A BIT OF PHILOSOPHY.

Disappointment—pho! What is disappointment, I should like to know? Why should any body feel it? I don’t. I did so at one time, however, certainly, and have a vague recollection of it being a rather unpleasant sort of feeling; but I am a total stranger to it now, and have been so for the last twenty years.

“Lucky fellow!” say you; “then you succeed in every thing?”

Quite the reverse, my dear sir; I succeed in nothing. I have not the faintest recollection of having ever succeeded in any single thing, where success was of the least moment, in the whole course of my life. I have invariably failed in every thing I have tried. But what has been the consequence? Why, the consequence has been, that I now never expect success in any thing I aim at; and this again has produced one of the most delightful states of feeling that can well be conceived. In fact, the reader can not conceive how delicious is the repose, the placidity of mind, the equanimity of temper, the coolness, the calmness, the comfort, arising from this independence of results—this delightful quiescence of the aspirations. It is a perfect paradise, an elysium. You recline on it so softly, so easily. It is like a down pillow; a bed of roses; an English blanket. I recollect the time when I used to fret and fume when I attempted any thing. How I used to be worried and tortured with hopes and fears, when I commenced any new undertaking, or applied for any situation! What folly! what absurdity!—all proceeding from the ridiculous notion that I had some chance of success!

Grown wiser, I save myself a world of trouble now. I know that I need not look for success in any thing I attempt, and therefore never expect it. It would do you good, gentle reader, to see with what calmness, with what philosophy, I now wait the result of any effort to better myself in life. It is truly edifying to behold.

Notwithstanding, however, this certain foreknowledge of consequences as regards the point in question, I deem it my bounden duty, both to myself and family, to make every effort I can for their and my own advancement; to try for every situation to which I think myself competent, and, therefore, I do so; but it is merely in compliance with this moral obligation, and from no hope whatever of succeeding; and the result has invariably shown, that to have given myself any uneasiness on the subject, to have entertained the most remote idea of success, would have been one of the most ridiculous things conceivable.

What a triumph is mine in such cases! I suffer nothing—no distress of mind, no uneasiness, not the least of either: I am calm and cool, and quite prepared for the result, and sure as fate it comes—“Dear Sir, I am sorry to say,” &c., &c. I never read a word beyond this.

Perhaps it would amuse the reader to give him one of those instances—I could give him five hundred—of what the generality of people call disappointments, which has induced the happy state of mind I now enjoy, which enables me to contemplate such crises as would throw any other person into the utmost agitation, with the most perfect equanimity.

About four or five years ago, a very intimate and dear friend suddenly burst in upon me while at breakfast one morning. He was almost breathless, and his look was big with intelligence.

“Well, Bob,” said he, with a gleeful smile, “here’s something at last that will do you good.”

I smiled, and shook my head.

“Well, well, so you always say,” said my friend, who perfectly understood me; “but you cannot miss this time. I have just heard from a confidential friend that Mr Bowman is about to retire from business, and that he is on the lookout for a respectable person to purchase his stock in trade, and the good will of his shop, privately. Now, Bob, that’s just the thing for you. You know the trade; you know, too, that Mr Bowman has realised a handsome fortune in it, and that his shop, where that fortune was made, has the best business in town.”

Now, all this that my friend said was true, perfectly true. Mr Bowman had made a fortune in the shop alluded to. It had by far the best run in town: it was crowded with customers from morning till night. But I felt quite confident that the moment I took the shop there would be an end of its prosperity. However, my friends prevailed. To please them, and to show that I was willing to do any thing to better my circumstances, I took the shop. I bought the stock and good will of the business, and entered on possession. My friends all congratulated me, and declared that my fortune was made. I knew better.

However, to give the speculation fair play, a thing I thought due to it, I prevailed on Mr Bowman to forego the usual proceeding in such cases of advertising his retirement from business and recommending me as his successor, because I knew that if he did so, all chance of my doing any good would be instantly knocked on the head. Recommend me! Why, the bare mention of my name—any allusion to it—would be certain and immediate destruction to me. I knew that if the public was made aware that I had succeeded to the business, it would instantly desert the shop.

