THE MIGHT OF LITTLE THINGS.
Little strokes fell great oaks.--FRANKLIN.
Think naught a trifle, though it small appear;
Small sands the mountain, moments make the year,
And trifles, life.
YOUNG.
"Scorn not the slightest word or deed,
Nor deem it void of power;
There's fruit in each wind-wafted seed,
That waits its natal hour."
It is but the littleness of man that seeth no greatness in
trifles.--WENDELL PHILLIPS.
He that despiseth small things shall fall by little and
little.--ECCLESIASTICUS.
Often from our weakness our strongest principles of conduct are born;
and from the acorn, which a breeze has wafted, springs the oak which
defies the storm.--BULWER.
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.--EMERSON.
Men are led by trifles.--NAPOLEON I.
"A pebble on the streamlet scant
Has turned the course of many a river;
A dewdrop on the baby plant
Has warped the giant oak forever."
The mother of mischief is no bigger than a midge's wing.--SCOTCH
PROVERB.
"The bad thing about a little sin is that it won't stay little."
"A little bit of patience often makes the sunshine come,
And a little bit of love makes a very happy home;
A little bit of hope makes a rainy day look gay,
And a little bit of charity makes glad a weary way."
"Arletta's pretty feet, glistening in the brook, made her the mother of
William the Conqueror," says Palgrave's "History of Normandy and
England." "Had she not thus fascinated Duke Robert the Liberal, of
Normandy, Harold would not have fallen at Hastings, no Anglo-Norman
dynasty could have arisen, no British Empire."
* * * * * *
[Illustration: AGASSIZ]
Small things become great when a great soul sees them. Trifles light
as air sometimes suggest to the thinking mind ideas which revolutionize
the world.
* * * * * *
We may tell which way the wind blew before the Deluge by marking the
ripple and cupping of the rain in the petrified sand now preserved
forever. We tell the very path by which gigantic creatures, whom man
never saw, walked to the river's edge to find their food.
The tears of Veturia and Volumnia saved Rome from the Volscians when
nothing else could move the vengeful heart of Coriolanus.
It was little Greece that rolled back the overflowing tide of Asiatic
luxury and despotism, giving instead to Europe and America models of
the highest political freedom yet attained, and germs of limitless
mental growth. A different result at Plataea had delayed the progress
of the human race more than ten centuries.
Among the lofty Alps, it is said, the guides sometimes demand absolute
silence, lest the vibration of the voice bring down an avalanche.
The power of observation in the American Indian would put many an
educated man to shame. Returning home, an Indian discovered that his
venison, which had been hanging up to dry, had been stolen. After
careful observation he started to track the thief through the woods.
Meeting a man on the route, he asked him if he had seen a little, old,
white man, with a short gun, and with a small bob-tailed dog. The man
told him he had met such a man, but was surprised to find that the
Indian had not even seen the one he described. He asked the Indian how
he could give such a minute description of the man whom he had never
seen. "I knew the thief was a little man," said the Indian, "because
he rolled up a stone to stand on in order to reach the venison; I knew
he was an old man by his short steps; I knew he was a white man by his
turning out his toes in walking, which an Indian never does; I knew he
had a short gun by the mark it left on the tree where he had stood it
up; I knew the dog was small by his tracks and short steps, and that he
had a bob-tail by the mark it left in the dust where he sat."
Two drops of rain, falling side by side, were separated a few inches by
a gentle breeze. Striking on opposite sides of the roof of a
court-house in Wisconsin, one rolled southward through the Rock River
and the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico; while the other entered
successively the Fox River, Green Bay, Lake Michigan, the Straits of
Mackinaw, Lake Huron, St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, Detroit River,
Lake Erie, Niagara River, Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River, and
finally reached the Gulf of St. Lawrence. How slight the influence of
the breeze, yet such was the formation of the continent that a trifling
cause was multiplied almost beyond the power of figures to express its
momentous effect upon the destinies of these companion raindrops. Who
can calculate the future of the smallest trifle when a mud crack swells
to an Amazon, and the stealing of a penny may end on the scaffold? Who
does not know that the act of a moment may cause a life's regret? A
trigger may be pulled in an instant, but the soul returns never.
