hat. In baseball, or law, or anything else,
William, you've got to lose sometimes. Remember the old saying, 'It's
better to have tried to buck the line, and failed, than never to have
tried at all.'"

"But Mister Whimple's just getting a good start, and he can't afford to
lose cases. It gives him a bad steer with people that's looking for
lawyers in the winning column!"

CHAPTER XIX

The plans that men make in the belief that the knowledge and wisdom of
the adult mind knows what is best for youth are many and of small
account. For the youthful mind sees easily through the most of them,
intuitively perhaps, and not by methods of reasoning, and decides for
itself whether it shall accept or reject them. And office boys
constitute a particularly abnormal department--if such it may be
termed--of the youthful mind. This is merely a roundabout way of
preparing the readers, if any, of this veracious chronicle with the
fact that William had not, as Tommy Watson supposed, "walked into" the
plan whereby he was to receive an additional hour of tuition from that
prince of tutors, "Chuck" Epstein. If this was a history, the truth
might be coloured with the glamour of romance at times. But, as Tommy
Watson himself was wont to say, "Facts are real, facts are earnest,
facts are very stubborn things, facts are facts where'er you find 'em,
facts are what gives truth its wings." Therefore, it is here set down
in black and white that William himself engineered that additional
hour, and the wise men who thought they had initiated it patted
themselves on the back because it was a success.

William, of a truth, was beginning to find himself by finding others
out. He had discovered, and it was a bitter shock to William, that
Lucien Torrance, for whom his feelings were tinctured by good-natured
tolerance, was making good use of his spare time around the office.
Lucien had no "vaulting ambition:" he would hardly have understood the
meaning of the words. He wanted to improve his position though, and he
practised consistently on the typewriter, he took lessons in shorthand,
and was beginning to master the intricacies of bookkeeping, taking his
lessons therein at a night school. His desk was always neat and clean,
and the clerical work that Simmons, the architect, was beginning to
trust him with was well done.

William's desk always looked to be over-crowded, and was never neat.
Periodically, the lad had a cleaning-up day, bu