CHAPTER VIII

CHRIST AND THE EAST

For a first trip the Southwestern expedition under Fred Finch's tutelage

had been something of an exploit. Finch's report to Peter McDougall was

more than verified by the order sheets, and the observant Peter, keeping

track of things during the succeeding weeks, noticed with quiet

satisfaction that not a single order Was canceled.

To himself he said, "The lad's a find, I'm thinking. From Finch's talk I

should say he has not only a natural knack of selling, but he sells for

keeps. And that's the idea, Peter. Anybody can sell if the buyer means

to call off the order by the next mail. This John Wesley boy may go far,

and I'll have to tell Albert Drury the next time I see him that he's

done the house of Cummings a real favor."

The months went by. J.W. kept his wits about him, and on the road he

stuck to his salesman's faith that goods are better sold by those who

know exactly how they may be used and that they are never sold until

they are bought. So he found favor in the sight of Peter McDougall. The

proof of that is easy. Peter gave him a week off before the end of his

first year.

Delafield looked better to the homecoming salesman than it had to the

boy coming back from college. And the town was glad to see him. He

meant something to not a few of its people, altogether outside the

interest of the Farwells--and Pastor Drury--and Jeannette!

Deep Creek was his first port of call, after his first half-day at home.

He had been welcomed with deep, quiet gladness by the home folks, and he

had talked a little over the telephone with the preacher. Then time was

a laggard until he could head the Farwell car toward Deep Creek and the

old farm.

Jeannette's welcome was all that even he could ask, though, of course,

just precisely what it was is none of our business. In the car, and by

the fireplace in the Shenk living room, and around the farm, they

considered many things, some of them not so personal as others. J.W.

told the story of his life in Saint Louis and on the road; Jeannette

listening like another Desdemona to the recital. And once again it was

not the adventure which supplied the thrill, but the adventurer.

And Jeannette told him the news of Delafield. How Joe Carbrook and

Marcia Dayne's wedding had been the most wonderful wedding ever seen in

Delafield, with the town as proud of its one-time scapegrace as it was

of the beautiful bride. How brother Marty had been finding many excuses

of late for driving up from his circuit, and how he managed to see Alma

Wetherell a good deal. How Alma was now head bookkeeper and cashier of

the Emporium, the town's biggest store, and how she was such a dear

girl. How Pastor Drury and Marty had become great friends. How the

minister was not so well as usual, and people were getting to be a

little worried about him. How the Delafield church had taken up tithing,

and was not only doing a lot better financially, but in every other way.

How Deep Creek was going to have a new minister, a friend whom Marty had

met at the summer school for rural ministers, who would try to help the

Deep Creek people get an up-to-date church building and learn to use it.

How the Everyday Doctrines of Delafield had been first boosted and then

forgotten, and now again several of them were being practiced in some

quarters. And much more, though never to the wearing out of J.W.'s

interest. Certainly not, the news being just what he wanted to know, and

the reporter thereof being just the person he wanted to tell it to him.

One bit of news Jeannette did not tell, for the sufficient reason that

she did not know it. Pastor Drury and Brother Marty _had_ become great

friends, but what Jeannette could not tell was the special bond of

interest which was back of the fact. Marty had long been aware that for

some reason the Delafield pastor was peculiarly concerned about J.W.

Never did he guess Walter Drury's secret, but he knew well enough there

was one.

These two, the town preacher and the young circuit rider, read to each

other J.W.'s letters, and talked much about him and his experiences, and

made J.W. in general the theme of many discussions.

"It has been good for the boy that he has had that border trip," said

the pastor to Marty a few days before J.W. got back. "Don't you think

so?"

Marty was, as ever, J.W.'s ardent and self-effacing chum. "I certainly

do," he said. "He's growing, is J.W., and growing the right way. We need

business men of just the quality that's showing in him."

