engine. The merry party meets disaster. No power
could foresee the catastrophe, nor provide against the death that must
result. Inevitably comes the clash of independent machines. Each human
being is a separate machine. Along the road of life he meets countless
others like himself. Some chance meetings are fortunate and help the
journey. Some other chance meeting with a human machine, a mechanical
device, an infinitesimal microbe that happened to be at the same place
at the same time brings disaster or death. This is luck or chance or
fate, and this really hovers over every life, controlling its course and
destiny and deciding when the puppet shall be laid away!

Luck and chance are the chief of all factors that really affect man.
From birth to death the human machine is called on to make endless
adjustments. A child is born and starts down the road of life. He starts
blindly and, for the most part, travels the whole way in the mists and
clouds. On his pathway he meets an infinite number of other pilgrims
going blindly like himself. From the beginning to the end, all about him
and in front of him are snares and pitfalls. His brain and nervous
system are filled with emotions and desires which lure him here and
there. Temptations are beckoning and passions urging him. He has no
guide to show the way and no compass to direct his course. He knows that
the journey will bring him to disaster in the end. He does not know the
time or the nature of the last catastrophe he shall meet. Every step is
taken in doubt and pain and fear. His friends and companions, through
accident or disease, drop around him day by day. He cannot go back or
halt or wait. He must go forward to the bitter end.

The whole journey of life is largely a question of luck. Let anyone ask
himself the question how often he has escaped disaster or how often
death has just passed him by. How often has he done some act that would
have led to degradation had it been known? How many hair-breadth escapes
has he met? How many accidents has he had which luckily were slight but
which easily might have caused his destruction?

Chance is the great element in life. Two men invest money; one gains a
fortune, the other loses all. Two men are riding in a machine and it
goes over a cliff; one is killed, the other escapes. The deadly germ is
taken by one, it passes the other by; or, it is taken by one when his
health will make him immune, by another at the time that it will de