It was a summer day in 1861, when I boarded a west-bound stage-coach in Omaha, Nebraska, at the end of my resources and the end of my rope. I put back in my pocket the newspaper clipping which had been responsible for giving me inspiration at a time when I needed it most. At twenty-four years, everything I had tried had somehow failed to hold me. I had long been in doubt whether or not there was anything really in me. My father wanted me to try law, so I went to Harvard for a year, then gave that up. Then I tried medicine for a year. No good. I had interest in medicine, but I could not stay indoors and study. Those two frustrated years, however, revealed to me what was the matter. The ambition of my parents and relatives to put me in a profession or if not that, into business, had influenced me against what I really wanted.