And in a way I am satisfied with having achieved that material success which argues the possession of brains and industry; but the encomiums of the high-school principal and the congratulations of my college mates, sincere and well-meaning as they are, no longer quicken my blood; for I know that they are based on a total ignorance of the person they seek to honor.  They see a heavily built, well-groomed, shrewd-looking man, with clear-cut features, a ready smile, and a sort of brusque frankness that seems to them the index of an honest heart.  They hear him speak in a straightforward, direct way about the “Old Home,” and the “Dear Old College,” and “All Our Friends”—­quite touching at times, I assure you—­and they nod and say, “Good fellow, this!  No frills—­straight from the heart!  No wonder he has got on in the city!  Sterling chap!  Hurrah!”

Perhaps, after all, the best part of me comes out on these occasions.  But it is not the me that I have worked for half a century to build up; it is rather what is left of the me that knelt at my mother’s side forty years ago.  Yet I have no doubt that, should these good parents of mine see how I live in New York, they would only be the more convinced of the greatness of my success—­the success to achieve which I have given the unremitting toil of thirty years.

* * * * *

And as I now clearly see that the results of this striving and the objects of my ambition have been largely, if not entirely, material, I shall take the space to set forth in full detail just what this material success amounts to, in order that I may the better determine whether it has been worth struggling for.  Not only are the figures that follow accurate and honest, but I am inclined to believe that they represent the very minimum of expenditure in the class of New York families to which mine belongs.  They may at first sight seem extravagant; but if the reader takes the trouble to verify them—­as I have done, alas! many times to my own dismay and discouragement—­he will find them economically sound.  This, then, is the catalogue of my success.

I possess securities worth about seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars and I earn at my profession from thirty to forty thousand dollars a year.  This gives me an annual income of from sixty-five thousand to seventy-five thousand dollars.  In addition I own a house on the sunny side of an uptown cross street near Central Park which cost me, fifteen years ago, one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, and is now worth two hundred and fifty thousand.  I could sell it for that.  The taxes alone amount to thirty-two hundred dollars—­the repairs and annual improvements to about twenty-five hundred.  As the interest on the value of the property would be twelve thousand five hundred dollars it will be seen that merely to have a roof over my head costs me annually over eighteen thousand dollars.