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Show 289 failures contributed. Could she have felt that even ^ood people cannot be blessed in unsound financial undertakings? Where Milford's first failures could be attributed to bad luck or bad timing, she may have come to feel, in time, that their continued predictability attached to his own lack of judgment. More than this (and we are speculating), what about his refusal to practice law and medicine after full and adequate preparation? The genuine rejoicing which Ellis expressed in her diary when her beloved husband was admitted to the Salt Lake Bar had its foundation not in the notion that he could now be called a lawyer, but that now there would be opportunity for the use of the whole range of his brilliant gifts. How must she have felt when, soon abandoning that castle, he ran to build another in the study of medicine. Surely her hope skyrocketed again when, in 1883, he got his coveted M.D. degree. But how long did it take her to understand that Milford was not going to practice medicine either? His daughter Bardella later said two things about this: 1) that he never did intend to practice, and 2) that having had to miss commencement, he had a sense of something unfinished, and therefore decided not to be active in the profession. Maggie, who had to return home from medical college even earlier than Milford, did not let that hinder her from practicing. How might she have felt about his decision not to use his new skills at a time when there was a very real need not only for doctors in Utah, but for money to support his families? When Maggie left Milford in |