Necessity is a CIRCUMSTANCE; Circumstance is man's master--and when Circumstance commands, he must obey; he may argue the matter--that is his privilege, just as it is the honorable privilege of a falling body to argue with the attraction of gravitation--but it won't do any good, he must OBEY.I wandered for ten years, under the guidance and dictatorship of Circumstance, and finally arrived in a city of Iowa, where Iworked several months.Among the books that interested me in those days was one about the Amazon.The traveler told an alluring tale of his long voyage up the great river from Para to the sources of the Madeira, through the heart of an enchanted land, a land wastefully rich in tropical wonders, a romantic land where all the birds and flowers and animals were of the museum varieties, and where the alligator and the crocodile and the monkey seemed as much at home as if they were in the Zoo.Also, he told an astonishing tale about COCA, a vegetable product of miraculous powers, asserting that it was so nourishing and so strength-giving that the native of the mountains of the Madeira region would tramp up hill and down all day on a pinch of powdered coca and require no other sustenance.
I was fired with a longing to ascend the Amazon.Also with a longing to open up a trade in coca with all the world.During months I dreamed that dream, and tried to contrive ways to get to Para and spring that splendid enterprise upon an unsuspecting planet.But all in vain.A person may PLAN as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is likely to come of it until the magician CIRCUMSTANCE steps in and takes the matter off his hands.At last Circumstance came to my help.It was in this way.Circumstance, to help or hurt another man, made him lose a fifty-dollar bill in the street; and to help or hurt me, made me find it.I advertised the find, and left for the Amazon the same day.This was another turning-point, another link.
Could Circumstance have ordered another dweller in that town to go to the Amazon and open up a world-trade in coca on a fifty-dollar basis and been obeyed? No, I was the only one.There were other fools there--shoals and shoals of them--but they were not of my kind.I was the only one of my kind.
Circumstance is powerful, but it cannot work alone; it has to have a partner.Its partner is man's TEMPERAMENT--his natural disposition.His temperament is not his invention, it is BORN in him, and he has no authority over it, neither is he responsible for its acts.He cannot change it, nothing can change it, nothing can modify it--except temporarily.But it won't stay modified.It is permanent, like the color of the man's eyes and the shape of his ears.Blue eyes are gray in certain unusual lights;but they resume their natural color when that stress is removed.
A Circumstance that will coerce one man will have no effect upon a man of a different temperament.If Circumstance had thrown the bank-note in Caesar's way, his temperament would not have made him start for the Amazon.His temperament would have compelled him to do something with the money, but not that.It might have made him advertise the note--and WAIT.We can't tell.
Also, it might have made him go to New York and buy into the Government, with results that would leave Tweed nothing to learn when it came his turn.
Very well, Circumstance furnished the capital, and my temperament told me what to do with it.Sometimes a temperament is an ass.When that is the case of the owner of it is an ass, too, and is going to remain one.Training, experience, association, can temporarily so polish him, improve him, exalt him that people will think he is a mule, but they will be mistaken.Artificially he IS a mule, for the time being, but at bottom he is an ass yet, and will remain one.
By temperament I was the kind of person that DOES things.
Does them, and reflects afterward.So I started for the Amazon without reflecting and without asking any questions.That was more than fifty years ago.In all that time my temperament has not changed, by even a shade.I have been punished many and many a time, and bitterly, for doing things and reflecting afterward, but these tortures have been of no value to me; I still do the thing commanded by Circumstance and Temperament, and reflect afterward.Always violently.When I am reflecting, on these occasions, even deaf persons can hear me think.
I went by the way of Cincinnati, and down the Ohio and Mississippi.My idea was to take ship, at New Orleans, for Para.
In New Orleans I inquired, and found there was no ship leaving for Para.Also, that there never had BEEN one leaving for Para.
I reflected.A policeman came and asked me what I was doing, and I told him.He made me move on, and said if he caught me reflecting in the public street again he would run me in.
After a few days I was out of money.Then Circumstance arrived, with another turning-point of my life--a new link.On my way down, I had made the acquaintance of a pilot.I begged him to teach me the river, and he consented.I became a pilot.
By and by Circumstance came again--introducing the Civil War, this time, in order to push me ahead another stage or two toward the literary profession.The boats stopped running, my livelihood was gone.
Circumstance came to the rescue with a new turning-point and a fresh link.My brother was appointed secretary to the new Territory of Nevada, and he invited me to go with him and help him in his office.I accepted.