tury, has multiplied into food for millions, driving
famine from Ireland again and again.

It seemed a small thing to drive William Brewster, John Robinson, and
the poor people of Austerfield and Scrooby into perpetual exile, but as
Pilgrims they became the founders of a mighty people. A cloud may hide
the sun which it cannot extinguish.

"Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth." "A look of
vexation or a word coldly spoken, or a little help thoughtlessly
withheld, may produce long issues of regret."

It was but a little dispute, a little flash of temper, the trigger was
pulled in an instant, but the soul returned never.

A few immortal sentences from Garrison and Phillips, a few poems from
Lowell and Whittier, and the leaven is at work which will not cease its
action until the whipping-post and bodily servitude are abolished
forever.

"For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For want of a shoe the horse was lost;
For want of a horse the rider was lost, and all,"

says Poor Richard, "for want of a horse-shoe nail."

A single remark dropped by an unknown person in the street led to the
successful story of "The Bread-winners." A hymn chanted by the
barefooted friars in the temple of Jupiter at Rome led to the famous
"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."

"Do little things now," says a Persian proverb; "so shall big things
come to thee by and by asking to be done." God will take care of the
great things if we do not neglect the little ones.

"Words are things," says Byron, "and a small drop of ink, falling like
dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps
millions think."

"I give these books for the founding of a college in this colony;" such
were the words of ten ministers who in the year 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.

"He that has a spirit of detail," says Webster, "will do better in life
than many who figured beyond him in the university."

The pyramid of knowledge is made up of little grains of information,
little observations picked up from everywhere.

For a thousand years Asia monopolized the secret of silk culture, and
at Rome the product was sold for its weight in gold. During the sixth
century, at the request of Justinian, two Persian monks brought a few
eggs from China to Europe