He saw himself again the homeless little farmer boy setting out from his Illinois village to take up life in a great city; as though it had all happened but yesterday he remembered how for days and weeks he had nearly starved, how he had sold papers at first, and then, by lucky chance, became errand boy in a big drafting establishment.

It was there that the ambition was born in him.

He saw great engineers come and go--men who were greater than presidents to him, and who sought out the ends of the earth in the following of their vocation.

He made a slave of himself in the nurturing and strengthening of his ambition to become one of them--to be a builder of railroads and bridges, a tunneler of mountains, a creator of new things in new lands.

His slavery had not lessened as his years increased.