Being the Confessions of A Successful Man CONTENTS 
<ul>
<li>MY FRIENDS</li>
<li>MYSELF</li>
<li>MY CHILDREN</li>
<li>MY MORALS</li>
<li>MY MIND</li>
<li>MY FUTURE</li>
</ul>
 "We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. We have lost the power of even imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant--the liberation from material attachments; the unbribed soul; the manlier indifference; the paying our way by what we are or do, and not by what we have; the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly--the more athletic trim, in short the moral fighting shape.... It is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated class is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers." William James, p. 313. CHAPTER I MYSELF "My house, my affairs, my ache and my religion--" I was fifty years old to-day. Half a century has hurried by since I first lay in my mother's wondering arms. To be sure, I am not old; but I can no longer deceive myself into believing that I am still young. After all, the illusion of youth is a mental habit consciously encouraged to defy and face down the reality of age. If, at twenty, one feels that he has reached man's estate he, nevertheless, tests his strength and abilities, his early successes or