e
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.

It was the turning point in Theodore Parker's life when he picked up a
stone to throw at a turtle. Something within him said, "Don't do it,"
and he didn't. He went home and asked his mother what it was in him
that said "Don't;" and she taught him the purpose of that inward
monitor which he ever after chose as his guide. It is said that David
Hume became a deist by being appointed in a debating society to take
the side of infidelity. Voltaire could not erase from his mind the
impression of a poem on infidelity committed at the age of five. The
"Arabian Nights" aroused the genius of Coleridge. 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. A war between France and England,
costing more than a hundred thousand lives, grew out of a quarrel as to
which of two vessels should first be served with water. The quarrel of
two Indian boys over a grasshopper led to the "Grasshopper War."
George IV. of England fell in a fit, and a village apothecary bled him,
restoring him to consciousness. The king made him his physician, a
position of great honor and profit.

Many a noble ship has stranded because of one defective timber, when
all other parts were strong. Guard the weak point.

No object the eye ever beheld, no sound however slight caught by the
ear, or anything once passing the turnstile of any of the senses, is
ever let go. 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 immortal. These
notes may appear a thousand years hence, reproduced in our descendants,
in all their beautiful or terrible detail.

All the ages that have been are rounded up into the small space we call
"To-day." Every life spans a