A day of fate (1880) Novel by Edward Payson Roe
A Day of Fate is not about destiny — it’s about choice. It shows how one impulsive moment can cost us what we treasure most — and how humility, patience, and genuine change can slowly restore it. It’s a quiet, powerful reminder: we shape our fate more than it shapes us.
Richard is burning out. An ambitious young newspaper editor in the city, he drives himself relentlessly — until his health breaks. Overwhelmed, he flees to the quiet countryside to rest and find clarity.
In a village meeting‑house, he sees Katharine, a young Quaker woman. Her calm dignity and beauty stop his restlessness instantly — he falls deeply, genuinely in love at first sight. He courts her, and for one luminous June day, happiness seems certain. He believes his life has found its true direction.
Then the "fate" strikes: In a moment of impulse, confusion, or weakness — details unfold through the chapters — Richard makes a serious blunder. A rushed decision, a misunderstood word, a secret revealed at the wrong time — and everything unravels. By day’s end, he has lost her trust. What felt like destiny becomes a tragedy of his own making.
"It was inevitable" — he recognizes his own character flaws helped cause the catastrophe.
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Excerpt:
"Another month's work will knock Morton into pye, was a remark that caught my ear as I fumed from the composing-room back to my private office. I had just irately blamed a printer for a blunder of my own, and the words I overheard reminded me of the unpleasant truth that I had recently made a great many senseless blunders, over which I chafed in merciless self-con- damnation.
For weeks and months, my mind had been tense under the strain of increasing work and responsibility. It was my nature to become absorbed in my tasks, and, as night editor of a prominent City journal, I found a limitless field for labour.
It was true I could have jogged along under the heavy burden with comparatively little wear and loss, but, impelled by both temperament and ambition, I was trying to maintain a racer's speed. From casual employment as a reporter, I had worked my way up to my present position, and tireless activity and alertness required to win and hold such a place Mras seemingly degenerating into a nervous restlessness which permitted no repose of mind or rest of body. I worked when other men slept, but, instead of availing myself of the right to sleep when the world was awake, I yielded to an increasing tendency to wakefulness, and read that I might be informed on the endless variety of subjects occupying public attention.
The globe was becoming a vast hunting ground around which my thoughts ranged almost unceasingly that I might capture something new, striking, or original for the benefit of our paper. Each day the quest had grown more eager, and, as the hour for going to press approached, I would even become feverish in my intense desire to send the paper out with a breezy, newsy aspect, and would be elated if, at the last moment, the material was flashed in that would warrant startling headlines, and correspondingly depressed if the weary old world had a few hours of quiet and peace. To make the paper go, every faculty I possessed was in the harness.
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