Into the well of experience I cast my bucket in quest of a new wisdom, and behold, the bucket came down and settled but spans below the surface of the water; as for the deep abysses wrapped in the unknown, their enchanted locks open only at the knock of the old buckets which, from long practice, have come to know how to find their way to the heart of the well, and to its bottom...

I drew my bucket up hastily from the well of experience, and behold, the bucket, for all its smallness and the shallowness of the water it held, was brimming to its lips with perplexities. And wonder seized me — utter wonder — at a stout giant, tall of stature, who crowded me from my place at the edge of the well, while the people around us fought over a drop of water; so I shrank back, awed, at his side... What if it should occur to him to lift his thick foot and bring it down upon me, and make an end of me?... But nothing of the sort happened; the tall giant contented himself with darting at me, every now and then, glances of fire that all but devoured me in rage and envy. Why should I, insignificant as I am, have a bucket that ladles up for me from the well wisdom upon wisdom, while he, the great, great giant, spreads two empty hands in the air, staring in vain at people's full buckets, unable to comprehend a single letter of their wisdom, or to untie one of its obscure symbols?

And I set my bucket down amid the throng of people, amid their clamor and their din, to read from it the wisdom of its day, hungry for knowledge and for the sounding of its depths.

The first thing that grew clear to my eyes was that life is a struggle, and that man was made for toil and effort, winning of success and victory in the measure of his diligence and striving; his shares in life rise and fall in proportion to that striving and that diligence.

Some objector, no doubt, could bring forward any number of anecdotes to prove, contrary to what I have claimed, that luck alone plays with our destinies as it pleases, and that our radiant prosperity, or our scowling, gloomy ruin, is but the result of a stray arrow that luck shoots at random. Otherwise, what is it that makes one man, between one night and the next, drown in riches up to his ears, while another man no sooner turns his face toward some green bend of earth than the bend goes barren and blighted in his face, and he falls back from it in despair to another, only to meet the second time with what befell him the first?

And here the voice of the bucket rose, saying: Know, O you who seek my wisdom, that this thing they call luck comes down to this: that no one of us prospers except as the fruit of seizing the passing opportunities, when they suddenly disclose to him one of their luminous faces. These opportunities are nothing lasting; they are more like flashes of lightning that gleam in our lives for a fleeting instant, and soon return to their former darkness... Whoever wishes to profit by their light answers their call and clings fast to them, and they

raise him to their heights and show him wonder upon wonder; but he whose eyes go dim, so that he shuts his lids against their blazing glow — his case is the case of the dullards whose courage betrays them in the hour of need, so that they go blind to the profit of this flash of good, and lurk in their cowardice and failure, crouching in their places, denying every man who prospers in life, because luck, in their reckoning, is his slave alone, obeying him and trailing his footsteps, submissive and abject... Little do such men know that the flash of luck does not come to them every day, nor every year; it may hold back from them and turn away, so that never again, all their lives long, do they glimpse a spark of its fire... Our luck, then, is the work of our own hands: it is the fruit of our seizing the chances as they offer, and backing them with a grip of resolve, activity, wisdom, and courage.

*

And I flung my bucket into the well anew, keeping clear of my neighbor, the tall giant, avoiding any brush with the coarseness of his frame and of his character, lest I suffer from it what I had no wish to suffer. And I gazed into the heart of the bucket, peering into its depths with longing, to make out what useful wisdom might have clung to its lips; and behold: people are of two kinds. One builds his glory upon the ruins of others, and life is sweet to him only as a parasite, abject and shifty, who spends his days and his nights weaving nets and setting traps, to snare this man and trip that one, bragging in his loud voice, making all manner of crooked claims built upon slander and hypocrisy... And a man who believes in nothing but the sweat of his brow and the whetting of his mind as the source of his livelihood, in the straight and open road and the sure, honest step... And victory belongs to the latter: however it tarry and delay, it rarely disowns this second kind, or turns its back upon them, heedless of their positive spirit, clear in its aims and its ends; and material triumph, in this feverish material age, will belong only to the positive — positive in their deeds and in their words... Even the consciences of these men are for the most part wrapped in sound and good intentions: they climb the ladder step by step — they do not deliberately hurl down in treachery those who have gone ahead of them, nor do they hinder the caravan's march out of envy and smallness of soul.

And here the voice of the bucket broke forth, loud and quavering like the voice of thunder:

And man — what has man to do with this long, exhausting toil, wearing his feet bare, quenching the burning flame of youth in his veins, in pursuit of the piaster?... Can this piaster be man's far goal and the dream of his

heart, for which he dies a thousand deaths, searching for it, digging for its hiding places, so that at the last he may store up a handful of it to retire upon, secure and content?... And who says that man, once he has gained this handful of piasters, sees his ambitions turn