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,