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Show HE FOUNDA FORTUNE. After Years of Misfortune, the Goddess of ,' luck Touches the Dial of Success, and a Young Man I ABUNDANTLY. EEAPS HIS EEWAED His lather's Great Losses On the Day of Success of the Son the Father. Passes Away. "People may declare their disbelief in luck as frequently as they like, but for all that, luck is the most potent factor in shaping the success or non-success of .a man," said a citizen of Detroit who had been sojourning in Escanaba for several days. "1 was born in a Pennsylvania village, and came west with my parents when I . was a lad. "We located on a farm in the lower peninsula of Michigan, and from that hour on bad luck seemed to dog my J father in whatever he undertook to do. 1 "When ho left Pennsylvania he had flO.000. He put $5,000 of this in abank and invested the other $5,000 in a farm. , The bank broke. Then a drought came and mined his crop. His house took fire and was burned with all its con-' con-' tents, and we were left homeless on the verge of winter. . "Father succeeded in mortgaging the farm, and thon" . suddenly my mother died, and a few days later my sister followed fol-lowed her into the unknown. CONTINUAL HARD LUCK. JThe following year my father had a medium crop, and after he had sold it . and paid the interest on the mortgage he had just enough left to carry us through the winter. He had lost confi-( confi-( dence in banks, sq he kept his money hidden in the house. One night we had a visit from burglars, who took every cent he had in the world. " ' , "He was compelled to clap a second mortgage on the farm, but his crop failed and we hadn't a penny to tido us over until the following spring. "One day that I will never forget I 'started out hunting, and I had to borrow bor-row a gun, for I had sold my own to provide us with bread. Game proved very scarce, and my aim very poor. It was nearly night, and I hadn't even a bird to show for my long tramp through the woods, so I struck out for home. Just as 1 leaped the fence that let me into our farm again I saw a ' squirrel scurrying up the dead trunk of an old tree. I popped away at the little fellow, missed him, and then started i back with a cry of surprise. "My bullet had hit the tree, and just where it had struck I saw something that shone like fire in tho last rays of the setting sun. Running to it, I whipped out my knife and began cutting into the ' hollow trunit of the tree. Suddenly handful after handful of gold pieces began be-gan to run out of tho hole upon the : brown sod at my feet ' ' V "1 began to count. The sum ran up Into' hundreds into thousands and I fairly screamed for joy. , WEALTH AND DEATH. "No more' poverty .for us! No more living on crusts! No more dressing in j : rags!. . . '' ' j V "1 filled my pockets as full as they ! would hold, buried the balance of the coin and tore for home. ,' , . "Opening the door 1 ran in, Father lay on the floor dead stricken With apoplexy. He was the last near relative I had in the world. "1 told no one of the treasure I had found, and after tho funeral of my fa- ther I went to Detroit and placed it in i a bank. s I went to college at Ann Arbor i , until 1 graduated; then embarked in ' business, and my luck has been as good as that of my father was bad." This story demonstrates that the optimists opti-mists are wrong when they utter the fool j declaration that "This world is what we ! make it." It is not what we make it, j by any manner of means. i ' In the case of the father who figures j In this romance of real life, he certainly i tried his best to make his family and himself comfortable, happy, successful, but he failed not through any fault of : his own, but failed through the infamy j of bank officials; through a drought that destroyed his crop: through the burning of his home; through burglars; through , the death of his wife and daughter; , through other agencies over which he I had no possible control, and, to finish up I his bad luck, he was stricken dead on the very day that his son found a fortune. fort-une. . On the other hand, it was simply a j Stroke of good luck that led the son to f - the particular . tree that held the gold, and all the circumstances of his find were the merest accidents of fortune. Escanaba Mirror. , |
