The Contributor can manipulate and control others; he does not appreciate receiving this from them in return-he in fact avoids all obligation that might open him up to influence. Adam Smith: "When he left the University to be a tutor for three years [in return for financial independence] he returned all the students' fees for leaving half way through the year. This he could only do by a display of violence at the end of his last lecture. The first student refused to accept the money, declaring that the instruction and pleasure he had already received was much more than he either had repaid or ever could compensate; and a general cry was heard from every one in the room to the same effect. But after warmly expressing his feelings of gratitude and the strong sense he had of the regard shown to him by his young friends, Smith told them this was a matter betwixt him and his own mind, and that he could not rest satisfied unless he performed what he deemed right and proper. 'You must not refuse me this satisfaction; nay, by heavens, gentlemen, you shall not,'; and seizing by the coat the young man who stood next to him, he thrust the money into his pocket and then pushed him from him. The rest saw it was in vain to contest the matter, and were obliged to let him take his own way."
Samuel Johnson: "As time went on at Oxford, and his means of subsistence fell off, poverty became apparent in his footwear and apparel; and it did not please him when he found a new pair of shoes outside his chamber one morning, placed there by a well-meaning though tactless gentleman-commoner. He flung them away in a rage."
"He received a pension from the government after being assured repeatedly that the pension 'is not given you for anything you are to do, but for what you have done.' "
George Mueller: "After he decided to follow Christ, his father disowned him."
"Although Mueller still had two years of study ahead at the university, he made up his mind never to take any more money from his father. It seemed wrong to do this, now that his father had no prospect of seeing him become what he had wished-a clergyman with a good living."
Bobby Fischer: "His mother, a dominating, ambitious woman, was completely single-minded in her efforts to push him and to collect money for him. The methods she adopted for this led to increasing strain and ultimately a break between them. After a time he refused to touch any of the money she raised."
"He dislikes the permitted postponements in matches on grounds of ill-health. When he had a severe cold in the match with Petrosian he refused on principle to postpone."
Adolf Hitler: "Hitler'd drink it, just to please the youngster and us, though I know well he didn't hold with alcoholic drink even then. Only he was that obstinate-he WOULD pay for it himself!"
Michelangelo: "He closed himself in St. Peter's. He wanted no pay for his work. If the Popes made him an allowance from their own pockets, he would accept it, but he would never touch a farthing from the treasure of St. Peter's. It was sacred money and he wanted to work only for the love of God. For this reason he was able to act as dictator and not account to anyone for his work or his plans."
Dwight L. Moody: "In 1858 Moody left Wiswall's to work on a commission [in place of wages] for C. N. Henderson, a wholesaler in boots and shoes. Here Moody had more freedom to work for his Master [God] without encroaching upon his employer's rights. Then in 1860 he joined Buel, Hill, and Granger, still working on a commission basis."
The Contributor can chafe greatly under the claims of fame. Charles Lindbergh: "Despite his continuing realization that wide publicity for his flight was essential to the purposes of his backers, he began to resent as personally insulting every inaccurate report of him, however flattering in intention."
"Far from possessing 'his' fame, he was possessed by it, and by it his private life and personal liberties were drastically limited when not totally destroyed."
"A disgust with humankind-generally helpless, often coldly angry-began to streak his daily experience. Of well-dressed women sneaking beneath a restraining rope to grasp corncobs from which he had eaten. That his underwear and linen seldom returned from the laundry, a hat from the cloakroom."
Brahms: "Until late in his life he almost consistently refused to be photographed, painted, or modeled, and led the artists who wistfully shadowed him a dog's life."
George Lucas (Time magazine, May 23, 1983): "I've got to get my life back again-before it's too late."
The Contributor's nightmare can be an irretrievable bankruptcy (the ultimate obligation). Mark Twain: "The terms finally agreed upon gave the creditors an immediate settlement at about 50 cents on the dollar, and had he chosen to take advantage of the bankruptcy laws, that would have been all. But he refused to take advantage: sooner or later, he declared, he would pay every cent his firm owed!"
(And so he wrote and lectured, and after 4 years, the debt was paid off and a foundation laid for a new fortune.)
"The law recognizes no mortgage on a man's brain, and a merchant who has given up all he has may take advantage of the laws of insolvency and start free again for himself. But I am not a businessman, and honor is a harder master than the law. It cannot compromise for less than 100 cents on the dollar, and its debts never outlaw."
P. T. Barnum, losing $500,000 in a clock-making concern which was misrepresented to him, to a friend who offered help: "I beg of you if you have any regard for my feelings not to let me feel that any man had expended out of his pocket for me ONE COPPER that I have not put back again. Favors I must receive, and hope to reciprocate, but money, however small the amount, I have invariably declined, and I cannot accept it without great pain and humiliation."
"Buying his museum on credit, he did not eat a warm dinner, except on Sundays, until he was out of debt."