What power can poverty have over a home where loving hearts are beating with a consciousness of untold riches of head and heart?

Paul was never so great as when he occupied a prison cell; and Jesus Christ reached the height of his success when, smitten, spat upon, tormented, and crucified, He cried in agony, and yet with triumphant satisfaction, "It is finished."

"Character before wealth," was the motto of Amos Lawrence, who had inscribed on his pocket-book, "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

If you make a fortune let every dollar of it be clean. You do not want to see in it drunkards reel, orphans weep, widows moan. Your riches must not make others poorer and more wretched.

Alexander the Great wandered to the gates of Paradise, and knocked for entrance. "Who knocks?" demanded the guardian angel. "Alexander." "Who is Alexander?" "Alexander,—the Alexander,—Alexander the Great,—the conqueror of the world." "We know him not," replied the angel; "this is the Lord's gate; only the righteous enter here."

Don't start out in life with a false standard; a truly great man makes official position and money and houses and estates look so tawdry, so mean and poor, that we feel like sinking out of sight with our cheap laurels and gold. Millions look trifling beside character.

A friend of Professor Agassiz, an eminent practical man, once expressed his wonder that a man of such abilities should remain contented with such a moderate income as he received. "I have enough," was Agassiz's reply. "I have no time to waste in making money. Life is not sufficiently long to enable a man to get rich and do his duty to his fellow-men at the same time."

How were the thousands of business men who lost every dollar they had in the Chicago fire enabled to go into business at once, some into wholesale business, without money? Their record was their bank account. The commercial agencies said they were square men; that they had always paid one hundred cents on a dollar; that they had paid promptly, and that they were industrious and dealt honorably with all men. This record was as good as a bank account. They drew on their character. Character was the coin which enabled penniless men to buy thousands of dollars' worth of goods. Their integrity did not burn up with their stores. The best part of them was beyond the reach of fire and could not be burned.

What are the toil-sweated productions of wealth piled up in vast profusion around a Girard, or a Rothschild, when weighed against the stores of wisdom, the treasures of knowledge, and the strength, beauty, and glory with which victorious virtue has enriched and adorned a great multitude of minds during the march of a hundred generations?

"Lord, how many things are in the world of which Diogenes hath no need!" exclaimed the stoic, as he wandered among the miscellaneous articles at a country fair.

"There are treasures laid up in the heart—treasures of charity, piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes with him beyond death when he leaves this world." (Buddhist Scriptures.)

Is it any wonder that our children start out with wrong ideals of life, with wrong ideas of what constitutes success? The child is "urged to get on," to "rise in the world," to "make money." The youth is constantly told that nothing succeeds like success. False standards are everywhere set up for him, and then the boy is blamed if he makes a failure.

It is all very well to urge youth on to success, but the great mass of mankind can never reach or even approximate the goal constantly preached to them, nor can we all be rich. One of the great lessons to teach in this century of sharp competition and the survival of the fittest is how to be rich without money, and to learn how to do without success, according to the popular standard.

Gold cannot make the miser rich, nor can the want of it make the beggar poor.

In the poem, "The Changed Cross," a weary woman is represented as dreaming that she was led to a place where many crosses lay, crosses of divers shapes and sizes. The most beautiful one was set in jewels of gold. It was so tiny and exquisite that she changed her own plain cross for it, thinking she was fortunate in finding one so much lighter and lovelier. But soon her back began to ache under the glittering burden, and she changed it for another cross very beautiful and entwined with flowers. But she soon found that underneath the flowers were piercing thorns which tore her flesh. At last she came to a very plain cross without jewels, without carving, and with only the word, "Love," inscribed upon it. She took this one up and it proved the easiest and best of all. She was amazed, however, to find that it was her old cross which she had discarded. It is easy to see the jewels and the flowers in other people's crosses, but the thorns and heavy weight are known only to the bearers. How easy other people's burdens seem to us compared with our own. We do not appreciate the secret burdens which almost crush the heart, nor the years of weary waiting for delayed success—the aching hearts longing for sympathy, the hidden poverty, the suppressed emotion in other lives.

William Pitt, the great Commoner, considered money as dirt beneath his feet compared with the public interest and public esteem. His hands were clean.

The object for which we strive tells the story of our lives. Men and women should be judged by the happiness they create in those around them. Noble deeds always enrich, but millions of mere money may impoverish. Character is perpetual wealth, and by the side of him who possesses it the millionaire who has it not seems a pauper. Compared with it, what are houses and lands, stocks and bonds? "It is better that great souls should live in small habitations than that abject slaves should burrow in great houses." Plain living, rich thought, and grand effort are real riches.

Invest in yourself, and you will never be poor. Floods cannot carry your wealth away, fire cannot burn it, rust cannot consume it.

"If a man empties his purse into his head," says Franklin, "no man can take it from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest."

"There is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe," says Emerson, "that they take somewhat for everything they give. I look bigger, but I am less, I have more clothes, but am not so warm; more armor, but less courage; more books, but less wit."

Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'T is only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood. TENNYSON.



CHAPTER XIV.

OPPORTUNITIES WHERE YOU ARE.

To each man's life there comes a time supreme; One day, one night, one morning, or one noon, One freighted hour, one moment opportune, One rift through which sublime fulfillments gleam, One space when fate goes tiding with the stream, One Once, in balance 'twixt Too Late, Too Soon, And ready for the passing instant's boon To tip in favor the uncertain beam. Ah, happy he who, knowing how to wait, Knows also how to watch and work and stand On Life's broad deck alert, and at the prow To seize the passing moment, big with fate, From opportunity's extended hand, When the great clock of destiny strikes Now! MARY A. TOWNSEND.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side. LOWELL.

What is opportunity to a man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity.—GEORGE ELIOT.

A thousand years a poor man watched Before the gate of Paradise: But while one little nap he snatched, It oped and shut. Ah! was he wise? W. B. ALGER.

Our grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.—CARLYLE.

A man's best things are nearest him, Lie close about his feet. R. M. MILNES.

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.—DISRAELI.

"There are no longer any good chances for young men," complained a law student to Daniel Webster. "There is always room at the top," replied the great lawyer.

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"The world is all gates, all opportunities to him who can use them.'

"'T is never offered twice, seize then the hour When fortune smiles and duty points the way."

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No chance, no opportunities, in a land where many poor boys become rich men, where newsboys go to Congress, and where those born in the lowest stations attain the highest positions? The world is all gates, all opportunities to him who will use them. But, like Bunyan's Pilgrim in the dungeon of Giant Despair's castle, who had the key of deliverance all the time with him but had forgotten it, we fail to rely wholly upon the ability to advance all that is good for us which has been given to the weakest as well as the strongest. We depend too much upon outside assistance.

"We look too high For things close by."

A Baltimore lady lost a valuable diamond bracelet at a ball, and supposed that it was stolen from the pocket of her cloak. Years afterward she washed the steps of the Peabody Institute, pondering how to get money to buy food. She cut up an old, worn-out, ragged cloak to make a hood, when lo! in the lining of the cloak she discovered the diamond bracelet. During all her poverty she was worth $3500, but did not know it.

Many of us who think we are poor are rich in opportunities, if we could only see them, in possibilities all about us, in faculties worth more than diamond bracelets. In our large Eastern cities it has been found that at least ninety-four out of every hundred found their first fortune at home, or near at hand, and in meeting common every-day wants. It is a sorry day for a young man who cannot see any opportunities where he is, but thinks he can do better somewhere else. Some Brazilian shepherds organized a party to go to California to dig gold, and took along a handful of translucent pebbles to play checkers with on the voyage. After arriving in San Francisco, and after they had thrown most of the pebbles away, they discovered that they were diamonds. They hastened back to Brazil, only to find that the mines from which the pebbles had been gathered had been taken up by others and sold to the government.

The richest gold and silver mine in Nevada was sold for $42 by the owner to get money to pay his passage to other mines, where he thought he could get rich. Professor Agassiz told the Harvard students of a farmer who owned a farm of hundreds of acres of unprofitable woods and rocks, and concluded to sell out and get into a more profitable business. He decided to go into the coal-oil business; he studied coal measures and coal-oil deposits, and experimented for a long time. He sold his farm for $200, and engaged in his new business two hundred miles away. Only a short time after the man who bought his farm discovered upon it a great flood of coal-oil, which the farmer had previously ignorantly tried to drain off.

