TRIVIAL INCIDENTS.
HAT may be deemed a trivial incident? What is an occurrence of serious importance P Those who have observed life most closely will probably be the least able to furnish to these queries replies altogether satisfactory. The choice of a boy's school, a young man's start in a profession, marriage, serious injuries, illness, sudden wealth or poverty, would probably be included in the latter; whilst meeting an
acquaintance in the street, forgetting to post a letter, accepting an invitation to a particular party, the expression of a random opinion, missing a railway-train, are likely to be relegated to the former category. Yet an unbiassed analysis of the ex- periences of the majority of mankind would, in our opinion, show that what is variously termed by different orders of persons, " Providence," " Chance," or the " Chapter of Accidents," acting extremely often through the agency of the slightest imaginable circumstances, plays a most important, not unfrequently an overwhelming part, in the drama of human affairs. The result of a fall from a horse depends much less on the speed of the horse, or the constitution and equestrian ability of the precipitated rider, than on the precise manner in which his body reaches the ground, and this, despite all theories as to learning how to fall, will probably never be twice exactly the same, however often the mischance may occur. To take another instance, the impression made by one personality on another, leaving out of reckoning the element of beauty, is well known to defy all forecast, because we kindle sympathy and excite dististe at points the most unexpected and unaccountable. Most of us have bad occasion to test the working of this subtle attraction and repulsion when we have endeavoured to make -one of our friends take kindly to the conversation and com- panionship of another intimate acquaintance. Yet upon the outcome of these perpetually recurring combinations depends the issue of a vast number of our undertakings. The arising of a certain idea at a given propitious moment is another most weighty factor in life. It may be replied that Newton's apple
or Watt's tea-kettle only brought to a definite expression reflections which had long been working in the philosopher's brain ; but there can be no question that many thoughts pro- ductive of momentous consequences flash on the mind suddenly by what can only be termed an inspiration. Then, again, as to a particular line of conduct and its results. The novice is taught, and rightly taught, that the good apprentice
-succeeds, and comes in his special sphere to honour and credit. But we could name an eminent public character who owes his brilliant career entirely to crass neglect of his duty as a railway booking-clerk ; and also an idle dunce at school, held pre-destined to the workhouse, who retired from business about the time his contemporaries were taking their degrees, on a fortune acquired through a timely developed genius for blending and tasting tea. We know of a young Austrian to whom vast wealth was bequeathed by an aged gentleman whom the lucky youngster met in a railway-train retnrning from his only son's funeral, because the bereaved parent was touched by the close resemblance of the stranger's features to
• those of his departed boy. Similarly, we are acquainted with -a person who distinctly traces his entry on a distinguished professional life to the selection one day of a certain thorough- fare in a large city, where several ways met. Above all, to mention the most critical of steps, the origin of very many marriages would disclose this woof of destiny crossing, modifying, and not seldom cancelling the operation of the warp of law generally controlling events.
To borrow an illustration from a different department of _human activity, a happy literary fluke, where a careful printer would have spoiled all,• gave Malherbe, and after him the world, one of the loveliest lines in all lyric verse. The poem in question was written on the lamented death of a friend's daughter named Roselle ; but by a benignant blunder, the conventional " Roselle a vicu ce que vivent les roses," became
" Rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses,
L'espace d'un matin," -owing to the compositor's oversight its nameless charm and unchallenged immortality. Countless other examples of the trivial proving the grave and pregnant facts of life will present themselves to us all as we pass in review the events of every day, such as the casual acquisition of information, the chance word interchanged with an unknown person in a drawing-room, the fortuitous observation of a footprint, the sudden awakening of conscience in the mind of a would-be criminal, all of which are constantly developing consequences which outwit the wisdom of the wise, and contribute to hold over the future, however apparently certain, an im- penetrable veil. Even more startling are often the effects of
incidents to all seeming immaterial and trifling, when we for- sake the by-paths of private life for the great highway of history. A striking case in point is dwelt on by Sir Francis Palgrave in his " History of Normandy and England," showing us the obscure and unheeded origin of our very existence as a nation. He well remarks that England owes its place in the world to Duke Robert of Normandy, father of William the Conqueror, seeing Arletta, daughter of a tanner of Falaise, washing her linen in a rivulet near that town. " Arletta's pretty feet twinkling in the brook made her the mother of William the Conqueror. But for the tanner of Falaise, her father, Harold would not have fallen at Hastings, no Anglo-Norman dynasty would have arisen, no British Empire." To no sphere of energy does this sudden, over- mastering interference of the unforeseen apply more forcibly than to war. Blficher's arrival half-an-hour later on the field of Waterloo might not impossibly have changed the history of the world ; and the cackling of some geese was once highly useful,—examples of the manner in which the fate of armies and citadels, and with them the destiny of nations. tremble at certain moments in the balance, to be swayed hither and thither by agencies apparently slight, but drawing boundless significance from the accidents, if there be such a thing as accident, of time and place.
