Hard work alone is not ennobling, but drudgery for those whom we love
may have its uplifting trend. Dosia was pale and thin, the blue veins on
her temples showed more plainly, her face was no longer the typical
white page, unwritten upon; that first freshness of youth and
inexperience had gone. Dosia had lived. Young as she was, she had tasted
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; she had known suffering,
she had faced shame and disappointment and—truth; yes, through
everything she had faced that—taken herself to account, probed,
condemned, renounced. What she had lost in youthfulness she had gained
in character. She had an innocent nobility of expression that came from
a light within, as of one ready to answer unwaveringly wherever she
might be called. Yet something in her soft eyes at times trembled into
being, indescribably gentle, intolerably sweet—the soul of that Dosia
who was made to be loved.
If she had changed since that first journeying a year and a half ago, so
had the conditions changed in the household to which she went. Justin
had had the not unusual experience of the business man who has achieved
what he has set out to achieve without the expected result; in the
silting-pan which holds success some of the gold mysteriously drops
through. The Typometer Company was doing a very large business,
quadrupled since the day of its inception. The building was hardly big
enough now to hold the offices and manufacturing plant; the force had
been greatly increased, and an additional floor for storage had been
hired next door. The typometer had absorbed the output of two small
rival companies, one out West and one in a neighboring town—both glad,
in view of a losing game, to make terms with the successful arbiter.
Where one person used a typometer three years ago, it was in request by
fifty people now, for many things—for many more, indeed, than had been
thought of at first; every week plans in special adjustments were made
to fit the machine for different purposes. It was undoubtedly not only a
success in itself, but was destined to fit into more and more of the
needs of the working world as a standard product.
Orders came in from all parts of the globe. Justin, as he hurried over
to his office or held important consultations with the men who wanted to
see him, was awarded the respect given to the head of a large and
successful concern. He was marked as a rising man. Yet, in spite of all
this real accomplishment of the Typometer Company, the net profits had
always fallen short of the mark set for them; the company was in
constant and growing need of money.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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