Union County Star And Lewisburg Chronicle

Benjamin Franklin tells us, in one of
his letters, that when he was a boy, a little
book fell into his hands, entitled Essays
to do Good, by Cotton Mather. It was
tattered and torn, and several leaves were
missing.

"But the remainder," he says,
"gave me such a turn of thinking, as to
have an influence on my conduct through
life; for I have always set a greater value
on the character of a doer of good, than
any other kind of reputation; and if I
have been a useful citizen, the public
owes all the advantage of it to that little
book."

Jeremy Bentham mentions that
the current of his thoughts and studies
was directed for life by a single phrase
that caught his eye at the end of a pam-
phlet—"The greatest good of the greatest
number."

There are single sentences in
the New Testament that have awakened
to spiritual life hundreds or millions of
dormant souls. In things of less moment,
reading has a wondrous power. George
Law, a boy on his father's farm, met an
old unknown book, which told the story of
a farmer's son who went away to seek his
fortune, and came home after many years'
absence, a rich man, and gave great sums
to all his relations. From that moment,
George was uneasy, till he set out on his
travels to imitate the adventurer; he lived
over again the life he had read of, and ac-
tually did return a millionaire, and paid
all his father's debts. Robinson Crusoe
has sent to sea more sailors than the press
gang.

The story about little George
Washington telling the truth about the
hatchet and the plum tree, has made many
a truth-teller. We owe all the Waverley
Novels to Scott's early reading of the old
traditions and legends; and the whole
body of pastoral fiction came from Addi-
son's Sketches of Sir Roger de Coverley, in
the Spectator. But illustrations are num-
berless. Tremble, ye who write, and ye
who publish writing! A pamphlet has
precipitated a revolution. A paragraph
may quench or kindle the celestial spark
in a human soul—in myriads of souls.