compensation. [Note the photo accompanying this blog is Pena Vu while the other is a caricature of an elderly man who falls down but no one dares to help.] In a related story, an 84-year-old man was found lying in the street for a long while, during which time no passers-by attempted to help him. It was reported that two women wanted to help him up, but one of the onlookers warned them not to touch him if they wanted to avoid problems with the law. This convinced the women to call the police with a cell phone, but by the time the ambulance finally arrived, the old man had died. The two women hesitated and finally stood up. Using their cell phone, they called the police and first-aid center. But by the time the ambulance arrived, the old man had died. A similar event occurred in the United States in 2004. A woman pulled a coworker from a car that was on fire as a result of an automobile collision. Later, the injured person sued the rescuer and claimed that she suffered paralysis due to the way the rescuer pulled her from the burning car. While the court initially ruled in favor of the plaintiff, the ruling stirred a lot of anger across the country. As a result, five years later, the California legislature passed the Good Samaritan Protection Act (CPA). The CPA protected Good Samaritans from liability when assisting another. However Good Samaritan laws in most states protect the rescuer ONLY if the rescuer is not compensated monetarily for his or her own actions. In other words, a policeman or fireman who attempts to rescue someone can still be later sued by the one who was rescued. Also, if the rescuer is later rewarded by anyone (including the person rescued), he or she can still be sued. We are a litigious society, where some people simply want to sue others either to extract money or to shift the blame on someone else, even if it’s not the other person’s fault. Frivolous lawsuits are the bane of society, and some countries discourage this by forcing plaintiffs to pay for the defendant’s legal and court costs if those lawsuits have no solid basis for a court action. While fear of legal retaliation may be one reason some people may feat being a Good Samaritan, I believe another major factor is preoccupation with our own selves. Now that we have all kinds of electronic devices and don’t really have to communicate face-to-face or by handwritten letters that require more thought that emails–now that we have materialism on the brain or legitimate personal concerns like how to find a job–now that we have these things to think about, we have little room left for compassion. And I don’t think we as a society can expect to be blessed by God if we totally shut the door to helping out a person in distress. I’ve attempted to show compassion–or the lack thereof–in all of my books…and I hope I’ve succeeded in some small way. It could be compassion for a mistreated slave (SISSY) or compassion for a priest wrongfully accused of a crime (AN INNOCENT MURDERED) or compassion for a scientist who has to go it alone when no one believes him (ADVENT)…or even a cat who cannot find his way back home (HOMER THE ROAMER). Examples of compassion or lack thereof can be found in all examples of life. I guess I like to write about compassion because it is a friend of forgiveness and a close relative of love.