Hundreds of years ago there lived near the shore of the river Indus a Persian by the name of Ali Hafed. He lived in a cottage on the river bank, from which he could get a grand view of the beautiful country stretching away to the sea. He had a wife and children, an extensive farm, fields of grain, gardens of flowers, orchards of fruit, and miles of forest. He had a plenty of money and everything that heart could wish. He was contented and happy. One evening a priest of Buddha visited him, and, sitting before the fire, explained to him how the world was made, and how the first beams of sunlight condensed on the earth's surface into diamonds. The old priest told that a drop of sunlight the size of his thumb was worth more than large mines of copper, silver, or gold; that with one of them he could buy many farms like his; that with a handful he could buy a province, and with a mine of diamonds he could purchase a kingdom. Ali Hafed listened, and was no longer a rich man. He had been touched with discontent, and with that all wealth vanishes. Early the next morning he woke the priest who had been the cause of his unhappiness, and anxiously asked him where he could find a mine of diamonds. "What do you want of diamonds?" asked the astonished priest. "I want to be rich and place my children on thrones." "All you have to do is to go and search until you find them," said the priest. "But where shall I go?" asked the poor farmer. "Go anywhere, north, south, east, or west." "How shall I know when I have found the place?" "When you find a river running over white sands between high mountain ranges, in those white sands you will find diamonds," answered the priest.

The discontented man sold the farm for what he could get, left his family with a neighbor, took the money he had at interest, and went to search for the coveted treasure. Over the mountains of Arabia, through Palestine and Egypt, he wandered for years, but found no diamonds. When his money was all gone and starvation stared him in the face, ashamed of his folly and of his rags, poor Ali Hafed threw himself into the tide and was drowned. The man who bought his farm was a contented man, who made the most of his surroundings, and did not believe in going away from home to hunt for diamonds or success. While his camel was drinking in the garden one day, he noticed a flash of light from the white sands of the brook. He picked up a pebble, and pleased with its brilliant hues took it into the house, put it on the shelf near the fireplace, and forgot all about it. The old priest of Buddha who had filled Ali Hafed with the fatal discontent called one day upon the new owner of the farm. He had no sooner entered the room than his eye caught that flash of light from the stone. "Here's a diamond! here's a diamond!" the old priest shouted in great excitement. "Has Ali Hafed returned?" said the priest. "No," said the farmer, "nor is that a diamond. That is but a stone." They went into the garden and stirred up the white sand with their fingers, and behold, other diamonds more beautiful than the first gleamed out of it. So the famous diamond beds of Golconda were discovered. Had Ali Hafed been content to remain at home, had he dug in his own garden, instead of going abroad in search for wealth, and reaping poverty, hardships, starvation, and death, he would have been one of the richest men in the world, for the entire farm abounded in the richest of gems.

You have your own special place and work. Find it, fill it. Scarcely a boy or girl will read these lines but has much better opportunity to win success than Garfield, Wilson, Franklin, Lincoln, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frances Willard, and thousands of others. But to succeed you must be prepared to seize and improve the opportunity when it comes. Remember that four things come not back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.

It is one of the paradoxes of civilization that the more opportunities are utilized, the more new ones are thereby created. New openings are as easy to fill as ever to those who do their best; although it is not so easy as formerly to obtain distinction in the old lines, because the standard has advanced so much and competition has so greatly increased. "The world is no longer clay," said Emerson, "but rather iron in the hands of its workers, and men have got to hammer out a place for themselves by steady and rugged blows."

Thousands of men have made fortunes out of trifles which others pass by. As the bee gets honey from the same flower from which the spider gets poison, so some men will get a fortune out of the commonest and meanest things, as scraps of leather, cotton waste, slag, iron filings, from which others get only poverty and failure. There is scarcely a thing which contributes to the welfare and comfort of humanity, not an article of household furniture, a kitchen utensil, an article of clothing or of food, that is not capable of an improvement in which there may be a fortune.

Opportunities? They are all around us. Edison found them in a baggage car. Forces of nature plead to be used in the service of man, as lightning for ages tried to attract his attention to the great force of electricity, which would do his drudgery and leave him to develop the God-given powers within him. There is power lying latent everywhere waiting for the observant eye to discover it.

First find out what the world needs and then supply that want. An invention to make smoke go the wrong way in a chimney might be a very ingenious thing, but it would be of no use to humanity. The patent office at Washington is full of wonderful devices of ingenious mechanism, but not one in hundreds is of use to the inventor or to the world. And yet how many families have been impoverished, and have struggled for years amid want and woe, while the father has been working on useless inventions. A. T. Stewart, as a boy, lost eighty-seven cents when his capital was one dollar and a half in buying buttons and thread which shoppers did not call for. After that he made it a rule never to buy anything which the public did not want, and so prospered.

It is estimated that five out of every seven of the millionaire manufacturers began by making with their own hands the articles which made their fortunes. One of the greatest hindrances to advancement in life is the lack of observation and of the inclination to take pains. An observing man, the eyelets of whose shoes pulled out, but who could not afford to get another pair, said to himself, "I will make a metallic lacing hook, which can be riveted into the leather;" he was so poor that he had to borrow a sickle to cut the grass in front of his hired tenement. Now he is a very rich man.

An observing barber in Newark, N. J., thought he could make an improvement in shears for cutting hair, invented clippers, and became rich. A Maine man was called in from the hayfield to wash clothes for his invalid wife. He had never realized what it was to wash before. Finding the method slow and laborious, he invented the washing-machine, and made a fortune. A man who was suffering terribly with toothache said to himself, there must be some way of filling teeth which will prevent their aching. So he invented the principle of gold filling for teeth.

The great things of the world have not been done by men of large means. Ericsson began the construction of the screw propellers in a bathroom. The cotton-gin was first manufactured in a log cabin. John Harrison, the great inventor of the marine chronometer, began his career in the loft of an old barn. Parts of the first steamboat ever run in America were set up in the vestry of a church in Philadelphia by Fitch. McCormick began to make his famous reaper in a gristmill. The first model dry dock was made in an attic. Clark, the founder of Clark University of Worcester, Mass., began his great fortune by making toy wagons in a horse shed. Farquhar made umbrellas in his sitting-room, with his daughter's help, until he sold enough to hire a loft. Edison began his experiments in a baggage car on the Grand Trunk Railroad when a newsboy.

As soon as the weather would permit, the Jamestown colonists began to stroll about the country digging for gold. In a bank of sand some glittering particles were found, and the whole settlement was in a state of excitement. Fourteen weeks of the precious springtime, which ought to have been given to plowing and planting, were consumed in this stupid nonsense. Even the Indians ridiculed the madness of the men who, for imaginary grains of gold, were wasting their chances for a crop of corn.

Michael Angelo found a piece of discarded Carrara marble among waste rubbish beside a street in Florence, which some unskillful workman had cut, hacked, spoiled, and thrown away. No doubt many artists had noticed the fine quality of the marble, and regretted that it should have been spoiled. But Michael Angelo still saw an angel in the ruin, and with his chisel and mallet he called out from it one of the finest pieces of statuary in Italy, the young David.

The lonely island of Nantucket would not be considered a very favorable place to win success and fame. But Maria Mitchell, on seventy-five dollars a year, as librarian of the Nantucket Athenaeum, found time and opportunity to become a celebrated astronomer. Lucretia Mott, one of America's foremost philanthropists and reformers, who made herself felt over a whole continent, gained much of her reputation as a preacher on Nantucket Island.

"Why does not America have fine sculptors?" asked a romping girl, of Watertown, Mass., in 1842. Her father, a physician, answered that he supposed "an American could be a stone-cutter, but that is a very different thing from being a sculptor." "I think," said the plucky maiden, "that if no other American tries it I will." She began her studies in Boston, and walked seven miles to and fro daily between her home and the city. The medical schools in Boston would not admit her to study anatomy, so she had to go to St. Louis. Subsequently she went to Rome, and there, during a long residence, and afterward, modeled and carved very beautiful statuary which made the name of Harriet G. Hosmer famous. Begin where you are; work where you are; the hour which you are now wasting, dreaming of some far-off success, may be crowded with grand possibilities.

Patrick Henry was called a lazy boy, a good-for-nothing farmer, and he failed as a merchant. He was always dreaming of some far-off greatness, and never thought he could be a hero among the corn and tobacco and saddlebags of Virginia. He studied law six weeks, when he put out his shingle. People thought he would fail, but in his first case he showed that he had a wonderful power of oratory. It then first dawned upon him that he could be a hero in Virginia. From the time the Stamp Act was passed and Henry was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, and he had introduced his famous resolution against the unjust taxation of the American colonies, he rose steadily until he became one of the brilliant orators of America. In one of his first speeches upon this resolution he uttered these words, which were prophetic of his power and courage: "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third—may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it."

