fellows meet in all lines of business and especially in technical courses in college come largely from the fact that men have gone into them not because of any special fitness or of any special interest in the work or liking for it, but because they felt that the particular business or profession which they were taking up offered an easy and sure approach to success.
In choosing a profession one ought to be willing to reach success slowly and by reasonable stages.
Cowan did well in high school and college. He was not afraid of work, he showed enthusiasm, and he was dependable. His character was above reproach, and his personality was unusually attractive. I used often to marvel at the ease with which he met people, the rapidity with which he made friends, and the facility with which he dispatched business; but yet he did not get on. He tried life insurance but gave it up at the end of a few months; he took up the real estate business; he was a traveling salesman for a tractor company; he went in with a reputable manufacturing concern; but he did not stick long. He drifted from one thing to another, and at the end of ten years he had got nowhere; yet everyone admitted his ability.
The real cause of his failure was that Cowan wanted to succeed at a bound; he was looking for something that would make him rich or famous or independent in a short time. He was not willing to go through the long period of servitude and drudgery that practically every success-