The pastor hesitated a moment. Then he spoke: "Marty, when J.W. comes

home I hope something will set him thinking about the outer world that

has no word of our Christ. He hasn't seen it yet, not clearly; and you

know that there isn't any hope for that world to get out of the depths

until it gets the news of a Helper. I'm counting on you to help me with

J.W. if the chance comes. Just between ourselves, you know."

"I'll do all I can, Mr. Drury; you may be sure of that," said Marty. And

he did.

J.W.'s holiday brought several young people together who had not met for

a long time. Marty came up again, and spent the day with J.W., all over

town, from the store to the house and back again. In the evening Mrs.

Farwell made a feast, to which, besides Marty, Jeannette and Alma and

Pastor Drury were bidden. Mrs. Farwell was much more to Delafield than

the best cook and the most remarkable housekeeper in the place, but her

son insisted that she was these to begin with. Certainly, she had not

been experimenting on the two J.W.'s all these years for nothing.

After dinner--talk. No need of any other game in that company at such a

time. There was plenty to talk about, and all had their reasons for

enjoying it. Naturally, J.W. must tell about himself. Letters are all

very well, but they are no more than makeshifts, after all. He was

modest enough about it, not having any special exploits to parade before

their wondering eyes, but quite willing. His Western experiences being

called for, he was soon telling, not of desert and cactus and

irrigation, but of the people who had so taken his attention, the

Mexicans.

"I believe," said he, "that we can do something really big down there.

And it's our business. Nobody except American Christians will do it;

nobody else can. Besides, the Mexicans are Christians in name, now. What

they need is the reality. They are not impossible--just uncertain. All I

heard and what little I saw made me believe they are suffering from bad

leadership and ignorance more than from anything hopelessly wrong. They

seem easy to get along with. The women are the most patient workers I

ever heard of. And the poor Mexicans, the 'peons,' do want an end to

fighting and banditry."

"Well, J.W.," Marty asked, "what's the first thing we ought to think

about for Mexico?"

"I told you I don't know anything about Mexico, except at second-hand.

But, I should say, schools. Schools are good for any land, don't you

think, Mr. Drury? And in Mexico they are such great disturbers of the

old slouching indifference. They will make the right kind of

discontent. Schools bring other things; new ideas of health and

sanitation, home improvement, social outlook, and all that. Then, with

the schools, I guess, the straight gospel. The Mexicans won't get

converted all at once, and they won't become like us, ever. But I'm

about ready to say that whether missions are needed anywhere else or

not, they surely are needed in Mexico. And Mexico is the first

stepping-stone to South America; which is next on my list of the places

that ought to have the whole scheme of Christian teaching and life."

"Yes," said Alma, "and you know, I suppose, that the beginning of our

Panama Mission was an Epworth League Institute enterprise? Well, it was.

California young people assumed the support of the first missionary sent

there, and later he went on down to South America, with the same young

people determined to take him on as their representative, just as they

did in Panama."

"Where did you get that story?" J.W. wanted to know.

"Oh, I forgot," Alma answered him, laughing. "You haven't had time to

read The Epworth Herald in Saint Louis."

"Yes, I have, young lady," J.W. retorted, "but I missed that. Anyway,

it's on the right track. I think we've got to change the thinking of all

Latin America about Christianity, if we can. Most of the men, they say,

are atheists, made so very largely by their loss of faith in the church;

and many of the women substitute an almost fierce devotion to the same

church for what we think of as being genuine religion."

The minister spoke up just here. "I should think it would be pretty

difficult to treat our United States Mexicans in one way, and those

across the Rio Grande in another. We must evangelize on both sides of

the river, but only on this side can we even attempt to Americanize."

"That's right," J.W. affirmed. "And even on this side we can't do what

we may do in Delafield. The language is a big question, and it has two

sides. But no matter what the difficulties, I'm for a great advance of

missions and education, starting with Mexico and going all the way to

Cape Horn."

"That's all very fine," interposed Marty, "but what about the rest of

the world, J.W.? What about the world that has not even the beginning of

Christian knowledge?" Marty had put the question on the urge of the

moment, and not until it was out did he remember that Mr. Drury had

asked him to help raise this very issue.

