mustard seed

Start with a mustard seed of irrelevant fact. Rutherford Hayes’s wife, Lucy, was the first American president’s wife to be referred to as the first lady.

Being myself much given to the collection of birds for scientific purposes, a line of operation, requiring, in most cases, the finest shot that can be procured, I use mustard seed habitually, and have learned, incidentally as it were, its efficacy when directed against birds which, it might be thought, could not be brought down with it.