Western Union

It was a summer day in 1861, when I boarded a west-bound stage-coach in Omaha, Nebraska, at the end of my resources and the end of my rope.I put back in my pocket the newspaper clipping which had been responsible for giving me inspiration at a time when I needed it most. At twenty-four years, everything I had tried had somehow failed to hold me. I had long been in doubt whether or not there was anything really in me.My father wanted me to try law, so I went to Harvard for a year, then gave that up. Then I tried medicine for a year. No good. I had interest in medicine, but I could not stay indoors and study. Those two frustrated years, however, revealed to me what was the matter. The ambition of my parents and relatives to put me in a profession or if not that, into business, had influenced me against what I really wanted.