t
recreate it. And if I'm helping to make it worse, I'm also hastening the
time when it'll be better. The Great Ass must have brains and spirit
kicked and cudgeled into it."

At his house in Madison Avenue, just at the crest of Murray Hill, there
was an awning from front door to curb and a carpet beneath it. He
passed, dry and comfortable, up the steps. A footman in quiet rich
livery was waiting to receive him. From rising until bedtime, up town
and down town, wherever he went and whatever he was about, every
possible menial detail of his life was done for him. He had nothing to
do but think about his own work and keep himself in health. Rarely did
he have even to open or to close a door. He used a pen only in signing
his name or marking a passage in a law book for some secretary to make a
typewritten copy.

Upon most human beings this sort of luxury, carried beyond the ordinary
and familiar uses of menial service, has a speedily enervating effect.
Thinking being the most onerous of all, they have it done, also. They
sink into silliness and moral and mental sloth. They pass the time at
foolish purposeless games indoors and out; or they wander aimlessly
about the earth chattering with similar mental decrepits, much like
monkeys adrift in the boughs of a tropical forest. But Norman had the
tenacity and strength to concentrate upon achievement all the powers
emancipated by the use of menials wherever menials could be used. He
employed to advantage the time saved in putting in shirt buttons and
lacing shoes and carrying books to and from shelves. In this lay one of
the important secrets of his success. "Never do for yourself what you
can get some one else to do for you as well. Save yourself for the
things only _you_ can do."

In his household there were three persons, and sixteen servants to wait
upon them. His sister--she and her husband, Clayton Fitzhugh, were the
other two persons--his sister was always complaining that there were not
enough servants, and Frederick, the most indulgent of brothers, was
always letting her add to the number. It seemed to him that the more
help there was, the less smoothly the household ran. But that did not
concern him; his mind was saved for more important matters. There was no
reason why it should concern him; could he not compel the dollars to
flood in faster than she could bail them out?

This brother and sister had come to New York fifteen years before, when
he was twenty-two and