execute this minute work than it does to bore a Hoosac tunnel, or
build a Victoria bridge, or put a dam across the Connecticut, or
construct an Erie canal? I do not speak of the relative importance
of the great works and the small, but of the relative amount and
quality of the power that is brought to bear upon them. In a very
important sense the greatest thing a man can do is the most
difficult thing he can do. The most difficult thing a man can do
may not be the most useful, or in any sense the most important;
but it will measure and show the limits of his power. Work grows
difficult as it goes below a man, quite as rapidly as it does when
it rises above him. It costs as much skill to make a dainty bit of
jewelry as it does to carve a colossal statue. It actually costs
more power to make the chain of gold that holds the former, than
it does to forge the clumsy links by which the latter is dragged
to its location. Thus, whether man goes down or up, he soon gets
beyond the sphere of his power. The further he can carry himself
in either direction the more does he demonstrate his superiority
over the majority of men. The more difficult the task which he
performs the further does he reach toward infinity.

In the town of Waltham there is a manufactory of watches which I
have examined with great interest. It is here undertaken to
organize the skill which has been achieved by thousands of patient
hands, and submit it to machinery; and it is done. Every thing is
so systematized, and the operations are carried on with such
exactness, that, among a hundred watches, corresponding parts may
be interchanged without embarrassment to the machinery. The
different parts are passed from hand to hand, and from machine to
machine, each hand and each machine simply doing its duty, and
when from different and distant rooms these parts are assembled,