It is a common thing, with both the brilliant and the mediocre, when the reward of their exertions and the result of their plans seem unsatisfactory, to blame the ever-ready scapegoat, bad luck, as the cause of the untoward outcome. One of the most healthful and profitable exercises which a young man who has just experienced failure of any kind can perform, will be to analyze the whole transaction with merciless candor, finding out just what proportion of the disaster is due to his own fault and what is due to fortuitous circumstances, and then make a cold-blooded comparison. If this was more generally done than it is, there would be far fewer believers in, or rather blamers of, luck as a business marplot than are at present to be found. To come down to the facts in the case, without going so far as to dispute the existence of such a thing as chance, in almost all cases of failure the cause is to be found in the man, and the reason it is not found there is because that is the last place in which the man hunts for it. "Untoward accidents," "fate," "destiny," "ill fortune," "evil star," "chance," "luck," or some other synonym of the scapegoat, suggests itself to the victim of ill-success and he consoles himself with charging upon it his failure. He has the poets on his side, too.

Does not Shakspeare say:

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will."

And Byron:

"Men are the sport of circumstances, when The circumstances seem the sport of men."

And after all has been said, it were better, perhaps, that the young business man place some little, very little, credence in luck's existence, just enough in fact, to cause him to so organize upon solid and substantial foundation each of his enterprises, and to so honestly and perseveringly conduct them, that the smallest possible loop-hole will be left for ill-luck to make its appearance.