most of my life. I am to have a respite now. Here in this corner of
Putnam County I have found my happy hills of rest. My work will always
be in the city but here my home is to me and here I am to do my
writing, thinking, living. In the solitude of these woods I am to find
inspiration and quiet, here I am to dream my dreams and see my
visions. I am forty-seven years of age now, but I have the health and
vigour of a boy and I feel that for me life has just really begun. I
have but one ambition: it is not wealth, or fame, or even rest. It is
to be of service to my fellow-men; for that is my highest conception
of service to God.

This memoir is but a catalogue of events--a series of milestones that
I have passed. My life has been at times such a tempest and at other
times such a calm, and between these extremes I have failed so often
and my successes have been so phenomenal that the world would not
believe a true recital of the facts, even though I were able to write
them.

The conflicts of the soul, the scalding tears that bespeak the
breaking heart, can not be reduced to print. Nevertheless, I hope that
what I have written may be of encouragement to my fellow-travellers
along the highway of life, especially men who mistakenly imagine they
have been worsted in the fight.

There is a great truth in the doctrine of the economic interpretation
of history but there is also truth, and a mighty truth, in the
spiritual interpretation of life. The awakened human soul is
indissolubly inknit with the warp and woof of things divine. It fights
not alone, it is linked with God.

"No man is born into the world whose work
Is not born with him; there is always work
And tools to work withal for those who will.
And blessed are the horny hands of toil!
The busy world shoves angrily aside
The man who stands with arms akimbo set,
Until occasion tells him what to do;
And he who waits to have his task worked out--
Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled."

* * * * *

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