EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
if fortune so favors me that I shall be provided with all the means that are required, and if meanwhile by the above preparations and communications I shall have gained some credit abroad, I should prefer by all means to go abroad and seek my fortune in my calling, which consists in promoting everything that concerns the administration and working of mines. For he is nothing short of a fool who is independent and at liberty to do as he pleases and sees an opportunity for himself abroad and yet remains at home in darkness and cold, where the Furies, Envy, and Pluto have taken up their abode and dispose the rewards, and where labors such as I have performed are rewarded with misery. The only thing I would desire until that time comes is bene latere, to find a sequestered place where I can live secluded from the world. I think I may find such a corner in the end either at Starbo or at Skinskatteberg. But as this would take four or five years' time, I am quite ready to acknowledge that long-laid plans are like long roofs, apt to tumble in; for man proposes, God disposes. Still I have always been in favor of a man's knowing what he is doing, and of his forming for himself some clever plan
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