An adventurer waits upon you one of these days and offers you on terms absurdly easy some diamond-field in Africa, or silver-mine in Nevada, or ruby-mine in Burmah—a few shares at a trifling cost will make you a millionaire. You are smitten; your brain is filled with pleasant dreams; and without the least investigation, you invest your good money to find ere long that you have been cruelly deceived. Will the public greatly pity you? They will not. There was a personal moral fault at the bottom of your misfortune. You were willingly ignorant, you were easily blinded, because of your inordinate desires. So is it in all temptations of life to which we fall a prey. A certain morbid disposition of soul is the secret of our loss or ruin.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”
(744)
Despair Relieved—See [Extremity Not Final].
Desperate Remedy—See [Last Resort of a Woman].
DESTINY
The tissue of the life to be
We weave with colors all our own,
And in the fields of destiny
We reap as we have sown;
Still shall the soul around it call