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OUR CHILDREN AND GREAT DISCOVERIES
DELIVERED AT THE AUTHORS' CLUB, NEW YORK
Our children--yours--and--mine. They seem like little things to talk
about--our children, but little things often make up the sum of human
life--that's a good sentence. I repeat it, little things often produce
great things. Now, to illustrate, take Sir Isaac Newton--I presume some
of you have heard of Mr. Newton. Well, once when Sir Isaac Newton--
a mere lad--got over into the man's apple orchard--I don't know what he
was doing there--I didn't come all the way from Hartford to q-u-e-s-t-i-
o-n Mr. Newton's honesty--but when he was there--in the main orchard--
he saw an apple fall and he was a-t-t-racted toward it, and that led to
the discovery--not of Mr. Newton but of the great law of attraction and
gravitation.
And there was once another great discoverer--I've forgotten his name,
and I don't remember what he discovered, but I know it was something very
important, and I hope you will all tell your children about it when you
get home. Well, when the great discoverer was once loafn' around down in
Virginia, and a-puttin' in his time flirting with Pocahontas--oh!
Captain John Smith, that was the man's name--and while he and Poca were
sitting in Mr. Powhatan's garden, he accidentally put his arm around her
and picked something simple weed, which proved to be tobacco--and now we
find it in every Christian family, shedding its civilizing influence
broadcast throughout the whole religious community.
Now there was another great man, I can't think of his name either, who
used to loaf around and watch the great chandelier in the cathedral at
Pisa., which set him to thinking about the great law of gunpowder, and
eventually led to the discovery of the cotton-gin.
Now, I don't say this as an inducement for our young men to loaf around
like Mr. Newton and Mr. Galileo and Captain Smith, but they were once
little babies two days old, and they show what little things have
sometimes accomplished.
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