Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1884 — Streaks of Luck. [ARTICLE]

Streaks of Luck.

We have heard of a man who had £2,000 a year left him because he was civil to an infirm old lady in church, finding the hymns for her, setting her hassock, etc. He did not know her name, but she took care to ascertain his, and when she died he found that she had bequeathed to him the bulk of her property “as a reward for his patient kindness.” A clergyman of onr acquaintance obtained a living of good value from a baronet in Norfolk for no other reason than that he was the only curate within ten miles round who had not applied for it when it fell vacant. Another clergyman whom we know got a still better living for having refused preferment offered to him under circumstances derogatory to his dignity. He was a fair singer; and a vulgar plutocrat who had invited him to dinner promised to give him a living if he would sing a comic song at dessert. The quiet rebuke which the young clergyman administered made the plutocrat ashamed of himself, so that the next day he proffered the living with a letter of apology, but the living was refused, the clergyman stating that it would be impossible for him to forget the circumstances under which it was first tendered. This was the more honorable as the clergyman was very badly off Another patron, hearing of what he had done, appointed him to a benefice as a testimony of his admiration. We may conclude with a story of a man who was suddenly made rich because of his great stupidity. He was the only dull man in a bright-witted family, and going to dine with a Wealthy relative who had a horror of fools, he made so many silly remarks that the old man cried in exasperation: “I must do something for you, for you’ll never do anything for yourself. If I don’t make a rich man of you you’ll become a laughing-stock to the whole world, and a disgrace to your family,—Chambers’ Journal.