e that are won by
a sudden charge or an accident, and not as the result of long-maturing
causes. Doubtless the direction of a character or a career is often
turned by a sudden act of the will or a momentary impotence of the will.
But the battle is not over then, nor without long and arduous fighting,
often a dreary, dragging struggle without the excitement of novelty.

It was comparatively easy for Jack Delancy in Mr. Fletcher's office to
face about suddenly and say yes to the proposal made him. There was on
him the pressure of necessity, of his own better nature acting under a
sense of his wife's approval; and besides, there was a novelty that
attracted him in trying something absolutely new to his habits.

But it was one thing to begin, and another, with a man of his
temperament, to continue. To have regular hours, to attend to the
details of a traffic that was to the last degree prosaic, in short, to
settle down to hard work, was a very different thing from the "business"
about which Jack and his fellows at the club used to talk so much, and to
fancy they were engaged in. When the news came to the Union that Delancy
had gone into the house of Fletcher & Co. as a clerk, there was a general
smile, and a languid curiosity expressed as to how long he would stick to
it.

In the first day or two Jack was sustained not only by the original
impulse, but by a real instinct in learning about business ways and
details that were new to him. To talk about the business and about the
markets, to hear plans unfolded for extension and for taking advantage of
fluctuations in prices, was all very well; but the drudgery of details
--copying, comparing invoices, and settling into the routine of a clerk's
life, even the life of a confidential clerk--was contrary to the habits
of his whole life. It was not to be expected that these habits would be
overcome without a long struggle and many back-slidings.

The little matter of being at his office desk at nine o'clock in the
morning began to seem a hardship after the first three or four days.
For Mr. Fletcher not to walk into his shop on the stroke of ten would
have been such a reversal of his habits as to cause him as much annoyance
as it caused Jack to be bound to a fixed hour. It was only the
difference in training. But that is saying everything.

Besides, while the details of his work, the more he got settled in them,
were not to his taste, he was daily mortified to find himself ignor