Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/109

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simple apparatus for repairing and sharpening tools. I had just been trying to hew a broken lead pencil into shape with an impossibly dull knife, so that his coming seemed like an angel's visit. I gathered up all the paraphernalia in the office which permitted of sharpening, and he went at it. They were in a few minutes in excellent condition, he collected a quarter, and I sent him over to my house to make the rest of my family happy. I kept my eye on him during the year, and was not surprised to find that he was making a good living during his leisure moments because he had had intelligence enough to meet an unsatisfied want.

Several years ago, before the business of pressing men's clothes and keeping them in condition had been taken up generally, one of our freshmen rented a room, bought the necessary apparatus, and agreed for one dollar a month to press a suit of clothes each week, and to call for the clothes and deliver them. It was at that time an innovation, and even with one or two assistants, he soon had more business than he could take care of. He had a business head, he kept his agreements, he did his work well, and he was soon one of the financially independent who could oversee his business and let some one else do the manual labor. I always had the assurance that he would get on wherever he went, and I have not been mistaken. He is successfully running a fruit farm down in Florida now, and last Christmas I had a pleasant note from him accompanied by a box of delicious grapefruit which caused my family to remember him kindly for many a morning.

The skilled laborer, the man who has a trade or a