The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1874-08-19
From Harper's Bazar.1
Iu1k.

There are some people who are never in
luck. If they were not born under an un-
lucky star, it was because wandering comet,
yet more baletul, was in the ascendant. They
made at the beginning some one of those in
fintesimal errors which in the course of a
lifelong calculation widen out into the loga-
rithmic figures; they came into the world be-
hind time, and have always been in search of
it, and never catching up; they were born
Just too late for 4 legacy, they died just too
late for the life-insurance which happens to
expire first. Their piece of bread is sure TO
fall, and always on the buttered side; their
dear gazelles are sure to die; if they think
they can play comedy, a compelling fate
thrusts them into tragedy; they would like 10
write poetry, but are obliged to make living
by plain prose; if they have a chance in an
ol-well, it runs nothing but mud and water;
if they have a silver mine, it turns out a false
lead; if they dabble in stocks, it is only to
burn their fingers; all their bulls are beared,
all their swans are geese; there are seven FIJI
days in every week of their lives, and all of
them are black Fridays, so black that they
are blue! On the wedding journeys of these
worthless nobody has slipper to throw after
them; horse-shoes never lie in their path;
let them get up never so early in the mosn-
ing to catch their worm, an earlier bird has
been before them. The blind beggar on the
are empty and a charming girl is their COM
panion, before he sees anybody else; the con-
fidence man always selects them for victims;
If they travel, they are the Jonahs of the
journey; if they stay at home, it is to see the
folly of not having gone abroad; their broth
ers never learn to swim, and sail round the
world in safety; they learn every trick of the
water, to be drowned in their own bath-tub;
regardless of the economies, other people may
put bacon in the engine fires and sit on the
valve, and nothing happens; but these people
will not only be blown up by the steam OF
their own teakettle, but will have to eat their
greens without bacon. No contagious disease
goes a-begging for the want of them to take it,
and always at the most inauspicious season !;
their good crop and their neighbours famine
never come together; if they make corner
in cream, there is always thunderstorm on
hand to sour it; in short, whatever they do,
they will have reason to wish they had done
the other thing; they are so invariably out Of
joint with the times and seasons of prosperi-
ty. that ii o fnnPS cap he fhrnuzn into n n=nud
where they are, theirs is the head it falls on,
while they are ied TO declare shat if they had
been born hatters, other people would have
been born without heads; and they are thank
full for but one thing in the world, and that is
that they we're not born pair of twins.
1t may have been to this strangely intellect
Gus class that those wretched women of the
French Revolution belonged who, when one
tyrant went down, and before another came
to the top, were taken from the prison to the
guillotine by mere routine. For such fate as
that would seem something TO be avoided
neither by wit nor learning, and only to have
come through natural alienation from luck,
an inherent hostility to happiness. But, if
we admit the existence OF luck or of ill-luck
at all, certainly these and such as these are
the only cnes who can claim any striking dis
agreement withit.
But the wretcEed individuals who pride
themselves on being so invariably untortu-
nate, are always, as the saying is, down on
their luck. They never attribute any OF their
misfortunes to their rashness or to their pro-
crastination, to their Incidence or their med
dlesomeness, to their pusianimity or to their
overplus of pluck, to their maladioitness or
to the element omitted in their combinations;
they neither reprOach others nor themselves
it is always and merely their luck. Luck is
the divinity that shapes their ends; and if we
will accept new reading of the old passage,
is the divinity that shapes our ends rough
hew them how they will! "Just my LUCK"
is the shibboleth they use no all occasions, till
other people adopt their own view of them
selves, and leave them out of their schemes
and out of their parties, as persons with whom
it is not best to attempt fine undertakings,
till the unlucky ones again cry out against
their treatment as a fresh manifestation OF
the injustice of Providence, and against
themselves as nothing but the fools of fort
une.
1t has sometimes occurred to us that pos
sible reason for many of tue woes of these
poor creatures is that they are completely
out of time and place. They do not belong
to this generation or to this era; they wele
III, OF no hat thaN. rpapboI
planet some thousands of years after all their
kindred souls lad passed away. They be-
longed to the times of the augurs; to the
times when adventures were undertaken by
the direction of the smoke of sacrifice or the
position Cf the entrals of animals; to the
time when Fortune had her altars, and men
Invoked good luck with burnt-oiierings, and
poured lbations to prevent its opposite; to
the epoch OF superstition between two great
flights of birds, one Of which directed Romu-
lus to Rome, and the other directed Colum
bus to America. They are still the uevoteeS
OF small creduIIty. and certainly are foreign to
the age and the latitudes of civilization.
tits not, of course, impossible that in all
tie complications Of the Innumerable threads
that hold the worlds in order, there should be
some found running at cross-purposes through
unwise human Intervention, that there should
be born individuals the currents of whose
lives may run counter to the great currents
of the universe; but since there is deep and
everlasting law to control the things of crea-
ton, and reconcile disturbances, and wise
disposer of events, such variations are, to say
the least, unlikely; and it seems to us after
ALL about time for general declaration OF
disbelief in the existence OF any such thing as
i'll luck. SIT is not in our stars, but in our
selves, that we are underlings." The great
poet of humanity tells us, and reason confess
es the truth of the statement. The person
who is in earnest is never unlucky. Does
that seem like harsh judgment? Let us
remember then, that the person who
is in earnest neglects no method OF
fortifying his purpose. Determination,
perseverance, and industry work with
him; he avails himself of every instrument
he leaves no fact unlearned, no stone unturn-
ed; he bends men to his will be has nothing
to do with any circumstances beyond his con-
troll, but, like Napoleon, he controls ciicum-
stances and when all else disappoints, he
seizes the elements, and the very ''stars in
their courses" fight against his adversary to foI
him there's no such word as fail" To the
| person in earnest the worst stroke of fortune
will not constitute i'll luck. He knows that
| the fickle-goddess to whose worship he will
not bend is as two-faced as the statue o
| Janus, and that ii she turns her frownne
view at first, he can always compel her smil
ing one. For i'll luck, so called, is frequently
| only blessing in DISGUISE. This any mother
| knows, the manhood Vi whose drunken son
| makes her regret the agony she suffered al
the prospect OF losing HIM in his baby-hood
this the natiou learned when the first disas'e el
to It's arms at Buii Run woke il from the apa
thy of assurance ard rousod it to summon
all its strength l9r conquest in the grea
struggle.
Thus to the one in earnest il-luck is al
impossibity. The leaden weight falls OF
him. but does not crush him; he seizes anC
trarsnutes it into precious metal, and stamp