what chance had he with nothing ahead of him but regular reports to the
department in which he could only announce that he was in good health
and that no one had "called."

Chase belonged to the diplomatic class which owes its elevation to the
influence of Congress--not to Congress as a body but to one of its
atoms. He was not a politician; no more was he an office seeker. He was
a real soldier of fortune, in search of affairs--in peace or in war, on
land or at sea. Possessed of a small income, sufficiently adequate to
sustain life if he managed to advance it to the purple age (but wholly
incapable of supporting him as a thriftless diplomat), he was compelled
to make the best of his talents, no matter to what test they were put.
He left college at twenty-two, possessed of the praiseworthy design to
earn his own way without recourse to the $4,500 income from a certain
trust fund. His plan also incorporated the hope to save every penny of
that income for the possible "rainy day." He was now thirty; in each of
several New York banks he had something like $4,000 drawing three per
cent. interest while he picked his blithe way through the world on
$2,500 a year, more or less, as chance ordained.

"When I'm forty," Chase was wont to remark to envious spendthrifts who
couldn't understand his philosophy, "I'll have over a hundred thousand
there, and if I live to be ninety, just think what I'll have! And it
will be like finding the money, don't you see? Of course, I won't live
to be ninety. Moreover, I may get married and have to maintain a poor
wife with rich relatives, which is a terrible strain, you know. You have
to live up to your wife's relatives, if you don't do anything else."

He did not refer to the chance that he was quite sure to come in for a
large legacy at the death of his maternal grandfather, a millionaire