The Chronicle PUBLISHED DAILY. LEVIN. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 1915. ON LUCK.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 30 June 1915, Page 2

The Chronicle PUBLISHED DAILY. LEVIN. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 1915. ON LUCK.

Luck is a term of wide significance. Uroadly used; it inters good fortune. Though usually one speaks of "good luck" 1 or "bad luck." the general practice is to attribute to the words "in luck" the sense that fortune of the best description is meant, but, waiving the point as to ambiguity, It reasonably may be asked "Is not luck, good or bad, only relative?" The man who retired from wharf work in (let us avoid exactness by saying Taihape) the month that he won £10,000 in a sweep—a good many years ago—was accounted lucky; and when he won a further sum of several thousands a very few yeare later lie was accounted superlatively fortunate. Yet the quality of his luck was problematical after all. Hi 6 seeming .reward has been the placing of himself above the need for work, and his self-given guerdon is the perpetual company of one of the most costly oil-paintings in the three islands. It is "done" neither in painters' oils nor watercolours—unless fusel oil enters into the artist's category. To take another instance: the writer's memory goes back to the days when the totalisator was new in this country, and a risk-all backer who put £1 on : a 300 to 1 chance proved prescient. In a very few months all the £300 of winnings had gone in whisky, and the "lucky" backer finished in- the police cells at Napier, where he beat his head against the walls so severely that he died from the wounds. 'Luck, in short, proves good or bad according to the use that people make of the Actual and prospective chances that come to them; and the surest means to proper enjoyment of life is to realize early enough that the ability to defy worry is the luckiest attribute that any man can possess. It is born in some"; others acquire it with difficulty. If an income of £1000 or so per annum is a man' 6 idea of luck, usually the man goes to his grave with the ideal ; and the few who acquire great wealth must have for the most part a haunting sense of insecurity, based upon tlie characteristics of wealth for "taking unto itself wings." The cheery philosopher who accounts matters well enough while he and his live in reasonable comfort and owe no man anything is lucky in the truest sense of the word.