However clear-sighted and philosophical a college graduate, his first actual contact with the great world is apt to be depressing. Society seems so large and so indifferent; he is so insignificant and so helpless--he who six months ago was a hero in the eyes of his companions. Especially is this apt to be the case when one is translated from the dizzy democratic heights of college renown to a humble, humdrum social station. It was no revelation to Gordon Perry to find himself the son of a hard-working, inconspicuous boarding-house keeper, but it sobered him. He was neither ashamed of the fact nor dismayed by it. On the contrary, the sight of his mother's tired face and figure subordinated every ambition to his loving determination to conquer the world for her sake. It seemed, however, a less simple matter to conquer the world now that he was an unknown student in a law office in a large city, with no family influence or powerful friends to abet his endeavors. For the first few years his lot was so obscure that the contrasts of life arrested his attention as they had never done before, though as a subconsciousness, for he never outwardly paused in his efforts to become indispensable to the firm of lawyers in whose office he was. He beheld acquaintances in various employments, whose mental superior he believed himself to be, put in the direct line of preferment through pecuniary or social influence, and had to solace himself with the doctrine--also the American doctrine--that it was every man's privilege to make the most of his own advantages, and his duty to acknowledge the same privilege in others.