HE ALWAYS SUPPORTED HIMSELF
“From the time I began working in the store until to-day, I have always supported myself, and during all the years of my boyhood I never received a penny that I did not earn myself. At the end of my first year, I went to a larger store in the same town, where I was to receive sixty dollars a year and my board. I kept this place for two years, and then I gave it up, against the wishes of my employer, because I had made up my mind that I wanted to get a better education. I determined to go to college.
“I did not know how I was going to do this, except that it must be by my own efforts. I had saved about eighty dollars from my store-keeping, and that was all the money I had in the world.” Out of a hundred and fifty dollars, the only cash he received as his first earnings during three years, young Schurman had saved eighty dollars; this he invested in the beginnings of an education.
“When I told my employer of my plan, he tried to dissuade me from it. He pointed out the difficulties in the way of my going to college, and offered to double my pay if I would stay in the store.”