GHOST OF A CHANCE
Sometimes things look so bad you
wonder if you have any chance at all. In that case, no, you don't
have a chance. The chance died.
So we use the expression "ghost
of a chance". What does that mean?
If you don't even have a ghost of
a chance it's best to give up, roll over and play dead. That
may attract the ghost of a chance back to you.
Better to have chance's dead ghost
than none at all.
Let's say you get the ghost of a
chance back but you're having a devil of a time. What then? Maybe
that's what happened in 1876.
Little Big Horn, June 25, 1876: mostly
unnoticed by General Custer's scouts a small blurry object was
seen traveling away at high speed while on their way to the battle.
Historians claim that was Custer's
luck running out. He and 268 of his men in the 7th Cavalry died
that day. Chance didn't even have a ghost.
The great leader of the Lakota Sioux
was Sitting Bull at the time of Custer's Last Stand. A decade
later the Ghost Dance movement spread across the West.
The Ghost Dance was an updated version
of a prehistoric dance. The movement was a millennial-type prophecy
that the White Man would be swept away peacefully and stop their
expansion.
But did the Ghost Dance have a ghost
of a chance to succeed? |