It is not often the great strokes of misfortune that break men down,
but the daily wear and tear of small troubles. An editor writes thus:
A huge cart-wheel lies in the gutter near our office. The cart
itself has been pulled with difficulty out of the way of the
trolley cars. An axle has broken. And that axle! It is fully
four inches in diameter and was originally forged of soundest
steel. But as you look at the fragments of it wedged in the
overturned hub you discover a peculiar condition. “The steel
has been crystallized,” the mechanic would explain. No sudden
strain broke it, no tremendous wrench twisted the spindle from
the beam. The ruin was wrought by the constant small jars of
daily traffic. Rumbling over stones, bumping over crossings,
scraping against curbs threw the atoms of steel in the axle out
of cohesive harmony. Then came the one jar, no heavier than the
others, that sent the load of coal into the street.
(1683)
=Jester, The=--See HUMOR OVERDONE.