ing
him. And he was bright and lovable and talented. Everybody said Frank
would make his mark in the world and make the town proud of him.

I was the janitor of the schoolhouse. Some of my classmates will never
know how their thoughtless jeers and jokes wounded the sensitive,
shabby boy who swept the floors, built the fires and carried in the
coal. After commencement my career seemed to end and the careers of
Frank and the rest of them seemed to begin. They were going off to
college and going to do so many wonderful things.

But the week after commencement I had to go into a printing office,
roll up my sleeves and go to work in the "devil's corner" to earn my
daily bread. Seemed like it took so much bread!

Many a time as I plugged at the "case" I would think of Frank and
wonder why some people had all the good things and I had all the hard
things.

How easy it is to see as you look backward. But how hard it is to see
when you look forward.

Twenty-one years afterward as I got off the train in the home town, I
asked, "Where is he?" We went out to the cemetery, where I stood at a
grave and read on the headstone, "Frank."

I had the story of a tragedy--the tragedy of modern unpreparedness. It
was the story of the boy who had every opportunity, but who had all the
struggle taken out of his life. He never followed his career, never
developed any strength. He disappointed hopes, spent a fortune, broke
his father's heart, shocked the community, and finally ended his wasted
life with a bullet fired by his own hand.

Why Ben Hur Won

It revived the memory of the story of Ben Hur.

Do you remember it? The Jewish boy is torn from his home in disgrace.
He is haled into court and tried for a crime he never committed. Ben
Hur did not get a fair trial. Nobody can get a fair trial at the hands
of this world. That is why the great Judge has said, judge not, for you
have not the full evidence in the case. I alone have that.

Then they condemn him. They lead him away to the galleys. They chain
him to the bench and to the oar. There follow the days and long years
when he pulls on the oar under the lash. Day after day he pulls on the
oar. Day after day he writhes under the sting of the lash. Years of the
cruel injustice pass. Ben Hur is the helpless victim of a mocking fate.

That seems to be your life and my life. In the kitchen or the office,
or wherever we work we seem so often like slaves bound to the oar and
pullin