Fortuitous circumstances constitute the moulds that shape the majority of human lives, and the hasty impress of an accident is too often regarded as the relentless decree of all-ordaining fate; while to the philosophic anthropologist it might furnish matter for curious speculation whether, if Attila and Alaric had chanced to find themselves the pampered sons of some merchant prince,--some Rothschild or Peabody of the fifth century,--their campaigns had not been purely fiscal and bloodless, limited to the leaves of a ledger, while the names of Goth and Hun had never crystallized into synonyms of havoc and ruin; or had Timour been trained to cabbage-raising and vine-dressing, whether he would not have lived in history as the great horticulturist of Kesth, or the Diocletian of Samarcand, rather than the Tartar tyrant and conqueror of the East? How many possible Howards have swung at Tyburn? How many canonized and haloed heads have barely escaped the doom of Brinvilliers, and the tender mercies of Carnifex? Analogous to that wonderful Gulf Stream, once a myth and still a mystery, the strange current of human existence, four score and ten years long, bears each and all of us with a strong, steady sweep away from the tropic lands of sunny childhood, enamelled with verdure and gaudy with bloom, through the temperate regions of manhood and womanhood, fruitful and harvest-hued, on to the frigid, lonely shores of dreary old age, snow-crowned and ice-veined; and individual destinies seem to resemble the tangled drift on those broad bounding gulf-billows, driven hither and thither, strewn on barren beaches, scattered over bleaching coral crags, stranded upon blue bergs,--precious germs from all climes and classes; some to be scorched under equatorial heats; some to perish by polar perils; a few to take root and flourish and triumph, building imperishable land-marks; and many to stagnate in the long, inglorious rest of a Sargasso Sea. For all helpless human waifs in this surging ocean of time, there is comfort in the knowledge that the fiercest storms toss their drift highest; and one of these apparently savage waves of adversity had swept Salome Owen safely to an isle of palms and peace, where, under the fostering rays of prosperity, the selfish and sordid elements of her character found rapid development.