PREFACE How This Book Was Written—and Why

In 1909, I was one of the unhappiest lads in New York. I was selling motor-trucks for a living. I didn't know what made a motor-truck run. That wasn't all: I didn't want to know. I despised my job. I despised living in a cheap furnished room on West Fifty-sixth Street—a room infested with cockroaches. I still remember that I had a bunch of neckties hanging on the walls; and when I reached out of a morning to get a fresh necktie, the cockroaches scattered in all directions. I despised having to eat in cheap, dirty restaurants that were also probably infested with cockroaches.

I came home to my lonely room each night with a sick headache—a headache bred and fed by disappointment, worry, bitterness, and rebellion. I was rebelling because the dreams I had nourished back in my college days had turned into nightmares. Was this life? Was this the vital adventure to which I had looked forward so eagerly? Was this all life would ever mean to me—working at a job I despised, living with cockroaches, eating vile food—and with no hope for the future?...I longed for leisure to read, and to write the books I had dreamed of writing back in my college days.

I knew I had everything to gain and nothing to lose by giving up the job I despised. I wasn't interested in making a lot of money, but I was interested in making a lot of living. In short, I had come to the Rubicon—to that moment of decision which faces most young people when they start out in life. So I made my decision—and that decision completely altered my future. It has made the rest of my life happy and rewarding beyond my most utopian aspirations.