Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1885 — Trifles. [ARTICLE]

Trifles.

The proverbial lore of all nations is, strongly in favor of the importance of trifles. “The mother of mischief is no bigger than a fly’s wing,” runs the Italian proverb; while the English traces up the “loss of a kingdom” to the loss of the nail of a horseshoe. Many historical writers have pointed out what different results would have followed some trifling departure from the line of action followed by the men whose lives they«record. Livy devotes pages to speculations as to what would have ensued had Alexander the Great invaded Italy. Had Prince Charles Edward march south instead of north after quitting Derby, our Hanoverian line of kings might have terminated with George 11. Had Charles Martel lost the battle of Tours in 732, the crescent might have supplanted the cross in Europe for centuries. Had? the famous “Icon Basilike” been published a week earlier, many persons believed it would have saved the life of diaries 1., so strong a hold did it take on the popular sentiment; but the work appeared a few days after the execu-, fion of the King. In every-day life we must all know countless instances in which a mere trifle has affected a whole career. The failure to keep an ap pointment, or to catch a train, a slight accident, a shower, a letter posted too late, may all be the very turning points to a life, and bear results for good or evil for the whole of a man’s existence. When the Jacobites toasted “the little gentleman in black velvet” (the mole who made the hillock at which the horse of William 111. tumbled, inflicting injuries on his rider, which afterward proved fatal), they acknowledged the universal tendency to trace up great events to trifling sources.