more sense than a log
of wood, and is as bad as he is foolish, should have many wise and good
men to serve him, only because he has a great heap of that metal; and
that if, by some accident or trick of law (which sometimes produces as
great changes as chance itself), all this wealth should pass from the
master to the meanest varlet of his whole family, he himself would very
soon become one of his servants, as if he were a thing that belonged to
his wealth, and so was bound to follow its fortune."

And when I had remembered this much, I unwisely failed to pause and
reflect. So I gathered my belongings together, cinched my hogskin belt
tight about me, and went away to my own country. It was a very foolish
thing to do. I am sure it was. But when I had recovered my reason, I
fell upon my particular gods and berated them mightily, and as penance
for their watchlessness placed them away amongst dust and cobwebs. Oh
no, not for long. They are again enshrined, as bright and polished as of
yore, and my destiny is once more in their keeping.

It is given that travail and vicissitude mark time to man's footsteps as
he stumbles onward toward the grave; and it is well. Without the bitter
one may not know the sweet. The other day--nay, it was but yesterday--I
fell before the rhythm of fortune. The inexorable pendulum had swung the
counter direction, and there was upon me an urgent need. The hogskin
belt was flat as famine, nor did it longer gird my loins. From my window
I could descry, at no great distance, a very ordinary mortal of a man,
working industriously among his cabbages. I thought: Here am I, capable
of teaching him much concerning the field wherein he labours--the
nitrogenic--why of the fertilizer, the alchemy of the sun, the
microscopic cell-structure of the plant, the cryptic chemistry of root
and runner--but thereat he straightened his work-wearied back and rested.
His eyes wandered over what he had produced in the sweat of his brow,
then on to mine. And as he stood there drearily, he became reproach
incarnate. "Unstable as water," he said (I am sure he did)--"unstable as
water, thou shalt not excel. Man, where are _your_ cabbages?"

I shrank back. Then I waxed rebellious. I refused to answer the
question. He had no right to ask it, and his presence was an affront
upon the landscape. And a dignity entered into me, and my neck was
stiffened, my head poised. I gathered together certain certificates o