So it had gone.  One after another he had with the utmost fervour taken up photography, sailing, carpentry, metal working—­a dozen and one occupations—­only to drop them as suddenly.  This restlessness of childhood came to be considered a defect in young manhood.  It indicated instability of character.  Only his mother, wiser in her quiet way, saw the thoroughness with which he ransacked each subject.  Bobby would read and absorb a dozen technical books in a week, reaching eagerly for the vital principles of his subject.  She alone realized, although but dimly, that the boy did not relinquish his subject until he had grasped those vital principles.

“He’s learning all the time,” she ventured.

“‘Jack of all trades:  master of none,’” quoted Orde doubtfully.

The danger being recognized, little Bobby’s teaching was carefully directed.  He was not discouraged in his varied activities; but the bigger practical principles of American life were inculcated.  These may be very briefly stated.  An American must not idle; he must direct his energies toward success; success means making one’s way in life; nine times out of ten, for ninety-nine men out of a hundred, that means the business world.  To seize the business opportunity; to develop that opportunity through the business virtues of attention to detail, industry, economy, persistence, and enthusiasm—­these represented the plain and manifest duty of every citizen who intended to “be somebody.”

Now Bob realized perfectly well that here he was more fortunate than most.  A great many of his friends had to begin on small salaries in indoor positions of humdrum and mechanical duty.  He had started on a congenial out-of-door occupation of great interest and picturesqueness, one suited to his abilities and promising a great future.  Nevertheless, he had now been in the business five years.  He was beginning to see through and around it.  As yet he had not lost one iota of his enthusiasm for the game; but here and there, once in a while, some of the necessary delays and slow, long repetitions of entirely mechanical processes left him leisure to feel irked, to look above him, beyond the affairs that surrounded him.  At such times the old blank, doped feeling fell across his mind.  It had always been so definite a symptom in his childhood of that state wherein he simply could not drag himself to blow up the embers of his extinguished enthusiasm, that he recoiled from himself in alarm.  He felt his whole stability of character on trial.  If he could not “make good” here, what excuse could there be for him; what was there left for him save the profitless and honourless life of the dilettante and idler?  He had caught on to a big business remarkably well, and it was worse than childish to lose his interest in the game even for the fraction of a second.  Of course, it amounted to nothing but that.  He never did his work better than that spring.