market streets of New York, when a heavy bale of hay, through the
carelessness of some workman, dropped from thirty or forty feet above me
and struck the pavement at my feet. I heard angry words over the mishap,
spoken by someone above me, but I only said to myself, "Lucky again!" I
recall a bit of luck of a different kind when I was a treasury clerk in
Washington. I had started for the seashore for a week's vacation with a
small roll of new greenbacks in my pocket. Shortly after the train had
left the station I left my seat and walked through two or three of the
forward cars looking for a friend who had agreed to join me. Not finding
him, I retraced my steps, and as I was passing along through the car
next my own I chanced to see a roll of new bills on the floor near the
end of a seat. Instinctively feeling for my own roll of bills and
finding it missing, I picked up the money and saw at a glance that it
was mine. The passengers near by eyed me in surprise, and I suspect
began to feel in their own pockets, but I did not stop to explain and
went to my seat startled but happy. I had missed my friend but I might
have missed something of more value to me just at that time.

A kind of untoward fate seems inherent in the characters of some persons
and makes them the victims of all the ill luck on the road. Such a fate
has not been mine. I have met all the good luck on the road. Some kindly
influence has sent my best friends my way, or sent me their way. The
best thing about me is that I have found a perennial interest in the
common universal things which all may have on equal terms, and hence
have found plenty to occupy and absorb me wherever I have been. If the
earth and the sky are enough for one, why should one sigh for other
spheres?

The old farm must have had at least ten miles of stone walls upon it,
many of them built new by Father from stones picked up in the fields,