The great natural philosopher, Faraday, who was the son of a blacksmith, wrote, when a young man, to Humphry Davy, asking for employment at the Royal Institution. Davy consulted a friend on the matter. "Here is a letter from a young man named Faraday, he has been attending my lectures, and wants me to give him employment at the Royal Institution—what can I do?" "Do? put him to washing bottles; if he is good for anything he will do it directly; if he refuses he is good for nothing." But the boy who could experiment in the attic of an apothecary shop with an old pan and glass vials during every moment he could snatch from his work saw an opportunity in washing bottles, which led to a professorship at the Royal Academy at Woolwich. Tyndall said of this boy with no chance, "He is the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen." He became the wonder of his age in science.

There is a legend of an artist who long sought for a piece of sandal-wood, out of which to carve a Madonna. He was about to give up in despair, leaving the vision of his life unrealized, when in a dream he was bidden to carve his Madonna from a block of oak wood which was destined for the fire. He obeyed, and produced a masterpiece from a log of common firewood. Many of us lose great opportunities in life by waiting to find sandal-wood for our carvings, when they really lie hidden in the common logs that we burn. One man goes through life without seeing chances for doing anything great, while another close beside him snatches from the same circumstances and privileges opportunities for achieving grand results.

Anna Dickinson began life as a school-teacher. Adelaide Neilson was a child's nurse. Charlotte Cushman's parents were poor. The renowned Jeanne d'Arc fed swine. Christine Nilsson was a poor Swedish peasant, and ran barefoot in childhood. Edmonia Lewis, the colored sculptor, overcame the prejudice against her sex and color, and pursued her profession in Italy. Maria Mitchell, the astronomer, was the daughter of a poor man who taught school at two dollars per week. These are but a few of the many who have struggled with fate and risen to distinction through their own personal efforts.

Opportunities? They are everywhere. "America is another name for opportunities. Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine Providence in behalf of the human race." Never before were there such grand openings, such chances, such opportunities. Especially is this true for girls and young women. A new era is dawning for them. Hundreds of occupations and professions, which were closed to them only a few years ago, are now inviting them to enter.

When I hear of a young woman entering the medical profession, or beginning the study of law, or entering school with a view to teaching, I feel like congratulating her for thus asserting her individuality.

We cannot all of us perhaps make great discoveries like Newton, Faraday, Edison, and Thompson. We cannot all of us paint immortal pictures like an Angelo or a Raphael. But we can all of us make our lives sublime, by seizing common occasions and making them great. What chance had the young girl, Grace Darling, to distinguish herself, living on those barren lighthouse rocks alone with her aged parents? But while her brothers and sisters, who moved to the cities to win wealth and fame, are not known to the world, she became more famous than a princess. This poor girl did not need to go to London to see the nobility; they came to the lighthouse to see her. Right at home this young girl had won fame which the regal heirs might envy, and a name which will never perish from the earth. She did not wander away into dreamy distance for fame and fortune, but did her best where duty had placed her.

If you want to get rich, study yourself and your own wants. You will find that millions have the same wants. The safest business is always connected with man's prime necessities. He must have clothing and a dwelling; he must eat. He wants comforts, facilities of all kinds for pleasure, luxuries, education, and culture. Any man who can supply a great want of humanity, improve any methods which men use, supply any demand of comfort, or contribute in any way to their well-being, can make a fortune.

"We cannot doubt," said Edward Everett, "that truths now unknown are in reserve to reward the patience and the labors of future lovers of truth, which will go as far beyond the brilliant discoveries of the last generation as these do beyond all that was known to the ancient world."

The golden opportunity Is never offered twice; seize then the hour When fortune smiles and duty points the way; Nor shrink aside to 'scape the spectre fear, Nor pause, though pleasure beckon from her bower; But bravely bear thee onward to the goal. ANON.

For the distant still thou yearnest, And behold the good so near; If to use the good thou learnest, Thou wilt surely find it here. GOETHE.

Do not, then, stand idly waiting For some greater work to do; Fortune is a lazy goddess— She will never come to you. Go and toil in any vineyard, Do not fear to do or dare; If you want a field of labor, You can find it anywhere. ELLEN H. GATES.

Why thus longing, thus forever sighing, For the far-off, unattained and dim, While the beautiful, all around thee lying Offers up its low, perpetual hymn? HARRIET WINSLOW.

Work for the good that is nighest; Dream not of greatness afar: That glory is ever the highest Which shines upon men as they are. W. MORLEY PUNSHON.



CHAPTER XV.

THE MIGHT OF LITTLE THINGS.

Little strokes fell great oaks.—FRANKLIN.

Think naught a trifle, though it small appear; Small sands the mountain, moments make the year, And trifles, life. YOUNG.

"Scorn not the slightest word or deed, Nor deem it void of power; There's fruit in each wind-wafted seed, That waits its natal hour."

It is but the littleness of man that seeth no greatness in trifles.—WENDELL PHILLIPS.

He that despiseth small things shall fall by little and little.—ECCLESIASTICUS.

Often from our weakness our strongest principles of conduct are born; and from the acorn, which a breeze has wafted, springs the oak which defies the storm.—BULWER.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.—EMERSON.

Men are led by trifles.—NAPOLEON I.

"A pebble on the streamlet scant Has turned the course of many a river; A dewdrop on the baby plant Has warped the giant oak forever."

The mother of mischief is no bigger than a midge's wing.—SCOTCH PROVERB.

"The bad thing about a little sin is that it won't stay little."

"A little bit of patience often makes the sunshine come, And a little bit of love makes a very happy home; A little bit of hope makes a rainy day look gay, And a little bit of charity makes glad a weary way."

"Arletta's pretty feet, glistening in the brook, made her the mother of William the Conqueror," says Palgrave's "History of Normandy and England." "Had she not thus fascinated Duke Robert the Liberal, of Normandy, Harold would not have fallen at Hastings, no Anglo-Norman dynasty could have arisen, no British Empire."

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Small things become great when a great soul sees them. Trifles light as air sometimes suggest to the thinking mind ideas which revolutionize the world.

* * * * * *

We may tell which way the wind blew before the Deluge by marking the ripple and cupping of the rain in the petrified sand now preserved forever. We tell the very path by which gigantic creatures, whom man never saw, walked to the river's edge to find their food.

The tears of Veturia and Volumnia saved Rome from the Volscians when nothing else could move the vengeful heart of Coriolanus.

It was little Greece that rolled back the overflowing tide of Asiatic luxury and despotism, giving instead to Europe and America models of the highest political freedom yet attained, and germs of limitless mental growth. A different result at Plataea had delayed the progress of the human race more than ten centuries.

Among the lofty Alps, it is said, the guides sometimes demand absolute silence, lest the vibration of the voice bring down an avalanche.

The power of observation in the American Indian would put many an educated man to shame. Returning home, an Indian discovered that his venison, which had been hanging up to dry, had been stolen. After careful observation he started to track the thief through the woods. Meeting a man on the route, he asked him if he had seen a little, old, white man, with a short gun, and with a small bob-tailed dog. The man told him he had met such a man, but was surprised to find that the Indian had not even seen the one he described. He asked the Indian how he could give such a minute description of the man whom he had never seen. "I knew the thief was a little man," said the Indian, "because he rolled up a stone to stand on in order to reach the venison; I knew he was an old man by his short steps; I knew he was a white man by his turning out his toes in walking, which an Indian never does; I knew he had a short gun by the mark it left on the tree where he had stood it up; I knew the dog was small by his tracks and short steps, and that he had a bob-tail by the mark it left in the dust where he sat."

Two drops of rain, falling side by side, were separated a few inches by a gentle breeze. Striking on opposite sides of the roof of a court-house in Wisconsin, one rolled southward through the Rock River and the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico; while the other entered successively the Fox River, Green Bay, Lake Michigan, the Straits of Mackinaw, Lake Huron, St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, Detroit River, Lake Erie, Niagara River, Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River, and finally reached the Gulf of St. Lawrence. How slight the influence of the breeze, yet such was the formation of the continent that a trifling cause was multiplied almost beyond the power of figures to express its momentous effect upon the destinies of these companion raindrops. Who can calculate the future of the smallest trifle when a mud crack swells to an Amazon, and the stealing of a penny may end on the scaffold? Who does not know that the act of a moment may cause a life's regret? A trigger may be pulled in an instant, but the soul returns never.

