My
conscience reproves me to-day, looking back, when I think of the hard
bargain I drove with my young playmates, many of whom were content to
gather dandelions and clover for a whole season with me, conditioned
upon this unique reward--the poorest return ever made to labor. Alas!
what else had I to offer them! Not a penny.
I treasure the remembrance of this plan as the earliest evidence of
organizing power upon the development of which my material success in
life has hung--a success not to be attributed to what I have known or
done myself, but to the faculty of knowing and choosing others who did
know better than myself. Precious knowledge this for any man to
possess. I did not understand steam machinery, but I tried to
understand that much more complicated piece of mechanism--man.
Stopping at a small Highland inn on our coaching trip in 1898, a
gentleman came forward and introduced himself. He was Mr. MacIntosh,
the great furniture manufacturer of Scotland--a fine character as I
found out afterward. He said he had ventured to make himself known as
he was one of the boys who had gathered, and sometimes he feared
"conveyed," spoil for the rabbits, and had "one named after him." It
may be imagined how glad I was to meet him--the only one of the rabbit
boys I have met in after-life.
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