Moreover, this talk about luck is, in the first place, somewhat unmanly, not to say cowardly. To trust to luck is a confession that one can not do anything by one's own labor or one's own intellect. It is really, my boy, an acknowledgment that you have no independence of character, no strength of will, no patience, and no perseverance. It is a sure confession of carelessness and idleness. "I'll study this thing or that thing, and trust to luck for the rest," you say, and the result is you are nowhere in the examination.
So in everything we undertake. If we neglect to take ordinary pains, if we omit ordinary prudence, no luck ever saves us from disaster.
Trusting in luck is a very different thing from trusting in Providence. Providence aids those who aid themselves, and just in proportion as they do their work honestly and conscientiously. Luck is a kind of capricious spirit which is expected to set at naught all the laws of nature for our advantage, or to our disadvantage, without the slightest apparent reason why it should intervene at all. If there is such a thing, that can either make or mar us, our first duty is not to be its slave, but to make ourselves its master.
We must not stand like beggars at a street corner until luck drops a few coppers into our hats. We must be a law unto ourselves, and not mere playthings of chance. Let us be honest enough to acknowledge our own mistakes. The grumbler who laments,
"I never had a slice of bread, Cut nice and smooth and long and wide, But fell upon the sanded floor, And always on the buttered side,"
fancies himself unlucky. If he were honest, he would blame himself for not keeping good hold of his bread and butter, and if he thought about it, he would see that falling on the buttered side was a natural result of the way in which he was holding it.
This notion of luck very often arises from a mixture of conceit and jealousy. We do not like to allow that another has more talent than we have, and has used his faculties better. He has, however, if we examine his career, been more studious, more careful, more observant. It would be much more noble of us, instead of repeating like parrots the word "luck," meaning thereby that he has got a reward which he does not deserve, to candidly say, "He has deserved all he has won; he is the better fellow."