to sit down. I was astonished to hear her story.

She had been born and brought up in the mountains of West
Virginia,--many miles from civilization. Her father and mother died when
she was four years old. She had been living with an old grandfather and
brother. When I began to talk with her I found her to have a most
remarkable acquaintance with Emerson, with Thoreau, with Bernard Shaw
and with the old Eastern writers.

I said to her: "How is it that you are delivering telegrams in a khaki
suit and a soldier cap?"

She replied: "Because I could get nothing else to do. I lived down there
in the mountains just as long as I could. I had to get to the city where
I could express myself and develop my finer qualities. When I got to
Washington there was nothing that I could do. They asked me if I could
typewrite, but I had never seen a typewriter. Finally, after walking the
streets for a while, I got a job as a Western Union messenger."

I wrote Mrs. Babson and made arrangements to have the girl come to
Wellesley and work for a few months with the Babson Organization. I saw
in her certain qualities which, if developed, should make her very
useful to someone somewhere. She came to Wellesley. About a month after
her arrival I was obliged to leave on a two months' trip and Mrs. Babson
invited her up to dine the night before I left. I told her that I was
going to speak while away on "America's Undeveloped Resources." After
dinner she went to my desk and took her pen and scribbled these lines
and said:

"Perhaps during your talk on America's Greatest Undeveloped Resources
you will give those men a message from a Western Union girl." These are
the lines she wrote. They are by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

I gave a beggar from my little store of wealth some gold;
He spent the shining ore, and came again and yet again,
Still cold and hungry, as before.
I gave a thought--and through that thought of mine,
He found himself, the man supreme, divine,
Fed, clothed and crowned with blessing manifold;
And now he begs no more.

The mind of man is a wonderful thing, but unless the soul of man is
awakened he must lack faith, power, originality, ambition,--those vital
elements which make a man a real producer. I do not say that you can
awaken this force in every soul. If you are an employer, perhaps only a
few of all your employees can be made to understand. But this much is
certain,--in every man or woman in whom you can loose the