At the same time I found angles to him. I sensed a ruthlessness in him.
I saw him as a fearless and sleepless antagonist, but always open and
fair. There was only once when his nature broke ground and revealed
something of his inner self, something of a sensitiveness which suffers
for subtler things and penetrates to finer understandings. This was when
he was telling me of the effect of his uncle's broken promise to educate
him. He had suffered deeply for this; and he was sure his whole life
would be influenced by it. It had stirred all the reserve ambition and
power of his nature. It had thrown him forward in a redoubled
determination to overcome the default, to succeed in spite of the lost
opportunity.
Hence he had read many books. He had studied the history of America, and
other countries as well. His mind ran to statecraft. He thought of
nothing else. He sensed men as groups--thinking, desiring, trading,
building--and for these ends organized into neighborhoods, villages,
cities, and states. His genius, even then, was interested in using these
groups for progressive ends, such as he had in view. He was a super-man
who sees empires of progress and achievement for the race through the
haze of the unformed future, and who takes the responsibility of carving
that future out and of forcing history into the segment that his
creative imagination has opened.
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