A spark falling upon some combustibles led to the invention of
gunpowder. Irritable tempers have marred the reputation of many a
great man, as in the case of Edmund Burke and of Thomas Carlyle. A few
bits of seaweed and driftwood, floating on the waves, enabled Columbus
to stay a mutiny of his sailors which threatened to prevent the
discovery of a new world. There are moments in history which balance
years of ordinary life. Dana could interest a class for hours on a
grain of sand; and from a single bone, such as no one had ever seen
before, Agassiz could deduce the entire structure and habits of an
animal so accurately that subsequent discoveries of complete skeletons
have not changed one of his conclusions.
A cricket once saved a military expedition from destruction. The
commanding officer and hundreds of his men were going to South America
on a great ship, and, through the carelessness of the watch, they would
have been dashed upon a ledge of rock had it not been for a cricket
which a soldier had brought on board. When the little insect scented
the land, it broke its long silence by a shrill note, and this warned
them of their danger.
"Strange that a little thing like that should cause a man so much
pain!" exclaimed a giant, as he rolled in his hand and examined with
eager curiosity the acorn which his friend the dwarf had obligingly
taken from the huge eye into which it had fallen just as the colossus
was on the point of shooting a bird perched in the branches of an oak.
Sometimes a conversation, or a sentence in a letter, or a paragraph in
an article, will help us to reproduce the whole character of the
author; as a single bone, a fish scale, a fin, or a tooth, will enable
the scientist and anatomist to reproduce the fish or the animal,
although extinct for ages.
By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation. A little boy
in Holland saw water trickling from a small hole near the bottom of a
dike. He realized that the leak would rapidly become larger if the
water was not checked, so he held his hand over the hole for hours on a
dark and dismal night until he could attract the attention of
passers-by. His name is still held in grateful remembrance in Holland.
The beetling chalk cliffs of England were built by rhizopods, too small
to be clearly seen without the aid of a magnifying-glass.
What was so unlikely as that throwing an empty wine-flask in the fire
should furnish the first notion of a locomotive, or that the sickness
of an Italian chemist's wife and her absurd craving for reptiles for
food should begin the electric telegraph?
Madame Galvani noticed the contraction of the muscles of a skinned frog
which was accidentally touched at the moment her husband took a spark
from an electrical machine. She gave the hint which led to the
discovery of galvanic electricity, now so useful in the arts and in
transmitting vocal or written language.
M. Louis Pasteur was usher in the Lyceum. Thursdays he took the boys
to walk. A student took his microscope to examine insects, and allowed
Pasteur to look through it. This was the starting of the boy on the
microscopic career which has made men wonder. He was almost wild with
enthusiasm at the new world which the microscope revealed.
A stamp act to raise 60,000 pounds produced the American Revolution, a
war that cost 100,000,000 pounds. What mighty contests rise from
trivial things!
Congress met near a livery stable to discuss the Declaration of
Independence. The members, in knee breeches and silk stockings, were
so annoyed by flies, which they could not keep away with their
handkerchiefs, that it has been said they cut short the debate, and
hastened to affix their signatures to the greatest document in history.
"The fate of a nation," says Gladstone, "has often depended upon the
good or bad digestion of a fine dinner."
A young man once went to India to seek his fortune, but, finding no
opening, he went to his room, loaded his pistol, put the muzzle to his
head, and pulled the trigger. But it did not go off. He went to the
window to point it in another direction and try it again, resolved that
if the weapon went off he would regard it as a Providence that he was
spared. He pulled the trigger and it went off the first time.
