home he had dreams of entering at once on a
life of thrilling adventure where there would be numberless
opportunities for the display of high courage. At the end of a month a
friend asked him how he liked life at the navy yard. "Fine!" was the
reply. "What are you doing?" was the next query. "They haven't given me
anything but window washing to do yet," he replied, with a smile that
was an index of character.

A newspaper writer has told of a college student nineteen years old who
enlisted in the navy. He was sent to one of our naval stations and told
to guard a pile of coal. As the summer passed he still guarded that coal
pile. He wrote home about it:

"You know, dad, when we were little shavers, you always rubbed it into
us that anything that was worth doing at all was worth doing as well as
it could be done. I've been standing over that coal pile nearly three
months now, and it looks just exactly as small as it did when I first
landed on the job."

"He was relieved from the coal pile at last and promoted," said the
writer who told of him. "At the same time the government gave him a last
chance to return to his college work. He thought it over carefully. He
realized that America was going to need trained men as never before, but
still, he decided, the best service that he individually could give was
the one that he had chosen. He had a few days of leave before going on
to his next assignment, and he hurried back to his home. He found that
his summer task was a matter of town history, and he had to face a good
deal of affectionate raillery about his coal pile. Of course he did not
mind that. But his answer revealed his spirit:

"'You may laugh, but that coal pile was all right. I'll admit it got on
my nerves for a bit, but I figured it out that while I was taking care
of that coal pile I was releasing some other fellow who knew things I
didn't know, and who could do things I couldn't do. I'm ready to stand
by a coal pile till the war ends, if that's where I can help the most.'"

"That is the spirit that will conquer because it is the spirit that
never can be conquered," was the comment made on the incident. "There is
no self in it--only consecration to duty; no seeking for large
things--only for an opportunity to serve whenever the call comes. That
is the spirit that is growing in America to-day--and only through such
spirit can we accomplish our great task in the life of the world."

The man who really desires t