A spark falling upon some combustibles led to the invention of gunpowder. Irritable tempers have marred the reputation of many a great man, as in the case of Edmund Burke and of Thomas Carlyle. A few bits of seaweed and driftwood, floating on the waves, enabled Columbus to stay a mutiny of his sailors which threatened to prevent the discovery of a new world. There are moments in history which balance years of ordinary life. Dana could interest a class for hours on a grain of sand; and from a single bone, such as no one had ever seen before, Agassiz could deduce the entire structure and habits of an animal so accurately that subsequent discoveries of complete skeletons have not changed one of his conclusions.

A cricket once saved a military expedition from destruction. The commanding officer and hundreds of his men were going to South America on a great ship, and, through the carelessness of the watch, they would have been dashed upon a ledge of rock had it not been for a cricket which a soldier had brought on board. When the little insect scented the land, it broke its long silence by a shrill note, and this warned them of their danger.

"Strange that a little thing like that should cause a man so much pain!" exclaimed a giant, as he rolled in his hand and examined with eager curiosity the acorn which his friend the dwarf had obligingly taken from the huge eye into which it had fallen just as the colossus was on the point of shooting a bird perched in the branches of an oak.

Sometimes a conversation, or a sentence in a letter, or a paragraph in an article, will help us to reproduce the whole character of the author; as a single bone, a fish scale, a fin, or a tooth, will enable the scientist and anatomist to reproduce the fish or the animal, although extinct for ages.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation. A little boy in Holland saw water trickling from a small hole near the bottom of a dike. He realized that the leak would rapidly become larger if the water was not checked, so he held his hand over the hole for hours on a dark and dismal night until he could attract the attention of passers-by. His name is still held in grateful remembrance in Holland.

The beetling chalk cliffs of England were built by rhizopods, too small to be clearly seen without the aid of a magnifying-glass.

What was so unlikely as that throwing an empty wine-flask in the fire should furnish the first notion of a locomotive, or that the sickness of an Italian chemist's wife and her absurd craving for reptiles for food should begin the electric telegraph?

Madame Galvani noticed the contraction of the muscles of a skinned frog which was accidentally touched at the moment her husband took a spark from an electrical machine. She gave the hint which led to the discovery of galvanic electricity, now so useful in the arts and in transmitting vocal or written language.

M. Louis Pasteur was usher in the Lyceum. Thursdays he took the boys to walk. A student took his microscope to examine insects, and allowed Pasteur to look through it. This was the starting of the boy on the microscopic career which has made men wonder. He was almost wild with enthusiasm at the new world which the microscope revealed.

A stamp act to raise 60,000 pounds produced the American Revolution, a war that cost 100,000,000 pounds. What 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, meester," replied Dick. "Well, what shall I give you for your secret?" asked Mr. Peel, and Dick replied, "Gi' me a quart of ale every day as I'm in the mills, and I'll tell thee all about it." "Agreed," said Mr. Peel, and Dick whispered very cautiously in his ear, "Chalk your bobbins!" That was the whole secret, and Mr. Peel soon shot ahead of all his competitors, for he made machines that would chalk their own bobbins. Dick was handsomely rewarded with money instead of beer. His little idea has saved the world millions of dollars.

Trifles light as air often suggest to the thinking mind ideas which have revolutionized the world.

A poor English boy was compelled by his employer to deposit something on board a ship about to start for Algiers, in accordance with the merchant's custom of interesting employees by making them put something at risk in his business and so share in the gain or loss of each common venture. The boy had only a cat, which he had bought for a penny to catch mice in the garret where he slept. In tears, he carried her on board the vessel. On arriving at Algiers, the captain learned that the Dey was greatly annoyed by rats, and loaned him the cat. The rats disappeared so rapidly that the Dey wished to buy the cat, but the captain would not sell until a very high price was offered. With the purchase-money was sent a present of valuable pearls for the owner of Tabby. When the ship returned the sailors were greatly astonished to find that the boy owned most of the cargo, for it was part of the bargain that he was to bring back the value of his cat in goods. The London merchant took the boy into partnership; the latter became very wealthy, and in the course of business loaned money to the Dey who had bought the cat. As Lord Mayor of London, our cat merchant was knighted, and became the second man in the city,—Sir Richard Whittington.

When John Williams, the martyr missionary of Erromanga, went to the South Sea Islands, he took with him a single banana-tree from an English nobleman's conservatory; and now, from that single banana-tree, bananas are to be found throughout whole groups of islands. Before the negro slaves in the West Indies were emancipated a regiment of British soldiers was stationed near one of the plantations. A soldier offered to teach a slave to read on condition that he would teach a second, and that second a third, and so on. This the slave faithfully carried out, though severely flogged by the master of the plantation. Being sent to another plantation, he repeated the same thing there, and when at length liberty was proclaimed throughout the island, and the Bible Society offered a New Testament to every negro who could read, the number taught through this slave's instrumentality was found to be no less than six hundred.

A famous ruby was offered to the English government. The report of the crown jeweler was that it was the finest he had ever seen or heard of, but that one of the "facets" was slightly fractured. That invisible fracture reduced its value thousands of dollars, and it was rejected from the regalia of England.

It was a little thing for the janitor to leave a lamp swinging in the cathedral at Pisa, but in that steady swaying motion the boy Galileo saw the pendulum, and conceived the idea of thus measuring time.

"I was singing to the mouthpiece of a telephone," said Edison, "when the vibrations of my voice caused a fine steel point to pierce one of my fingers held just behind it. That set me to thinking. If I could record the motions of the point and send it over the same surface afterward, I saw no reason why the thing would not talk. I determined to make a machine that would work accurately, and gave my assistants the necessary instructions, telling them what I had discovered. That's the whole story. The phonograph is the result of the pricking of a finger."

It was a little thing for a cow to kick over a lantern left in a shanty, but it laid Chicago in ashes, and rendered homeless a hundred thousand people.

You turned a cold shoulder but once, you made but one stinging remark, yet it lost you a friend forever.

Some little weakness, some self-indulgence, a quick temper, want of decision, are little things, you say, when placed beside great abilities, but they have wrecked many a career. The Parliament of Great Britain, the Congress of the United States, and representative governments all over the world have come from King John signing the Magna Charta.

Bentham says, "The turn of a sentence has decided many a friendship, and, for aught we know, the fate of many a kingdom."

The sight of a stranded cuttlefish led Cuvier to an investigation which made him one of the greatest natural historians in the world. The web of a spider suggested to Captain Brown the idea of a suspension bridge. A man, looking for a lost horse, picked up a stone in the Idaho 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 time among the nations of the earth, has ever since kept pace with the march of her sister, Knowledge, up through the centuries. Yet how simple was the thought which has borne such a rich harvest of benefit to mankind.

As he carved the names of his prattling children it occurred to him that if the letters were made in separate blocks, and wet with ink, they would make clear printed impressions better and more rapidly than would the pen. So he made blocks, tied them together with strings, and printed a pamphlet with the aid of a hired man, John Gutenberg. People bought the pamphlets at a slight reduction from the price charged by the monks, supposing that the work was done in the old way. Coster died soon afterward, but young Gutenberg kept the secret, and experimented with metals until he had invented the metal type. In an obscure chamber in Strasburg he printed his first book.

At about this time a traveler called upon Charles VII. of France, who was so afraid somebody would poison him that he dared eat but little, and made his servants taste of every dish of food before he ate any. He looked with suspicion upon the stranger; but when the latter offered a beautiful copy of the Bible for only seven hundred and fifty crowns, the monarch bought it at once. Charles showed his Bible to the archbishop, telling him that it was the finest copy in the world, without a blot or mistake, and that it must have taken the copyist a lifetime to write it. "Why!" exclaimed the archbishop in surprise, "I bought one exactly like it a few days ago." It was soon learned that other rich people in Paris had bought similar copies. The king traced the book to John Faust, of Strasburg, who had furnished Gutenberg money to experiment with. The people said that Faust must have sold himself to the devil, and he only escaped burning at the stake by divulging the secret.

William Caxton, a London merchant who went to Holland to purchase cloth, bought a few books and some type, and established a printing-office in Westminster Chapel, where he issued, in 1474, "The Game of Chess," the first book printed in England.

The cry of the infant Moses attracted the attention of Pharaoh's daughter, and gave the Jews a lawgiver. A bird alighting on the bough of a tree at the mouth of the cave where Mahomet lay hid turned aside his pursuers, and gave a prophet to many nations. A flight of birds probably prevented Columbus from discovering this continent, for when he was growing anxious, Martin Alonzo Pinzon persuaded him to follow a flight of parrots toward the southwest; for to the Spanish seamen of that day it was good luck to follow in the wake of a flock of birds when on a voyage of discovery. But for his change of course Columbus would have reached the coast of Florida. "Never," wrote Humboldt, "had the flight of birds more important consequences."

