ving and paying off
the debts sort of cleared the atmosphere of its gloom.

In Burke's "Essay on the Sublime," he speaks of the quiet joy that comes
through calamity when we discover that the calamity has not really
touched us. The death of a father who leaves a penniless widow and a
hungry brood comes at first as a shock--the heavens are darkened and
hope has fled.

I know a man who was in a railroad wreck--the sleeping-car in which he
rode left the track and rolled down an embankment. There was a black
interval of horror, and then this man found himself, clad in his
underclothes, standing on the upturned car, looking up at the Pleiades
and this thought in his mind, "What beauty and peace are in these winter
heavens!" The calamity had come--he was absolutely untouched--he was
locating the constellations and surprised and happy in his ability to
enjoy them.

Starr King and his mother sipped their midnight tea and grew jolly over
the thought of their comfortable home; they were clothed and fed, the
children well and sleeping soundly in baby abandon upstairs, the debts
were being paid. They laughed, did this mother and son, really laughed
aloud, when only a month before they had thought that only gloom and
misery could ever again be theirs.

They laughed!

And soon the young man's salary was increased--people liked to trade
with him--customers came and asked that he might wait on them. He sold
more goods than anyone else in his department, and yet he never talked
things on to people. He was alert, affable, kindly, and anticipated the
wishes and wants of his customers without being subservient, fawning or
domineering.

This kind of helper is needed everywhere--the one who gives a willing
hand, who puts soul into his service, who brings a glow of good-cheer
into all his relations with men.

The doing things with a hearty enthusiasm is often what makes the doer a
marked person and his deeds effective. The most ordinary service is
dignified when it is performed in that spirit. Every employer wants
those who work for him to put heart and mind into the toil. He soon
picks out those whose souls are in their service, and gives them
evidence of his appreciation. They do not need constant watching. He can
trust them in his absence, and so the places of honor and profit
naturally gravitate to them.

The years went by, and one fine day Starr King was twenty years of age.
All of the debts were paid, the children were going