He had now turned instinctively to the making of a home for himself.
After an engagement of four years he had been married, on October 22,
1896, to Mary Louise Curtis, the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus H. K.
Curtis; two sons had been born to them; he had built and was occupying a
house at Merion, Pennsylvania, a suburb six miles from the Philadelphia
City Hall. When she was in this country his mother lived with him, and
also his brother, and, with a strong belief in life insurance, he had
seen to it that his family was provided for in case of personal
incapacity or of his demise. In other words, he felt that he had put his
own house in order; he had carried out what he felt is every man's duty:
to be, first of all, a careful and adequate provider for his family. He
was now at the point where he could begin to work for another goal, the
goal that he felt so few American men saw: the point in his life where
he could retire from the call of duty and follow the call of
inclination.
At the age of forty he tried to look ahead and plan out his life as far
as he could. Barring unforeseen obstacles, he determined to retire from
active business when he reached his fiftieth year, and give the
remainder of his life over to those interests and influences which he
assumed now as part of his life, and which, at fifty, should seem to him
best worth while. He realized that in order to do this he must do two
things: he must husband his financial resources and he must begin to
accumulate a mental reserve.
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