Failure

e than that for which I was paid, and by taking the initiative and doing that which should have been done without being told to do it. I was holding my position without difficulty. I practically had a soft berth for life had I cared to keep it. Without consultation with my friends, and without warning, I resigned! This was the first turning point that was of my own selection. It was not forced upon me. I saw the old man Fate coming and beat him to the door. When pressed for a reason for resigning, I gave what seemed to me to be a very sound one, but I bad trouble convincing the family circle that I had acted wisely. I quit that position because the work was too easy and I was performing it with too little effort. I saw myself drifting into the habit of inertia. I felt myself becoming accustomed to taking life easily and I knew that the next step would be retrogression. I had so many friends at court that there was no particular impelling urge that made it necessary for me to keep moving. I was among friends and relatives, and I had a position that I could keep as long as I wished it, without exerting myself. I received an income that provided me with all the necessities and some of the luxuries, including a motor car and enough gasoline to keep it running. What more did I need? 9 Nothing! I was beginning to say to myself. This was the attitude toward which I felt myself slipping. It was an attitude which, for some reason that is still unknown to me, startled me so sharply that I made what many believed to be an irrational move by resigning. However ignorant I might have been in other matters at the time, I have felt thankful ever since for having had sense enough to realize that strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle, that disuse brings atrophy and decay. This move proved to be the next most important turning point of my life, although it was followed by ten years of effort, which brought almost every conceivable grief that the human heart can experience. I quit my job in the legal field, where I was getting along well, living among friends and relatives, where I had what they believed to be an unusually bright and promising future ahead of me. I am frank to admit that it has been an ever-increasing source of wonderment to me as to why and how I gathered the courage to make the move that I did. As far as I am able to interpret the event, I arrived at my decision to resign more because of a hunch, or a sort of prompting which I then did not understand, than by logical reasoning. I selected Chicago as my new field of endeavor. I did this because I believed Chicago to be a place where one might find out if one had those sterner qualities which are so essential for survival in a world of keen competition. I made up my mind that if I could gain reco