disaffected people
in our midst might be as so much fuel to fire."

"But really I have been forgetting my errand. Have you any opening in
your store for my young friend?"

"I have only one vacancy, and that is the place of a utility man."

"What are the duties of that position?"

"Almost anything that comes to hand; tying up bundles, looking after the
mails, scattering advertisements. A factotum whose work lies here, there
and everywhere."

"I am confident that he will accept the situation and render you
faithful service."

"Well, then send him around tomorrow and if there is anything in him I
may be able to do better by him when the fall trade opens."

And so Charley Cooper was fortunate enough in his hour of perplexity to
find a helping hand to tide him over a difficult passage in his life.
Gratefully and faithfully did he serve Mr. Hastings, who never regretted
the hour when he gave the struggling boy such timely assistance. The
discipline of the life through which he was passing as the main stay of
his mother, matured his mind and imparted to it a thoughtfulness past
his years. Instead of wasting his time in idle and pernicious pleasure,
he learned how to use his surplus dollar and how to spend his leisure
hours, and this knowledge told upon his life and character. He was not
very popular in society. Young men with cigars in their mouths and the
perfume of liquor on their breaths, shrugged their shoulders and called
him a milksop because he preferred the church and Sunday school to the
liquor saloon and gambling dens. The society of P. was cut up and
divided into little sets and coteries; there was an amount of
intelligence among them, but it ran in narrow grooves and scarcely
one[10] intellect seemed to tower above the other, and if it did, no
people knew better how to ignore a rising mind than the society people
of A.P. If the literary aspirant did not happen to be of their set. As
to talent, many of them were pleasant and brilliant conversationalists,
but in the world of letters scarcely any of them were known or
recognized outside of their set. They had leisure, a little money and
some ability, but they lacked the perseverance and self-denial
necessary to enable them to add to the great resources of natural
thought. They had narrowed their minds to the dimensions of their set
and were unprepared to take expansive[11] views of life and duty. They
took life as a holiday and the lack of noble purposes and