e before the public. She was gazing through her glass with her
usual quiet intentness when she was suddenly startled to perceive "an
unknown comet, nearly vertical above Polaris, about five degrees." At
first she could not believe her eyes; then hoping and doubting,
scarcely daring to think that she had really made a discovery, she
obtained its right ascension and declination. She then told her
father, who gave the news to the other astronomers and to the world,
and her claim to the discovery was duly accepted and ever after stood
to her lasting credit. But had she not been interested in her work and
competent to seize upon and to make the most of the opportunity that
presented itself, she would not have been able to make herself the
first of all the beings of our earth to observe and record this
strange visitant to our starry realms above us.

It is the faith which the sunshiny spirit has in the "worth whileness"
of life and its possibilities that makes him or her who possesses it
prepare for the best that is to come. It is because of the
"preparedness" achieved by labor that men and women are able to seize
upon and make the most of the "lucky chance" that may bring them
happiness and success.

While Thomas A. Edison was yet a youth, the desire to make himself of
worth to the world and to be able to do something that would make him
a living while he was still fitting himself for better things, he
spent the leisure which most boys would spend in idleness or
purposeless pastime in learning the telegrapher's code. Later on this
knowledge gave him work which enabled him to gain experience as a
telegraph operator, which in turn led to his invention of the
quadruplex telegraph. But the invention was temporarily a failure,
although later on a great success. Sorely reduced in circumstances, he
was one day tramping the streets of New York without a cent.

"I happened one day," he says, "into the office of a 'gold ticker'
company which had about five hundred subscribers. I was standing
beside the apparatus when it gave a terrific rip-roar and suddenly
stopped. In a few minutes hundreds of messenger boys blocked up the
doorway and yelled for some one to fix the tickers in the office. The
man in charge of the place was completely upset; so I stepped up to
him and said: 'I think I know what's the matter.' I removed a loose
contact spring that had fallen between the wheels; the machine went
on. The result? I was appointed to take