Macbeth. If we should fail--
Lady Macbeth. We fail!
But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we'll not fail.--Shakspeare.
You see that scrag over in the woods there? Crack! goes
the lightning! The scrag has been hit again! Unfortunate! Now, perhaps
you know somebody who is a scrag in society. When the thunder storms of
life roll and rumble, tell him to look well to himself. He is very
liable to another dose of disaster. Why is this? The reason is plain.
There is some particular attraction for the bolt which hits him. There
is a loadstone of reason in the earth at his roots for this constant
attack of misfortune. However badly off he may be, something still worse
will happen to him. If he have something profitable to do with his
hands, he will get a felon on his finger. If he have walking to do, he
will get a peeled heel. If he have only to sit and attend to a certain
thing, he will get the brain fever. If he be expected at seven in the
morning, his child will suffer an attack of croup at 6:45. The lightning
is darting around him silently all the time, a good deal like the
movements of a snake's tongue. After all, it is a scrag that has been
struck, and everybody laughs and seems to think it a good joke. It is,
indeed, close to the ridiculous to see the number of undoubted
afflictions which will beset
"A REAL OLD FAILURE IN LIFE."
He is a good old fellow. He hates with a mortal hate only one thing, and
that is hard work; that will make him deliriously ill inside of three
days. The boils, and felons, and fevers, and chilblains, and fractures,
and bereavements he has had are enough to fill an encyclopedia. He never
has worked long at any one thing, and he never will. He can relate to
you how the lightning broke off his biggest limb, knocked off his bark,
broke him off half-way up, finally split him clear through the trunk,
and never hit another tree in the whole piece of timber! This will bring
tears to his eyes, for it seems so strange to him. But if you get tears
in your eyes, also, hire him by the day for a while, and look into "the
pulse of the machine," you will soon understand the wonderful workings
of society, and the nicety of that order of things which separates the
wheat from the tare. When the winds of adversity sweep down upon us,