That winter I spent with my wife and daughter in Philadelphia, and here I found that she had a brother, Remey A.Fiegel, who was as averse to going to school as ever I had been.

By this time I had come to a realizing sense of the power of knowledge, and so I labored with him until he consented to go to night-school, providing that I would send him, which I agreed to do.
Pierce's Business College was the place selected, and when I went up there to make the necessary arrangements for his tuition I asked how old a man had to become before he was barred from attending.
"Oh!" replied the superintendent, "age is no bar here.

We have a great many scholars right now who are a long ways older than you are." "All right! You can just put my name down, too," I replied, and the following Monday evening Remey and I started to go to school together, and this time there was no nonsense about it.

That winter I studied faithfully, and, though it was hard work, by the time spring came and we returned to Chicago I had acquired at least a fair knowledge of the rudiments of business and was able to keep my own books, figure my own interest, and, in fact, run my own business.
During the greater part of another winter I ran a hand-ball court on Michigan avenue in Chicago, which did not prove to be a.

paying venture, one reason, and the paramount one, being that it was too far away from the business center of the town at that time, though now it would have been in the very heart of the business district, while still another reason was that there were not enough hand-ball players in the city to keep the game running.
Some time during the latter part of the '80s the old Congress street grounds were converted during the winter season into a skating rink and toboggan slide, and of this I had the management during one whole season, a season that was pecuniarily profitable to the lessees of the grounds, as the weather during the greater part of the winter was severe, the ice in fine condition and the toboggan slide in apple-pie order.
Ice skating was that season more popular in Chicago than it had ever been before, and the toboggan craze, which had been brought over here from Canada, at once caught on to the public fancy.