rs. One cable from abroad
attracted attention as appropriate and deserved: "Ten octaves every
note truly struck and grandly sung." No man in private life passed away
in our day with such general lamentation. The Republic got even more
valuable material than engines from the old home in the ship that
arrived on January 12, 1796.

We must not permit ourselves to forget that it was not until the Watt
engine was applied to steam navigation that the success of the latter
became possible. It was only by this that it could be made practicable,
so that the steamship is the product of the steam-engine, and it is to
Watt we owe the modern twenty-three-thousand-ton monster (and larger
monsters soon to come), which keeps its course against wind and tide,
almost "unshaked of motion," for this can now properly be said.
Passengers crossing the Atlantic from port to port now scarcely know
anything of irregular motion, and never more than the gentlest of slight
heaves, even during the gale that

"Catches the ruffian billows by their tops,
Curling their monstrous heads."

The ocean, traversed in these ships, is a smooth highway--nothing but a
ferry--and a week spent upon it has become perhaps the most enjoyable
and the most healthful of holiday excursions, provided the prudent
excursionist has left behind positive instructions that wireless
telegrams shall not follow.

[1] Perhaps there is no instance so striking as this of the immense
difference that sometimes lies in the mere accent given one
monosyllable. Until Mrs. Siddons revealed the real Lady Macbeth, every
actress had replied, "We fail?" interrogatively, and then encouragingly,
"Screw your courage to the sticking-point and we'll _not_ fail." Such
the commonplace reciters. When genius touched the word it flashed and
sparkled. Then came the prompt response. "_We_ fail." She was of such
stuff as meets failure without fear. For this revelation the actress
becomes immortal, since her name is linked with the greatest son of
time. One word did it, nay a new accent upon a monosyllable--a trifling
change say you? "I make it a rule never to mind trifles," said a great
man. "So should I if I could only tell what were trifles," said a
greater. One is far on if he can predict consequences that may flow from
one kind word or the intonation of a word. Fortune sometimes hangs upon
a glance or nod of kindly recognition as we pass.

[2] An American Murdoch was found in Captain Jones,