pulse pass and bring quiet thought and good practical sense to this
problem of success in men, and you will find that the instances are
comparatively few where it is not about as wise to speak of it as luck
as it would be so to characterize the law of cause and consequence.
When you are discussing a man's success or his position, do not stop at
the mere fact that he has it--that is obvious enough; try to know how
he got it, and you may be surprised to find how little, after all, luck
has had to do with it. In one of the most quoted of our Lord's
parables we are told that "they that were ready went in to the marriage
feast." And this right of entry was not a matter of luck. They went
in because they were ready, and the others were left out because they
had made no effort to be ready. And so if you would understand a man's
success, know what he was doing while the opportunity tarried, while
his chance seemed to wait, while his "psychological moment" appeared to
linger.

Our fate or our fortune is not in great occasions; it is in our
readiness to seize the opportunities that make great occasions. We
frequently hear young men complain that they have not had a chance.
Are they always sure of that? How often is it that their chance has
been and gone, without their knowing it? "There are scores of young
fellows in our place," said a large employer of labour lately, "who
would be in vastly better positions than they are, had they worked as
hard to be ready for the better positions as they are anxious to have
them." There are multitudes of young men who appear to have lost sight
of the distinction there may be between wishing for an opportunity and
being ready to use the opportunity when it presents itself. As Sir
Frederick Treves once said to the students at the Aberdeen University:
"The man who is content to wait for a stroke of good fortune will
probably wait until he has a stroke of paralysis." He who waits for
good fortune without doing his part to make it possible, opens up the
way for lazy habits and morbid conclusions about the arrangements of
life. Luck in any serious business or profession is not so much the
coming of opportunity as readiness to make the most of the opportunity
when it comes. A man was speaking to me not long ago about one of the
leading commercial men in this city. "What is there in him or about
him to explain his success?" asked the man, and he answered his own
question with the round as