The excerpts below are from Ayn Rand's book 'The Fountainhead'.

Gail Wynand worked as bootblack on a ferryboat. He was shoved and ordered around by every bloated horse trader, by every drunken deck hand aboard. lf he spoke, he heard some thick voice answering: 'Vou don't run things around here.' But he liked this job. When he had no customers, he stood at the rail and looked at Manhattan. He looked at the yellow boards of new houses, at the vacant lots, at the cranes and derricks, at the few towers rising in the distance. He thought of what should be built and what should be destroyed, of the space, the promise and what could be made of it. A hoarse shout - 'Hey, boyl' - interrupted him. He went back to his bench and bent obediently over some muddy shoe. The customer saw only a small head of light brown hair and two thin, capable hands. On foggy evenings, under a gas lantern on a street corner, nobody noticed the slender figure leaning against a lamppost, the aristocrat of the Middle Ages, the timeless patrician whose every instinct cried that he should command, whose swift brain told him why he had the right to do so, the feudal baron created to rule - but born to sweep floors and take orders.