planning that mapped this man’s course, but Providence, Plan¬ 
ning and Luck; and I silence the adversary, for the time, by 
citing these facts; 
“Very shortly after Providence and the sheriff of Erie 
County—whose name, by the way, was Grover Cleveland—had 
disposed of the East Aurora grocery, our friend met a man in 
Buffalo who had a wonderful secret, a sweeping scar on his 
chin, and nothing else worth mentioning. 
“This man secured his assets in Germany; he got them while 
attending the University of Jena. 
“The secret was gotten by an understanding with a professor; 
the scar was received through a misunderstanding with a stu¬ 
dent. 
“The secret was a plan by which you could make glucose 
from corn. 
“In Germany it was only a laboratory experiment, because 
there was no corn in Europe to speak of. 
“Here we had corn to burn, since in that very year the 
farmers of Iowa were using corn for fuel. 
“Glucose is the active saccharine principle in maize, but it 
does not become active until the corn is treated chemically in a 
certain way, just as honey is not honey until a bee puts it through 
his Maeterlinck laboratory. 
“Glucose is a food; it can be used for all purposes where 
sugar is used, in degree, at least. And every living person on 
earth uses sugar as food every day! Now, our ex-grocer knew 
all about Hambletonian Ten and Dexter; but dextrine, dextrose 
and glucose were out of his class. Yet, he realized that if sugar 
could be made from corn, there was a fortune in it for some¬ 
body. 
“Opportunity, we are told, knocks once at each man’s door. 
Our David Harum was forty, past, and he had often thought 
Opportunity was tapping, but when he opened wide the door, 
darkness there, and nothing more! Opportunity had knocked, 
but was too timid to stay. This time, he heard the knock, and 
when he opened the door, Opportunity made a rush for him, 
grabbed him by the collar—catch-as-catch-can—in a grip he 
could not shake off. 
4 
