successfully handled.

This planning for good views must have been an early passion with me.
I remember when I was hardly more than a boy I wanted to cut away a
big tree which I thought interfered with the view from the windows of
the dining-room of our home. I was for cutting it down, but some
other members of the family objected, though my dear mother, I think,
sympathized with me, as she said one day: "You know, my son, we have
breakfast at eight o'clock, and I think if the tree were felled some
time before we sat down to table, there would probably be no great
complaint when the family saw the view which the fallen tree
revealed."

So it turned out.




CHAPTER II

THE DIFFICULT ART OF GETTING


To my father I owe a great debt in that he himself trained me to
practical ways. He was engaged in different enterprises; he used to
tell me about these things, explaining their significance; and he
taught me the principles and methods of business. From early boyhood I
kept a little book which I remember I called Ledger A--and this little
volume is still preserved--containing my receipts and expenditures as
well as an account of the small sums that I was taught to give away