“Why?” he questioned succinctly.
“I wish to discover whether you believe special advantages at the beginning of a youth’s career are necessary to success?”
“Why my opinion?”
I was rather floored for an instant, but endeavored to make plain the natural interest of the public in the subject and his opinion, but he interrupted me with the query:—
“Why don’t you ask a man who never had any advantages,” at the same time fixing upon me one of his famous “what’s in thy heart?” glances.
“Then you have had them?” I said, grasping wildly at the straw that might keep the interviewer afloat.
“A few, not many,” he replied.
“Are advantages necessary to success to-day?”
“Define advantages and success,” he said abruptly, evidently questioning whether it was worth while to talk. A distinguished looking figure he made, looking on, as I collected my defining ability. The room seemed full of his atmosphere. He is a tall man, oaken in strength, with broad, intelligent face, high forehead, alert, wide-set eyes, and firm, even lips expressive of great self-control. His fluency, his wit and humor, his sound knowledge, his strength and perfect self-possession, were all suggested by his face and expression, and by the firmness of his squarely set head and massive shoulders.