The Golden Pool: A Story of a Forgotten Mine

It must have been a matter of surprise to most of us who have arrived at, or passed, middle life, on looking back through a vista of years, to note what an astonishingly important part has been played in our lives by entirely trivial circumstances. It has, indeed, become a common-place that “great events from little causes spring”; but we do not realise, until we actually submit our experiences to analysis, how the whole tenour and meaning of our lives has in many cases been determined by some occurrence so unimportant that, at the time, it appears incredible that it should have any consequences at all...