ill Dutch; he had held
on to the lesson which his people had learned years ago; that the people
of other European countries had learned; that the English had
discovered: that the Great Adventure of Life was something more than
material work, and that the time to go is while the going is good!

For it cannot be denied that the pathetic picture we so often see is
found in American business life more frequently than in that of any
other land: men unable to let go--not only for their own good, but to
give the younger men behind them an opportunity. Not that a man should
stop work, for man was born to work, and in work he should find his
greatest refreshment. But so often it does not occur to the man in a
pivotal position to question the possibility that at sixty or seventy he
can keep steadily in touch with a generation whose ideas are controlled
by men twenty years younger. Unconsciously he hangs on beyond his
greatest usefulness and efficiency: he convinces himself that he is
indispensable to his business, while, in scores of cases, the business
would be distinctly benefited by his retirement and the consequent
coming to the front of the younger blood.

Such a man in a position of importance seems often not to see that he
has it within his power to advance the fortunes of younger men by
stepping out when he has served his time, while by refusing to let go he
often works dire injustice and even disaster to his younger associates.

The sad fact is that in all too many instances the average American
business man is actually afraid to let go because he realizes that out
of business he should not know what to do. For years he has so excluded
all other interests that at fifty or sixty or seventy he finds himself a
slave to his business, with positively no inner resources. Retirement
from the one thing he does know would naturally leave such a man useless
to himself and his family, and his community: worse than useless, as a
matter of fact, for he would become a burden to himself, a nuisance to
his family, and, when he would begin to write "letters" to the
newspapers, a bore to the community.

It is significant that a European or English business man rarely reaches
middle age devoid of acquaintance with other matters; he always lets the
breezes from other worlds of thought blow through his ideas, with the
result that when he is ready to retire from business he has other
interests to fall back upon. Fortunately it is becoming