The fact that your
neighbors do not suspect your potentialities is really an advantage.
If you have that righteous and permissible craft which every man
should have, and if you take advantage of it, you can begin the work
which will bring you success without that envy and competition, that
friction of jealousy, which every man of acknowledged power arouses.
But if you, a man of fifty or over, go into a new environment, you
carry with you that heaviest of all burdens, the necessity of making
explanations.
"Why have you come among us at your age?" the people ask. "What is the
story of your past?" they very properly inquire. "It must be that you
are not a man of integrity which commanded the respect and support of
your old home," they will not unnaturally conclude; "either this, or
else you were a failure there."
These are the two necessary and inevitable deductions, and either horn
of that cruel dilemma of logic is enough to impale you. If you escape
them, you do it because you do not attract notice, and this, in
itself, is failure. And in any event, to gain the substantial
confidence of the people you must spend several years of right living
among them. And you have no time to waste in building up confidence at
your period of life.
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