r 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.

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.
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. A ship-worm boring
a piece of wood suggested to Sir Isambard Brunel 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.

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.

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