The children of a spectacle-maker placed two or more pairs of the spectacles before each other in play, and told their father that distant objects looked larger. From this hint came the telescope.

"Of what use is it?" people asked with a sneer, when Franklin told of his discovery that lightning and electricity are identical. "What is the use of a child?" replied Franklin; "it may become a man."

"He who waits to do a great deal of good at once," said Dr. Johnson, "will never do any." Do good with what thou hast, or it will do thee no good.

Every day is a little life; and our whole life but a day repeated. Those that dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal, those that dare misspend it, desperate. What is the happiness of your life made up of? Little courtesies, little kindnesses, pleasant words, genial smiles, a friendly letter, good wishes, and good deeds. One in a million—once in a lifetime—may do a heroic action. The atomic theory is the true one. Many think common fractions vulgar, but they are the components of millions.

He is a great man who sees great things where others see little things, who sees the extraordinary in the ordinary. Ruskin sees a poem in the rose or the lily, while the hod-carrier would perhaps not go a rod out of his way to see a sunset which Ruskin would feed upon for a year.

Napoleon was a master of trifles. To details which his inferior officers thought too microscopic for their notice he gave the most exhaustive attention. Nothing was too small for his attention. He must know all about the provisions, the horse fodder, the biscuits, the camp kettles, the shoes. When the bugle sounded for the march to battle, every officer had his orders as to the exact route which he should follow, the exact day he was to arrive at a certain station, and the exact hour he was to leave, and they were all to reach the point of destination at a precise moment. It is said that nothing could be more perfectly planned than his memorable march which led to the victory of Austerlitz, and which sealed the fate of Europe for many years. He would often charge his absent officers to send him perfectly accurate returns, even to the smallest detail. "When they are sent to me, I give up every occupation in order to read them in detail, and to observe the difference between one monthly return and another. No young girl enjoys her novel as much as I do these returns." The captain who conveyed Napoleon to Elba was astonished with his familiarity with all the minute details connected with the ship. Napoleon left nothing to chance, nothing to contingency, so far as he could possibly avoid it. Everything was planned to a nicety before he attempted to execute it.

Wellington too was "great in little things." He knew no such things as trifles. While other generals trusted to subordinates, he gave his personal attention to the minutest detail. The history of many a failure could be written in three words, "Lack of detail." How many a lawyer has failed from the lack of details in deeds and important papers, the lack of little words which seemed like surplusage, and which involved his clients in litigation, and often great losses! How many wills are contested from the carelessness of lawyers in the omission or shading of words, or ambiguous use of language!

Physicians often fail to make a reputation through their habitual blundering, carelessness in writing prescriptions, failure to give minute instruction. The world is full of blunderers; business men fail from a disregard of trifles; they go to the bank to pay a note the day after it has gone to protest; they do not pay their bills promptly; do not answer their letters promptly or file them away accurately; their books do not quite balance; they do not know exactly how they stand, they have a contempt for details.

"My rule of conduct has been that whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well," said Nicolas Poussin, the great French painter. When asked the reason why he had become so eminent in a land of famous artists he replied, "Because I have neglected nothing."

Not even Helen of Troy, it is said, was beautiful enough to spare the tip of her nose; and if Cleopatra's had been an inch shorter Mark Antony would never have become infatuated with her wonderful charms, and the blemish would have changed the history of the world. Anne Boleyn's fascinating smile split the great Church of Rome in twain, and gave a nation an altered destiny. Napoleon, who feared not to attack the proudest monarchs in their capitols, shrank from the political influence of one independent woman in private life, Madame de Stael. Had not Scott sprained his foot his life would probably have taken a different direction.

Cromwell was about to sail for America when a law was passed prohibiting emigration. At that time he was a profligate, having squandered all his property. But when he found that he could not leave England he reformed his life. Had he not been detained who can tell what the history of Great Britain would have been?

When one of his friends asked Scopas the Thessalian for something that could be of little use to him, he answered, "It is in these useless and superfluous things that I am rich and happy."

It was the little foxes that spoiled the vines in Solomon's day. Mites play mischief now with our meal and cheese, moths with our woolens and furs, and mice in our pantries. More than half our diseases are produced by infinitesimal creatures called microbes.

Most people call fretting a minor fault, a foible, and not a vice. There is no vice except drunkenness which can so utterly destroy the peace, the happiness, of a home.

"We call the large majority of human lives obscure," says Bulwer, "presumptuous that we are! How know we what lives a single thought retained from the dust of nameless graves may have lighted to renown?"

The theft of a diamond necklace from a French queen convulsed Europe. From the careful and persistent accumulation of innumerable facts, each trivial in itself, but in the aggregate forming a mass of evidence, a Darwin extracts his law of evolution, and Linnaeus constructs the science of botany. A pan of water and two thermometers were the tools by which Dr. Black discovered latent heat, and a prism, a lens, and a sheet of pasteboard enabled Newton to unfold the composition of light and the origin of colors. An eminent foreign savant called on Dr. Wollaston, and asked to be shown over those laboratories of his in which science had been enriched by so many great discoveries, when the doctor took him into a little study, and, pointing to an old tea tray on the table, on which stood a few watch glasses, test papers, a small balance, and a blow-pipe, said, "There is my laboratory." A burnt stick and a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and paper. A single potato, carried to England by Sir Walter Raleigh in the sixteenth century, 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 in a hollow cane. The eggs were hatched by means of heat, and Asia no longer held the monopoly of the silk business.

In comparison with Ferdinand, preparing to lead forth his magnificent army in Europe's supreme contest with the Moors, how insignificant seemed the visionary expedition of Columbus, about to start in three small shallops across the unknown ocean. But grand as was the triumph of Ferdinand, it now seems hardly worthy of mention in comparison with the wonderful achievement of the poor Genoese navigator.

Only one hundred and ninety-two Athenians perished in the battle of Marathon, but Europe was saved from a host which is said to have drunk rivers dry, and to have shaken the solid earth as they marched.

Great men are noted for their attention to trifles. Goethe once asked a monarch to excuse him, during an interview, while he went to an adjoining room to jot down a stray thought. Hogarth would make sketches of rare faces and characteristics upon his finger-nails upon the streets. Indeed, to a truly great mind there are no little things. "The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances," said Bacon. Trifles light as air suggest to the keen observer the solution of mighty problems. Bits of glass arranged to amuse children led to the discovery of the kaleidoscope. Goodyear discovered how to vulcanize rubber by forgetting, until it became red hot, a skillet containing a compound which he had before considered worthless. Confined in the house by typhoid fever, Helmholtz, with a little money which he had saved by great economy, bought a microscope which led him into the field of science where he became so famous. A ship-worm boring a piece of wood suggested to Sir Isambard Brunei the idea of a tunnel under the Thames at London. Tracks of extinct animals in the old red sandstone led Hugh Miller on and on until he became the greatest geologist of his time. Sir Walter Scott once saw a shepherd boy plodding sturdily along, and asked him to ride. This boy was George Kemp, who became so enthusiastic in his study of sculpture that he walked fifty miles and back to see a beautiful statue. He did not forget the kindness of Sir Walter, and, when the latter died, threw his soul into the design of the magnificent monument erected in Edinburgh to the memory of the 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 all that precedes it. To-day is a book which contains everything that has transpired in the world up to the present moment. The millions of the past whose ashes have mingled with the dust for centuries still live in their destinies through the laws of heredity.

Nothing has ever been lost. All the infinitesimals of the past are amassed into the present.

The first acorn had wrapped up in it all the oak forests on the globe.

"Least of all seeds, greatest of all harvests," seems to be one of the great laws of nature. All life comes from microscopic beginnings. In nature there is nothing small. The microscope reveals as great a world below as the telescope above. All of nature's laws govern the smallest atoms, and a single drop of water is a miniature ocean.

The strength of a chain lies in its weakest link, however large and strong all the others may be. We are all inclined to be proud of our strong points, while we are sensitive and neglectful of our weaknesses. Yet it is our greatest weakness which measures our real strength. A soldier who escapes the bullets of a thousand battles may die from the scratch of a pin, and many a ship has survived the shocks of icebergs and the storms of ocean only to founder in a smooth sea from holes made by tiny insects. Drop by drop is instilled into the mind the poison which blasts many a precious life.

