"The most important thing a young man ever does is to get ready. The key-note lasts to the end of the tune, and the foundation reaches clear to the finial. Beginnings are autocratic. No matter how long a man lives, he will never get away from his youth… A good many young men excuse themselves from ever becoming anything or doing anything by the fact that they always live where it is low tide. Perhaps that is because it is always low tide where they live. At any rate, the more I learn of the history of the men who have succeeded the more apparent it becomes that if they were born in low water they patched up their tattered circumstances and beat out to sea on a tide of their own making."