I have motors, saddle-horses, and a beautiful summer cottage at a cool and fashionable resort.  I travel abroad when the spirit moves me; I entertain lavishly and am entertained in return; I smoke the costliest cigars; I have a reputation at the bar, and I have an established income large enough to sustain at least sixty intelligent people and their families in moderate comfort.  This must be true, for on the one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month I pay my chauffeur he supports a wife and two children, sends them to school and on a three-months’ vacation into the country during the summer.  And, instead of all these things giving me any satisfaction, I am miserable and discontented.

The fact that I now realize the selfishness of my life led me to-day to resolve to do something for others—­and this resolve had an unexpected and surprising consequence.

Heretofore I had been engaged in an introspective study of my own attitude toward my fellows.  I had not sought the evidence of outside parties.  What has just occurred has opened my eyes to the fact that others have not been nearly so blind as I have been myself.

James Hastings, my private secretary, is a man of about forty-five years of age.  He has been in my employ fifteen years.  He is a fine type of man and deserves the greatest credit for what he has accomplished.  Beginning life as an office boy at three dollars a week, he educated himself by attending school at night, learned stenography and typewriting, and has become one of the most expert law stenographers in Wall Street.  I believe that, without being a lawyer, he knows almost as much law as I do.

Gradually I have raised his wages until he is now getting fifty dollars a week.  In addition to this he does night-work at the Bar Association at double rates, acts as stenographer at legal references, and does, I understand, some trifling literary work besides.  I suppose he earns from thirty-five hundred to five thousand dollars a year.  About thirteen years ago he married one of the woman stenographers in the office—­a nice girl she was too—­and now they have a couple of children.  He lives somewhere in the country and spends an unconscionable time on the train daily, yet he is always on hand at an early hour.

What happened to-day was this:  A peculiarly careful piece of work had been done in the way of looking up a point of corporation law, and I inquired who was responsible for briefing it.  Hastings smiled and said he had done so.  As I looked at him it suddenly dawned on me that this man might make real money if he studied for the bar and started in practice for himself.  He had brains and an enormous capacity for work.  I should dislike losing so capable a secretary, but it would be doing him a good turn to let him know what I thought; and it was time that I did somebody a good turn from an unselfish motive.

“Hastings,” I said, “you’re too good to be merely a stenographer.  Why don’t you study law and make some money?  I’ll keep you here in my office, throw things in your way and push you along.  What do you say?”