Trembling with excitement he resolved to hold his life sacred, to make
the most of it, and never again to cheapen it. This young man became
General Robert Clive, who, with but a handful of European soldiers,
secured to the East India Company and afterwards to Great Britain a
great and rich country with two hundred millions of people.
The cackling of a goose aroused the sentinels and saved Rome from the
Gauls, and the pain from a thistle warned a Scottish army of the
approach of the Danes. "Had Acre fallen," said Napoleon, "I should
have changed the face of the world."
Henry Ward Beecher came within one vote of being elected superintendent
of a railway. If he had had that vote America would probably have lost
its greatest preacher. What a little thing fixes destiny!
In the earliest days of cotton spinning, the small fibres would stick
to the bobbins, and make it necessary to stop and clear the machinery.
Although this loss of time reduced the earnings of the operatives, the
father of Robert Peel noticed that one of his spinners always drew full
pay, as his machine never stopped. "How is this, Dick?" asked Mr. Peel
one day; "the on-looker tells me your bobbins are always clean." "Ay,
that they be," replied Dick Ferguson. "How do you manage it, Dick?"
"Why, you see, Meester Peel," said the workman, "it is sort o' secret!
If I tow'd ye, yo'd be as wise as I am." "That's so," said Mr. Peel,
smiling; "but I'd give you something to know. Could you make all the
looms work as smoothly as yours?" "Ivery one of 'em, meester," replied
Dick. "Well, what shall I give you for your secret?" asked Mr. Peel,
and Dick replied, "Gi' me a quart of ale every day as I'm in the mills,
and I'll tell thee all about it." "Agreed," said Mr. Peel, and Dick
whispered very cautiously in his ear, "Chalk your bobbins!" That was
the whole secret, and Mr. Peel soon shot ahead of all his competitors,
for he made machines that would chalk their own bobbins. Dick was
handsomely rewarded with money instead of beer. His little idea has
saved the world millions of dollars.
Trifles light as air often suggest to the thinking mind ideas which
have revolutionized the world.
A poor English boy was compelled by his employer to deposit something
on board a ship about to start for Algiers, in accordance with the
merchant's custom of interesting employees by making them put something
at risk in his business and so share in the gain or loss of each common
venture. The boy had only a cat, which he had bought for a penny to
catch mice in the garret where he slept. In tears, he carried her on
board the vessel. On arriving at Algiers, the captain learned that the
Dey was greatly annoyed by rats, and loaned him the cat. The rats
disappeared so rapidly that the Dey wished to buy the cat, but the
captain would not sell until a very high price was offered. With the
purchase-money was sent a present of valuable pearls for the owner of
Tabby. When the ship returned the sailors were greatly astonished to
find that the boy owned most of the cargo, for it was part of the
bargain that he was to bring back the value of his cat in goods. The
London merchant took the boy into partnership; the latter became very
wealthy, and in the course of business loaned money to the Dey who had
bought the cat. As Lord Mayor of London, our cat merchant was
knighted, and became the second man in the city,--Sir Richard
Whittington.
When John Williams, the martyr missionary of Erromanga, went to the
South Sea Islands, he took with him a single banana-tree from an
English nobleman's conservatory; and now, from that single banana-tree,
bananas are to be found throughout whole groups of islands. Before the
negro slaves in the West Indies were emancipated a regiment of British
soldiers was stationed near one of the plantations. A soldier offered
to teach a slave to read on condition that he would teach a second, and
that second a third, and so on. This the slave faithfully carried out,
though severely flogged by the master of the plantation. Being sent to
another plantation, he repeated the same thing there, and when at
length liberty was proclaimed throughout the island, and the Bible
Society offered a New Testament to every negro who could read, the
number taught through this slave's instrumentality was found to be no
less than six hundred.
A famous ruby was offered to the English government. The report of the
crown jeweler was that it was the finest he had ever seen or heard of,
but that one of the "facets" was slightly fractured. That invisible
fracture reduced its value thousands of dollars, and it was rejected
from the regalia of England.
