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 He gave up the elevator shortly and opened a grocery store. He tried farming and market gardening; he ran a news stand; he was postmaster, but he never put his best effort into any one of these activities, because he was not interested; he thought it was not what he was cut out for. He couldn't just get down to it.

He drifted from Presbyterianism to Christian Science; his political favorites ranged from St. John and Grover Cleveland to Theodore Roosevelt. He stuck to no principle or profession, he got nowhere because he could not find anything that really held his interest. Men with half his talent and one-fourth of his opportunity far outstripped him, and because he was never willing to do well the thing at hand, he found himself at seventy no further than the station platform. Through all the years he had been watching the train go by because he could never make up his mind where he wanted to go.