Mark Twain's Speeches

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—a 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.