Lecture Five.

LUCK AND PLUCK.

Early Impressions of Luck-Luck vs. Law-Proverbs-Law, and not Luck, Governs the World-We gain nothing by Chance-Some Seek for Luck in Far-off Places-Some Stay at Home for Luck-The Do-Littles-Bad Philosophy-Luck and Dishonesty-Pluck is the One Thing Needful-There is Luck only in Pluck -How Luck is Lost-Pluck and Reform-Wealth and Honors Useless unless Earned-Labor and Luck.

THESE are common words, and suggest a common subject. We are common men and women, and wish to take a common view of it.

Since we were boys and girls we have heard of Luck. Our fathers and mothers talked of good luck and bad luck, of lucky and unlucky days. What was meant we did not exactly understand, nor is it probable they did; but the most vivid impression conveyed was, that things happened so and so; some happened well and some happened ill, without any particular cause; or, in other words, certain things chanced to be as we wished, while certain other things chanced to be contrary to our desires, undirected by any steady and unvarying laws.

The word Luck is suggestive of a want of law. This idea has passed into many common proverbs, such as these: "It is more by hit than good wit;" "It is as well

LAW, NOT LUCK, GOVERNS THE WORLD.

55

to be born lucky as rich;" "Fortune is a fickle jade;" "Risk nothing, win nothing;" and more of a similar import, all ignoring the grand rule of law, and resting upon the atheistical idea of chance.

Our fathers were good, religious people, and did not mean to foster atheism when they talked about Luck, and gave a half-way assent to its Godless reality. If the universe were an infinite chaos; if order had no throne in its wide realm; if universal law were a fable of fancy; if God were a Babel, or the world a Pandemonium, there might be such a thing as Luck. But while from the particle to the globe, from the animalcule to the archangel there is not a being or a thing, a time or an event, disconnected with the great government of eternal law and order, we can not see how such a game of chance as the word Luck supposes can be admitted into any corner of the great world. Luck! What is it? A lottery? A hap-hazard? A frolic of gnomes? A blind-man's-bluff among the laws? A ruse among the elements? A trick of dame Nature? Has any scholar defined Luck, any philosopher explained its nature, any chemist shown us its elements? Is Luck that strange, nondescript unmateriality that does all things among men that they can not account for? If so, why does not Luck make a fool speak words of wisdom; an ignoramus utter lectures on philosophy; a stupid dolt write the great works of music and poetry; a double-fingered dummy create the beauties of art, or an untutored savage the wonders of mechanism?

If we should go into a country where the sluggard's

56

WE GAIN NOTHING BY CHANCE.

farm is covered with the richest grains and fruits, and where industry is rewarded only with weeds and brambles; where the drunkard looks sleek and beautiful, and his home cheerful and happy, while temperance wears the haggard face and eats the bread of want and misery; where labor starves, while idleness is fed and grows fat; where common sense is put upon the pillory, while twaddle and moonshine are raised to distinction; where genius lies in the gutter, and ignorance soars to the skies; where virtue is incarcerated in prison, while vice is courted and wooed by the sunlight, we might possibly be led to believe that Luck had something to do there. But where we see, as we everywhere do in our world, the rewards of industry, energy, wisdom, and virtue constant as the warmth in sunlight or beauty in flowers, we must deny in toto the very existence of this good and evil essence which men have called Luck.

Was it Luck that gave Girard and Astor, Rothschild and Gray, their vast wealth? Was it Luck that won victories for Washington, Wellington, and Napoleon? Was it Luck that carved Venus de Medici, that wrote the Eneid," ," "Paradise Lost," and "Festus ?" Was it Luck that gave Morse his telegraph, or Fulton his steamboat, or Franklin the lightning for his plaything? Is it Luck that gives the merchant his business, the lawyer his clients, the minister his hearers, the physician his patients, the mechanic his labor, the farmer his harvest? Nay, verily. No man believes it. And yet many are the men who dream of Luck, as though such a mysterious

SOME STAY AT HOME FOR LUCK.

57

spirit existed, and did sometimes humor the whims of visionary cowards and drones.

Many are the young men who waste the best part of their lives in attempts to woo this coy maid into their embraces. They enter into this, or that, or the other speculation, with the dreamy hope that Luck will pay them a smiling visit. Some go to California, or Australia, or the "Far West," or to the Torrid or the Frigid Zone, or some wondrous away-off place, with no fair prospect or hope of success from their own energies and exertions, but depending almost wholly on a gentle smile from capricious Luck. Poor fellows! they find that Luck does not get so far from home.

Some less daring and more lazy loiter about home, drawl around town, or loll through the country, whose only trust or expectation is in a shuffle of Luck in their favor. They know they deserve nothing, yet with an impudence hard as brass they will pray to Luck for a "windfall," or a "fat office," or a "living," and foolishly wait for an answer. These are the men that make your gamblers, your house thieves, your counterfeiters, your gentlemen loafers. They are not men that originally mean any harm. But they believe in Luck, and their trust is in Luck, and they are going to have it out of Luck some way. They despised meanness at first, perhaps, as much as you and I do; but somebody told them of Luck, and they believed, and lo! they got duped. Little by little they went over to meanness, waiting all the while for a shake of the hand from Luck.

Some of the believers in Luck, of more moral firmness, dally with all life's great duties, and so do about the same as nothing, and eat the bread of disappointment. They do a little at this business, and Luck does not smile. They do a little at that, still Luck keeps away. They do a little at something else, they hear not a foot-fall from Luck. And so they fritter away time and life. These are the do-littles. Hard-working men they are frequently. It is with them as though they had started to go to a place a thousand miles distant, leading to which there were many roads. They set out at full speed on one road, go a few miles, and get tired, and so conclude to turn back and try another. And so they try one road after another, each time returning to the starting-place. In a little while it is too late to get there at the appointed time, and so they mope along any road they happen to be on till the day is over.

There is a bad philosophy in the world. Our boys are full of it; our young men are its victims; our middleaged men have not outgrown it, and our old men can not make themselves believed on it. It is the idea that the good which man needs, comes, or may come, some other way than by wise application and hard industry.

Besides the moral evil and intellectual stupor which come upon the men who adopt this philosophy of Luck, their lives are embittered by constant forebodings of evil. Clouds overshadow them; blue spirits of evil gather around them; they occasionally have strange fits of laughter, and at times enjoy a delirious happiness, when