Giving is Receiving Quote

One summer he took a job as a bellboy in one of the hotels. The salary was only $8.00 a month, but he was told that the tips that bellboys receive amounted to $100.00 in a season. When the first tip was offered him, however, something deep down within him would not let him take it. Stammeringly he said, "No thank you, sir," and fled. He went down to his retreat in the cellar and tried to probe why that inner voice had spoken to him thus. Then suddenly he had a great vision.

"I’ll be the only bellboy in existence who never took a tip!" he exclaimed. "And I’ll be the best bellboy the world ever knew. I’ll pledge myself to give the most joyful and cheerful service that a bellboy ever gave!"

From that moment he responded to every request with the alacrity of a steel trap. He ran his legs off for everybody. He got up at five o’clock every morning to procure cow’s milk for a baby that needed special care, and then went back to bed again. When asked why he did not take tips he replied, "I receive a salary, and I love my work."
The guests were simply overwhelmed by it. They invited him to dinner parties and yachting trips and when the management explained that it was against the rules for servants to have social relations with guests, those people of influence said they would never go back again to that hotel if they didn’t break a rule for him. So he had a wonderful summer.

During his spare time he did sketching and painting. The guests became deeply interested in his work and at the end of the season instead of $100.00 from tips he had received checks amounting to $850.00 for his pictures, and five offers of legal adoption in wealthy families, in one of which there were already three badly spoiled boys. The people to whom he brought ice-water became his life-long friends, and from them and friends of theirs he received many commissions for painting after he became famous in that field. And he went to the wedding of the baby he brought milk for!

"I have absolute faith," he asserts over and over again, "that anything can come to the one who trusts to the unlimited help of the Universal Intelligence that is within so long as one works within the law and always gives more to others that they expect, and does it cheerfully and courteously."

About Walter Russell, The Man Who Tapped The Secrets of the Universe (by Glenn Clark)