alternative.  But it happened that I had been left enough money by my father not to make it necessary for me to think solely of earning bread for myself and my family.  I had enough to get bread.  What I had to do, if I wanted butter and jam, was to provide the butter and jam, but to count their cost as compared with other things.  In other words, I made up my mind that, while I must earn money, I could afford to make earning money the secondary instead of the primary object of my career.  If I had had no money at all, then my first duty would have been to earn it in any honest fashion.  As I had some money I felt that my need for more money was to be treated as a secondary need, and that while it was my business to make more money where I legitimately and properly could, yet that it was also my business to treat other kinds of work as more important than money-making.

Almost immediately after leaving Harvard in 1880 I began to take an interest in politics.  I did not then believe, and I do not now believe, that any man should ever attempt to make politics his only career.  It is a dreadful misfortune for a man to grow to feel that his whole livelihood and whole happiness depend upon his staying in office.  Such a feeling prevents him from being of real service to the people while in office, and always puts him under the heaviest strain of pressure to barter his convictions for the sake of holding office.  A man should have some other occupation—­I had several other occupations—­to which he can resort if at any time he is thrown out of office, or if at any time he finds it necessary to choose a course which will probably result in his being thrown out, unless he is willing to stay in at cost to his conscience.

At that day, in 1880, a young man of my bringing up and convictions could join only the Republican party, and join it I accordingly did.  It was no simple thing to join it then.  That was long before the era of ballot reform and the control of primaries; long before the era when we realized that the Government must take official notice of the deeds and acts of party organizations.  The party was still treated as a private corporation, and in each district the organization formed a kind of social and political club.  A man had to be regularly proposed for and elected into this club, just as into any other club.  As a friend of mine picturesquely phrased it, I “had to break into the organization with a jimmy.”

Under these circumstances there was some difficulty in joining the local organization, and considerable amusement and excitement to be obtained out of it after I had joined.