(Look at Carlyle's article on Boswell, and see how he speaks of the poor young woman Johnson talked with in the streets one evening.) All the crowd gone but these two "filles de la paroisse,"-- gone as utterly as the dresses they wore, as the shoes that were on their feet, as the bread and meat that were in the market on that day.
Not the great historical events, but the personal incidents that call up single sharp pictures of some human being in its pang or struggle, reach us most nearly.

I remember the platform at Berne, over the parapet of which Theobald Weinzapfli's restive horse sprung with him and landed him more than a hundred feet beneath in the lower town, not dead, but sorely broken, and no longer a wild youth, but God's servant from that day forward.

I have forgotten the famous bears, and all else .-- I remember the Percy lion on the bridge over the little river at Alnwick,--the leaden lion with his tail stretched out straight like a pump-handle,--and why?
Because of the story of the village boy who must fain bestride the leaden tail, standing out over the water,--which breaking, he dropped into the stream far below, and was taken out an idiot for the rest of his life.
Arrow-heads must be brought to a sharp point, and the guillotine- axe must have a slanting edge.

Something intensely human, narrow, and definate pierces to the seat of our sensibilities more readily than huge occurrences and catastrophes.

A nail will pick a lock that defies hatchet and hammer.