It was a little thing for the janitor to leave a lamp swinging in the
cathedral at Pisa, but in that steady swaying motion the boy Galileo
saw the pendulum, and conceived the idea of thus measuring time.
"I was singing to the mouthpiece of a telephone," said Edison, "when
the vibrations of my voice caused a fine steel point to pierce one of
my fingers held just behind it. That set me to thinking. If I could
record the motions of the point and send it over the same surface
afterward, I saw no reason why the thing would not talk. I determined
to make a machine that would work accurately, and gave my assistants
the necessary instructions, telling them what I had discovered. That's
the whole story. The phonograph is the result of the pricking of a
finger."
It was a little thing for a cow to kick over a lantern left in a
shanty, but it laid Chicago in ashes, and rendered homeless a hundred
thousand people.
You turned a cold shoulder but once, you made but one stinging remark,
yet it lost you a friend forever.
Some little weakness, some self-indulgence, a quick temper, want of
decision, are little things, you say, when placed beside great
abilities, but they have wrecked many a career. The Parliament of
Great Britain, the Congress of the United States, and representative
governments all over the world have come from King John signing the
Magna Charta.
Bentham says, "The turn of a sentence has decided many a friendship,
and, for aught we know, the fate of many a kingdom."
The sight of a stranded cuttlefish led Cuvier to an investigation which
made him one of the greatest natural historians in the world. The web
of a spider suggested to Captain Brown the idea of a suspension bridge.
A man, looking for a lost horse, picked up a stone in the Idaho
mountains which led to the discovery of a rich gold mine.
An officer apologized to General O. M. Mitchel, the astronomer, for a
brief delay, saying he was only a few moments late. "I have been in
the habit of calculating the value of the thousandth part of a second,"
was Mitchel's reply.
A missing marriage certificate kept the hod-carrier of Hugh Miller from
establishing his claim to the Earldom of Crawford. The masons would
call out, "John, Yearl of Crawford, bring us anither hod o' lime."
Not long ago the great steamship Umbria was stopped in mid-Atlantic by
a flaw in her engine shaft.
The absence of a comma in a bill which passed through Congress several
years ago cost our government a million dollars. A single misspelled
word prevented a deserving young man from obtaining a situation as
instructor in a New England college. A cinder on the eyeball will
conquer a Napoleon. Some little weakness, as lack of courtesy, want of
decision, a bad temper, may nullify the labor of years.
"I cannot see that you have made any progress since my last visit,"
said a gentleman to Michael Angelo. "But," said the sculptor, "I have
retouched this part, polished that, softened that feature, brought out
that muscle, given some expression to this lip, more energy to that
limb, etc." "But they are trifles!" exclaimed the visitor. "It may be
so," replied the great artist, "but trifles make perfection, and
perfection is no trifle."
That infinite patience which made Michael Angelo spend a week in
bringing out a muscle in a statue with more vital fidelity to truth, or
Gerhard Dow a day in giving the right effect to a dewdrop on a cabbage
leaf, makes all the difference between success and failure.
By scattering it upon a sloping field of grain so as to form, in
letters of great size, "Effects of Gypsum," Franklin brought this
fertilizer into general use in America. By means of a kite he
established principles in the science of electricity of such broad
significance that they underlie nearly all the modern applications of
that science, with probably boundless possibilities of development in
the future.
More than four hundred and fifty years have passed since Laurens Coster
amused his children by cutting their names in the bark of trees, in the
land of windmills, and the monks have laid aside forever their old
trade of copying books. From that day monarchies have crumbled, and
Liberty, lifting up her head for the first time among the nations of
the earth, has ever since kept pace with the march of her sister,
Knowledge, up through the centuries. Yet how simple was the thought
which has borne such a rich harvest of benefit to mankind.
