r in the cloister. Alter the circumstance as much as you
please! point to strange adventures, successes, failures! life is like
a sweet-shop, where there is a great variety of things, odd in shape
and diverse in color--one and all made from the same paste. And when
men speak of some one's success, the lot of the man who has failed is
not so very different as it seems. The inequalities in the world are
like the combinations in a kaleidoscope; at every turn a fresh picture
strikes the eye; and yet, in reality, you see only the same bits of
glass as you saw before.

SECTION 48. An ancient writer says, very truly, that there are three
great powers in the world; _Sagacity, Strength_, and _Luck_,--[Greek:
sunetos, kratos, tuchu.] I think the last is the most efficacious.

A man's life is like the voyage of a ship, where luck--_secunda aut
adversa fortuna_--acts the part of the wind, and speeds the vessel on
its way or drives it far out of its course. All that the man can do
for himself is of little avail; like the rudder, which, if worked hard
and continuously, may help in the navigation of the ship; and yet all
may be lost again by a sudden squall. But if the wind is only in the
right quarter, the ship will sail on so as not to need any steering.
The power of luck is nowhere better expressed than in a certain
Spanish proverb: _Da Ventura a tu hijo, y echa lo en el mar_--give
your son luck and throw him into the sea.

Still, chance, it may be said, is a malignant power, and as little
as possible should be left to its agency. And yet where is there any
giver who, in dispensing gifts, tells us quite clearly that we have no
right to them, and that we owe them not to any merit on our part,
but wholly to the goodness and grace of the giver--at the same time
allowing us to cherish the joyful hope of receiving, in all humility,
further undeserved gifts from the same hands--where is there any giver
like that, unless it be _Chance_? who understands the kingly art of
showing the recipient that all merit is powerless and unavailing
against the royal grace and favor.

On looking back over the course of his life,--that _labyrinthine way
of error_,--a man must see many points where luck failed him and
misfortune came; and then it is easy to carry self-reproach to an
unjust excess. For the course of a man's life is in no wise entirely
of his own making; it is the product of two factors--the series of
things that happened, and his own re