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 then the business has moved ahead triumphantly. Never, however, has this success seemed to me to be deserved; never has it interested me.

Had I not been educated in college, doubtless I should have slipped automatically into my proper niche. I might have been a brakeman on a railroad or a sailor before the mast, but at any rate there would have been some intention or meaning in my occupation. All that college did for me was to unfit me for decision. It unwilled me and threw me forward into the first opportunity that presented itself.

The gloom on the elderly gentleman's face was apparently ineffaceable.

Realizing, he went on after a moment's pause, that with the advent of a boy, my difficulties would be repeated in his life, I wished with all my heart that my dear wife would present me with a little girl, Through no fault of hers, she failed me. Immediately the news of your birth was brought to me, I began to conceive ways by which I might spare you the agony of my own experience. I will never send him to college, I promised myself, never. My wife, who was acquainted with my opinions on this subject, had always pooh-poohed my sentiments. Have you not been successful? she would ask. What more do you wish? You have made plenty of money and your college education has made it possible for you to enjoy the best books, to travel with pleasure, even to marry me. There