As he carved the names of his prattling children it occurred to him
that if the letters were made in separate blocks, and wet with ink,
they would make clear printed impressions better and more rapidly than
would the pen. So he made blocks, tied them together with strings, and
printed a pamphlet with the aid of a hired man, John Gutenberg. People
bought the pamphlets at a slight reduction from the price charged by
the monks, supposing that the work was done in the old way. Coster
died soon afterward, but young Gutenberg kept the secret, and
experimented with metals until he had invented the metal type. In an
obscure chamber in Strasburg he printed his first book.
At about this time a traveler called upon Charles VII. of France, who
was so afraid somebody would poison him that he dared eat but little,
and made his servants taste of every dish of food before he ate any.
He looked with suspicion upon the stranger; but when the latter offered
a beautiful copy of the Bible for only seven hundred and fifty crowns,
the monarch bought it at once. Charles showed his Bible to the
archbishop, telling him that it was the finest copy in the world,
without a blot or mistake, and that it must have taken the copyist a
lifetime to write it. "Why!" exclaimed the archbishop in surprise, "I
bought one exactly like it a few days ago." It was soon learned that
other rich people in Paris had bought similar copies. The king traced
the book to John Faust, of Strasburg, who had furnished Gutenberg money
to experiment with. The people said that Faust must have sold himself
to the devil, and he only escaped burning at the stake by divulging the
secret.
William Caxton, a London merchant who went to Holland to purchase
cloth, bought a few books and some type, and established a
printing-office in Westminster Chapel, where he issued, in 1474, "The
Game of Chess," the first book printed in England.
The cry of the infant Moses attracted the attention of Pharaoh's
daughter, and gave the Jews a lawgiver. A bird alighting on the bough
of a tree at the mouth of the cave where Mahomet lay hid turned aside
his pursuers, and gave a prophet to many nations. A flight of birds
probably prevented Columbus from discovering this continent, for when
he was growing anxious, Martin Alonzo Pinzon persuaded him to follow a
flight of parrots toward the southwest; for to the Spanish seamen of
that day it was good luck to follow in the wake of a flock of birds
when on a voyage of discovery. But for his change of course Columbus
would have reached the coast of Florida. "Never," wrote Humboldt, "had
the flight of birds more important consequences."
The children of a spectacle-maker placed two or more pairs of the
spectacles before each other in play, and told their father that
distant objects looked larger. From this hint came the telescope.
"Of what use is it?" people asked with a sneer, when Franklin told of
his discovery that lightning and electricity are identical. "What is
the use of a child?" replied Franklin; "it may become a man."
"He who waits to do a great deal of good at once," said Dr. Johnson,
"will never do any." Do good with what thou hast, or it will do thee
no good.
Every day is a little life; and our whole life but a day repeated.
Those that dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal, those that dare
misspend it, desperate. What is the happiness of your life made up of?
Little courtesies, little kindnesses, pleasant words, genial smiles, a
friendly letter, good wishes, and good deeds. One in a million--once
in a lifetime--may do a heroic action. The atomic theory is the true
one. Many think common fractions vulgar, but they are the components
of millions.
He is a great man who sees great things where others see little things,
who sees the extraordinary in the ordinary. Ruskin sees a poem in the
rose or the lily, while the hod-carrier would perhaps not go a rod out
of his way to see a sunset which Ruskin would feed upon for a year.
Napoleon was a master of trifles. To details which his inferior
officers thought too microscopic for their notice he gave the most
exhaustive attention. Nothing was too small for his attention. He
must know all about the provisions, the horse fodder, the biscuits, the
camp kettles, the shoes. When the bugle sounded for the march to
battle, every officer had his orders as to the exact route which he
should follow, the exact day he was to arrive at a certain station, and
the exact hour he was to leave, and they were all to reach the point of
destination at a precise moment. It is said that nothing could be more
perfectly planned than his memorable march which led to the victory of
Austerlitz, and which sealed the fate of Europe for many years. He
would often charge his absent officers to send him perfectly accurate
returns, even to the smallest detail. "When they are sent to me, I
give up every occupation in order to read them in detail, and to
observe the difference between one monthly return and another. No
young girl enjoys her novel as much as I do these returns." The
captain who conveyed Napoleon to Elba was astonished with his
familiarity with all the minute details connected with the ship.
