VII 



As I read over this story, it strikes me that 

 I may not have been quite fair in my record. 

 I seem to have laid a very light accent upon 

 our difficulties, giving an effect as if we had 

 had none that counted as if we had followed 

 a smooth and easy path that led straight from 

 one success to another. To give that impres- 

 sion is misleading. 



We had our difficulties, rough ones, plenty 

 of them. Indeed, the whole job, from first to 

 last, has been a conquest of difficulties. I can't 

 remember a blessed thing we've done that 

 hasn't given us hard work or anxious thought, 

 or both. That was the only experience we had 

 any right to expect. There were times when 

 the frets came in flocks. Lazy incompetence 

 of the extra labor we were forced to hire some- 

 times in emergency was an unfailing source of 

 irritation. At first we had marveled that we 

 were able to get men to work for a dollar a day 

 and "find" themselves less than half the price 



137 



