The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-06-09

From the Washington Herald. l IT was Longfellow who said that we are "all architects of fate;" mean X ing thereby that fate is not an in | domitable monster before whose mighty power we must all succumb, but some thing that we can, if we are strong enough and worthy, wrest to our own pur- poses and build to our own uses. A com mon enough expression ip our language Is railing at fate" as # any good were ever accomplished by railing. It is doing that counts. It might be easier to strug- gle against what we are pleased to call an evil fate, if fate were something tan- gible, to be seen and recognized and so subdued. Lew Wallace had some such thought in his mind when he write: "The quarrel is with fate. It were well fin such quarres. if fate were something tangible, to be dispatched with look or a blow, to & speaking person. age with whom high words were possible; then the unhappy mortal would not al- ways end the affair by punishing him. self'
 | Among our forefathers of long ago the fates had all the attributes of the lesser gods; it was decreed that the workings of the fates were immutable; 1t was, in a measure, impious to combat them. Seneca, the wise philosopher, said that fate made his circuit and If for time he forgot some things at last he revis- | iteth them. He afflicteth some more rarely, and others more often, but he | leaveth nothing free and exempt from evil"
 To the Greeks there may have been some comfort in such philosophy as this which so easily could be made use of to account for failure. "Fate was too strong for me-" was often a ready excuse. But | to accept this philosophical dictum, Is not | in the modern spirit It would eliminate all striving. all battling with evil. and twisting good things to evil uses. man might sit down and fold his hands. mutt tering to himself:
 ''There's divinity that shapes our ends, Roush-hew them how we will"
 Or, quite without hope of accomplishing anything against fate, we might quote Shakespeare again to the effect:
 What fates impose. that men must needs abide;
 It boots not to resist both wind and tide."
 But this is not true, and never was | true. Wind and tide both against us, is it not our glorious privilege to strive ts make the sharbor? Against the adversi- ties of fate we may fashion weapons in the strength of our souls-our hopes. ou: sorrows, our despairs.
 What right have we, in this workaday world, to rail at fat%? We are not om- niscient yet, and it is Not given us to tell
 what effect todays happenings will have
 immeasurable now. may 1t not after all. be but blessing in disguise?
 Tate holds the strings. and men, like
 children, move
 But as they're led"-
 As Lord Lansdowne wrote; and Butler. in .Hudibras,'' gace expression to the same thought:
 Success, the mark no mortal wit | Or surest hand can always hit;
 For whatsoever we perpetrate,
 We do but row, we're steered by fate"
 And that is true! We are but voyagera on the ship of life. Fate steers! All that I is given us to do is to work the ship, trim l the sAils, and to keep on striving. coni-
 dent;1 ;1in the belief that all our labor Is not waited: that some day.: without fall we shalL~reach the port. It may not be the El Dorado of our desires. but It may