end upon it, you will gain more inspiration from
these words than from half the wise sayings of the philosophers of old.

But nature is full of examples to stimulate us to perseverance, and
beautiful illustrations of how much can be achieved by little
things--trifles unheeded by the multitude. The worms that we tread in the
dust beneath our feet, are the choicest friends of the husbandman. A tract
of land rendered barren by the incrustation of stones upon its surface,
becomes by their labors a rich and fertile plain; they loosen and throw up
in nutritious mealy hillocks the hardest and most unprofitable soil--the
stones disappear, and where all was sterility and worthlessness, is soon
rich with a luxurious vegetation. We may call to mind, too, the worm upon
the mulberry-tree, and its miles of fine-spun glistening silk; we may
watch the process of its transformation till the choice fabric which its
patient industry had produced is dyed by an infusion gained from another
little insect (the Cochineal), and then, endowed with the glory of tint
and softness of texture, it is cut into robes to deck the beauty of our
English wives and daughters. Yet, those ignorant of their usefulness would
despise these little laborers, as they do others equally valuable. The bee
and the ant, again, are instances which we may all observe--but how few
will spare five minutes to contemplate them. Yet, where is the man,
sluggard though he be, who would not shake off his slothfulness on
observing the patient industry and frugal economy of the little ant? or
where is the drunkard and spendthrift who could watch the bee, so busy in
garnering up a rich store for the coming winter--laboring while the sun
shone, to sustain them when the frost and rain, and the flowerless plants
shut out all means of gaining their daily bread; and not put his shoulder
to the wheel, and think of old age, and the clouds that are gathering in
the heavens? The worth of all the delicious sweets we have derived from
the industry of the little bee, is nothing, when compared with the value
of this moral which they teach us.

If we turn from the book of Nature and open the annals of discovery and
science, many instances of the importance of little things will start up
and crowd around us--of events which appear in the lowest degree
insignificant, being the cause of vast and stupendous discoveries. "The
smallest thing becomes respectable," says Foster, "when regarded as the
comm