Virtue without success
Is a fair picture shown by an ill light;
But lucky men are favorites of heaven:
All own the chief, when fortune owns the cause.--Dryden.
Lucky men are favorites of heaven, simply because they
have been endowed with that charming blindness which keeps them from
seeing when they are whipped in the battle of life. The man of success
has usually a greater sense of the value of a ten-dollar note than his
clerk who, like the braggart _Pistol_, has got the world for his oyster,
and expects to open that tough old mollusk with his rusty sword. The man
of success sees each young helper around him given better opportunities
than he himself had to begin with. His astonishment that inexperienced
young men should think they have no chance is always noticeable. He
half-envies some stripling soldier in the battle who is yet a high
private in the rear rank. The high private cannot understand how this
envy can be possible, and will not believe it exists. If you will study
the lucky man you will see that his "luck" is usually more of a matter
of course than an extraordinary happening. Reverse the thing, and you
can comprehend it. Here is a brakeman. He gets killed by the cars.