poor, but also showing a clear judgment in giving away his great earnings; with a friendship which once given is never modified or recalled even when the friend has become an open enemy; with a mind for most comprehensive plans and yet able to study and execute carefully the most numerous and minute details, he furnishes to the youth of America a most practical example of what a man may accomplish who consecrates himself wholly to God and humanity.

MINDING LITTLE THINGS.

REAT things are the aggregate of littles; great results proceed from little causes. Human life is a succession of unimportant events; only here and there one can be called great in itself. A crushing sorrow, the loss of a fortune, physical and mental suffering, are the exceptions and not the rule of life. Experiences so small as scarcely to leave a trace behind, are the rule, producing, in the consummation, a life that is noble or ignoble, useful or useless, an honor or a disgrace.

Success, in all departments of human effort, is won by attention to little things. The details of all kinds of business demand the closest attention. The pennies must be saved as well as the dollars. Indeed, it is the hundred pennies that make the dollar. So in literary pursuits; careful regard to details, such as correct pronunciation and spelling, good reading, meaning of words, dotting i's and "minding p's and q's " generally, make up what we call an education. Only littles are found in the way to learning, and many of them are a small sort of drudgery; but all of them must be taken up and carried along, if we would "make our lives sublime." Miss Alcott's literary heroes and heroines were "little men and women."

"He who despiseth little things shall perish by little and little." Nevertheless, youth of both sexes are apt to disregard this divine counsel. Like the man in the parable who hid his one talent because it was so small, they want and expect larger things. They may not ask for ten talents, but they despise one. It is too insignificant to command their interest. or admiration. Greater things or nothing.

It is right here that many young people make a fatal mistake, not believing or seeing that with this little they may

gain another little, and still another, and so on, up, up, up, to the great. They commit themselves to failure at the outset.

A clerk in New York city was wont to take down the shutters at precisely six o'clock in the morning. While he was taking them down, rain or shine, an old gentleman passed by on his way to his place of business. The latter smiled so benignantly upon the former, that a hearty and familiar "Good morning," became natural to both. Month after month this mutual greeting continued, until one morning the old gentleman was missed, and he never appeared again. He was dead.

Not long thereafter the enterprising and faithful clerk was waited upon by the administrator of the old man's estate and informed that the latter's store and stock of goods were willed to him. Attracted by the youth's promptness and fidelity, he inquired into his character and circumstances, and was satisfied that he could leave that property to no one so likely to make good use of it as the clerk who took down the shutters at just six o'clock, summer and winter.

Through this legacy the clerk was introduced into a profitable business at once, and became one of the most wealthy, benevolent, and respected merchants of the city.

A banker in the city of Paris, France, said to a boy who entered the bank :

"What now, my son?"

"Want a boy here?" was the answer.

"Not just now," the banker replied, engaging in further conversation with the lad, whose appearance favorably impressed him.

When the boy went out, the eyes of the banker followed him into the street, where he saw him stoop to pick up a pin and fasten it to the collar of his coat. That act revealed to the banker a quality indispensable to a successful financier ; and he called the boy back, gave him a position, and in process of time, he became the most distinguished banker in Paris Laffitte.

A young man responded to the advertisement of a New York merchant for a clerk. After politely introducing himself, the merchant engaged him in conversation as a test. Finally, he offered him a cigar, which the young man declined, saying:

"I never use tobacco in any form whatever."

"Won't you take a glass of wine, then ?" the merchant continued.

"I never use intoxicating drinks under any circumstances," the young man answered.

"Nor I," the merchant responded, "and you are just the young man I want."

He had the key to the applicant's character now, and he wanted no further recommendation.

Very little things to make so much account of," some one will say. Yes, they are little things; but all the more significant for that. "Straws show which way the wind blows." We say of the man who plans for the half-cent, he is avaricious; of the youth who is rude in the company of females, he is ill-bred; and of the letter writer who spells words incorrectly, his education is defective all little things but all revelations.