Napoleon left nothing to chance, nothing to contingency, so far as he
could possibly avoid it. Everything was planned to a nicety before he
attempted to execute it.
Wellington too was "great in little things." He knew no such things as
trifles. While other generals trusted to subordinates, he gave his
personal attention to the minutest detail. The history of many a
failure could be written in three words, "Lack of detail." How many a
lawyer has failed from the lack of details in deeds and important
papers, the lack of little words which seemed like surplusage, and
which involved his clients in litigation, and often great losses! How
many wills are contested from the carelessness of lawyers in the
omission or shading of words, or ambiguous use of language!
Physicians often fail to make a reputation through their habitual
blundering, carelessness in writing prescriptions, failure to give
minute instruction. The world is full of blunderers; business men fail
from a disregard of trifles; they go to the bank to pay a note the day
after it has gone to protest; they do not pay their bills promptly; do
not answer their letters promptly or file them away accurately; their
books do not quite balance; they do not know exactly how they stand,
they have a contempt for details.
"My rule of conduct has been that whatever is worth doing at all is
worth doing well," said Nicolas Poussin, the great French painter.
When asked the reason why he had become so eminent in a land of famous
artists he replied, "Because I have neglected nothing."
Not even Helen of Troy, it is said, was beautiful enough to spare the
tip of her nose; and if Cleopatra's had been an inch shorter Mark
Antony would never have become infatuated with her wonderful charms,
and the blemish would have changed the history of the world. Anne
Boleyn's fascinating smile split the great Church of Rome in twain, and
gave a nation an altered destiny. Napoleon, who feared not to attack
the proudest monarchs in their capitols, shrank from the political
influence of one independent woman in private life, Madame de Staël.
Had not Scott sprained his foot his life would probably have taken a
different direction.
Cromwell was about to sail for America when a law was passed
prohibiting emigration. At that time he was a profligate, having
squandered all his property. But when he found that he could not leave
England he reformed his life. Had he not been detained who can tell
what the history of Great Britain would have been?
When one of his friends asked Scopas the Thessalian for something that
could be of little use to him, he answered, "It is in these useless and
superfluous things that I am rich and happy."
It was the little foxes that spoiled the vines in Solomon's day. Mites
play mischief now with our meal and cheese, moths with our woolens and
furs, and mice in our pantries. More than half our diseases are
produced by infinitesimal creatures called microbes.
Most people call fretting a minor fault, a foible, and not a vice.
There is no vice except drunkenness which can so utterly destroy the
peace, the happiness, of a home.
"We call the large majority of human lives obscure," says Bulwer,
"presumptuous that we are! How know we what lives a single thought
retained from the dust of nameless graves may have lighted to renown?"
The theft of a diamond necklace from a French queen convulsed Europe.
From the careful and persistent accumulation of innumerable facts, each
trivial in itself, but in the aggregate forming a mass of evidence, a
Darwin extracts his law of evolution, and Linnaeus constructs the
science of botany. A pan of water and two thermometers were the tools
by which Dr. Black discovered latent heat, and a prism, a lens, and a
sheet of pasteboard enabled Newton to unfold the composition of light
and the origin of colors. An eminent foreign savant called on Dr.
Wollaston, and asked to be shown over those laboratories of his in
which science had been enriched by so many great discoveries, when the
doctor took him into a little study, and, pointing to an old tea tray
on the table, on which stood a few watch glasses, test papers, a small
balance, and a blow-pipe, said, "There is my laboratory." A burnt
stick and a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and paper. A
single potato, carried to England by Sir Walter Raleigh in the
sixteenth century, has multiplied into food for millions, driving
famine from Ireland again and again.
