ent in my estimate endorsed by Dan and a friend of his
and for a month I waited. I didn't sleep as well as usual but Ruth
didn't seem to be bothered. Then one night when I came home I found
Ruth at the outside door waiting for me. I knew the thing had been
decided. She came up to me and put her hand on my shoulder and patted
me.

"It's yours, Billy," she said.

My heart stopped beating for a moment and then it went on again
beating a dozen ticks to the second.

The next day I closed up my options. I went to Corkery, gave my notice
and told him what I was going to do. He was madder than a hornet. I
listened to what he had to say and went off without a word in reply.
He was so unreasonable that it didn't seem worth it. That noon I
rounded up the men and told them frankly that I was going to start in
business for myself and needed a hundred men. I told them also that
this first job might last only four or five weeks and that while I had
nothing definite in mind after that I was in hopes to secure in the
meanwhile other contracts. I said this would be largely up to them. I
told them that I didn't want a man to come who wasn't willing to take
the chance. Of course it was something of a chance because Corkery had
been giving them steady employment. Still it wasn't a very big chance
because there was always work for such men.

I watched anxiously to see how they would take it. I felt that the
truth of my theories were having their hardest test. When they let out
a cheer and started towards me in a mass I saw blurry.

I'll never forget the feeling I had when I started out in the morning
that first day as an independent contractor; I'll never forget my
feeling as I reached the work an hour ahead of my men and waited for
them to come straggling up. I seemed closer than ever to my ancestors.
I felt as my great-great-grandfather must have felt when he cut loose
from the Massachusetts colony and went off down into the unknown
Connecticut. I was full enough of confidence but I knew that a month
might drive me back again. Deeper than this trivial fear however there
was something bigger--something finer. I was a free man in a larger
way than I had ever been before. It made me feel an American to the
very core of my marrow.

The work was all staked out but before the men began I called them all
together. I didn't make a speech; I just said:

"Men--I've estimated that this can be done by an ordinary bunch of men
in forty days; I