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.