Dodsworth by Sinclair Lewis

With his second drink, at Florian's, after dinner, he recaptured a rare exhilarating glow at the thought of travel, alone and fast. He could go as he would: North, South--the very names had magic: NORTH and snow-drifts among silent pines; SOUTH and bamboo huts in the jungle; EAST and a cranky steamer jogging up a purple strait; WEST and a bench by a log cabin in the Rockies, with a lake two thousand feet below, and himself, strong and deep-breathing as he had been at thirty, smelling the new-cut chips, the frosty air. Yes! He would see them all! He wouldn't go back to an office!

He had twenty, perhaps thirty years more. He would have a second life; having been Samuel Dodsworth he would go on and miraculously be some one else, more ruthless, less bound, less sentimental. He could be a poet, a governor, an explorer. He'd learned his faults of commercial-mindedness, of timidity before women. Correct 'em! He'd seen the gaps in his knowledge. Fill 'em!