The Intemperance of Fate

— Luck and Chance (those two old inseparables of our common speech) treat us to some strange exhibitions of caprice as regards the least as well as the greatest affairs of life. For example, among other gifts and felicitations of a recent supreme occasion, Benedicta was made the puzzled recipient of six sugartongs and an equal number of butter-knives. What she can do with each superfluous five of the above-named articles I know not, unless (delicacy forbid !) she takes suggestion from an advertisement to which her attention has been drawn, namely, “ Duplicate Wedding Presents Exchanged,” etc. Benedicta’s dilemma is but one of the many instances of freakish and intemperate conduct on the part of Luck and Chance in matters of seemingly small moment. Such instances are more easily adduced than accounted for or even classified. Why, in our game of backgammon last night, should my gentle antagonist have thrown all the “doubles,” I throwing none ? Why to-day more than on some other day, in my journey about the city, afoot or in the horse cars, should I have been meeting continually the crippled, the dwarfed, and otherwise misshapen ones of the human family ? Why for three successive mornings does the postman keep aloof, and then, on the fourth, why does his shrill whistle at your door announce the descent of a whole covey of whitewinged birds from all quarters of your epistolary world ? And why on one day do fine weather, your leisure and desire, with other favoring concurrents, bring no visitor to the house, while on the morrow (nowise propitious to such an event) does “ All-the-World-and-his-Wife ” come to see you ? Neither can the little brothers of Walton, the weather, nor the fish themselves furnish an explanation of the fluctuating fortunes that follow rod and line and the fly. The sentimental searcher for fourleafed clover will tell you that in some random brief time, and within some unindicated small area, she has gathered more of these fairy favors than often in a whole afternoon’s quest over the entire field.

These uncalendared seasons of dearth and plenty do not seem to be confined to the realm of the physical. What has the soul to do with those unscrupulous playfellows Luck and Chance ? And yet it is one day (for no cause assignable by itself) all affluence, another day all indigence. I am courageous ; then, during that dispensation of spirit, everything which happens contributes to courage. I am despondent and timorous ; the same surroundings and incidents foster pusillanimity. But each condition, while it endures, wears a stamp of the absolute and immutable ; and our spiritual sovereignty seems to be governed by a kind of powerful, unmeasured vis inertiœ, under which the affairs of the soul, if they are static, delight to continue so, or, if in violent motion, refuse to become tranquilized. “ It never rains but it pours ” and “Misfortunes never come singly ” are proverbial expressions for the recognized strange immoderateness in the vicissitudes of outward current events, — expressions equally applicable to the flowing or ebbing fortunes of the spirit. But is it not a very human and general trait that, while we recognize the fitfulness and intemperance of Fate, we are all the time bent upon establishing a theory of libration between the excesses of Fate’s behavior in each kind ? In any reign of prosperity we suspect

In an opposite state of things there is a disposition (not quite so positive and ready) to be consoled by remembering that “affairs refuse to be administered badly a long time.” (Popularly, “ It is a long lane that has no turning.”) I confess to sharing the general prejudice that there must be an ultimate balance between the extravagancies of destiny. True, the precedents and examples set by the every-day chance of things do not teach us calm and even procedure. Acting according to the apparent teaching of circumstances, we should be yet more than we are creatures of abrupt and violent revulsion ; and our moral weather would be of the sort ordained by an ancient sibyl of my acquaintance, who would have us believe that “after a very cold winter we always have a very hot summer, and after a very hot summer we always have a very cold winter,” — thus giving an endless and unalterable succession of extreme seasons. Yet very many who have listened to her oracle have failed to detect a flaw in the logic thereof.