Having come across an article about the personal characteristics of the most successful people, I discovered that I fit the bill. Perfectly, too. Am I successful, though? By my own standards, I definitely am. And I am the most successful of all the people the article lists, by whose standards I am a failure across the board. Poor devils. When I think of their daily toil, not to mention all the miseries that wealth brings in its wake, including all the attention by the hoi polloi, I cannot but feel outright sorry for them. By comparison, I have all I can possibly need, but I am also free to do as I please. Over the ages, not too many people have enjoyed such a combination of wherewithal and sovereignty as I can claim my own. Looking at the most successful people of this day and age, I can see that they have not been bright enough to step out of the game in time. And now they are victims of their own success, for they cannot even try to step out of the game till their last day. Listed in articles like the one I have just come across, they are martyrs of their own making. And I do not even have to spell out any of their names. Poor devils, indeed.