THAT’S WHAT I’M HERE FOR.
It was the uniformed young porter who said it, as he smiled pleasantly on the woman whose bundles he had started to carry for her. The station was full of travelers, hurrying to and from their trains, but the porter was not in the least hurried. He was quiet, ready, helpful; and he found a seat for the woman in the right car, and repeated, as she thanked him for his trouble, “That’s what I’m here for, madam, all ‘day long; just to see that people get aboard all ‘right.’” Then he went back to the gate, and promptly helped somebody else to another train. Cheery and pleasant, he carried babies, lifted heavy bags, reassured nervous people who were afraid the train would start without them, and made himself generally helpful, hour after hour. “That’s what I’m here for.” The cheerful words carried an unconscious message. The porter’s lot was not a very pleasant one. Perhaps he, too, longed to travel away from the hot city to the sea or the woods; yet all the year round he was shut within the crowded station, with its tracks and platforms. Few thanked him for helping them, and he could hardly have been blamed if he had been a trifle cross over his work. But he had no such thought; he was there to be helpful, and his heart was in his work. The woman who had been helped to her seat by11him thought it over as the train rolled away. She was one who carried many burdens for other people, and had had few thanks. She seemed to herself to have spent her life in starting other people off where they wanted to go, and staying behind herself; and, lately, she had felt rebellious about it. But the young porter’s words started a new line of thought. “That’s ‘what I’m here for,’” she said to herself, “and it isn’t ‘my business to complain or to question. If he can ‘do his day’s work in that hearty spirit, I think I can, ‘too,” and she felt her heart lighter than for many a day. The porter did not know it, but he had preached a whole sermon in five words that afternoon.—Wellspring.