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 power of this invisible something, you will mobilize a force, not only for his or her good, but for the good and perhaps the very salvation of your own business.