ing influence, and bestows energy apportioned to the trial. It takes from calamity its dejecting quality, and enables the soul to possess itself under every vicissitude. It rescues the unhappy from degradation, and the feeble from contempt.

Courage, like every other emotion, however laudable in its pure form, may be allowed to degenerate into a faulty extreme. Thus rashness, too often assuming the name of courage, has no pretensions to its merit. For rashness urges to useless and impossible efforts, and thus produces a waste of vigor and spirit, that, properly restrained and well directed, would have achieved deeds worthy to be achieved. Rashness is the exuberance of courage, and ought to be checked, as we prune off the useless though vigorous shoots of shrubs and trees.

Little Things.

TRIFLES are not to be despised. The nerve of a tooth, not so large as the finest cambric needle, will sometimes drive a strong man to distraction. A musquito can make an elephant absolutely mad. The coral rock, which causes a navy to founder, is the work of tiny insects. The warrior that with stood death in a thousand forms may be killed by an insect. 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. Every pea helps to fill the peck.

Little and often fills the purse. Moments are the golden sands of time. Every day is a little life; and our whole life is but a day repeated; those, therefore, that dare lose a day, are dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend it, desperate. Springs are little things, but they are sources of large streams—a helm is a little thing, but it governs the course of a ship— a bridle bit is a little thing, but see its use and powernails and pegs are little things, but they hold parts of large buildings together-a word, a look, a frown, all are little things, but powerful for good or evil. Think of this, and mind the little things. Pay that little debt-it's promise redeem.

Little acts are the elements of true greatness. They raise life's value like the little figures over the larger ones in arithmetic, to its highest power. They are tests of character and disinterestedness. They are

the straws upon life's deceitful current, and show the current's way. The heart comes all out in them. They move on the dial of character and responsibility significantly. They indicate the character and destiny. They help to make the immortal man. It matters not so much where we are as what we are. It is seldom that acts of moral heroism are called for. Rather the re?. heroism of life is, to do all its little duties promptly and faithfully.

There are no such things as trifles in the biography of man. Drops make up the sea. Acorns cover the earth with oaks, and the ocean with navies. Sands make up the bar in the harbor's mouth, on which vessels are wrecked; and little things in youth accu

mulate into character in age, and destiny in eternity. All the links in that glorious chain which is in all and around all, we can see and admire, or at least admit; but the staple to which all is fastened, and which is the conductor of all, is the Throne of Deity.

If you cannot be a great river, bearing great vessels of blessings to the world, you can be a little spring by the wayside of life, singing merrily all day and all night, and giving a cup of cold water to every weary, thirsty one who passes by.

He who travels

He who writes
He who learns

Life is made up of little things. over a continent must go step by step. books must do it sentence by sentence. a science must master it fact by fact, and principle after principle. What is the happiness of our 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; but the little things that make up our life come every day and every hour. If we make the little events of life beautiful and good, then is the whole life full of beauty and goodness.

There is nothing too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much ha, niness as possible. "If a straw," says Dryden, "ca. ne made the instrument of happiness, he is a wise man who does not despise it." A very little thing makes all the difference. You stand in the engine-room of a steamer; you admit the steam to the cylinders, and the paddles turn ahead; a touch of a lever, you admit the

self-same steam to the self-same cylinders, and the paddles turn astern. It is so, oftentimes, in the moral world. The turning of a straw decides whether the engines shall work forward or backward. Look to the littles. The atomic theory is the true one. universe is but an infinite attrition of particles. The grandest whole is resolvable to fractions; or, as the ditty has it

"Little drops of water and little grains of sand,

Fill the mighty ocean and form the solid land."

The

Is it not strange that, in the face of these facts, men will neglect details? that many even consider them beneath their notice, and, when they hear of the success of a business man who is, perhaps, more solid than brilliant, sneeringly say that he is "great in little things"? Is it not the "little things" that, in the aggregate, make up whatever is great? Is it not the countless grains of sand that make the beach; the trees that form the forest; the successive strata of rock that compose the mountains; the myriads of almost imperceptible stars that whiten the heavens with the milkyway?

So with character, fortune, and all the concerns of life-the littles combined form the great bulk. If we look well to the disposition of these, the sum total will be cared for. It is the minutes wasted that wound the hours and mar the day. It is the pennies neglected that squander the dollars. The majority of men disdain littles-to many fractions are "vulgar" in more senses than the rule implies. It is apt to be thought

indicative of a narrow mind and petty spirit to be scrupulous about littles. Yet from littles have sprung the mass of great vices and crimes. In habits, in manners, in business, we have only to watch the littles, and all will come out clear. The smallest leak, overlooked, may sink a ship-the smallest tendency to evil thinking or evil doing, left unguarded, may wreck character and life. No ridicule should dissuade us from looking to the littles. The greatest and best of men have not been above caring for the littles-some of which have to do with every hour and every purpose of our lives.

Often what seems a trifle, a mere nothing by itself, in some nice situations turns the scale of fate, and rules the most important actions. The cackling of a goose is fabled to have saved Rome from the Gauls, and the pain produced by a thistle to have warned a Scottish army of the approach to the Danes; and according to the following anecdote from Randall's "Life of Jefferson," it seems that flies contributed to hasten the American independence: While the question of independence was before Congress, it had its meeting near a livery stable. Its members wore short breeches and silk stockings, and, with handkerchief in hand, they were diligently employed in lashing the flies from their legs. So very vexatious was this annoyance, and to so great an impatience did it arouse the sufferers, that it hastened, if it did not aid in inducing them to promptly affix their signatures to the great document which gave birth to an empire republic!

Discoveries are made mostly by little things. The art of printing owes its origin to rude impressions (for the