ults.

It was about this time that I stepped into the office of my cousin,
then a successful lawyer and district attorney of his city, later the
first vice-president of one of the great American railroads with
headquarters in New York, and now retired. He was one of those men in
whose vocabulary there is no such word as "fail." After I had talked
with him for quite a while, he looked at me, and with his kindly,
almost fatherly smile asked, "Why don't you cure yourself?"

"Cure myself?" I queried. "How do you expect me, a young man with no
scientific training, to cure myself, when the learned doctors, surgeons
and scientists of the country hare given me up as incurable?"

"That doesn't make any difference," he replied, "'while there is life,
there is hope' and it's a sure thing that nobody ever accomplished
anything worth while by accepting the failures of others as proof that
the thing couldn't be done. Whitney would never have invented the
cotton gin if he had accepted the failures of others as final. Columbus
picked out a road to America and assured the skeptics that there was no
danger of his sailing 'over the edge.' Of course, it had never been
done before, but then Columbus went ahead and did it himself. He didn't
take somebody else's failure as an indication of what he could do. If
he had, a couple of hundred years later, somebody else would have
discovered it and put Columbus in the class with the rest of the
weak-kneed who said it couldn't BE done, just because IT NEVER HAD BEEN
DONE.

"The progress of this country, Ben," continued my cousin, "is founded
on the determination of men who refuse to accept the failures of others
as proof that things can't be done at all. Now you've got a mighty good
start. You've found out all about these other methods--you know that
they have failed--and in a lot of cases, you know WHY they have failed.
Now, why don't you begin where they have left off and find out how to
succeed?"

The thought struck me like a bolt from a clear sky: "BEGIN WHERE THE
OTHERS LEAVE OFF AND FIND OUT HOW TO SUCCEED!" I kept saying it over
and over to myself, "Begin where the others leave off--begin where the
others leave off!"

This thought put high hope in my heart. It seemed to ring like a call
from afar. "Begin where the others leave off and find out how to
succeed." I kept thinking about that all the way home. I thought of it
at the table that evening. I said nothing. I went to bed--but I di