It seemed a small thing to drive William Brewster, John Robinson, and
the poor people of Austerfield and Scrooby into perpetual exile, but as
Pilgrims they became the founders of a mighty people. A cloud may hide
the sun which it cannot extinguish.
"Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth." "A look of
vexation or a word coldly spoken, or a little help thoughtlessly
withheld, may produce long issues of regret."
It was but a little dispute, a little flash of temper, the trigger was
pulled in an instant, but the soul returned never.
A few immortal sentences from Garrison and Phillips, a few poems from
Lowell and Whittier, and the leaven is at work which will not cease its
action until the whipping-post and bodily servitude are abolished
forever.
"For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For want of a shoe the horse was lost;
For want of a horse the rider was lost, and all,"
says Poor Richard, "for want of a horse-shoe nail."
A single remark dropped by an unknown person in the street led to the
successful story of "The Bread-winners." A hymn chanted by the
barefooted friars in the temple of Jupiter at Rome led to the famous
"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."
"Do little things now," says a Persian proverb; "so shall big things
come to thee by and by asking to be done." God will take care of the
great things if we do not neglect the little ones.
"Words are things," says Byron, "and a small drop of ink, falling like
dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps
millions think."
"I give these books for the founding of a college in this colony;" such
were the words of ten ministers who in the year 1700 assembled at the
village of Branford a few miles east of New Haven. Each of the worthy
fathers deposited a few books upon the table around which they were
sitting; such was the founding of Yale College.
"He that has a spirit of detail," says Webster, "will do better in life
than many who figured beyond him in the university."
The pyramid of knowledge is made up of little grains of information,
little observations picked up from everywhere.
For a thousand years Asia monopolized the secret of silk culture, and
at Rome the product was sold for its weight in gold. During the sixth
century, at the request of Justinian, two Persian monks brought a few
eggs from China to Europe in a hollow cane. The eggs were hatched by
means of heat, and Asia no longer held the monopoly of the silk
business.
In comparison with Ferdinand, preparing to lead forth his magnificent
army in Europe's supreme contest with the Moors, how insignificant
seemed the visionary expedition of Columbus, about to start in three
small shallops across the unknown ocean. But grand as was the triumph
of Ferdinand, it now seems hardly worthy of mention in comparison with
the wonderful achievement of the poor Genoese navigator.
Only one hundred and ninety-two Athenians perished in the battle of
Marathon, but Europe was saved from a host which is said to have drunk
rivers dry, and to have shaken the solid earth as they marched.
Great men are noted for their attention to trifles. Goethe once asked
a monarch to excuse him, during an interview, while he went to an
adjoining room to jot down a stray thought. Hogarth would make
sketches of rare faces and characteristics upon his finger-nails upon
the streets. Indeed, to a truly great mind there are no little things.
"The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you
may see objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great
axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances," said Bacon.
Trifles light as air suggest to the keen observer the solution of
mighty problems. Bits of glass arranged to amuse children led to the
discovery of the kaleidoscope. Goodyear discovered how to vulcanize
rubber by forgetting, until it became red hot, a skillet containing a
compound which he had before considered worthless. Confined in the
house by typhoid fever, Helmholtz, with a little money which he had
saved by great economy, bought a microscope which led him into the
field of science where he became so famous. A ship-worm boring a piece
of wood suggested to Sir Isambard Brunei the idea of a tunnel under the
Thames at London. Tracks of extinct animals in the old red sandstone
led Hugh Miller on and on until he became the greatest geologist of his
time. Sir Walter Scott once saw a shepherd boy plodding sturdily
along, and asked him to ride. This boy was George Kemp, who became so
enthusiastic in his study of sculpture that he walked fifty miles and
back to see a beautiful statue. He did not forget the kindness of Sir
Walter, and, when the latter died, threw his soul into the design of
the magnificent monument erected in Edinburgh to the memory of the
author of "Waverley."
A poor boy applied for a situation at a bank in Paris, but was refused.
