I should have been a lawyer, I know; for I
had had the ambition from my earliest boyhood, and I had been confirmed
in it by my success in debating at school. (Once, at Notre Dame, I
spoke for a full hour in successful defence of the proposition that
Colorado was the "greatest state in the Union," and proved at least
that I had a lawyer's "wind.") But I should probably have been a
lawyer who has learned his pleasant theories of life in the colleges.
And on the night that my father died, the crushing realities of poverty
put out an awful and compelling hand on me, and my struggle with them
began.
I was eighteen years old, the eldest of four children. I had been
"writing proofs" in the Denver land office, for claimants who had filed
on Government land; and I had saved $150 of my salary before my work
there ceased. I found, after my father's death, that this $150 was all
we had in the world, and $130 of it went for funeral expenses. His
life had been insured for $15,000, and we believed that the premiums
had all been paid, but we could not find the last receipt; the agent
denied having received the payment; the policy had lapsed on the day
before my father's death; and we got nothing.
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