A child, when asked why a certain tree grew crooked, answered, "Somebody trod upon it when it was a little fellow." By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

A little boy in Holland saw water trickling from a small hole near the bottom of a dike.

He realized that the leak would rapidly become larger if the water was not checked, so he held his hand over the hole for hours on a dark and dismal night until he could attract the attention of passers-by.

His name is still held in grateful remembrance in Holland.
We may tell which way the wind blew before the Deluge by marking the ripple and cupping of the rain in the petrified sand now preserved forever.

We tell the very path by which gigantic creatures, whom man never saw, walked to the river's edge to find their food.
The tears of Virgilia and Volumnia saved Rome from the Volscians when nothing else could move the vengeful heart of Coriolanus.
Not even Helen of Troy, it is said, was beautiful enough to spare the tip of her nose; and if Cleopatra's had been an inch shorter Mark Antony would never have become infatuated with her wonderful charms, and the blemish would have changed the history of the world.