WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LUCK,

we never mean that a man is lucky to be endowed with successful qualities.  So long as we do not go back to the real matter of fortune, which lies in the character, let us, at least, be intelligent, and stop talking about one man having any more good things happen to him than another.  There is only one sure thing about events, and that is the law of chance.  If men take to chance, they will come out even, if it be a fair chance.

THIS IS CERTAIN.

If you try to match the penny some one has covered, and fail ten times in succession, it is a certainty that you will succeed often enough, ere long, to make your failures and your successes balance.  Everything which depends entirely on chance is exactly even.  If the man you envy to-day on account of some piece of unquestionably good luck, were to be as closely watched to-morrow, he would be seen to suffer some piece of as unquestionably bad luck.  You cannot help noticing his good fortune, and he never howls about his disasters.

FORTUNE TELLERS

thrive on this principle—­taking even guesses, and trusting to the victim’s remembrance of all that comes true and his forgetfulness of all that does not.

Put up your lightning-rods, get between the cars, begin making powder—­increase your probabilities of getting blown up, of having something out of the ordinary run happen to you.  If you are food for big fish, go where the big fish are, and you will not be left over for lunch.  If you can be useful to a great railroad man, a great statesman, or, even, a great nation, they are going to thrive on you.  They will take a taste of you almost before you know it.  If you are smart, sober, and were not born tired, there is no bad luck that can get even a shade the best of you.

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DISCIPLINE.

     “Tarry a while,” says Slow.—­Mother Goose.

Our generation is formed largely of men who went to war and experienced the trials and the combats of one of the greatest commotions of all history.  Upon those men was imposed the glorious rod of discipline.  “Thus far and no farther!” is written upon their broad foreheads as plainly as the God of the great sea marks it on the rocks with which he has hemmed the shores, and I would not wonder if the vast prosperity of the present day were largely attributable to that stern fondness with which the true man passes into the action of daily life, and obeys orders under fire.  Young man, carve yourself down to that rugged line that will make you a fitting part of the structure in which you are an element.

BE RATHER THE GIRDER