Hooper--
for the first time in fourteen years.
His wanderings as a tramp--in his own account of himself he used the
word "tramp" with a shocking lack of pride--led him inevitably into
the far Northwest. Men were doing things up there. The country fairly
seethed with the activity of live, virile men who were taking the
first staunch grip upon the tricky wheel of fortune and were turning
it to their own account. Every man was building; no man complained of
conditions, for conditions were so new and so ready to hand that he
who found fault was merely lessening his own chance to secure his
share of the vast resources that spread before him, welcoming the
greedy fingers of him who courted the future and shunned the past. All
men lived in the present out there in the great stretches, and all men
were strong and eager.
Joseph Hooper caught the fever that infected the West. He shook off
the fetters that bound him to a far from enchanted East, and began to
squirm with the first tickling sensations of an ambition that had
never really made itself felt, even in the old days of successful
achievement among men who were content to tread the beaten and
commonplace highway toward riches.
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