Impressed with this conviction, I had the whole matter and manner of the transfer of property and interest in the shop managed with the utmost privacy and secrecy, my object being to slip unperceived and unobserved, as it were, into my predecessor’s place, that the public might not have the slightest hint of the change.

In order further to secure this important secret, I would not permit the slightest alteration to be made, either on the shop itself, or on any of its multifarious contents. I would not allow a box, or an article of any kind, not even a nail, to be removed or shifted from its place, for fear of giving the public the slightest clue to the fact of the shop’s being now mine. As to my own appearance in it, which of course could not be avoided, I hoped that I might pass for a shopman of Mr Bowman’s.

All, however, as I expected, was in vain. The public by some intuitive instinct, as it seemed to me, discovered that I was now proprietor of the shop, and took its measures accordingly. On the very first day that I took my place behind the counter, I thought it looked shy at me. I was not mistaken. Day after day my customers became fewer and fewer, until hardly one would enter the shop.

Being quite prepared for this result, I felt neither surprise nor disappointment, but shortly after coolly disposed of the shop, and all that was in it, to another party, who, as I wish every body well, I am glad to say, did, according to his own account, amazingly well in it, he declaring to me himself that it fulfilled his most sanguine expectations.

It could not be otherwise, for, as I well knew would be the case, the moment I quitted the counter, and this person took my place, the stream of public patronage returned; customers came thronging in faster than he and two stout active shopmen could serve them.

Now, in this affair, as in all others of a similar kind, my friends confessed that I had given the spec fair play, and that there was nothing on my part to which they could attribute the blame of failure. Unable to account for it, therefore, they merely shrugged their shoulders and said, “It was odd; they didn’t understand it.” Neither did I, good reader; but so it was.

One rather odd feature in my case I may mention. Although I never actually succeed in anything, I am always very near doing so—very near getting every thing—within an ace, in almost every instance, of obtaining all I want. My friends are frequently bitten by this will-o’-the-wisp in my fortunes, and have fifty times congratulated me on the strength of its deceptive promises or successes, which of course are never realised.

In reply to their congratulations on such occasions, I merely smile and shake my head; adding, perhaps, “Not so fast, my good friends; wait a bit and you’ll see. I have been as near my mark a hundred times before.”

Perhaps the reader would like to glance at a case in point. I will present it to him: it is not yet three weeks old. I applied for a certain appointment in the gift of a certain board. Here is the reply of the secretary, who was my personal friend:—“My dear Sir, I am exceedingly happy to inform you that your application, which was this day read at the board, has been most favourably received. Indeed, from what has passed on the subject, I may assure you of success, and beg to congratulate you accordingly. Your success would not perhaps have been quite so certain had Mr S— been at home, as he would probably support his friend B., who is the only person you had to fear. But Mr S—, who is on the continent (at Carlsbad), is not expected for a fortnight, and cannot be here for a week at the soonest; so you are safe.”

“Well, then, now surely, Bob,” said my friends to whom I showed this letter, “you cannot doubt of your success in this instance.”

“No, indeed!” exclaimed I, with the usual shake of the head and accompanying smile of incredulity; “never had less expectation from any thing in my life. Don’t you see, Mr S— will be home in time, and will give his powerful interest to my rival?”

“Impossible, my dear sir; Mr S— is at Carlsbad, and cannot be home in less than a week. Neither steam-boat nor rail-road could enable him to accomplish such a feat.”

“No, but a balloon might; and depend upon it a balloon he will take, rather than I should get the situation. This he’ll certainly do, although he knows nothing of what is going on.”

“There’s the postman, my dear,” said I with gentleness and equanimity to my wife, on the morning of the third day after the conversation above alluded to had taken place. “It is a letter from my friend Secretary Wilkins, to inform me that I have lost the situation of ——; that Mr S—, performing miracles in the way of expedition, although not impelled by any particular motive, came home just in time to support his friend and, of course, to cut me out.”

It was precisely so. “My dear Sir,” began my friend’s letter, “I am truly sorry to inform you”——I read no more; not another word. It was quite unnecessary; I knew it all before. So, laying the letter gently on the table, I said with my wonted smile, “Exactly; all right!”

Now, does the reader think that, in this, or in any other similar case, I gave myself the smallest uneasiness about the result? Not I, indeed—not the smallest. I expected no success, and was not therefore disappointed.

C.