Physicians often fail to make a reputation through their habitual blundering, carelessness in writing prescriptions, failure to give minute instruction. The world is full of blunderers; business men fail from a disregard of trifles; they go to the bank to pay a note the day after it has gone to protest; they do not pay their bills promptly; do not answer their letters promptly or file them away accurately; their books do not quite balance; they do not know exactly how they stand, they have a contempt for details.
"My rule of conduct has been that whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well," said Nicolas Poussin, the great French painter. When asked the reason why he had become so eminent in a land of famous artists he replied, "Because I have neglected nothing."
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 capitols, shrank from the political influence of one independent woman in private life, Madame de Staël. Had not Scott sprained his foot his life would probably have taken a different direction.
Cromwell was about to sail for America when a law was passed prohibiting emigration. At that time he was a profligate, having squandered all his property. But when he found that he could not leave England he reformed his life. Had he not been detained who can tell what the history of Great Britain would have been?
When one of his friends asked Scopas the Thessalian for something that could be of little use to him, he answered, "It is in these useless and superfluous things that I am rich and happy."
It was the little foxes that spoiled the vines in Solomon's day. Mites play mischief now with our meal and cheese, moths with our woolens and furs, and mice in our pantries. More than half our diseases are produced by infinitesimal creatures called microbes.
Most people call fretting a minor fault, a foible, and not a vice. There is no vice except drunkenness which can so utterly destroy the peace, the happiness, of a home.
"We call the large majority of human lives obscure," says Bulwer, "presumptuous that we are! How know we what lives a single thought retained from the dust of nameless graves may have lighted to renown?"
The theft of a diamond necklace from a French queen convulsed Europe. From the careful and persistent accumulation of innumerable facts, each trivial in itself, but in the aggregate forming a mass of evidence, a Darwin extracts his law of evolution, and Linnaeus constructs the science of botany. A pan of water and two thermometers were the tools by which Dr. Black discovered latent heat, and a prism, a lens, and a sheet of pasteboard enabled Newton to unfold the composition of light and the origin of colors. An eminent foreign savant called on Dr. Wollaston, and asked to be shown over those laboratories of his in which science had been enriched by so many great discoveries, when the doctor took him into a little study, and, pointing to an old tea tray on the table, on which stood a few watch glasses, test papers, a small balance, and a blow-pipe, said, "There is my laboratory." A burnt stick and a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and paper. A single potato, carried to England by Sir Walter Raleigh in the sixteenth century, has multiplied into food for millions, driving famine from Ireland again and again.
It seemed a small thing to drive William Brewster, John Robinson, and the poor people of Austerfield and Scrooby into perpetual exile, but as Pilgrims they became the founders of a mighty people. A cloud may hide the sun which it cannot extinguish.
"Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth." "A look of vexation or a word coldly spoken, or a little help thoughtlessly withheld, may produce long issues of regret."
It was but a little dispute, a little flash of temper, the trigger was pulled in an instant, but the soul returned never.
A few immortal sentences from Garrison and Phillips, a few poems from Lowell and Whittier, and the leaven is at work which will not cease its action until the whipping-post and bodily servitude are abolished forever.
"For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For want of a shoe the horse was lost;
For want of a horse the rider was lost, and all,"
says Poor Richard, "for want of a horse-shoe nail."
A single remark dropped by an unknown person in the street led to the successful story of "The Bread-winners." A hymn chanted by the barefooted friars in the temple of Jupiter at Rome led to the famous "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."
"Do little things now," says a Persian proverb; "so shall big things come to thee by and by asking to be done." God will take care of the great things if we do not neglect the little ones.
"Words are things," says Byron, "and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions think."
"I give these books for the founding of a college in this colony;" such were the words of ten ministers who in the year 1700 assembled at the village of Branford a few miles east of New Haven. Each of the worthy fathers deposited a few books upon the table around which they were sitting; such was the founding of Yale College.
"He that has a spirit of detail," says Webster, "will do better in life than many who figured beyond him in the university."
The pyramid of knowledge is made up of little grains of information, little observations picked up from everywhere.
For a thousand years Asia monopolized the secret of silk culture, and at Rome the product was sold for its weight in gold. During the sixth century, at the request of Justinian, two Persian monks brought a few eggs from China to Europe in a hollow cane. The eggs were hatched by means of heat, and Asia no longer held the monopoly of the silk business.
In comparison with Ferdinand, preparing to lead forth his magnificent army in Europe's supreme contest with the Moors, how insignificant seemed the visionary expedition of Columbus, about to start in three small shallops across the unknown ocean. But grand as was the triumph of Ferdinand, it now seems hardly worthy of mention in comparison with the wonderful achievement of the poor Genoese navigator.
Only one hundred and ninety-two Athenians perished in the battle of Marathon, but Europe was saved from a host which is said to have drunk rivers dry, and to have shaken the solid earth as they marched.
Great men are noted for their attention to trifles. Goethe once asked a monarch to excuse him, during an interview, while he went to an adjoining room to jot down a stray thought. Hogarth would make sketches of rare faces and characteristics upon his finger-nails upon the streets. Indeed, to a truly great mind there are no little things. "The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances," said Bacon. Trifles light as air suggest to the keen observer the solution of mighty problems. Bits of glass arranged to amuse children led to the discovery of the kaleidoscope. Goodyear discovered how to vulcanize rubber by forgetting, until it became red hot, a skillet containing a compound which he had before considered worthless. Confined in the house by typhoid fever, Helmholtz, with a little money which he had saved by great economy, bought a microscope which led him into the field of science where he became so famous. A ship-worm boring a piece of wood suggested to Sir Isambard Brunei the idea of a tunnel under the Thames at London. Tracks of extinct animals in the old red sandstone led Hugh Miller on and on until he became the greatest geologist of his time. Sir Walter Scott once saw a shepherd boy plodding sturdily along, and asked him to ride. This boy was George Kemp, who became so enthusiastic in his study of sculpture that he walked fifty miles and back to see a beautiful statue. He did not forget the kindness of Sir Walter, and, when