The article about Robert A. Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy tells of how a seed was sown in my mind by a story I read 'by chance'. This story eventually influenced my choice of profession – and thus the entire course of my life.
With hindsight, I wonder if it really was just chance that someone came to stay for a short time with his box of books and science fiction magazines, one of which contained the influential story.
I recently learned that something similar happened to Abraham Lincoln.
In his case it was a barrel not a box, he (unwittingly) bought rather than borrowed the reading material, it was a set of books not a magazine, it was a treatise on English common law rather than a science fiction story, and he was the junior partner in a store at the time rather than a child.
Just as what I read sparked my interest in computers and inspired me to become a computer programmer, Abraham Lincoln became fascinated by what he read of the law and went on to become a lawyer.
These are Lincoln's own words:
"One day a man who was migrating to the West drove up in front of my store with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder. He asked me if I would buy an old barrel for which he had no room in his wagon, and which contained nothing of special value. I did not want it, but to oblige him I bought it, and paid him, I think, half a dollar for it. Without further examination I put it away in the store and forgot all about it.
"Some time after, in overhauling things, I came upon the barrel, and emptying it on the floor to see what it contained, I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete set of 'Blackstone's Commentaries.' I began to read those famous works. I had plenty of time; for during the long summer days, when the farmers were busy with their crops, my customers were few and far between. The more I read the more intensely interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devoured them."
Although this anecdote was new to me, it is very well known and has been quoted in many places. The reason for repeating it here is that it provides a very good example of the unseen influences that appear to be at work in some people's lives.
The books that started it all were first published in 1765:
