Draft Proposal (at least one paragraph)

“Luck” by Mark Twain

[NOTE.--This is not a fancy sketch. I got it from a clergyman who was an instructor at

Woolwich forty years ago, and who vouched for its truth. --M.T.]

It was at a banquet in London in honour of one of the two or three conspicuously illustrious

English military names of this generation. For reasons which will presently appear, I will

withhold his real name and titles, and call him Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby,

V.C., K.C.B., etc., etc., etc. What a fascination there is in a renowned name! There say the

man, in actual flesh, whom I had heard of so many thousands of times since that day, thirty

years before, when his name shot suddenly to the zenith from a Crimean battle-field, to

remain for ever celebrated. It was food and drink to me to look, and look, and look at that

demigod; scanning, searching, noting: the quietness, the reserve, the noble gravity of his

countenance; the simple honesty that expressed itself all over him; the sweet

unconsciousness of his greatness--unconsciousness of the hundreds of admiring eyes

fastened upon him, unconsciousness of the deep, loving, sincere worship welling out 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 as an instructor in the military school at

Woolwich. Just at the moment I have been talking about, a veiled and singular light

glimmered in his eyes, and he leaned down and muttered confidentially to me--indicating

the hero of the banquet with a gesture,--'Privately--his glory is an accident-- just a product of incredible luck.'

This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had been Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have been greater.

Some days later came the explanation of this strange remark, and this is what the Reverend told me.

About forty years ago I was an instructor in the military academy at Woolwich. I was

present in one of the sections when young Scoresby underwent his preliminary examination.

I was touched to the quick with pity; 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 was

evidently good, and sweet, and lovable, and guileless; and so it was exceedingly painful to

see him stand there, as serene as a graven image, and deliver himself of answers which

were veritably miraculous for stupidity and ignorance. All the compassion in me was

aroused in his behalf. I said to myself, when he comes to be examined again, he will be

flung over, of course; so it will be simple a harmless act of charity to ease 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 like a galley-slave on a certain line of stock

questions concerning Caesar which I knew would be used. If you'll believe me, he went

through with flying colours on examination day! He went through on that purely superficial

'cram', and got compliments, too, while others, who knew a thousand times more than he,

got plucked. By some strangely lucky accident--an accident not likely to happen twice in a century--he was asked 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 crippled child; and he always saved himself--just by

miracle, apparently.

Now of course the thing that would expose him and kill him at last was mathematics. I

resolved to make his death as easy as I could; so I drilled him and crammed him, and

crammed him and drilled him, just on the 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 the result:

to my consternation, he took the first prize! And with it he got a perfect ovation in the way of compliments.

Sleep! There was no more sleep for me for a week. My conscience tortured me 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 such preposterous result as the thing that had happened. I

felt as guilty and miserable as the creator of Frankenstein. Here was a wooden- head whom

I had put in the way of glittering promotions and prodigious responsibilities, and but one

thing could happen: he and his responsibilities 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, I said to myself: we

couldn't have peace and give this donkey a chance to die before he is found out. I waited

for the earthquake. It came. And it made me reel when it did come. He was actually

gazetted to a captaincy in a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the

service before they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever have foreseen that

they would go and put such a load of responsibility on such green and inadequate

shoulders? I could just barely have stood it if they had made him a cornet; but a captain-- think of it! I thought my hair would turn white.

Consider what I did--I who so loved repose and inaction. I said to myself, I am responsible

to the country for this, and I must go along with him and protect the country against him as

far as I can. So I took my poor little capital that I had saved up through years of work and

grinding economy, and went with a sigh and bought a cornetcy in his regiment, and away we went to the field.

And there--oh dear, it was awful. Blunders? why, he never did anything but blunder. But,

you see, nobody was in the fellow's secret--everybody had him focused wrong, and

necessarily misinterpreted his performance every time--consequently they took his idiotic

blunders for inspirations of genius; they did honestly! His mildest blunders were enough to

make a man in his right mind cry; and they did make me cry--and rage and rave too,

privately. And the thing that kept me always in a sweat of apprehension was the fact that

every fresh blunder he made increased the lustre of his reputation! I kept saying to myself,

he'll get so high that when discovery does finally come it will be like the sun falling out of

the sky.

He went right along up, from grade to grade, over the dead bodies of his superiors, until at

last, in the hottest moment of the battle of.... down went our colonel, and my heart jumped

into my mouth, for Scoresby was next in rank! Now for it, said I; we'll all land in Sheol in ten minutes, sure.

The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily giving way all over the field. Our

regiment occupied a position that was vital; a blunder now must be destruction. At this

critical moment, what does this immortal fool do but detach the regiment from its place and

order a charge over a neighbouring hill where there wasn't a suggestion of an enemy! '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 the insane 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 in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. But no; those Russians argued that

no single regiment would come browsing around there at such a time. It must be the entire

English army, and that the sly Russian game was 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 the field, and tore through,

and in no time there was the most tremendous rout you ever saw, and the defeat of the

allies was turned into a sweeping and splendid victory! Marshal Canrobert looked on, dizzy

with astonishment, admiration, and delight; and sent right off for Scoresby, and hugged him, and decorated him on the field in presence of all the armies!

And what was Scoresby's blunder that time? Merely the mistaking his right hand for his left-

-that was all. An order had come to him to fall back and support our right; and instead he

fell forward and went over the hill to the left. But the name he won that day as a marvellous

military genius filled the world with his glory, and that glory will never fade while history books last.

He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending as a man can be, but he doesn't

know enough to come in when it rains. He has been pursued, day by day and year by year,

by a most phenomenal and astonishing luckiness. He has been a shining soldier in all our

wars for half a generation; he has littered his military life with blunders, and yet has never

committed one that didn't make him a knight or a baronet or a lord or something. Look at

his breast; why, he is just clothed in domestic and foreign decorations. Well, sir, every one

of them is a record of some shouting stupidity or other; and, taken together, they are proof

that the very best thing in all this world that can befall a man is to be born lucky. http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/mtwain/bl-mtwain-luck.htm