Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Our Nervous Friends — Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness by Robert S. Carroll
page 75 of 210 (35%)
did not take to the importing business, while his cousins early showed
a natural capacity for the work of the big firm in all its branches.
Clifford's parents, too, seemed to feel that it was time that there be
a professional member of their honorable family. Moreover the property
was large, and the younger sisters would require a guardian, and the
estate an administrator. So Clifford finished the law-course. Nor was
it many years until the family fortune of approximately one million
dollars in real estate, securities and mortgages was left him to
administer for himself and the two sisters. Thus before thirty the
responsibility of these many thousands swept down upon him. Limited in
practical contact with the world, geographically, politically,
socially, having learned little of the play-side of life, he was by
inheritance, training and inclination a conservative. He had never
practiced law. He never tried a case, but he now opened a downtown
office where he punctually arrived at ten o'clock and methodically
spent the morning, carefully, personally managing all the details of
the entailed estate. He was essentially conscientious and, as the
years passed, there was no lessening of interest in his devotion to
each transaction, large or small. There were no losses, though his
conservatism turned him away from many golden opportunities which
knocked at the door of his wealth, the acceptance of which would have
doubled the estate in any ten-year period of these days of New York's
magnificent expansion. He was nearly forty when he married a quiet,
good woman who added little that was new, who most conscientiously
subtracted nothing of the old, from his now systematic life. They both
realized that their Fifth Avenue home was rapidly growing out of date,
so for nearly five years they spent their spare hours daily, in the,
to Clifford, vital and seemingly unending details of modernizing the
old house. It was during those days when the plans so carefully
considered were being realized in granite and marble and polished
DigitalOcean Referral Badge