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.

The totality of a life at any moment is the product mainly of little
things. Trifling choices, insignificant exercises of the will,
unimportant acts often repeated,--things seemingly of small
account,--these are the thousand tiny sculptors that are carving away
constantly at the rude block of our life, giving it shape and feature.
Indeed the formation of character is much like the work of an artist in
stone. The sculptor takes a rough, unshapen mass of marble, and with
strong, rapid strokes of mallet and chisel quickly brings into view the
rude outline of his design; but after the outline appears then come
hours, days, perhaps even years, of patient, minute labor. A novice
might see no change in the statue from one day to another; for though
the chisel touches the stone a thousand times, it touches as lightly as
the fall of a rain-drop, but each touch leaves a mark.

The smallest thing becomes respectable when regarded as the commencement
of what has advanced or is advancing into magnificence. The crude
settlement of Romulus would have remained an insignificant circumstance
and might have justly sunk into oblivion, if Rome had not at length
commanded the world.

Beecher says that men, in their property, are afraid of conflagrations