He went in for law at Yale, and then practised restlessly, vaguely for two years in Baltimore, under the patronage of his father's oldest friend, a lawyer of distinction.
"If I fail at everything else, I'll go back to the practice of law," he said cheerfully.

"Uncle Henry is mean enough to say that he has forgotten more law than I ever knew, but he has none the better of me.
'Gad, I am confident that I've forgotten more law, myself, than I ever knew." Tiring of the law books and reports in the old judge's office, he suddenly abandoned his calling and set forth to see the world.

Almost before his friends knew that he had left he was heard of in Turkestan.
In course of time he served as a war correspondent for one of the great newspapers, acted as agent for great hemp dealers in the Philippines, carried a rifle with the Boers in South Africa, hunted wild beasts in Asia and in Hottentot land, took snapshots in St.Petersburg, and almost got to the North Pole with one of the expeditions.

To do and be all of these he had to be a manly man.

Not in a month's journey would you meet a truer thoroughbred, a more agreeable chap, a more polished vagabond, than Hollingsworth Chase, first lieutenant in Dame Fortune's army.