seen from the side of earning
one's own living--a knowledge which can never be acquired at
second-hand, and which he considered inestimable, giving to a man juster
views of himself and his fellow-men than anything else can.

In the nine years that had passed since his father's death Evert had, as
has been stated, quadrupled the fortune he had inherited.

It was said--by the less successful--that Chance, Luck, and Opportunity
had all favored him. It was perhaps Chance that had led the elder
Winthrop in the beginning to invest some hundreds of dollars in wild
lands on the shore of Lake Superior--though even that was probably
foresight. But as for Luck, she is generally nothing but
clear-headedness. And Opportunity offers herself, sooner or later, to
almost all; it is only that so few of us recognize her, and seize the
advantages she brings. Winthrop had been aided by two things; one was
capital to begin with; the other a perfectly untrammelled position. He
had no one to think of but himself.

Early in the spring after his father's death he journeyed westward,
looking after some property, and decided to go to Lake Superior and see
that land also. He always remembered his arrival; the steamer left him
on a rough pier jutting out into the dark gray lake; on the shore,
stretching east and west, was pine forest, unbroken save where in the
raw clearing, dotted with stumps, rose a few unpainted wooden houses,
and the rough buildings of the stamping-mills, their great wooden legs
stamping ponderously on iron ore. His land was in the so-called town;
after looking at it, he went out to the mine from which the ore came; he
knew something of ores, and had a fancy to see the place. He went on
horseback, following a wagon track through the wild forest. The snow
still lay in the hollows, there was scarcely a sign of spring; the mine
was at some distance, and the road very bad; but at last he reached it.
The buildings and machinery of the struggling little company were poor
and insufficient; but few men were employed, the superintendent had a
discouraged expression. But far above this puny little scratching at its
base rose "the mountain," as it was called; and it was a cliff-like
hill of iron ore. One could touch it, feel it; it was veritable, real.
To Winthrop it seemed a striking picture--the great hill of metal,
thinly veiled with a few trees, rising towards the sky, the primitive
forest at its feet, the snow, the silence, and beyo