Perhaps, I should give just here a little more of Miss Eleanor Leigh's
history as I came to know of it later on. How I came to know of it may
or may not be divulged later. But, at least, I learned it. She was the
daughter of a gentleman who, until she came and began to tyrannize over
him, gave up all of his time and talents to building up enterprises of
magnitude and amassing a fortune. He had showed abilities and ambition
at college "back East," where he came from, and when he first struck for
the West and started out in life, it was in a region and amid
surroundings which were just becoming of more than local importance as
they a little later grew under the guidance of men of action like
himself, to be of more than sectional importance. The new West as it was
then had called to him imperiously and he had responded. Flinging
himself into the current which was just beginning to take on force, he
soon became one of the pilots of the development which, changing a vast
region where roamed Indians and buffalo into a land of cities and
railways, shortly made its mark on the Nation and, indeed, on the
world, and he was before long swept quite away by it, leaving behind all
the intellectual ambitions and dreams he had ever cherished and giving
himself up soul and body to the pleasure he got out of his success as an
organizer and administrator of large enterprises. Wealth at first was
important to him, then it became, if not unimportant, at least of
secondary importance to the power he possessed. Then it became of
importance again--indeed of supreme importance; for the power he wielded
was now dependent on wealth and great wealth. His associates were all
men of large interests, and only one with similar interests could lead
them. New conditions had come about of late and new methods which he
could neither employ nor contend against successfully.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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