Year: 1874

There are some people who are never
in luck. Ifthey are NOT born under an u n
lucky star it was because a wandering
comet. yet more baleful, was in the
ascendant. They made at the begin
ming some one of those infnitesmal
errors which in the course of lifelong
calculation widen out into the logarith-
mic figures; they came in the world
behind time, and have always been in
pursuit of it and never catching up; they
were born just too late for the life in
surance 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, compelling fate
thrusts them into tragedy they would
like to write poetry, but are obliged to
make living by plain prose- If they have
a chance in an oil well, it runs nothing
but mud and water; if they have q silver
mine, it turns out as false lead; if they
dabble ia stocks, it is only to burn their
fingers; all their bulls are beared; all
their swans are geese; there are seven
Fridays 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; horseshoes
never lie in their path let them get up
never so early in the morning to catch
their worm, an ear ier bird has been
before them. The blind beggar on the
corner always sees them; when their
pockets are empty a charming girl
is their comptnion; before he sees any
body else the confidence 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 brothers
never learn to swim. and sail around 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
tea-kettle, but will have to eat their
greens without bacon. No contagious
disease goes begging for the want oil
them to take it, and always at the most
inaus picious season; their good crop
and their neighbor's famine never come
together; il they make corner in cream,
there is always q thunder storm 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 invari-
ably out of joint with the times and sea
sons of prosperity that if FOOLS cap be
thrown into the crowd where they are
theirs is the head it falls on, while they
are led to declare that if they had been
born hatters other people would have
been born without heads; and they are
thankful but for one thing in the world,
and that is that they were not born a
pair of twins.


But the wretched individuals who pride
themselves on being so invariably unfor
tunats are always, as the saying is, down
on their luck. They never attribute any
of their misfortunes to their procrastina'
ton, to their Incidence or to their med
dlesomeness, to their pusillauimity or to
their overplus of pluck, to their mala-
droitRess or to the element omitted in
their combinations. they neither re-
prosch others nor themselves-it is
always and erely their luck. Luck is
the divinity that shapes their ends; and
if we will accept a new reading OF the
old passage, is the divinity that shapes
their ends rough-hew them how they
wilt Just my luck, is the shibboleth
they use on all occasions, till other peo
pie adopt their own view of themselves,
and leave them out of their schemes and
out of their parties, as persons with
whom it is not best TO attempt fine un-
dertakings, till the unluoky ones again
cry out against their treatment as a fresh
N manifestation Of the injustice of Provi-
dence, and against themselves as moth.
ing but the fools of fortune.