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THE CROWN OF SUCCESS
WE all want to wear the crown of success. Some would even like to wear it in a glittering bejewelled form, indicating authority. Alas for these dreamers of lovely dreams! In the very nature of things such crowns cannot be 'unrare'! Eager ambition, too, will not find much to admire in them, if they could be had without exertion.
Some, the favourites of fortune, are born with a silver at times even with a golden-spoon in the mouth. They soon find themselves decorated with diadems!
Human thought is inquisitive, and wishes to know if Good Luck will befriend these men still further. Shall the crowns be retained? And without sweating?
Yes! they may be in some cases; sometimes crowns are so retained. These are instances of the golden spoon, bejewelled!
But the number of these well-beloved of Dame Fortune is small. There are many who have no spoons placed in their mouths at birth. These are, so to speak, left to their own devices to sink or swim, on their own hook!
The worst is the gift of the iron spoon, the mark of madame's frowns! It sticks in the mouth. A whole lifetime may have to be spent before it can be taken out. Often it extends to cover up vision itself. Such a case is truly pitiable. You can only pass by, suppressing your sobs!
It is, then, a good thing to win the smiles of the bountiful Dame! But she has also another side to her nature. For men say that she is faithless and fickle, that her smile, for certain, has a withering effect in the end! Relentless in her indifference to consequences, she even plans and plots the downfall of her greatest favourites with a stony heart! Sad, indeed very very sad, at times, is the lot of the Cæsars and Czars among her blind admirers!
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