How often do we hear people say, "Oh, it's only ten minutes, or twenty minutes, till dinner time; there's no use doing anything," or use other expressions of a like effect? Why, it is just in these little spare bits of time, these odd moments, which most people throw away, that men who have risen have gained their education, written their books, and made themselves immortal.

Small things become great when a great soul sees them. The noble or heroic act of one man has sometimes elevated a nation. Many an honorable career has resulted from a kind word spoken in season or the warm grasp of a friendly hand.

It is the little rift within the lute, That by and by will make the music mute, And, ever widening, slowly silence all. TENNYSON.

"It was only a glad 'good-morning,' As she passed along the way, But it spread the morning's glory Over the livelong day."

"Only a thought in passing—a smile, or encouraging word, Has lifted many a burden no other gift could have stirred. Only!—But then the onlys Make up the mighty all."



CHAPTER XVI.

SELF-MASTERY.

Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart. SHAKESPEARE.

Strength of character consists of two things,—power of will and power of self-restraint. It requires two things, therefore, for its existence,—strong feelings and strong command over them.—F. W. ROBERTSON.

"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power."

The bravest trophy ever man obtained Is that which o'er himself himself hath gained. EARL OF STIRLING.

Real glory springs from the conquest of ourselves; and without that the conqueror is naught but the veriest slave.—THOMSON.

Whatever day makes man a slave takes half his worth away.—ODYSSEY.

Chain up the unruly legion of thy breast. Lead thine own captivity captive, and be Caesar within thyself.—THOMAS BROWNE.

He who reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires, and fears, is more than a king.—MILTON.

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty: and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.—BIBLE.

Self-trust is of the essence of heroism.—EMERSON.

Man who man would be Must rule the empire of himself. P. B. SHELLEY.

"Ah! Diamond, you little know the mischief you have wrought," said Sir Isaac Newton, returning from supper to find that his dog had upset a lighted taper upon the laborious calculations of years, which lay in ashes before him. Then he went calmly to work to reproduce them. The man who thus excelled in self-mastery surpassed all his predecessors and contemporaries in mastering the laws of nature.

* * * * * *



"We rise by the things that are under our feet; By what we have mastered of good or gain: By the pride deposed and the passion slain, And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet."

* * * * * *

The sun was high in the heavens when a man called at the house of Pericles to abuse him. The man's anger knew no bounds. He vented his spite in violent language until he paused from sheer exhaustion, and saw that it was quite dark without. He turned to go home, when Pericles calmly called a servant, and said, "Bring a lamp and attend this man home." Is any argument needed to show the superiority of Pericles?

The gladiators who were trained to tight in the Coliseum were compelled to practice the most graceful postures of falling and the finest attitudes to assume in dying, in case they were vanquished. They were obliged to eat food which would make the blood thick in order that they should not die quickly when wounded, thus giving the spectators prolonged gratification by the spectacle of their agonies. Each had to take this oath: "We swear that we will suffer ourselves to be bound, scourged, burned, or killed by the sword, or whatever Eumolpus ordains, and thus, like freeborn gladiators, we religiously devote both our souls and our bodies to our master." They were trained to exercise sublime self-control even when dying a cruel death.

The American Minister at St. Petersburg was summoned one morning to save a young, dissolute, reckless American youth, Poe, from the penalties incurred in a drunken debauch. By the Minister's aid young Poe returned to the United States. Not long after this the author of the best story and poem competed for in the "Baltimore Visitor" was sent for, and behold, the youth who had taken both prizes was that same dissolute, reckless, penniless, orphan youth, who had been arrested in St. Petersburg,—pale, ragged, with no stockings, and with his threadbare but well brushed coat buttoned to the chin to conceal the lack of a shirt. Young Poe took fresh courage and resolution, and for a while showed that he was superior to the appetite which was striving to drag him down. But, alas, that fatal bottle! his mind was stored with riches, yet he died in moral poverty. This was a soldier's epitaph:—

"Here lies a soldier whom all must applaud, Who fought many battles at home and abroad! But the hottest engagement he ever was in, Was the conquest of self, in the battle of sin."

In 1860, when a committee visited Abraham Lincoln at his home in Springfield, Ill., to notify him of his nomination as President, he ordered a pitcher of water and glasses, "that they might drink each other's health in the best beverage God ever gave to man." "Let us," he continued, "make it as unfashionable to withhold our names from the temperance pledge as for husbands to wear their wives' bonnets in church, and instances will be as rare in one case as the other."

Burns exercised no control over his appetites, but gave them the rein:—

"Thus thoughtless follies laid him low And stained his name."

"The first and best of victories," says Plato, "is for a man to conquer himself; to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful and vile."

Self-control is at the root of all the virtues. Let a man yield to his impulses and passions, and from that moment he gives up his moral freedom.

"Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasurable," says Walter Scott, "and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer."

Stonewall Jackson, early in life, determined to conquer every weakness he had, physical, mental, and moral. He held all of his powers with a firm hand. To his great self-discipline and self-mastery he owed his success. So determined was he to harden himself to the weather that he could not be induced to wear an overcoat in winter. "I will not give in to the cold," he said. For a year, on account of dyspepsia, he lived on buttermilk and stale bread, and wore a wet shirt next his body because his doctor advised it, although everybody else ridiculed the idea. This was while he was professor at the Virginia Military Institute. His doctor advised him to retire at nine o'clock; and, no matter where he was, or who was present, he always sought his bed on the minute. He adhered rigidly through life to this stern system of discipline. Such self-training, such self-conquest, gives one great power over others. It is equal to genius itself.

It is a good plan to form the habit of ranking our various qualities, marking our strongest point one hundred and all the others in proportion, in order to make the lowest mark more apparent, and enabling us to try to raise or strengthen it. A man's industry, for example, may be his strongest point, one hundred, his physical courage may be fifty; his moral courage, seventy-five; his temper, twenty-five; with but ten for self-control,—which, if he has strong appetites and passions, will be likely to be the rock on which he will split. He should strive in every way to raise it from one of the weakest qualities to one of the strongest. It would take but two or three minutes a day to rank ourselves in such a table by noting the exercise of each faculty for the day. If you have worked hard and faithfully, mark industry one hundred. If you have lost your temper, and, in consequence, lost your self-control, and made a fool of yourself, indicate it by a low mark. This will be an incentive to try to raise it the next day. If you have been irritable, indicate it by a corresponding mark, and redeem yourself on the morrow. If you have been cowardly where you should have been brave, hesitating where you should have shown decision, false where you should have been true, foolish where you should have been wise, tardy where you should have been prompt; if you have prevaricated where you should have told the exact truth; if you have taken the advantage where you should have been fair, have been unjust where you should have been just, impatient where you should have been patient, cross where you should have been cheerful, so indicate by your marks. You will find this a great aid to character building.

It is a subtle and profound remark of Hegel's that the riddle which the Sphinx, the Egyptian symbol of the mysteriousness of Nature, propounds to Oedipus is only another way of expressing the command of the Delphic oracle, "Know thyself." And when the answer is given the Sphinx casts herself down from her rock. When man knows himself, the mysteriousness of Nature and her terrors vanish.

The command by the ancient oracle at Delphos is of eternal significance. Add to it its natural complement—Help thyself—and the path to success is open to those who obey.

Guard your weak point. Moral contagion borrows fully half its strength from the weakness of its victims. Have you a hot, passionate temper? If so, a moment's outbreak, like a rat-hole in a dam, may flood all the work of years. One angry word sometimes raises a storm that time itself cannot allay. A single angry word has lost many a friend.

A Quaker was asked by a merchant whom he had conquered by his patience how he had been able to bear the other's abuse, and replied: "Friend, I will tell thee. I was naturally as hot and violent as thou art. I observed that men in a passion always speak loud, and I thought if I could control my voice I should repress my passion. I have therefore made it a rule never to let my voice rise above a certain key, and by a careful observance of this rule, I have, by the blessing of God, entirely mastered my natural tongue." Mr. Christmas of the Bank of England explains that the secret of his self-control under very trying circumstances was due to a rule learned from the great Pitt, never to lose his temper during banking hours from nine to three.

When Socrates found in himself any disposition to anger, he would check it by speaking low, in opposition to the motions of his displeasure. If you are conscious of being in a passion, keep your mouth shut, lest you increase it. Many a person has dropped dead in a rage. Fits of anger bring fits of disease. "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." "Keep cool," says Webster, "anger is not argument." "Be calm in arguing," says George Herbert, "for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy."

To be angry with a weak man is to prove that you are not strong yourself. "Anger," says Pythagoras, "begins with folly and ends with repentance." You must measure the strength of a man by the power of the feelings he subdues, not by the power of those which subdue him.