As he left the door, he picked up a pin. The bank president saw this,
called the boy back, and gave him a situation from which he rose until
he became the greatest banker of Paris,--Laffitte.
It was the turning point in Theodore Parker's life when he picked up a
stone to throw at a turtle. Something within him said, "Don't do it,"
and he didn't. He went home and asked his mother what it was in him
that said "Don't;" and she taught him the purpose of that inward
monitor which he ever after chose as his guide. It is said that David
Hume became a deist by being appointed in a debating society to take
the side of infidelity. Voltaire could not erase from his mind the
impression of a poem on infidelity committed at the age of five. The
"Arabian Nights" aroused the genius of Coleridge. A Massachusetts
soldier in the Civil War observed a bird hulling rice, and shot it;
taking its bill for a model, he invented a hulling machine which has
revolutionized the rice business. A war between France and England,
costing more than a hundred thousand lives, grew out of a quarrel as to
which of two vessels should first be served with water. The quarrel of
two Indian boys over a grasshopper led to the "Grasshopper War."
George IV. of England fell in a fit, and a village apothecary bled him,
restoring him to consciousness. The king made him his physician, a
position of great honor and profit.
Many a noble ship has stranded because of one defective timber, when
all other parts were strong. Guard the weak point.
No object the eye ever beheld, no sound however slight caught by the
ear, or anything once passing the turnstile of any of the senses, is
ever let go. The eye is a perpetual camera imprinting upon the
sensitive mental plates, and packing away in the brain for future use
every face, every tree, every plant, flower, hill, stream, mountain,
every scene upon the street, in fact, everything which comes within its
range. There is a phonograph in our natures which catches, however
thoughtless and transient, every syllable we utter, and registers
forever the slightest enunciation, and renders it immortal. These
notes may appear a thousand years hence, reproduced in our descendants,
in all their beautiful or terrible detail.
All the ages that have been are rounded up into the small space we call
"To-day." Every life spans all that precedes it. To-day is a book
which contains everything that has transpired in the world up to the
present moment. The millions of the past whose ashes have mingled with
the dust for centuries still live in their destinies through the laws
of heredity.
Nothing has ever been lost. All the infinitesimals of the past are
amassed into the present.
The first acorn had wrapped up in it all the oak forests on the globe.
"Least of all seeds, greatest of all harvests," seems to be one of the
great laws of nature. All life comes from microscopic beginnings. In
nature there is nothing small. The microscope reveals as great a world
below as the telescope above. All of nature's laws govern the smallest
atoms, and a single drop of water is a miniature ocean.
The strength of a chain lies in its weakest link, however large and
strong all the others may be. We are all inclined to be proud of our
strong points, while we are sensitive and neglectful of our weaknesses.
Yet it is our greatest weakness which measures our real strength. A
soldier who escapes the bullets of a thousand battles may die from the
scratch of a pin, and many a ship has survived the shocks of icebergs
and the storms of ocean only to founder in a smooth sea from holes made
by tiny insects. Drop by drop is instilled into the mind the poison
which blasts many a precious life.
How often do we hear people say, "Oh, it's only ten minutes, or twenty
minutes, till dinner time; there's no use doing anything," or use other
expressions of a like effect? Why, it is just in these little spare
bits of time, these odd moments, which most people throw away, that men
who have risen have gained their education, written their books, and
made themselves immortal.
_Small things become great when a great soul sees them_. The noble or
heroic act of one man has sometimes elevated a nation. Many an
honorable career has resulted from a kind word spoken in season or the
warm grasp of a friendly hand.
It is the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute,
And, ever widening, slowly silence all.
TENNYSON.
"It was only a glad 'good-morning,'
As she passed along the way,
But it spread the morning's glory
Over the livelong day."
"Only a thought in passing--a smile, or encouraging word,
Has lifted many a burden no other gift could have stirred.
Only!--But then the onlys
Make up the mighty all."