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, meeste