Failings of Christians—See [Cynic Rebuked].
FAILURE
Caligula once fitted out a fleet at great expense, as if to conquer Greece or to accomplish some other great undertaking, but the ships returned laden with pebbles and cockleshells, only to receive the scorn of all.
So many a life that is well equipped and has glorious opportunities flattens out into insipid nothingness.
(1017)
See [Defeat]; [Neglect]; [Success in Failure]; [Sorrow for a Lost Cause].
FAILURE LEADING TO SUCCESS
It is part of the compensation of life that nearly every dark cloud of disaster or disappointment has a fringe of light under it. An instance of this is seen in the career of Senator Beveridge:
It was a joke that sent United States Senator Beveridge, of Indiana, into public life instead of into the army. He took the competitive examination, but at a critical moment he laughed at another boy’s sportive remark and failed to pass by the smallest fraction. We are told by one chronicler that young Beveridge was so badly upset when the news reached him on the street that he had failed to pass that his distress was mirrored on his face so plainly that a passing acquaintance stopt to ask him the cause, and was himself so touched that he forthwith offered to advance him the money necessary to start him in college.
(1018)