De Leon, a distinguished Spanish poet, after lying years in dungeons of the Inquisition, dreary, and alone, without light, for translating part of the Scriptures into his native tongue, was released and restored to his professorship. A great crowd thronged to hear his first lecture, out of curiosity to learn what he might say about his imprisonment. But the great man merely resumed the lecture which had been so cruelly broken off five years before, just where he left it, with the words "Heri discebamus" (Yesterday we were teaching). What a lesson in this remarkable example of self-control for those who allow their tongues to jabber whatever happens to be uppermost in their minds!

Did you ever see a man receive a flagrant insult, and only grow a little pale, bite his quivering lip, and then reply quietly? Did you ever see a man in anguish stand as if carved out of solid rock, mastering himself? Have you not seen one bearing a hopeless daily trial remain silent and never tell the world what cankered his home peace? That is strength. "He who, with strong passions, remains chaste; he who, keenly sensitive, with manly power of indignation in him, can be provoked, and yet restrain himself and forgive,—these are strong men, the spiritual heroes."

"You will be remembered only as the man who broke my nose," said young Michael Angelo to the man Torrigiano, who struck him in anger. What sublime self-control for a quick-tempered man!

"You ask whether it would not be manly to resent a great injury," said Eardley Wilmot: "I answer that it would be manly to resent it, but it would be Godlike to forgive it."

That man has conquered his tongue who can allow the ribald jest or scurrilous word to die unspoken on his lips, and maintain an indignant silence amid reproaches and accusations and sneers and scoffs. "He is a fool who cannot be angry," says English, "but he is a wise man who will not."

Peter the Great made a law in 1722 that a nobleman who should beat his slave should be regarded as insane, and a guardian appointed to look after his property and person. This great monarch once struck his gardener, who took to his bed and died. Peter, hearing of this, exclaimed with tears in his eyes, "Alas! I have civilized my own subjects; I have conquered other nations; yet have I not been able to civilize or conquer myself." The same monarch, when drunk, rushed upon Admiral Le Fort with a sword. Le Fort, with great self-possession, bared his breast to receive the stroke. This sobered Peter, and afterwards he asked the pardon of Le Fort. Peter said, "I am trying to reform my country, and I am not yet able to reform myself." Self-conquest is man's last and greatest victory.

A medical authority of highest repute affirms that excessive labor, exposure to wet and cold, deprivation of sufficient quantities of necessary and wholesome food, habitual bad lodging, sloth and intemperance, are all deadly enemies to human life, but they are none of them so bad as violent and ungoverned passion,—that men and women have frequently lived to an advanced age in spite of these, but that instances are very rare where people of irascible tempers live to extreme old age.

It was the self-discipline of a man who had never looked upon war until he was forty that enabled Oliver Cromwell to create an army which never fought without annihilating, yet which retired into the ranks of industry as soon as the government was established, each soldier being distinguished from his neighbors only by his superior diligence, sobriety, and regularity in the pursuits of peace.

How sweet the serenity of habitual self-command! When does a man feel more a master of himself than when he has passed through a sudden and severe provocation in silence or in undisturbed good humor?

Whether teaching the rules of an exact morality, answering his corrupt judges, receiving sentence of death, or swallowing the poison, Socrates was still calm, quiet, undisturbed, intrepid.

It is a great thing to have brains, but it is vastly greater to be able to command them. The Duke of Wellington had great power over himself, although his natural temper was extremely irritable. He remained at the Duchess of Richmond's ball till about three o'clock on the morning of the 16th of June, 1815, "showing himself very cheerful," although he knew that a desperate battle was awaiting him. On the field of Waterloo he gave his orders at the most critical moments without the slightest excitement.

Napoleon, having made his arrangements for the terrible conflict of the next day (Jena and Auerstadt), retired to his tent about midnight, and calmly sat down to draw up a plan of study and discipline for Madame Campan's female school. "Keep cool, and you command everybody," says St. Just.

"He that would govern others first should be The master of himself,"

says Massinger.

He who has mastered himself, who is his own Caesar, will be stronger than his passion, superior to circumstances, higher than his calling, greater than his speech. Self-control is the generalship which turns a mob of raw recruits into a disciplined army. The rough man has become the polished and dignified soldier, in other words, the man has got control of himself, and knows how to use himself. The human race is under constant drill. Our occupations, difficulties, obstacles, disappointments, if used aright, are the great schoolmasters which help us to possess ourselves. The man who is master of himself will not be a slave to drudgery, but will keep in advance of his work. He will not rob his family of that which is worth more than money or position; he will not be the slave of his occupation, not at the mercy of circumstances. His methods and system will enable him to accomplish wonders, and yet give him leisure for self-culture. The man who controls himself works to live rather than lives for work.

The man of great self-control, the man who thinks a great deal and says little, who is self-centred, well balanced, carries a thousand times more weight than the man of weak will, always wavering and undecided.

If a man lacks self-control he seems to lack everything. Without it he can have no patience, no power to govern himself, he can have no self-reliance, for he will always be at the mercy of his strongest passion. If he lacks self-control, the very backbone, pith, and nerve of character are lacking also.

The discipline which is the main end in education is simply control acquired over one's mental faculties; without this discipline no man is a strong and accurate thinker. "Prove to me," says Mrs. Oliphant, "that you can control yourself, and I'll say you're an educated man; and, without this, all other education is good for next to nothing."

The wife of Socrates, Xanthippe, was a woman of a most fantastical and furious spirit. At one time, having vented all the reproaches upon Socrates her fury could suggest, he went out and sat before the door. His calm and unconcerned behavior but irritated her so much the more; and, in the excess of her rage, she ran upstairs and emptied a vessel upon his head, at which he only laughed and said that "so much thunder must needs produce a shower." Alcibiades his friend, talking with him about his wife, told him he wondered how he could bear such an everlasting scold in the same house with him. He replied, "I have so accustomed myself to expect it, that it now offends me no more than the noise of carriages in the street."

How many men have in their chain of character one weak link. They may be weak in the link of truthfulness, politeness, trustworthiness, temper, chastity, temperance, courage, industry, or may have some other weakness which wrecks their success and thwarts a life's endeavor. He who would succeed must hold all his faculties under perfect control; they must be disciplined, drilled, until they obey the will.

Think of a young man just starting out in life to conquer the world being at the mercy of his own appetites and passions! He cannot stand up and look the world in the face when he is the slave of what should be his own servants. He cannot lead who is led. There is nothing which gives certainty and direction to the life of a man who is not his own master. If he has mastered all but one appetite, passion, or weakness, he is still a slave; it is the weakest point that measures the strength of character.

Seneca, one of the greatest of the ancient philosophers, said that "we should every night call ourselves to account. What infirmity have I mastered to-day? what passion opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired?" and then he follows with the profound truth that "our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift." If you cannot at first control your anger, learn to control your tongue, which, like fire, is a good servant, but a hard master.

Five words cost Zacharias forty weeks' silence. There is many a man whose tongue might govern multitudes if he could only govern his tongue. Anger, like too much wine, hides us from ourselves, but exposes us to others.

General von Moltke, perhaps the greatest strategist of this century, had, as a foundation for his other talents, the power to "hold his tongue in seven languages." A young man went to Socrates to learn oratory. On being introduced, he talked so incessantly that Socrates asked for double fees. "Why charge me double?" asked the young fellow. "Because," said the orator, "I must teach you two sciences: the one how to hold your tongue, the other how to speak." The first is the more difficult.

Half the actual trouble of life would be saved if people would remember that silence is golden, when they are irritated, vexed, or annoyed.

To feel provoked or exasperated at a trifle, when the nerves are exhausted, is, perhaps, natural to us in our imperfect state. But why put into the shape of speech the annoyance which, once uttered, is remembered; which may burn like a blistering wound, or rankle like a poisoned arrow? If a child be crying or a friend capricious, or a servant unreasonable, be careful what you say. Do not speak while you feel the impulse of anger, for you will be almost certain to say too much, to say more than your cooler judgment will approve, and to speak in a way that you will regret. Be silent until the "sweet by and by," when you will be calm, rested, and self-controlled.

"Seest thou a man that is hasty in his words? There is more hope of a fool than of him."

"Silence," says Zimmerman, "is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy."

In rhetoric, as Emerson truly says, this art of omission is the chief secret of power. "Everything tells in favor of the man who talks but little. The presumption is that he is a superior man; and if, in point of fact, he is not a sheer blockhead, the presumption then is that he is very superior indeed." Grant was master of the science of silence.