"Well," J.W. answered, slowly, "maybe that part of the world is worse,

though I don't know. But we can't tackle everything. Latin America is an

immense job by itself, and we have some real responsibility there; a

sort of Christian Monroe Doctrine. Ought we to scatter our forces? The

non-Christian world has its own religions, and has had them for

hundreds, maybe thousands of years. What's the hurry just now? If we

could do everything, we Protestant Christians, I mean, in this country

and Britain, it might be different, but we can't. Why not concentrate?"

"Yes," Marty came back, "but not because Latin America is so nearly

Christian. What about this atheism and superstition and ignorance; isn't

it just a non-Christian civilization with Christian labels on some parts

of it?"

"One thing I've heard," put in Jeannette, not that she wanted to argue,

but she felt she ought to say something on J.W.'s side if she could,

"that the religions of the Orient, at least, are really great religions,

more suited to the minds of the people than any other. 'East is East,

and West is West,' you know. But, of course, the people don't live up to

the high levels of their beliefs. Americans don't, either."

Mr. Drury shot an amused yet admiring glance at Jeannette. What a loyal

soul she was! Then said he: "The religions of the East _are_ great

religions, Jeannette. They represent the best that men can do. The

Orient has a genius for religion, and it has produced far better systems

than the West could have done. Some of the truth that we Western people

get only in Christianity the thinkers of Asia worked out for themselves.

But God was back of it all."

That suited J.W.'s present mood. "All right, then; let's clean up as we

go--Delafield, Saint Louis, the Southwest, Mexico, Latin America; that's

the logical order. Then the rest of the world."

Marty put in a protest here: "That won't do, old man. Your logic's lame.

You want us to go into Mexico now, with all we've got. Your letters

have said so, and you've said it again to-night. But we're not 'cleaning

up as we go.' Look at Delafield; the town you've moved away from. Look

at Saint Louis; the town where you make your living. Are they

Christianized? Cleaned up? Yet you are ready for Mexico. No; you're all

wrong, J.W. I don't believe the world's going to be saved the way you

break up prairie sod, a field at a time, and let the rest alone. We've

got to do our missionary work the way they feed famine sufferers. They

don't give any applicant all he can eat, but they try to make the supply

go 'round, giving each one a little. Remember, J.W., the rest of the

world is as human as our western hemisphere."

"I know," admitted J.W. "And I don't say I've got the right of it. I'd

have to see the Orient before I made up my mind. But those countries

have waited a long while. A few more years wouldn't be any great

matter."

Alma Wetherell now joined the opposition. It looked as though J.W. and

Jeannette must stand alone, for the old people said nothing, though they

listened with eager ears. Said Alma, "I think it would matter a lot. The

more we do for one people, while ignoring all the others, the less we

should care to drop a developing work to begin at the bottom somewhere

else."

"There's something in that," J.W. conceded. "I'm not meaning to be

stubborn. But I've had just a glimpse of the size of the missionary job

in one little corner of the world. Even that is too big for us. We could

put our whole missionary investment into Mexico without being able to do

what is needed."

"The missionary job, as you call it, is too big, certainly, for our

present resources," said the pastor. "Everybody knows that."

"Yes," said Marty, who wondered if Mr. Drury had forgotten their compact

about J.W., "but why limit ourselves to our present resources? They are

not all we could get, if the church came to believe in the bigness of

her privilege. I'd like to see for myself, as J.W. says, but I can't.

Why don't you get a real traveling job, and go about the world looking

things over for us, old man?"

"Me?" J.W. said, sarcastically; "yes, that's a likely prospect. Just as

I'm getting over being scared by a sample case. I'll do well to hold the

job I've got."

Alma didn't know what Marty's game was, but she played up to his

suggestion. "Why shouldn't you go?" she asked. "You've told us that

Cummings hardware and tools are sold all over the world. Doesn't that

mean salesmen? And aren't you a salesman? They have to send somebody;

why shouldn't they pick on you some time?"

