dy to try this breach of promise of marriage." It is
in the petty details, not in the great results, that the interest of
existence lies.

What we really want is a novel showing us all the hidden under-current
of an ambitious man's career--his struggles, and failures, and hopes,
his disappointments and victories. It would be an immense success. I am
sure the wooing of Fortune would prove quite as interesting a tale as
the wooing of any flesh-and-blood maiden, though, by the way, it would
read extremely similar; for Fortune is, indeed, as the ancients painted
her, very like a woman--not quite so unreasonable and inconsistent, but
nearly so--and the pursuit is much the same in one case as in the other.
Ben Jonson's couplet--

"Court a mistress, she denies you;
Let her alone, she will court you"--

puts them both in a nutshell. A woman never thoroughly cares for her
lover until he has ceased to care for her; and it is not until you have
snapped your fingers in Fortune's face and turned on your heel that she
begins to smile upon you.

But by that time you do not much care whether she smiles or frowns. Why
could she not have smiled when her smiles would have filled you with
ecstasy? Everything comes too late in this world.

Good people say that it is quite right and proper that it should be so,
and that it proves ambition is wicked.

Bosh! Good people are altogether wrong. (They always are, in my opinion.
We never agree on any single point.) What would the world do without
ambitious people, I should like to know? Why, it would be as flabby as
a Norfolk dumpling. Ambitious people are the leaven which raises it into
wholesome bread. Without ambitious people the world would never get
up. They are busybodies who are about early in the morning, hammering,
shouting, and rattling the fire-irons, and rendering it generally
impossible for the rest of the house to remain in bed.

Wrong to be ambitious, forsooth! The men wrong who, with bent back and
sweating brow, cut the smooth road over which humanity marches forward
from generation to generation! Men wrong for using the talents that
their Master has intrusted to them--for toiling while others play!

Of course they are seeking their reward. Man is not given that godlike
unselfishness that thinks only of others' good. But in working for
themselves they are working for us all. We are so bound together that no
man can labor for himself alone. Each blow he strikes in