If any one had told him that he was a miserable man he would have been
angry, and also surprised. Why the dickens should he be miserable? He
considered himself one of the most successful men in New York, and his
greatest pleasure was in recalling his successes, step by step, from
the time before he got his foot on the first rung of the ladder all
the way up to the top.
Often he lay awake at night pondering on those first days and first
ambitions. If he began to think of them when he went to bed it was
fatal. He became so pleasantly excited, and the past built itself up
so realistically all about him, that he could not go to sleep for
hours. What a sensational "bed book" is to some tired brains, that
was his past to the head of the Hands. Besides, he had everything in
the world that he or anybody else (it seemed to him) could possibly
want. Perhaps it was a little irritating when you could have all you
wanted not to know what to want. But, he consoled himself, that must
be so with all rich people. The best thing was not to think about it.
He was convinced that he loved mother as dearly as ever a husband had
loved a wife. They were uncomfortable together, but wretched apart.
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