hort 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? 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. 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 which no man had ever seen 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 thus warned
them of their danger.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a n