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 t