all sorts of modern conveniences to add to one's comfort, without
money? The philosophers declared contentment to be happiness,
arguing that the hod-carrier was likely to be happier in his hut
than the millionaire in his palace; but was not that mere animal
contentment, the happiness which knows no higher state, the
ignorance of one whose eyes have never been raised to the heights?

No, Jefferson was no fool. He loved money for what pleasure,
intellectual or physical, it could give him, but he would never
allow money to dominate his life as his father had done. His
father, he knew well, was not a happy man, neither happy himself
nor respected by the world. He had toiled all his life to make his
vast fortune and now he toiled to take care of it. The galley
slave led a life of luxurious ease compared with John Burkett
Ryder. Baited by the yellow newspapers and magazines, investigated
by State committees, dogged by process-servers, haunted by
beggars, harassed by blackmailers, threatened by kidnappers,
frustrated in his attempts to bestow charity by the cry "tainted
money"--certainly the lot of the world's richest man was far from
being an enviable one.

That is why Jefferson had resolved to strike out for himself. He
had warded off the golden yoke which his father proposed to put on
his shoulders, declining the lucrative position made for him in
the Empire Trading Company, and he had gone so far as to refuse
also the private income his father offered to settle on him. He
would earn his own living. A man who has his bread buttered for
him seldom accomplishes anything he had said, and while his father
had appeared to be angry at this open opposition to his will, he
was secretly pleased at his son's grit. Jefferson was thoroughly