WHEN he told me his story, prefacing it with a scrap of philosophy, John Norton assured me it differed from that of scores of other men of his class but in one or two unimportant particulars. He gave it as his opinion that one need not necessarily be a genius to get ahead in this world; there are other qualities almost any man can cultivate which command opportunity, and in spite of the fact that he spoke with the authority of a rather conspicuous success, he disclaimed the possession of any special ability above the average.
To begin with, Norton had much of the cheerful ambition characteristic of the average American. He had been thoroughly drilled in the idea that the one thing needful, if one wished to get on, was industry,—given this, the results were as certain as that two and two make four.
He was a broad-shouldered young fellow, more than commonly prepossessing, with an utter absence of any ability for sharp practise; indeed, he was inclined to view his fellows with a gentle kindly confidence that proved costly until he learned caution, and even then he was not bitter, only a little hurt.
He came of honest stock and of people in comfortable circumstances, proud of their traditions and their respectability and rather regretful of the fortune old General Norton had somehow lost when he emigrated from Virginia to Ohio in 1814.
Perhaps John would not have felt called upon to make the plunge into business had his father kept his name off the notes of his neighbors; as a consequence of his indiscretions the broad acres he had inherited slipped away piecemeal.
John was the eldest of four boys and the first to leave home. At twenty he went East. He recognized that he would probably have a good many ups and downs before he finally got placed, and he was thankful his career was to be among strangers.
He was not much worried in the beginning over ways and means, for his father sent him money each week, and small as the sums were they gave him a pleasing sense of security. He soon discovered that merely to make a living can be a difficult problem; it also dawned upon him that he reached the solving of the problem in a roundabout fashion through a haze of uncertainty.
After his father's death, when it became necessary for him to make his own way unaided, he brought to the task a sad earnestness. He was, he felt, without business tact—indeed, the word business comprehended all of which he was most ignorant. He could never impress people with the importance of those benefits they would derive from thinking as he wished them to think, for he was never quite sure about the benefits. He could feel himself shrink and dwindle and grow limp, when what he needed was a convincing force. Still it continued part of his faith that there was some work he could do well, and that sooner or later he would have the opportunity to do it. He was a little shocked to find that there was no particular merit in being well-born and well-bred.
He was in rapid succession clerk, traveling salesman, bookkeeper, advertising solicitor and real-estate agent; he went from place to place hoping each time he made a change, that now he was nearer success.
Meanwhile his mother died, and the home had been sold to pay his father's debts. His brothers had scattered,—one was in California, a clerk in a store, another was a miner in Colorado, a third has gone to South America, while Tom, the youngest, was editor of a country newspaper in Texas.