Ernest Poole foi educado em casa até aos 7 anos e depois viria a frequentar a Escola Universitária para Meninos de Chicago, onde começou a revelar uma propensão para a palavra escrita, fazendo parte da equipa do jornal por um breve período de tempo.
A casa onde viveu na Michigan Avenue em Chicago era habitada não só pela família, mas também por um batalhão de empregados, jardineiros e governantas. Levou uma vida privilegiada, passando os Verões na casa de família em Lake Forest, nas margens do Lago Michigan, convivendo de perto com a elite de Chicago.
Após a conclusão do ensino secundário Ernest Poole, talentoso violinista, tirou um ano só para estudar música, com vista a tornar-se num compositor profissional, mas acabou por constatar que o processo de escrever música era mais difícil do que pensava. Acabou por se deixar inspirar pelo pai, um contador de histórias que adorava literatura, começando a equacionar dedicar-se à escrita.
Mankind had suddenly unmasked and shown itself for what it was—still only a precocious child, with a terrible precocity. For its growth had been one sided. Its strength was growing at a speed breathless and astounding. But its vision and its poise, its sense of human justice, of kindliness and tolerance and of generous brotherly love, these had been neglected and were being left behind.
And as he listened in the dusk to the numberless murmuring voices of living creatures large and small which rose out of the valley, and as from high above him the serenity of the mountains there towering over thousands of years stole into his spirit, Roger had a large quieting sense of something high and powerful looking down upon the earth, a sense of all humanity honeycombed with millions upon millions of small sorrows, absorbing joys and hopes and fears, and in spite of them all the Great Life sweeping on, with no Great Death to check its course, no immense catastrophe, all these little troubles like mere tiny specks of foam upon the surface of the tide.
And there came to him a feeling which he had often had before in many different places—that he himself was a part of all this, the great, blind, wistful soul of mankind, which had been here before he was born and would be here when he was dead—still groping, yearning, struggling upward, on and on—to something distant as the sun.
And still would he be a part of it all, through the eager lives of his children.
He turned and looked at Deborah and caught the light that was in her eyes.
