My ship of money did not come in until after I’d encountered my fortieth year. For those eighteen years next prior, if truth must out, I’d picked up intermittent small money following the races. Turf interest of that day settled about such speedy ones as Goldsmith Maid, Lucy, Judge Fullerton and American Girl, while Budd Doble, Dan Mace and Jack Splan were more often in the papers than was the President. I followed the races, I say; sometimes I was flush of money, more often I was poor; but one way or another I clung to the skirts of the circuits and managed to live. Now, since age has come to my head and gold to my fingers, and I’ve had time and the cooled blood wherewith to think, I’ve laid my ill courses of those eighteen evil years to the doors of what vile ideals of life are taught in circles of our very rich. What is true now, was true then. Among our “best people”--if “best” be the word where “worst” might better fit the case--who is held up to youthful emulation? Is it the great lawyer, or writer, or preacher, or merchant, or man of medicine? Is it he of any trade or calling who stands usefully and profitably at the head of his fellows? Never; such gentry of decent effort and clean dollars to flow therefrom are not mentioned; or if they be, it is not for compliment and often with disdain. And who has honor in the social conventions of our American aristocrats? It is young A, who drives an automobile some eighty miles an hour; or young B, who sails a single-sticker until her canvas is blown from the bolt ropes; or young C, who rides like an Arab at polo; or young D, who drives farthest at golf; or young E, who is the headlong first in a paper chase. These be the ideals; these the promontories to steer by. Is it marvel then when a youth raised of those “best circles” falls out of his nest of money that he lies sprawling, unable to honestly aid himself? Is it strange that he afterward lives drunken and precariously and seldom in walks asking industry and hard work? His training has been to spend money, while his contempt was reserved for those who labored its honorable accumulation. Such wrong-taught creatures, bereft of bank accounts, are left to adopt the races, the gambling tables, or the wine trade; and with all my black wealth of experience, I sit unable to determine which is basest and most loathly of the three. During those eighteen roving, race-course years I saw my mother but seldom; and I never exposed to her my methods of life. I told her that I “traveled;” and she, good, innocent girl! gained from the phrase a cloudy notion that I went the trusted ambassador to various courts of trade of some great manufactory. I protected her from the truth to the end, and she died brightly confident that her son made a brilliant figure in the world.