Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/28

 his boyish ambitions. The reasons of his dissatisfaction he once set forth as follows:

"As I was the boy of the family I generally brought the cows in the morning and assisted my sister to milk them and drove them back, and went for them again at night. I went barefooted and I used to get thistles in my feet, and I did not like farming in that way. So I said one day to my father that I would like to go to a select school that was some twelve or fifteen miles from there. He said all right, but that I was too young. I said to him that if he would give me my time, I would try my fortune. He said all right, that I was not worth much at home and I might go ahead. So next day I started off. I showed myself up at this school, and finally I found a blacksmith who consented to board me, as I wrote a pretty good hand, if I could write up his books at night. In that way I worked myself through this school."

During these years of the embryo financier, he was a pale, slender, delicate little fellow, studiously inclined and disliking the customary sports as much as the toil of the people around him. It is remembered of him that he was different from the other boys with whom he associated in school. He was not what is generally termed a manly boy. He kept out of the rough good-natured games. He preferred to remain indoors, and at noontime cuddled up in some remote corner of the school-house, busy about nobody knew what. When approached by the others with invitations to come and join them, he