When the air balloon was first invented, someone asked Franklin what was the use of it. He replied by asking another question: “What is the use of a new-born infant?” “It may become a man,” was the significant reply. So little acts may lead to great results, opening the door of opportunities to greater achievements. Baron James de Rothschild once posed as a beggar for Ary Scheffer. While the great financier, attired in the rags of a beggar, was in his place on the estrade, a correspondent of a French paper entered the studio. The Baron was so perfectly disguised that he was not recognized, and, believing that a veritable beggar was before him, the newspaper man slipped a louis into his hand. The pictured model took the coin and put it into his pocket. Ten years later the correspondent received at his residence an order on the office in the Rue Lafitte for ten thousand francs, enclosed in the following letter:
Sir:
One day you gave a louis to Baron Rothschild in the studio of Ary Scheffer. He has employed it, and to-day sends you the little capital with which you entrusted him, together with its interest. A good action always brings good fortune.
Baron James de Rothschild.
My boy, the motto of this rich man is certainly true. One cannot show the smallest kindness, render the smallest assistance, attend to the smallest detail without profit to himself and to others. “I discovered the principle by the merest accident,” said Edison to a friend who asked him how he discovered the phonograph. “I was singing to the mouthpiece of a telephone, when the vibrations of the voice sent the fine steel point into my finger. That set me to thinking. If I could record the actions of the point and send the point over the same surface afterward, I saw no reason why the thing would not talk. I tried the experiment first on a strip of telegraph paper, and found that the point made an alphabet. I shouted the word ‘Halloa!’ and ‘Halloa!’ came in return. I determined to make a machine that would work accurately. That’s the whole story. The phonograph is the result of the pricking of a finger.”
While this may seem very simple, my boy, do not overlook the fact that Mr. Edison discovered it by paying attention to little things. “Is it not the little things,” asks William Matthews, “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 Milky Way? And of what is human happiness made up, but of little things?” Of General Thomas it was said: “He was careful in all the details of a battle.” So in home duties, school work, business interests, yea, in everything you have to do, do well. Resolve—
“If any little words of mine
May make a life the brighter,
If any little song of mine
May make a heart the lighter—