I had a "whiskey sour," and he prescribed for himself a strange thing of his own invention.

Then we lighted our cigars, and he talked.
"Thirty years ago," said he, "I was a young man with a healthy belief in myself, and a desire to do good to others.

I did not imagine myself a genius.

I did not even consider myself exceptionally brilliant or talented.

But it did seem to me, and the more I noted the doings of my fellow-men and women, the more assured did I become of it, that I possessed plain, practical common sense to an unusual and remarkable degree.