to offer
save this; "While thy servant was busy here and there the man was
gone." Gone opportunity!--and lightning could not equal its swift
flight. Gone forever opportunity!--and the wings of seraphim could not
overtake and bring it back. Gone honor, gone fidelity, gone good
name!--all lost irretrievably. For though dying be long delayed,
coming at last death would find the soldier's task unfulfilled. From
"It might have been," and "It is too late," God save us all! For not
Infinity himself can reverse the wheel of events and bring back lost
opportunities.

The genius of opportunity lies in its strategic element. In every
opportunity two or more forces meet in such a way that the one force so
lends itself to the other as momentarily to yield plasticity. Nature
is full of these strategic times. Iron passes into the furnace cold
and unyielding; coming out it quickly cools and refuses the mold; but
midway is a moment when fire so lends itself to iron, and iron so
yields its force to flame as that the metal flows like water.

This brief plastic moment is the inventor's opportunity, when the metal
will take on any shape for use or beauty. Similarly the fields offer a
strategic time to the husbandman. In February the soil refuses the
plow, the sun refuses heat, the sky refuses rain, the seed refuses
growth. In May comes an opportune time when all forces conspire toward
harvests; then the sun lends warmth, the clouds lend rain, the air
lends ardor, the soil lends juices. Then must the sower go forth and
sow, for nature whispers that if he neglects June he will starve in
January.

The planets also lend interpretation to this principle. Years ago our
nation sent astronomers to Africa to witness the transit of Venus.
Preparations began months beforehand. A ship was fitted up,
instruments packed, the ocean crossed, a site selected and the
telescopes mounted. Scientists made all things ready for that
opportune time when the sun and Venus and earth should all be in line.
That critical moment was very brief. Instinctively each astronomer
knew that his eye must be at the small end of the glass when the planet
went scudding by the large end. Once the period of conjunction had
passed no machinery would offer itself for turning the planet back upon
her axis. Not for astronomers only are the opportune times brief. For
all men alike, failure is blindness to the strategic element in events;
success is readiness for