Year: 1874

There are some people who are never
in luck. If they we're not born under an
unlucky star il was because wandering
comet, yet more baleful, was in the ascen-
dant. They made at the beginning some
one Of those ininitesimal errors which in
the course Of lifelong calculation widen
out into the logarithmic figures they
came 10 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 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 compelling
fate thrusts them into tragedy they would
like to write poetry, but are obliged to
make living by plain prose; if they have
chance in an oil well, it runs nothing but
mud and water; if they have asilyer mine
It turns out false lead; II they dabble in
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 bIuei
On the wedding journeys of these worthless
nobody has slipper to throw after them !;
horscshoes never lie In their path let
them get up never so early in the morn
ing to catch their worm, an earlier bird
has been before them. The blind beggar
on the corner always sees them, when
their pockets are empty and charming
girl is their companion, before he sees
anybody else; the confidence man always
selects them for victims; if they travel,
they are the Jouahs 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 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 win not only be
blown up by the steam Of tLeir own ten
kettle, 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 inauspi-
cious season; their good crop and their
neighbor's famine never come together; if
they make corner in cream, there is al
ways a thunderstorm on hand to sour it !;
in short, whatever they do, they viii have
reason to wish they had done the other
thing; they are so invariably ont Of joint
with the times and seasons of prosperity
that il 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 pair Of twins.


But the wretched individuals who pride
themselves on being so invariably unfortu-
nate are always, as the saying is, down on
their luck. They never attribute any of
their misfortunes to their rashness or to
their procrastination, to their Incidence or
to their ineddlesomeness, to their pusilla
nimity or their overplus Of pluck, to their
maladroitness or to the element omitted in
their combinations; they neither reproach
others nor themselvcs--it is always and
merely their luck. Lack is the divinity
that shapes their ends; and if we viii ac-
cept new reading Of the old passage, is
the divinity that shapes their ends rough
-hew them how they viii "Just my
luck, is the shibboleth they use on all
occasions, till other people 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 at
tempt fine undertakings, till the unlucky
ones again cry out against sheir treatment
as fresh manifestation of the injustice of
4
Providence, and against themselves as
nothing but the fools of fortune. Har-
pers' Bazaar.