. Platform echoes: or, Living truths for head and heart . darlint. Kathleen,dear, hurrah! Its a happy man Iam. God bless your honor, and con-found the dirty old almanac; mywords saved! May ye live a longhundred years, and every one of thema leap-year ! Some may complain that I have given undue prominenceto habits that are deemed trivial; but can any habit bedeemed trivial that affects the character for good or evil?We grow into the habit, often, of despising little things, andyet some of the greatest discoveries have originated in theobservance of familiar and simple facts. The greatness ofsom
. Platform echoes: or, Living truths for head and heart . darlint. Kathleen,dear, hurrah! Its a happy man Iam. God bless your honor, and con-found the dirty old almanac; mywords saved! May ye live a longhundred years, and every one of thema leap-year ! Some may complain that I have given undue prominenceto habits that are deemed trivial; but can any habit bedeemed trivial that affects the character for good or evil?We grow into the habit, often, of despising little things, andyet some of the greatest discoveries have originated in theobservance of familiar and simple facts. The greatness ofsome of the worlds great men is not so much the utteranceof o-reat thoughts as their readiness to detect the significanceof little things. Galileo, when eighteen, saw in the cathe-dral at Pisa a lamp swinging to and fro, and from that con-ceived the idea of the pendulum for marking time. SirSamuel Brown, by noticing a spiders web, conceived theidea of the suspension-bridge. Seaweed floating past hisship enabled Columbus to quell the mutiny and discover the. A desavin cratur. 90 THE PATH OF DESOLATION. new world. Franklins first experiments in electricity wereby a kite made of two sticks and a silk handkerchief. Thefirst brushes of West, the painter, were made from the * i11 ~—tail. Wattss first model of the condensing steam-enginewas made of a syringe. Professor Faraday made his firstexperiment in an old bottle. Much might be written on thevalue and importance of little things. How little thingswill grow, and how mighty is an accumulation of littlethings! A flake of snow, how softly and quietly it comes:how small and frail it is, breathe on it and it is gone ; it restson yonder crag, an insect could brush it off with its wing:but another falls, and another, descending noiselessly, till anavalanche hangs over the valley. Scientists have told usthat even the motion of air produced by a human voice willsometimes loosen a tottering avalanche and send it, like awinding-sheet of death
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjecttempera, bookyear1890
