business and rise from position to position until he was taken in
as a junior partner. After that the senior partnership was only a
matter of time. Very often--so ran the myth--the boy, by reason
of his steadiness and application, married his employ's daughter.
By this time I had been encouraged to such faith in myself in the
matter of girls that I was quite certain I would marry my
employer's daughter. There wasn't a doubt of it. All the little
boys in the myths did it as soon as they were old enough.

So I bade farewell for ever to the adventure-path, and went out to
the power plant of one of our Oakland street railways. I saw the
superintendent himself, in a private office so fine that it almost
stunned me. But I talked straight up. I told him I wanted to
become a practical electrician, that I was unafraid of work, that
I was used to hard work, and that all he had to do was look at me
to see I was fit and strong. I told him that I wanted to begin
right at the bottom and work up, that I wanted to devote my life
to this one occupation and this one employment.

The superintendent beamed as he listened. He told me that I was
the right stuff for success, and that he believed in encouraging
American youth that wanted to rise. Why, employers were always on
the lookout for young fellows like me, and alas, they found them
all too rarely. My ambition was fine and worthy, and he would see
to it that I got my chance. (And as I listened with swelling
heart, I wondered if it was his daughter I was to marry.)

"Before you can go out on the road and learn the more complicated
and higher details of the profession," he said, "you will, of
course, have to work in the car-house with the men who install and