Joshua Bates, master of the Winthrop School, describes Starr King as he was when the father's death cut off his schooldays: "Slight of build, golden-haired, active, agile, with a homely face which everybody thought was handsome on account of the beaming eyes, the winning smile and the earnest desire of always wanting to do what was best and right." This kind of boy gets along all right anywhere--God is on his side. The hours in the drygoods-store were long, and on Saturday nights it was nearly midnight before Starr would reach home. But there was a light in the window for him, even if whale-oil was scarce, and the mother was at her sewing. Together they ate their midnight lunch, and counted the earnings of the week. And the surprise of both that they were getting a living and paying off the debts sort of cleared the atmosphere of its gloom. In Burke's "Essay on the Sublime," he speaks of the quiet joy that comes through calamity when we discover that the calamity has not really touched us. The death of a father who leaves a penniless widow and a hungry brood comes at first as a shock--the heavens are darkened and hope has fled. I know a man who was in a railroad wreck--the sleeping-car in which he rode left the track and rolled down an embankment. There was a black interval of horror, and then this man found himself, clad in his underclothes, standing on the upturned car, looking up at the Pleiades and this thought in his mind, "What beauty and peace are in these winter heavens!" The calamity had come--he was absolutely untouched--he was locating the constellations and surprised and happy in his ability to enjoy them. Starr King and his mother sipped their midnight tea and grew jolly over the thought of their comfortable home; they were clothed and fed, the children well and sleeping soundly in baby abandon upstairs, the debts were being paid. They laughed, did this mother and son, really laughed aloud, when only a month before they had thought that only gloom and misery could ever again be theirs. They laughed! And soon the young man's salary was increased--people liked to trade with him--customers came and asked that he might wait on them. He sold more goods than anyone else in his department, and yet he never talked things on to people. He was alert, affable, kindly, and anticipated the wishes and wants of his customers without being subservient, fawning or domineering. This kind of helper is needed everywhere--the one who gives a willing hand, who puts soul into his service, who brings a glow of good-cheer into all his relations with men.