It was wanting to work a human
brain to its last volt of capacity, and to see what it could do. I
suppose I became selfish as I forged on. I didn't mean to be, but
concentration upon the things I had to do prevented me from being the
thing I ought to be. I wanted, as they say, to get there. I had a lot of
irons in the fire--too many--but they weren't put there deliberately. One
thing led to another, and one thing, as it were, hung upon another, until
they all got to be part of the scheme. Once they got there, I had to
carry them all on, I couldn't drop any of them; they got to be my life.
It didn't matter that it all grew bigger and bigger, and the risks got
greater and greater. I thought I could weather it through, and so I could
have done, if it hadn't been for a mistake and an accident; but the
mistake was mine. That's where the thing nips--the mistake was mine. I
took too big a risk. You see, I'd got so used to being lucky, it seemed
as if I couldn't go wrong. Everything had come my way. Ever since I began
in that Montreal railway office, after leaving college, I hadn't a single
setback. I pulled things off. I made money, and I plumped it all into my
railways and the Regent Bank; and as you said a minute ago, the Regent
Bank has closed down.
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