guests arrived and enjoyed their dinner, including the pie, which they were somewhat surprised to see, as it had not been ordered. After dinner the landlord entered, and hoped the dinner had given satisfaction; was very sorry he had not been able to get any Viz., but hoped the giblet pie would do instead. The guests laughed heartily, and assured the host that they found the Viz. very good, as indeed was the whole entertainment. The gratified landlord went to his wife and said, "Well, you were right, after all. Viz. is only another word for giblet pie !"

VII.-ON FAILURE.

Why do men fail? they're not the sport of fate,
But to their own capacities are blind,

Or lack the training, or they lag behind,
Seize not on opportunity, but wait.

THERE is nothing more depressing than the sense of failure. It puts one's whole being into a state of unstable equilibrium. It disturbs sleep and digestion. It produces a general sensitive uneasiness. It makes a man a coward, for he reads his failure in the look of everyone he meets, and he turns everything that is said into a personal taunt. He shuns his friends and scarcely dares to look his own cat fairly in the face. Her purring is a triumph over his misfortune. All cheerfulness, to say nothing of mirth, is distasteful to him. He goes about brooding over dark thoughts with a film of gloom over his eyes which makes even sunshine and blue skies appear as in a fog. He traces and retraces all the steps of that career which led to the dread abyss of failure. He thinks that if he had varied this, or changed that, how different might have been the result. The reasoning which proved him to have failed he knows as well as his A B C. He catches, as if by inspiration, every point in the argument against himself, and feels how hopeless it is (supposing him

to be an honest man) to attempt to reply. "No," he will say to himself, if not to others, "I was wrong. I could give a number of arguments to prove myself right, but it is better to suffer than be dishonest." The world would have been spared a great deal of trouble if everyone who had failed had reasoned in this way. But pride, or rather her illegitimate sister, vanity, who lives only in the smiles of others, will not allow him to have failed. He still maintains the wrong; fights, argues, forms a party and carries on an unequal war in the cause of error. He tries to prove that his opponent is wrong, picks holes here and there, and is most ingenious in turning small tables on his antagonist. But, my friend, it will not do, you know you are wrong, and in time everybody else will know it too. It were shorter and wiser to knock under at once and say you are in the wrong. It would be much better for your own mental culture, if instead of contesting the matter and trying to deceive yourself and others, you were to inquire diligently into the causes of your failure, and the sources of consolation still left open to you. These last would be much more accessible if you would only picture to yourself that failure does not necessarily imply disgrace, and that frankly to acknowledge failure is as honourable to you as to your opponent. It disarms enemies and secures friends, who would become enemies, if they, at length, found, as they assuredly would, that you had been humbugging them.

Now as to the causes of failure—you know them as well as anyone. But without reference to your particular case, let us seek for a general solution of our subject.

Why do men fail? Some fail in intellectual efforts― others in commercial-business-or professional efforts others again in physical or social efforts.

Now it generally happens that men fail from want of capacity, or from an equally disastrous defect, want of training! I put these two together, because a man with considerable mental power may fail for want of that skill which can only be acquired by diligent study or training; while, on the other hand, an industrious man with very limited capacity may, under a proper system of education or training, not only become successful in the practice of his profession, but even carry off some off its honours.

I believe that most people come into the world with faculties better adapted to one pursuit or calling than any other. But being all ground up in the same sort of edu cational mill, the unbolted meal is made up into intellectual dough which it is thought can be baked into law loaves, or physic loaves, or science loaves, just according to the fancy or desires of the baker. If it were possible so to direct education as to introduce a kind of bolting process, by which minds of the one order could be separated from minds of a different order, and each be then further subjected to a process best adapted to further growth and development, failures would be less frequent. The rank and file of every profession is made up of men in no way specially qualified by nature to be lawyers, or doctors, or chemists. The leaders in each profession are so qualified, and they have improved their natural gifts by special and laborious training.

Every one must be aware of rare occasions in the course of his life when he did the thing in hand so admirably as to surprise himself much more than his companions. When I was a boy, an opportunity occurred to me a few times of joining in a game of cricket. I suppose I never played more than a dozen times in my life, but on one occasion when I

was in (it was modest single wicket) I handled the bat so skilfully that my companions could not get me out, and at length both sides resigned the game in despair. The next evening on presenting myself to the party they unanimously agreed not to admit me because I played too well. I had never played so well before, and I know how ridiculously ill my play has been since. I have played chess with a man who could have given me a knight, and won half a dozen games in succession. But I could never do it again. I have played backgammon with such success that the very best throws came to me, and apparently the very worst to my opponent. Now in all these isolated cases of skill or luck, the object of training is to make you do always well, or even excellently, that which you did so admirably on one occasion only. The immense amount of drilling required to make a good dancer, a good fiddler, or even a good acrobat ought to be a lesson to us humbler mortals who, fortunately for ourselves, are not called upon to show off in public. Even in a game like backgammon or whist, in which the element of chance is so largely mingled, training will accomplish more than luck. My old French master was an adept in tric-trac. I have played with him and watched his play. He seemed to win of everybody—but his success was based not upon his throws (for, as he said, in these he was only equal to his antagonist), but upon caution, foresight, and a refined system of calculation based upon training.

Of course there are cases in which no amount of training will make up for natural incapacity. One of the third Napoleon's Ministers wrote a Five Act Comedy in verse, which was damned. Next day, when one of his colleagues condoled with him, he remarked apologetically, "It is not so easy to write a Five Act Comedy in verse.

"But,"