SELF-CONFIDENCE 215see that no harm befell it. As the years passed by, this same vigilance
was kept up. This child did not have to dress himself; he had servants
who did that. Servants watched over him while he slept and while he
was at play. He was not permitted to do anything that a servant could
do for him. He had grown to the age of ten years. One day he was
playing in the yard and noticed that the back gate had been left open.
In all his life this boy had never been outside of that gate alone, and
naturally that was just the thing he wished to do. During a moment
when the servants were not looking, he dashed out the gate and was
run down and killed by an automobile before he reached the middle
of the street.
He had used his servants' eyes until his own no longer served him
as they might have done had he learned to rely on them.
Twenty years ago the man to whom I served as secretary had sent
his two sons away to school. One went to the University of Virginia
and the other to a college in New York. Each month it was a part of my
task to make out a check for $ 100 to each of these boys. [The 2004 value
would be at least $1,800.J This was their pin money, to be spent as they
wished. How profitably I remember the way I envied those boys as I
made out those checks each month. I often wondered why the hand of
fate bore me into the world in poverty. I could look ahead and see
how these boys would rise to the high stations in life while I remained
a humble clerk.
In due time the two boys returned home with their sheepskins.
Their father was a wealthy man who owned banks and railroads and
coal mines and other property of great value. Good positions were
waiting for the boys in their father's employ.
But twenty years of time can play cruel tricks on those who have
never had to struggle. Perhaps a better way to state this would be that
time gives those who have never had to struggle a chance to play cruel
tricks on themselves! At any rate, these two boys brought home from
school other things besides their sheepskins. They came back with well-