A pebble at the sea shore..

Another one of my drafts..
I meant to post this and put in my two pennies worth but I had saved this a long time ago (think a couple of years). Don't want to mess with its original intent (didn't even put in the source of this article at that time, my bad). No copyright infringement intended, (the whole excerpt below was taken from another site) but I love the way this judge has crafted the whole thing. Spare a minute okey? Maybe more haha..

A small speech given in 1875 by an obscure judge. The name of the judge was The Honourable Joseph Neilson, Chief Justice of the City Court of Brooklyn. He gave this address at some sort of a gathering, (not in a court, I don't think). The publisher of the book in which I discovered this short speech, entitled it "The Growth of Principles."

 

"At the sea shore you pick up a pebble, fashioned after a law of nature, in the exact form that best resists pressure, and worn as smooth as glass. It is so perfect that you take it as a keepsake.

But could you know its history from the time when a rough fragment of rock fell from the overhanging cliff into the sea, to be taken possession of by the under currents, and dragged from one ocean to another, perhaps around the world, for a hundred years, until in reduced and perfect form it was cast upon the beach as you find it, you would have a fit illustration of what many principles, now in familiar use, have endured, thus tried, tortured and fashioned during the ages.

We stand by the river and admire the great body of water flowing so sweetly on; could you trace it back to its source, you might find a mere rivulet, but meandering on, joined by other streams and by secret springs, and fed by the rains and dews of heaven, it gathers volume and force, makes its way through the gorges of the mountains, plows, widens and deepens its channel through the provinces, and attains its present majesty.

Thus it is that our truest systems of science had small beginnings, gradual and countless contributions, and finally took their place in use, as each of you, from helpless childhood and feeble boyhood, have grown to your present strength and maturity. No such system could be born in a day. It was not as when nature in fitful pulsations of her strength suddenly lifted the land into mountain ranges, but rather, as with small accretions, gathered in during countless years, she builds her islands in the seas. "