FORTUNE.
By a deplorable limitation of the meaning of the word, it has come about that the idea suggested to most minds by the expression ‘fortune’ or ‘a fortunate man’ is the accumulation of wealth. It would seem, therefore, that, in the popular estimation, no man is fortunate who is not in the possession of riches. A little thought, above all a little experience of life, will soon convince us that this is not the case; and so far is it from being true, that wealth will be found to be but a small and solitary factor in those various accidents or providences of our lives from which we derive our happiness. The sordid wooer in the ballad, who asked, ‘What is your fortune, my pretty maid?’ knew of no fortune beside that of riches. The pretty and witty maid knew better. ‘My face is my fortune, sir,’ she said; and let in a flood of unaccustomed light upon the benighted mind of her baffled suitor, to whom it had never occurred that fortune might consist in beauty and the qualities that win love and admiration.
It is doubtful whether a man who, by a stroke or two of the pen, can flutter the innocent dovecots of the Exchange, is, by virtue of that power, any happier than the humble farmer whose year’s income may be straitened by one night’s rain. Far in advance of wealth, in estimating what meed of fortune has fallen to any man’s lot, should be placed health, upon the state of which our welfare so largely depends, and the preservation of which is so nearly contingent upon the method of life we adopt. Riches without health do not bring with them the capacity for their enjoyment; and yet how many of us waste the latter in the pursuit of the former! The merchant who rises early and toils till a late hour at his desk in the sunless city office for the sake of amassing money, has generally advanced far beyond middle age before his object is attained, and finds then that he has lost the faculty of enjoyment. Leisure has become a weariness to him; the pursuits for which he once coveted it have lost their attraction for him; the studies he once desired opportunities to follow up, have lost their interest; he has no longer the robust health and bodily strength demanded for the sports and pastimes which once seemed to him to make life worth living. Without the accustomed occupation, the day is a blank; he must still journey to the office, still add sovereign to sovereign, and take what comfort is possible from the reflection that another may perhaps spend them, and that they may serve to keep in ease and idleness one who never worked for them—a poor and second-hand solace, indeed, for no man yet ever started life with the intention of acquiring wealth for the sole benefit of his successor. The proper image of such a man, wearing out his days in the dull monotonous round of business, is the ass in the great hollow wheel of the water-well in Carisbrooke Castle, which walks for ever up-hill, but which never advances, and never rises, and the end of whose labour is to draw water that others may drink it.
With numerically unimportant exceptions, we have all to toil for our living; and it is probable that that man is most truly described as fortunate who at the outset in life has chosen work in which he can take pleasure. To labour during the best hours of the day in hatred or contempt of the task, for the sake of the few hours of leisure that are thereby earned, will in the long-run weaken the moral fibre and lower the vitality; and those hours of leisure will probably be wasted when won. But he who has been fortunate enough to find work for his hands to do which will bring him food and shelter, and in which at the same time his soul can rejoice, will lay aside his task with a spirit fresh for a new study, a new enterprise, or with a zest for innocent and healthy enjoyment.
The artist who labours to create forms, hues, and ideas of beauty; the author who enriches the world with fresh treasures of thought; the physician whose aim and whose reward is to relieve suffering; the carpenter to whom his craft is a pride and a triumph; the labourer in the field who loves the soil he tills, and delights to watch from season to season the checkered success of his operations: these, and such as these, are the truly fortunate men, into whose annual money-winnings we have no need to inquire before pronouncing them happy. Here, again, our lot is to a large extent in our own hands; for though we have not all the professions and occupations of life offered to our choice, yet some selection is open to us, and it behoves us to choose both wisely and boldly, and it is an instance where boldness is often wisdom. Even where the choice presented to us is so narrow as seemingly to preclude all chance of satisfying our aspirations, there is but little work in the world which we cannot ennoble by our method of performing it and by the spirit in which we undertake it. The ideal life which presents us with the spectacle of the Master washing the feet of his disciples and kneading the common clay of the ground, teaches us how to invest with dignity the meanest labour of our hands. From the examples of Chaucer, whose pen ‘moved over bills of lading,’ and of Burns, whose feet trod deep into the miry furrows behind the plough he guided, we may learn that while a humble toil cannot degrade the man, a man may infinitely ennoble the toil. Let us but once recognise that it is necessary and right that any piece of work should be done, and that it has fallen to our lot to do it, and a genuine pleasure may be derived from its thorough performance. ‘The manly part,’ says Emerson, ‘is to do with might and main what you can do.’ Indifference as to the excellence of the work turned out, hurried or perfunctory or slovenly execution, will result in lethargy and self-dissatisfaction; while a right pride in a piece of good work well done will leave the nerves braced and not relaxed, and the faculties developed instead of diminished.
Fortunate, again, beyond the power of mishap to depress, is the man who is endowed with such elasticity of spirit that he can shake off the anxieties and wearinesses of the mind in the mere delight of existence; to whom the fresh breath of morning as he rises, the sense of bodily strength as he steps forth into the open air, the consciousness of vigour as he performs his mid-day toil, the assurance of sound sleep as he lays his head on the pillow at night, can bring oblivion of the losses or the disappointments of yesterday. And, once more, a measure of this good fortune is within the reach of most of us. The temper that broods over trouble, that cries over spilt milk, and forebodes unrealised ills, is one easy indeed to yield to, but one which can be put to rout with a little fortitude and resolve; and, that once achieved, the energies necessary for the retrieval of our position will quickly reassert themselves.
Highly favoured, too, of fortune is the man who has been born with an ear and a heart for Music, with an eye and a heart for Art and Nature, and with a brain and a heart for Poetry; for veritably in these are to be found the most inexhaustible riches, the most enduring delights, the most exalting pleasures. But it would be unavailing to attempt to capitulate the various gifts that birth or accident confers which are worthy to be regarded as good fortune. A moment’s reflection is all that is needed to prove that opulence is but a small and single item among the infinite number of such gifts; and the sordid tendency of the mind, and the liability of words to become restricted in their meaning and debased in their application, is evinced in the narrowed signification of opulence ascribed by common usage to the word ‘fortune.’ We live in a money-grasping age, and it is well to call to mind from time to time that guineas are not the only counters with which the game of life is played and won or lost, and that our banker is not, after all, the best judge of our fortune.