osed, I fell into a retrospective mood, and the
scroll of the past years unfolded itself before my memory, and as I
reviewed it and marked the possibilities which had passed with the
years, life took on even a greater aspect than it had already possessed.
I shall not discuss my life, but life with its probabilities and
possibilities of power and achievement; life in its earnestness and life
that is merely drifting with the tide, of no benefit to itself or to
humanity.

A man's life depends upon his emotions, his aspirations, his
determinations.

A young man, somebody's son, starts out with the determination that the
world is indebted to him for a good time. "Dollars were made to spend. I
am young, and every man must sow his wild oats and then settle down. I
want to be a 'hail fellow well met' with every one." So he is ever ready
to drink a social glass, to give a pun and to be a "masher on the
girls." With this determination uppermost in his life purpose he starts
out to be a good-timer. Perhaps some mother expects to hear great things
of her boy, some father's hopes are centered in him, but what does that
matter? "I am a good-timer." From one gayety to another, from one glass
to another, from one sin to another, and the good-timer at last is
broken in health, deserted by friends, and left alone to die. Thus the
"man about town" passes off the stage. When you ask some of his friends
about him, the answer is, "Oh, John was all right, but he lived too
fast. I like good time as well as anyone, but I could not keep up with
John." Was the game worth the candle?

Two pictures come before my mind; two cousins, both of them young men.
One started out early in life with the determination of getting along
"easy," shirking work, and looking for a soft snap. His motto was, "The
world owes me a living, and I am going to get mine." He was employed
first by one firm and then by another; if anything that he considered
hard came along, he would pay another fellow to do the work and he "took
things easy." It was not long before no one would hire him. He
continued to hold the idea that the world was indebted to him and
furthermore, he arrogated a belief that what another man had accumulated
he could borrow without his knowledge. He forged another's name, was
detected, and sentenced to the penitentiary and is now wearing the badge
of felony and shame--the convicts' stripes. Young men, the world owes no
man a living, but those who work f