On the other hand, the great salient changes and events of life, from which mighty innovations are expected, not unfre- quently leave no impression behind them ; and though they may be in a sense important, have little or no influence on the character or future of the individual they befall. Striking occurrences, foreshadowing serious consequences, have often absolutely no sequel, so that it passes the sagacity of the shrewdest to predict whether a given acorn, so to speak, shall perish unnoticed, or develop into a majestic oak. This strand of caprice, these inexplicable, surprising results from common-place facts, whilst they render life less logical and prevent the calmest lot from being mapped out entirely by rule and compass, undeniably supply most of the romance and excitement falling to the share of mortals, and though the medal has its dark and distressing side, there can be no doubt that existence without an occasional impromptu in the shape of the sudden and unexpected, to relieve the even tenor of plans calculated and prearranged, would be scarce endurable. Not only can we but rough-hew our ends, our most careful endeavours lead not unfrequently to a termination the very reverse from what might reasonably have been anticipated. We can call to mind the case of a lady who directed her solicitor to invest a large sum of money in shares of the City of Glasgow Bank some months prior to its collapse. Imagining that her instructions had been carried out, she heard the news of the closure of the bank's doors with unqualified dismay, as the claim of the creditors would have entailed her total ruin. The subsequent discovery of her agent's embezzlement revealed likewise the groundlessness of her apprehensions, her loss being limited to the amount entrusted to her dishonest representative. On the other hand, the unlucky recipient of a single City of Glasgow Bank share as a wedding present should for once have looked a gift horse in the mouth, and had no reason to congratulate himself on his father-in-law's liberality, involving as it did the loss of all he possessed. The procrastination of Madan of Glencoe had dire results; but the well-known happy failure of a belated traveller to catch the ill-starred Tay Bridge train in December, 1879, could hardly serve to point a moral in a lecture to young men on the advantages of punctuality, nor the authenticated fact of an intoxicated person falling unscathed two hundred feet from the Dean Bridge in Edinburgh, where a sober one would certainly have been killed, be felicitously quoted at a Blue-Ribbon Army meeting. An apparently indifferent custom may strike deep into the working of human society, as Lord Bacon points out in the matter of square and round tables :— " A long table and a square table seem things of form, but are things of substance, for at a long table a few at the upper end, in effect, sway all the business, but in the other form there is more use of the counsellors' opinion that sit lower." Again, it might moderate the vindictiveness of the most inveterate black-baller in London to remember how a candidate's enemy elected him by adding a black but twentieth ball to nineteen white ones, a score of members at least being required to vote.
Still, after observing in its myriad shapes the apparently
capricious interference of good and evil fate in the lot of many, the igneous rocks, as it were, forcing their wayward passage through the methodically ordered strata of life, most impartial minds will be the more convinced that the former are the exceptions, the more impressed with the certain eventual triumph of law, the more confident that, although " Fortune brings in some boats which are not steered," all " Chance " is yet " direction which we cannot see."
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