Boys and girls in ancient Greece believed that there were three fates,
in the form of three women seated above the clouds, who spun the thread
of everyone's life, and cut it off with shears when death came.
We no longer believe in such things, but we still speak of fate. Boys
and girls sometimes say that they are fated to fail in examinations, and
so think they cannot help failing. But that is no more true than the
belief about the three women which the Grecian boys and girls held. As a
matter of fact, nothing outside of us makes evil things happen to us. We
make our own fates. Or shall I say, we _are_ our own fates? Someone has
said, "Our fates lie asleep along the roadside until we waken them."
That is very true, as I think I can show you by a story.
Not long ago I was riding on a train up through Vermont. A boy came into
the car selling papers, books, candy, fruit, and other things. There
was a boy opposite me in the smoking-car who wanted to appear very smart
and manly. He was smoking a cigar and looking very much traveled. The
trainboy offered him a book which had a bad title and worse pictures in
it. But in front of this young chap sat two bright-faced,
innocent-looking boys who did not pretend to be anything but what they
were. The trainboy offered them salted peanuts. In front of those boys
sat a fine, clean-looking, well-bred man. The trainboy offered him a
good, wholesome book.
Now, three fates were in that car in the form of that trainboy, and each
person invited his own kind of fate by what he was in himself. That is
true all through life. Be true, and you attract truth. Be evil, and you
attract evil. Your fate is what you are.