The self-controlled are self-possessed. "Sir, the house is on fire!" shrieked a frightened servant, running into Dr. Lawson's study. "Go and tell your mistress," said the preoccupied professor, without looking up from the book he was reading; "you know I have no charge of household matters." A woman whose house was on fire threw a looking-glass out of the window, and carried a pair of andirons several rods to a safe place beside a stone wall. "Presence of mind and courage in distress are more than armies to procure success."

Xenophon tells us that at one time the Persian princes had for their teachers the four best men in the kingdom. (1) The wisest man to teach wisdom. (2) The bravest to teach courage. (3) The most just to train the moral nature. (4) The most temperate to teach self-control. We have them all in the Bible, and in Christ our teacher, an example. "If it is a small sacrifice to discontinue the use of wine," said Samuel J. May, "do it for the sake of others; if it is a great sacrifice, do it for your own sake." How many of nature's noblemen, who might be kings if they could control themselves, drink away their honor, reputation, and money in glasses of "wet damnation," more costly than the vinegar in which Cleopatra dissolved her pearls.

Experience shows that, quicker than almost any other physical agency, alcohol breaks down a man's power of self-control. But the physical evils of intemperance, great as they are, are slight, compared with the moral injury it produces. It is not simply that vices and crimes almost inevitably follow the loss of rational self-direction, which is the invariable accompaniment of intoxication; manhood is lowered and finally lost by the sensual tyranny of appetite. The drunken man has given up the reins of his nature to a fool or a fiend, and he is driven fast to base or unutterably foolish ends.

With almost palsied hand, at a temperance meeting, John B. Gough signed the pledge. For six days and nights in a wretched garret, without a mouthful of food, with scarcely a moment's sleep, he fought the fearful battle with appetite. Weak, famished, almost dying, he crawled into the sunlight; but he had conquered the demon, which had almost killed him. Gough used to describe the struggles of a man who tried to leave off using tobacco. He threw away what he had, and said that was the end of it; but no, it was only the beginning of it. He would chew camomile, gentian, toothpicks, but it was of no use. He bought another plug of tobacco and put it in his pocket. He wanted a chew awfully, but he looked at it and said, "You are a weed, and I am a man. I'll master you if I die for it;" and he did, while carrying it in his pocket daily.

Natural appetites, if given rein, will not only grow monstrous and despotic, but artificial appetites will be created which, like a ghastly Frankenstein, develop a kind of independent life and force, and then turn on their creator to torment him without pity, and will mock his efforts to free himself from this slavery. The victim of strong drink is one of the most pitiable creatures on earth, he becomes half beast, or half demon. Oh, the silent, suffering tongues that whisper "Don't," but the will lies prostrate, and the debauch goes on. What a mute confession of degradation there is in the very appearance of a confirmed sot. Behold a man no longer in possession of himself; the flesh is master; the spiritual nature is sunk in the mire of sensuality, and the mental faculties are a mere mob of enfeebled powers under bondage to a bestial or mad tyrant. As Challis says:—

"Once the demon enters, Stands within the door; Peace and hope and gladness Dwell there nevermore."

Many persons are intemperate in their feelings; they are emotionally prodigal. Passion is intemperance; so is caprice. There is an intemperance even in melancholy and mirth. The temperate man is not mastered by his moods; he will not be driven or enticed into excess; his steadfast will conquers despondency, and is not unbalanced by transient exhilarations, for ecstasy is as fatal as despair. Temper is subjected to reason and conscience. How many people excuse themselves for doing wrong or foolish acts by the plea that they have a quick temper. But he who is king of himself rules his temper, turning its very heat and passion into energy that works good instead of evil. Stephen Girard, when he heard of a clerk with a strong temper, was glad to employ him. He believed that such persons, taught self-control, were the best workers. Controlled temper is an element of strength; wisely regulated, it expends itself as energy in work, just as heat in an engine is transmuted into force that drives the wheels of industry. Cromwell, William the Silent, Wordsworth, Faraday, Washington, and Wellington were men of prodigious tempers, but they were also men whose self-control was nearly perfect.

George Washington's faculties were so well balanced and combined that his constitution was tempered evenly with all the elements of activity, and his mind resembled a well organized commonwealth. His passions, which had the intensest vigor, owed allegiance to reason; and with all the fiery quickness of his spirit, his impetuous and massive will was held in check by consummate judgment. He had in his composition a calm which was a balance-wheel, and which gave him in moments of highest excitement the power of self-control, and enabled him to excel in patience, even when he had most cause for disgust.

It was said by an enemy of William the Silent that an arrogant or indiscreet word never fell from his lips.

How brilliantly could Carlyle write of heroism, courage, self-control, and yet fly into a rage at a rooster crowing in a neighbor's yard.

A self-controlled mind is a free mind, and freedom is power.

"I call that mind free," says Channing, "which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven, which, whilst consulting others, inquires still more of the oracle within itself, and uses instructions from abroad, not to supersede, but to quicken and exalt its own energies. I call that mind free which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, which is not swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the creature of accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and acts from an inward spring, from immutable principles which it has deliberately espoused. I call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human opinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man's, which respects a higher law than fashion, which respects itself too much to be the slave or tool of the many or the few. I call that mind free which through confidence in God and in the power of virtue has cast off all fear but that of wrong-doing, which no menace or peril can enthrall, which is calm in the midst of tumults, and possesses itself though all else be lost. I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which does not mechanically repeat itself and copy the past, which does not live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to precise rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions. I call that mind free which is jealous of its own freedom, which guards itself from being merged in others, which guards its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world."

Be free—not chiefly from the iron chain But from the one which passion forges—be The master of thyself. If lost, regain The rule o'er chance, sense, circumstance. Be free. EPHRAIM PEABODY.

"It is not enough to have great qualities," says La Rochefoucauld; "we should also have the management of them." No man can call himself educated until every voluntary muscle obeys his will.

Every human being is conscious of two natures. One is ever reaching up after the good, the true, and the noble,—is aspiring after all that uplifts, elevates, and purifies. It is the God-side of man, the image of the Creator, the immortal side, the spiritual side. It is the gravitation of the soul faculties toward their Maker. The other is the bestial side which gravitates downward. It does not aspire, it grovels; it wallows in the mire of sensualism. Like the beast, it knows but one law, and is led by only one motive, self-indulgence, self-gratification. When neither hungry nor thirsty, or when gorged and sated by over-indulgence, it lies quiet and peaceful as a lamb, and we sometimes think it subdued. But when its imperious passion accumulates, it clamors for satisfaction. You cannot reason with it, for it has no reason, only an imperious instinct for gratification. You cannot appeal to its self-respect, for it has none. It cares nothing for character, for manliness, for the spiritual.

These two natures are ever at war, one pulling heavenward, the other, earthward. Nor do they ever become reconciled. Either may conquer, but the vanquished never submits. The higher nature may be compelled to grovel, to wallow in the mire of sensual indulgence, but it always rebels and enters its protest. It can never forget that it bears the image of its Maker, even when dragged through the slough of sensualism. The still small voice which bids man look up is never quite hushed. If the victim of the lower nature could only forget that he was born to look upward, if he could only erase the image of his Maker, if he could only hush the voice which haunts him and condemns him when he is bound in slavery, if he could only enjoy his indulgences without the mockery of remorse, he thinks he would be content to remain a brute. But the ghost of his better self rises as he is about to partake of his delight, and robs him of the expected pleasure. He has sold his better self for pleasure which is poison, and he cannot lose the consciousness of the fearful sacrifice he has made. The banquet may be ready, but the hand on the wall is writing his doom.

Give me that soul, superior power, That conquest over fate, Which sways the weakness of the hour, Rules little things as great: That lulls the human waves of strife With words and feelings kind, And makes the trials of our life The triumphs of our mind. CHARLES SWAIN.

Reader, attend—whether thy soul Soars fancy's flights above the pole, Or darkly grubs this earthly hole, In low pursuits: Know prudent, cautious self-control Is wisdom's root. BURNS.

The king is the man who can.—CARLYLE.

I have only one counsel for you—Be master.—NAPOLEON.

Ah, silly man, who dream'st thy honor stands In ruling others, not thyself. Thy slaves Serve thee, and thou thy slave: in iron bands Thy servile spirit, pressed with wild passions, raves. Wouldst thou live honored?—clip ambition's wing: To reason's yoke thy furious passions bring: Thrice noble is the man who of himself is king. PHINEAS FLETCHER.

"Not in the clamor of the crowded street, Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, But in ourselves are triumph and defeat."

THE END