A DAILY MESSAGE

Hokitika Guardian, 22 June 1929, Page 1

A DAILY MESSAGE

THE FORCE OF LITTLE THINGS Little things often have momentous consequences. It was only a little thing for a cow to kick over a lantern in a deserted shanty, but it laid Chicago in ashes and rendered homeless a hundred thousand people. It was only a little thing if or- an usher in a public building in Paris to ask a .student whether he would allow him to look through his microscope. He was in that very instant made wild with enthusiasm at the new world which the instrument revealed. He dedicated himself to science, became' the master of that instrument, and through it made the most notable contributions to science. His name was Louis Pasteur.

It was only At 1 little thing that Edison was humming at the mouthpiece of a telephone, and the resultant vibration set him thinking. The phonograph was the result, and from it the wealth of wireless developments. It was only a little thing for a janitor to leave a lamp swinging in the Cathedral at Pisa, hut from that steady swaying motion Galileo conceived the idea of measuring time, and all our clocks and watches are the result.

It was only a tiny stone that jammed ti e revolver with which a young man had determined to end his life. After two unsuccessful attempts to fire his revolver, ho determined to hold his life sacred, and to make the most oif it. That man was Robert Clive, who with a handful of soldiers secured to the East India Company, and afterwards to Great Britain, a great rich and magnificent country. It was only a little tiling for the wireless operator oil the Carpathia to go back to his room at two minutes past the hour when he was off duty, and touch the wireless key, when, behold, the fated S.O.S. told of the sinking Titanic. The little thing which caused him to go back to his room saved seven hundred precious lives. Jt was only a little thing—only a spider’s web—that suggested to Captain Brown tfilie idea of a suspension bridge, and all the mighty suspension bridges of this age are the result oi that little tiling.

It was only a prism, a lens, and a sheet of pasteboard, that enabled Newton to unfold the composition of light mid the origin bf colours. Your idle word may be another s ticket to perdition. Your smallest action fraught with might consequences. Put it is possible that there are no little things—perhaps all little things are big things. Remember the cow that kicked ovei the lantern. It was a little thing, but to a hundred thousand persons it was a vast tragedy.

_M. PRESTON STANLEY