bark leaping gladly, mounting buoyantly upon the waves; but no man can
tell what the morrow will bring forth to him. Prosperity is not a
matter of certitude, security or permanency. An ill wind comes, and
the vessel is swept to disaster; on the shoals or rocks, rushing to
destruction against some Scylla or swallowed up by some Charybdis. And
what is true of prosperity is true of power. Today a man is the idol
of the people, flattered, honored, extolled and crowned by them. They
gather round him and intoxicate him with their plaudits. He is the man
of the people, the great man of his day, but who can tell how long this
will rule enthroned? An unfortunate speech, an error of conduct, a
moment of indecision, a failure to appeal to the demagogic instincts of
the race, and he is ruthlessly bereaved of his honor and his glory
gone. The idols of yesterday are the broken statues of today; the
heroes of yesterday are the "have-beens" of today. So capricious, so
ephemeral, so mutable, so mercurial, so impermanent are the whims of
humanity, and so unstable its idolatries and adorations.

And as the mighty fall, so the obscure rises. Names that were unknown
ten years ago are blazoned almost on the skies. The insignificant come
up and take the scepter in their hand. The poor man of a little while
ago is the rich merchant or the successful lawyer of today. This is
his hour, this the moment of his power. Strange, is it not? There
seems to be no method, no system in those lower planes of life. The
rich become poor and the poor rich, the strong weak and the weak
strong; the ruler becomes the ruled and the ruled the ruler; the master
becomes the servant and the servant the master. No order, no system,
no method anywhere in mundane things, and therefore no power of vision
and vaticination.

But now in the higher things there is none of this impermanence and