"Little causes produce great results." A gnat choked Pope Adrian, and his death occasioned very important changes in Europe and America. A bloody war between France and England was occasioned by a quarrel between two boy princes. "The Grasshopper War" in the early settlement of our country, was a conflict between two Indian tribes. An Indian squaw, with her little son, visited a friend in another tribe. Her boy caught a grasshopper, and the boy of her friend wanted it. The boys quarreled; then the mothers took sides, and then the fathers and finally the two tribes waged a war which nearly destroyed one of them. Several centuries ago, some soldiers of Modena carried away a bucket from a public well in Bologna, and it occasioned a protracted war in which the king of Sardinia was taken prisoner and confined twenty-two years in prison, where he died.

The first hint which Newton received leading to his most important optical discoveries, was derived from a child's soap bubbles. The waving of a shirt before the fire suggested to Stephen Montgolfier the idea of a balloon. Galileo observed the oscillations of a lamp in the metropolitan temple of Pisa, and it suggested to him the most correct method of measuring time. The art of printing was suggested by a man cutting letters on the bark of a tree, and impressing them on paper. The telescope was the outcome of a boy's amusement

with two glasses in his father's shop, where spectacles were made, varying the distance between them, and observing the effect. A spark of fire falling upon some chemicals led to the invention of gunpowder. Goodyear neglected his skillet until it was red hot, and the accident guided him to the manufacture of vulcanized rubber. Brunel learned how to tunnel the Thames by observing a tiny ship-worm perforate timber with its armed head.

"Little foxes destroy the vines." Little sins sap the foundation of principle, and lead to greater sins. Cheating to the amount of one cent violates the divine law as much as swindling to the amount of a hundred dollars. The wrong does not lie in the amount involved. The stealing of a pin violates the law "Thou shalt not steal," as really as the taking of a dollar. "He who is unjust in the least, is unjust in much;" that is, he acts upon the same principle that he would in perpetrating far greater sins. Indeed, he who does wrong for a small gain may incur the highest criminality, since he yields to the smallest temptation, thereby showing a readier disposition to sin.

Smiles says, "As the daylight can be seen through very small holes, so little things will illustrate a person's character. Indeed, character consists in little acts, well and honorably performed."

CHAPTER XVIII.

SILAS WEIR MITCHELL.

OBSERVATIONS ABOUT SUCCESSFUL CAREERS BIRTHPLACE AND EDUCA

TION AT HOME THE DOCTOR — HIS STUDY AS A CONVERSATIONALIST BRIC-A-BRAC -THE AUTHOR FONDNESS FOR HIS NATIVE CITY HIS PERILS OF SUCCESS.

LITERARY CAREER

LITERARY METHODS.

I am very far from conceding that the vehement energy with which we do our work is due altogether to greed. We probably idle less and play less than any other race, and the absence of national habits of sport leaves the man of business with no inducement to abandon that unceasing labor in which at last he finds his sole pleasure. He does not idle, or shoot, or fish, or play any game but euchre. Business absorbs him utterly, and at last he finds neither time nor desire for books. The newspaper is his sole literature; he has never had time to acquire a taste, for any reading save his ledger. Honest friendship for books comes with youth or, as a rule, not at all. At last his hour of peril arrives. Then you may separate him from business, but you will find that to divorce his thoughts from it is impossible. The fiend of work he raised no man can lay. As to foreign travel, it wearies him. He has not the culture which makes it available or pleasant, and is now without resources. What then to advise I have asked myself countless times. Let him at least look to it that his boys go not the same evil road.

The best business men are apt to think that their own successful careers represent the lives their children ought to follow, and that the four years of college spoil a lad for business. In reality these years, be they idle or filled with work, give young men the custom of play, and surround them with an atmosphere of culture, which leaves them with bountiful resources for hours of leisure, while they insure to them in