Through the happenstance of revising and scheduling articles, this issue contains three tales of personal aspiration. Each conveys historical information and possibly moral instruction, in the manner of Plutarch, an author who certainly fit with James Loeb's goals in promoting the classics, as described in Kevin Sheets's essay. At a certain point in life, many of us will recognize in ourselves the Lincoln Steffens portrayed in James Connolly's article, an accomplished professional whose own intellectual deficiencies hampered pursuit of the ideals to which he was committed. Many will also identify will James Loeb's turn to literature as a device for cultivating nobility in society and peace within himself, even if few readers of this journal share Loeb's experience of great wealth. Of the three people profiled this issue, only cartoonist George McManus, as portrayed by Kerry Soper, seems to have reconciled his aspirations and accomplishments. As his career progressed, McManus was able to accept in a good-natured way—less "angst-filled," Soper remarks, than many ethnic artists—his readers' impulse to identify him with his creation, Jiggs, the buffoonish ethnic parvenu of the early-twentieth-century comics page.