by Mark Twain
LUCK
(NOTE.--This is not a fancy sketch. I got it from a clergyman who wasan instructor at Woolwich forty years ago, and who vouched for itstruth.--M.T.)
It was at a banquet in London in honour of one of the two or threeconspicuously illustrious English military names of this generation. Forreasons which will presently appear, I will withhold his real name andtitles, and call him Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby, V.C.,K.C.B., etc., etc., etc. What a fascination there is in a renownedname! There sat the man, in actual flesh, whom I had heard of so manythousands of times since that day, thirty years before, when his nameshot suddenly to the zenith from a Crimean battle-field, to remain forever celebrated. It was food and drink to me to look, and look, andlook at that demigod; scanning, searching, noting: the quietness, thereserve, the noble gravity of his countenance; the simple honestythat expressed itself all over him; the sweet unconsciousness of hisgreatness--unconsciousness of the hundreds of admiring eyes fastenedupon him, unconsciousness of the deep, loving, sincere worship wellingout of the breasts of those people and flowing toward him.
The clergyman at my left was an old acquaintance of mine--clergyman now,but had spent the first half of his life in the camp and field, and asan instructor in the military school at Woolwich. Just at the moment Ihave been talking about, a veiled and singular light glimmered in hiseyes, and he leaned down and muttered confidentially to me--indicatingthe hero of the banquet with a gesture,--'Privately--his glory is anaccident--just a product of incredible luck.'
This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had beenNapoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have beengreater.
Some days later came the explanation of this strange remark, and this iswhat the Reverend told me.
About forty years ago I was an instructor in the military academy atWoolwich. I was present in one of the sections when young Scoresbyunderwent his preliminary examination. I was touched to the quick withpity; for the rest of the class answered up brightly and handsomely,while he--why, dear me, he didn't know anything, so to speak. He wasevidently good, and sweet, and lovable, and guileless; and so it wasexceedingly painful to see him stand there, as serene as a graven image,and deliver himself of answers which were veritably miraculous forstupidity and ignorance. All the compassion in me was aroused in hisbehalf. I said to myself, when he comes to be examined again, he will beflung over, of course; so it will be simple a harmless act of charity toease his fall as much as I can.
I took him aside, and found that he knew a little of Caesar's history;and as he didn't know anything else, I went to work and drilled him likea galley-slave on a certain line of stock questions concerning Caesarwhich I knew would be used. If you'll believe me, he went throughwith flying colours on examination day! He went through on that purelysuperficial 'cram', and got compliments, too, while others, who knewa thousand times more than he, got plucked. By some strangely luckyaccident--an accident not likely to happen twice in a century--he wasasked no question outside of the narrow limits of his drill.
It was stupefying. Well, although through his course I stood by him,with something of the sentiment which a mother feels for a crippledchild; and he always saved himself--just by miracle, apparently.
Now of course the thing that would expose him and kill him at lastwas mathematics. I resolved to make his death as easy as I could; so Idrilled him and crammed him, and crammed him and drilled him, just onthe line of questions which the examiner would be most likely to use,and then launched him on his fate. Well, sir, try to conceive of theresult: to my consternation, he took the first prize! And with it he gota perfect ovation in the way of compliments.
Sleep! There was no more sleep for me for a week. My conscience torturedme day and night. What I had done I had done purely through charity,and only to ease the poor youth's fall--I never had dreamed of any suchpreposterous result as the thing that had happened. I felt as guilty andmiserable as the creator of Frankenstein. Here was a wooden-head whomI had put in the way of glittering promotions and prodigiousresponsibilities, and but one thing could happen: he and hisresponsibilities would all go to ruin together at the first opportunity.
The Crimean war had just broken out. Of course there had to be a war, Isaid to myself: we couldn't have peace and give this donkey a chance todie before he is found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And itmade me reel when it did come. He was actually gazetted to a captaincyin a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the servicebefore they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever haveforeseen that they would go and put such a load of responsibility onsuch green and inadequate shoulders? I could just barely have stood itif they had made him a cornet; but a captain--think of it! I thought myhair would turn white.
Consider what I did--I who so loved repose and inaction. I said tomyself, I am responsible to the country for this, and I must go alongwith him and protect the country against him as far as I can. So I tookmy poor little capital that I had saved up through years of work andgrinding economy, and went with a sigh and bought a cornetcy in hisregiment, and away we went to the field.
And there--oh dear, it was awful. Blunders? why, he never did anythingbut blunder. But, you see, nobody was in the fellow's secret--everybodyhad him focused wrong, and necessarily misinterpreted his performanceevery time--consequently they took his idiotic blunders for inspirationsof genius; they did honestly! His mildest blunders were enough to makea man in his right mind cry; and they did make me cry--and rage andrave too, privately. And the thing that kept me always in a sweat ofapprehension was the fact that every fresh blunder he made increasedthe lustre of his reputation! I kept saying to myself, he'll get so highthat when discovery does finally come it will be like the sun fallingout of the sky.
He went right along up, from grade to grade, over the dead bodies of hissuperiors, until at last, in the hottest moment of the battle of... downwent our colonel, and my heart jumped into my mouth, for Scoresbywas next in rank! Now for it, said I; we'll all land in Sheol in tenminutes, sure.
The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily giving way all overthe field. Our regiment occupied a position that was vital; a blundernow must be destruction. At this critical moment, what does thisimmortal fool do but detach the regiment from its place and order acharge over a neighbouring hill where there wasn't a suggestion of anenemy! 'There you go!' I said to myself; 'this is the end at last.'
And away we did go, and were over the shoulder of the hill before theinsane movement could be discovered and stopped. And what did we find?An entire and unsuspected Russian army in reserve! And what happened?We were eaten up? That is necessarily what would have happened inninety-nine cases out of a hundred. But no; those Russians argued thatno single regiment would come browsing around there at such a time.It must be the entire English army, and that the sly Russian gamewas detected and blocked; so they turned tail, and away they went,pell-mell, over the hill and down into the field, in wild confusion,and we after them; they themselves broke the solid Russia centre in thefield, and tore through, and in no time there was the most tremendousrout you ever saw, and the defeat of the allies was turned into asweeping and splendid victory! Marshal Canrobert looked on, dizzy withastonishment, admiration, and delight; and sent right off for Scoresby,and hugged him, and decorated him on the field in presence of all thearmies!
And what was Scoresby's blunder that time? Merely the mistaking hisright hand for his left--that was all. An order had come to him to fallback and support our right; and instead he fell forward and went overthe hill to the left. But the name he won that day as a marvellousmilitary genius filled the world with his glory, and that glory willnever fade while history books last.
He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending as a man canbe, but he doesn't know enough to come in when it rains. He hasbeen pursued, day by day and year by year, by a most phenomenal andastonishing luckiness. He has been a shining soldier in all our wars forhalf a generation; he has litt
ered his military life with blunders, andyet has never committed one that didn't make him a knight or a baronetor a lord or something. Look at his breast; why, he is just clothedin domestic and foreign decorations. Well, sir, every one of them is arecord of some shouting stupidity or other; and, taken together, theyare proof that the very best thing in all this world that can befall aman is to be born lucky.