changed by a torn copy of Cotton Mather's Essays to Do Good. Taking up a stone to throw at a turtle was the turning point in Theodore Parker's life. As he raised the stone 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." She told him it was conscience. Small things become great when a great soul sees them. A child, when asked why a certain tree grew crooked, answered, "Somebody trod upon it when it was a little fellow."

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation. A little boy in Holland saw water trickling from a small hole pear 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.

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

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 capitals, shrank from the political influence of oneindependent woman in private life, Madame de Staël.

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.

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The discovery of glass was due to a mere accident-the building of a fire on the sand; and the bayonet, first made at Bayonne, in France, owes its existence to the fact that a Basque regiment, being hard pressed by the enemy, one of the soldiers suggested that, as their ammunition was exhausted, they should fix their long knives into the barrels of their muskets, which was done, and the first bayonet-charge was made.

A jest led to a war between two great nations. The presence of a comma in a deed, lost to the owner of an estate five thousand dollars a month for eight months. The battle of Corunna was fought and Sir

John Moore's life sacrificed, in 1809, through a dragoon stopping to drink while bearing despatches.

You do no work," said the scissors to the rivet. Where would your work be," said the rivet to the scissors, “if I didn't keep you together?"

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.

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

CHAPTER XIV.

COURAGE.

Quit yourselves like men.—I SAMUEL iv. 9. Cowards have no luck.-ELIZABETH KULMAN. He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.-EMERSON.

To dare is better than to doubt,
For doubt is always grieving;

'Tis faith that finds the riddles out;
The prize is for believing.

-HENRY BURTON.

-Walk

Boldly and wisely in that light thou hast;
There is a hand above will help thee on.
-BAILEY'S FESTUS.

"Have hope! Though clouds environ now,
And gladness hides her face in scorn,
Put thou the shadow from thy brow-
No night but hath its morn."

"Our enemies are before us," exclaimed the Spartans at Thermopylæ. "And we are before them,' was the cool reply of Leonidas. "Deliver your arms," came the message from Xerxes. Come and take them," was the answer Leonidas sent back. A Persian soldier said: You will not be able to see the sun for flying javelins and arrows.' Then we will fight in the shade," replied a Lacedemonian. What

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wonder that a handful of such men checked the march of the greatest host that ever trod the earth.

"The hero," says Emerson, "is the man who is immovably centred."

Darius the Great sent ambassadors to the Athenians, to demand earth and water, which denoted submission. The Athenians threw them into a ditch and told them, there was earth and water enough.

"Bring back the colors," shouted a captain at the battle of the Alma, when an ensign maintained his ground in front, although the men were retreating. "No, cried the ensign, "bring up the men to the colors." "To dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare," was Danton's noble defiance to the enemies of France.

Shakespeare says: "He is not worthy of the honeycomb that shuns the hives because the bees have stings."

'It is a bad omen,' said Eric the Red, when his horse slipped and fell on the way to his ship, moored on the coast of Greenland, in readiness for a voyage of discovery. "Ill-fortune would be mine should I dare venture now upon the sea." So he returned to his house; but his young son Leif decided to go, and with a crew of thirty-five men, sailed southward in search of the unknown shore upon which Captain Biarni had been driven by a storm, while sailing in another Viking ship two or three years