“There was no cause why they should fear, for after all the invader was not a god but a man; and there never had been, and never would be, a man who was not…. [susceptible to] misfortune from the very day of his birth, and those misfortunes greater in proportion to his own greatness. The assailant therefore, being only a mortal, must needs fall from his glory.” (30) *
When Colonel Ulysses S. Grant took command of the Twenty-first Illinois Volunteer Infantry in 1861 he had already had combat experience in the Mexican War. Yet, as he led his volunteers on their first mission, he was concerned, maybe even apprehensive. Colonel Thomas Harris had moved his Confederate troops into northern Missouri near the town of Florida. Grant was sent to engage Harris. When his infantry reached the encampment of the secessionists, he found they had retreated rather than face him and his men. Grant later wrote about what he learned at the moment he saw the empty encampment: Harris had been just as apprehensive—or even more so—about engaging him as he had been about engaging Harris in a fight.
Do I need to say more? Fear not, reader; fear not. In the amusement park of life, all ride the wheel of fortune.
*Herodotus. The Persian Wars. Trans. by George Rawlinson. In Selections from Greek and Roman Historians, Ed. By C. A. Robinson, Jr. New York. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1957.