Who was it, I wonder, made that sagacious remark about the road to hell being paved with good intentions? He might have added an amendment to the effect that there's always a plentiful supply of material for that much travelled highway. We all contribute, more or less. I know I have done so. And so did my people before me. My father's intentions were good, but he didn't live long enough to carry them out. If he hadn't fallen a victim to an inborn streak of recklessness, a habit of taking chances,-well, I can't say just how things would have panned out. I'm not fatalist enough to believe that we crawl or run or soar through our allotted span of years according to some prearranged scheme which we are powerless to modify. Oh, no! It's highly probable, however, that if my father and mother had lived I should have gone into some commercial pursuit or taken up one of the professions. Either way, I should likely have pegged along in an uneventful sort of way to the end of the chapter-lots of men do. Not that I would have taken with enthusiasm to chasing the nimble dollar for the pure love of catching it, but because I was slated for something of the sort, and as the twig is bent so is the tree inclined; a man can't sit down and twiddle his thumbs and refuse to perform any useful act, because there is no glory in it. The heroic age has gone a-glimmering down the corridors of time.
