“A year after arrival in New York, [Andrew] Carnegie sat down specific plans for his future. They appear so radically different from the ambitions of other rising young men of the era, and so equally different from what actually happened, that they are worth knowing. The memorandum set down to guide Carnegie’s future was made at the St. Nicholas Hotel one evening in December of 1868. First noting that he was thirty-three, he wrote, ‘and (have) an income of $50,000 per annum!’ (The exclamation mark probably indicated more pleasure than astonishment.) He tells himself he must so arrange his business as to secure $50,000 every year, but ‘Beyond this never earn.’ He will go to England, ‘settle in Oxford and get a thorough education.’ He will make the acquaintance of literary men.’ He will then go to London and buy a controlling interest in some newspaper and review. He will also take part in public affairs, ‘especially those connected with education and improvement of the poorer classes. …No idol,’ he remarks twice in the memorandum, is ‘more debasing than the worship of money.’ Therefore, he will ‘resign business (in two years) at thirty-five.’ (Carnegie’s abdication of business came not two but thirty-two years later.)” [Stewart H. Holbrook, The Age of the Moguls in A Second Reader’s Notebook compiled by Gerald Kennedy, (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), p. 11]