An Ambitious Man

Alice did not rally in health or spirits after her marriage, as her

family, friends and physician had anticipated. She remained nervous,

ailing and despondent.

"Should maternity come to her, she would doubtless be very much

improved in health afterward," the doctor said, and Mabel,

remembering how true a similar prediction proved in her case, despite

her rebellion against it, was not sorry when she knew that Alice was

to become a mother, scarcely a year after her marriage.

But Alice grew more and more despondent as the months passed by; and

after the birth of her son, the young mother developed dementia of

the most hopeless kind. The best specialists in two worlds were

employed to bring her out of the state of settled melancholy into

which she had fallen, but all to no avail. At the end of two years,

her case was pronounced hopeless. Fortunately the child died at the

age of six weeks, so the seed of insanity which in the first Mrs

Lawrence was simply a case of "nerves," growing into the plant

hysteria in Mabel, and yielding the deadly fruit of insanity in

Alice, was allowed by a kind providence to become extinct in the

fourth generation.

This disaster to his only child caused a complete breaking down of

spirit and health in Preston Cheney.

Like some great, strongly coupled car, which loses its grip and goes

plunging down an incline to destruction, Preston Cheney's will-power

lost its hold on life, and he went down to the valley of death with

frightful speed.

During the months which preceded his death, Senator Cheney's only

pleasure seemed to be in the companionship of his son-in-law. The

strong attachment between the two men ripened with every day's

association. One day the rector was sitting by the invalid's couch,

reading aloud, when Preston Cheney laid his hand on the young man's

arm and said: "Close your book and let me tell you a true story

which is stranger than fiction. It is the story of an ambitious man

and all the disasters which his realised ambition brought into the

lives of others. It is a story whose details are known to but two

beings on earth, if indeed the other being still exists on earth. I

have long wanted to tell you this story--indeed, I wanted to tell it

to you before you made Alice your wife, yet the fear that I would be

wrecking the life and reason of my child kept me silent. No doubt if

I had told you, and you had been influenced by my experience against

a loveless marriage, I should to-day be blaming myself for her

condition, which I see plainly now is but the culmination of three

generations of hysterical women. But I want to tell you the story

and urge you to use it as a warning in your position of counsellor

and friend of ambitious young men.