rough the homiletic magazines, fashionable at that period,
pointed out but one road to success in this world--the beginning at the
bottom, as Bob was doing; close application; accuracy; frugality;
honesty; fair dealing. The homiletic magazines omitted idealism and
imagination; but perhaps those qualities are so common in what some
people are pleased to call our humdrum modern business life that they
were taken for granted. If a young man could not succeed in this world,
something was wrong with him. Can Bob be blamed that in this baffling
and unsuspected incapacity he found a great humility of spirit? In his
fashion he began to remember trifling significances which at the time
had meant little to him. Thus, a girl had once told him, half seriously:

"Yes, you're a nice boy, just as everybody tells you; a nice, big,
blundering, stupid, Newfoundland-dog boy."

He had laughed good-humouredly, and had forgotten. Now he caught at one
word of it. That might explain it; he was just plain stupid! And stupid
boys either played polo or drove fancy horses or ran yachts--or occupied
ornamental--too ornamental--desks for an hour or so a day. Bob
remembered how, as a small boy, he used to hold the ends of the reins
under the delighted belief that he was driving his father's spirited
pair.

"I've outgrown holding the reins, thank you," he said aloud in disgust.
At the sound of his voice the diver disappeared. Bob laughed and felt a
trifle better.

He reviewed himself dispassionately. He could not but admit that he had
tried hard enough, and that he had courage. It was just a case of
limitation. Bob, for the first time, bumped against the stone wall that
hems us in on all sides--save toward the sky.

He fell into a profound discouragement; a discouragement that somehow
found its prototype in the mournful little lake with its leaden water,
its cold breeze, its whispering, dried marsh grasses, its funereal
tamaracks, and its lonesome diver.

X

But Bob was no quitter. The next morning he tramped down to the office,
animated by a new courage. Even stupid boys learn, he remembered. It
takes longer, of course, and requires more application. But he was
strong and determined. He remembered Fatty Hayes, who took four years to
make the team--Fatty, who couldn't get a signal through his head until
about time for the next play, and whose great body moved appreciable
seconds after his brain had commanded it; Fatty Hayes, the "scrub