Topic
Adversity runs through this collection like a second career. Booker T. Washington's measure of success — not by position reached but by obstacles surmounted — is the methodological statement: trouble is not the opposite of success but its measure. Beecher's theological reframing, troubles as tools by which God fashions us for better things, sits alongside Wilde's more secular observation that always forgiving your enemies annoys them so much — trouble turned into leverage. Twain, as precise as ever, refuses the near-enough: the difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between a lightning bug and lightning. The proverb about roses and thorns appears in its Karr form — some grumble that roses have thorns; he is thankful that thorns have roses — a grammatical reversal that is also a philosophical one. Vergil's wolf simply does not count the sheep, which is either a comfort or an indictment depending on your vantage. What the collection refuses is the inspirational resolution: troubles are not always overcome. Sometimes they are endured, and sometimes that is enough.