and lightning strokes; but if they were building a wharf in Panama, a
million madrepores, so small that only the microscope could detect them,
would begin to bore the piles down under the water. There would be
neither noise nor foam; but in a little while, if a child did but touch
the post, over it would fall as if a saw had cut it through.

Men think, with regard to their conduct, that, if they were to lift
themselves up gigantically and commit some crashing sin, they should
never be able to hold up their heads; but they will harbor in their
souls little sins, which are piercing and eating them away to inevitable
ruin.

Lichens, of themselves of little value, prepare the way for important
vegetation. They deposit, in dying, an acid which wears away the rock
and prepares the mould necessary for the nourishment of superior plants.

It was but a tiny rivulet trickling down the embankment that started the
terrible Johnstown flood and swept thousands into eternity. One noble
heroic act has elevated a nation. Franklin's whole career was 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 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.

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 Cle