Robert Bruce.
Bruce, like many other heroes, was an observer of omens, and a singular instance is recorded by tradition.—After he had been four times defeated in his attempts to recover and secure the crown of Scotland, he was on the point of abandoning all future opposition to what appeared to be his fate, and to go to the Holy Land. It chanced that his eyes, as he was thus pondering, were attracted by the exertions of a spider, which, in order to fix his web, endeavoured to swing himself from one beam to another above his head. Involuntarily he became interested in the pertinacity with which the insect renewed its exertions after failing six times; and it occurred to him, that he would decide his own course according to the success or failure of that of the spider. At the seventh effort the insect gained its object, and Bruce, in like manner, persevered and carried his own.
Hence, it has been held unlucky and ungrateful, for any one of the name of Bruce to kill a spider!
How to meet afflictions.
Dissipation of mind, and a length of time, are the remedies to which the greatest part of mankind trust in their afflictions; but the first of these works a temporary, the second a slow effect, and both are unworthy of a wise man. Are we to fly from ourselves that we may fly from our misfortunes, and fondly imagine that the disease is cured because we find means to get some few minutes from pain? Or shall we expect from Time, the physician of brutes, a lingering and uncertain deliverance? Shall we wait to be happy, till we can forget we are miserable? and owe to the weakness of our faculties a tranquillity which ought to be the effect of our strength? Far otherwise, let us set all our past and present afflictions at once before our eyes; let us resolve to overcome them, instead of flying from them, or wearing out the sense of them by a long and ignominious patience; instead of palliating remedies, let us use the incision knife and the caustic; search the wound to the bottom, and work an immediate and radical cure.
Soho.
So ho.