earn that the soul of Fate is the soul of us, as Hafiz sings--

Alas! till now I had not known,
My guide and fortune's guide are one.

All the toys that infatuate men, and which they play for,--houses, land,
money, luxury, power, fame,--are the self-same thing, with a new gauze or
two of illusion overlaid. And of all the drums and rattles by which men
are made willing to have their heads broke, and are led out solemnly every
morning to parade, the most admirable is this by which we are brought to
believe that events are arbitrary, and independent of actions. At the
conjurer's we detect the hair by which he moves his puppet, but we have
not eyes sharp enough to descry the thread that ties cause and effect.

Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by making these the fruit
of his character. Ducks take to the water, eagles to the sky, waders to
the sea margin, hunters to the forest, clerks to counting-rooms, soldiers
to the frontier. Thus events grow on the same stem with persons; are
sub-persons. The pleasure of life is according to the man that lives it,
and not according to the work or the place. Life is an ecstasy. We know
what madness belongs to love--what power to paint a vile object in hues of
heaven. As insane persons are indifferent to their dress, diet, and other
accommodations, and, as we do in dreams, with equanimity, the most absurd
acts, so, a drop more of wine in our cup of life will reconcile us to
strange company and work. Each creature puts forth from itself its own
condition and sphere, as the slug sweats out its slimy house on the
pear-leaf, and the woolly aphides on the apple perspire their own bed, and
the fish its shell. In youth, we clothe ourselves with rainbows, and go as
brave as the zodiac. In age, we put out another sort of
perspiration--gout, fever, rheumatism, caprice, doubt, fretting, and
avarice.

A man's fortunes are the fruit of his character. A man's friends are his
magnetisms. We go to Herodotus and Plutarch for examples of Fate; but we
are examples. "_Quisque suos patimur manes._" The tendency of every man to
enact all that is in his constitution is expressed in the old belief, that
the efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us
into it; and I have noticed, a man likes better to be complimented on his
position, as the proof of the last or total excellence, than on his
merits.

A man will see his character emitted in the events that seem to me