Then, straining more tightly the cords knotted around the prisoner’s hands and feet, the officer turned and plunged again into the thick of the fight.  From that moment the soldier’s one duty was to guard the prisoner whose escape would work such havoc.

Strangely enough, he became negligent.  Careless, he leaned his bow and spear against the tent.  Hungry, he busied himself with baking a few small cakes.  Weary, he cast himself upon the ground, dozing upon his elbow.  Suddenly a noise startled his nap.  He sprang up just in time to see his prisoner make one leap, then disappear into the thicket.

A concealed knife had cut the thongs.  Negligence had let “slip the dogs of war.”  That night when the general returned to his tent he found the prisoner had escaped.

Fronting his master the terror-stricken soldier had no excuse 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