J.W. rose to the lure, for the moment all salesman. "Nothing in it,

Alma; no chance at all. But I would like to show the world the

civilizing values of good tools, and I'd go if I got the chance."

Jeannette's reaction was quicker than thinking; "Would you go half way

around the world just for that?" she asked, with a hint of alarm.

"Why, yes, I would," said J.W., "that is, if you were willing."

Whereupon everybody laughed but Jeannette, whose pale cheeks flamed into

sudden rosiness.

The minister came to her rescue. "It would be a good thing every way, if

more laymen would see the realities of Oriental life and bring back an

impartial report. Suppose you should be right, J.W., and we found that

the Orient could wait until the western hemisphere had been thoroughly

Christianized. Think how many thousands--perhaps millions--of dollars

could be directed into more productive channels. I can see what a great

influence such reports would have if they came from Christian laymen. We

have learned to expect stories of complete failure when the ordinary

traveler comes back; and maybe the missionaries have their bias too. But

business men with Christian ideals--that would be different."

Now, all this was far from unpleasant to J.W. He detested posing, but

why wouldn't it be worth something to have laymen report on missionary

work? Of course, though, if the time ever came when the firm was willing

to trust him abroad, he wouldn't have much chance to study missions.

Business would have to come first. It was no less a dream for being an

agreeable one.

"There's no danger of my going," he told them. "The Cummings people are

not sending cub salesmen to promote their big Asiatic trade. What could

they make by it?"

Then the talk drifted to the Carbrooks. Marty said, "Well, we've spoiled

your scheme a little, J.W., right here in Delafield. Joe Carbrook and

Marcia are in China by now, and I'd like to see both of 'em as they get

down to work. You can't keep all our interest on this side of the

Pacific so long as those two are on the other."

"No," said J.W., warmly, "and I don't want to. I'll help to back up

those two missionaries wherever they go." And his thoughts went back to

camp fire night at Cartwright Institute, when he had said to Joe

Carbrook without suspecting the consequences, "Say, Joe; if you think

you could be a doctor, why not a missionary doctor?"

Then he asked the company, "Just where have these missionary infants

been sent?"

Nobody knew, exactly. They had the name of the town and the province,

but the geography of China is not as yet familiar even to those who

support the missions and missionaries of that vast, mysterious land.

The pastor thought it was two or three hundred miles inland from

Foochow. "Anyhow," said he, "it is a good-sized town, of about one

hundred thousand people or more, and Joe's hospital is the only one in

the whole district. The man whose place he takes is home on furlough,

and I've looked up his work in the Annual Report of the Foreign Missions

Board. Six or eight years ago the hospital was a building of sun-dried

brick, with a mud floor and accommodations for about seventy-five

patients. He was running it on something like five dollars a day. But it

is better now, costs more too. And there's a school attached, where

Marcia has already begun to make herself necessary, or I'm much

mistaken."

So the talk ran on, until the evening was far spent, and everybody

wished there could be half a dozen such evenings before J.W. must go

back to Saint Louis and the road.

No other opportunity offered, however, and all too soon for some people

J.W. was gone again from Delafield.

Walter Drury, seeing his chance, set himself to follow up the talk of

that one evening. It had given him a lead as to the next phase of the

Experiment, and he wanted to try out the idea before anything else might

happen.

So he wrote to his brother Albert in Saint Louis. "I know I'm a bother

to you," the letter ran, "but you have always been generous, being your

own unselfish self. It's about young Farwell, 'John Wesley, Jr.,' you

know. I judge he's a boy with a fine business future, and I've found out

from his father some of the reasons why he is making good. Now, I don't

know much about business, but it seems to me that the very qualities

which make J.W. a good salesman for a beginner would be profitable to

his company if they sent him to their Oriental trade. He's young enough

to learn something over there. My own interest is not on that side of

the affair, but I know it would be out of the question to suggest his

going unless the Cummings people could see a business advantage in it.

If you think it is not asking too much, I wish you would talk to Mr.

McDougall about it. Tell him what I have written, and what I told you

long ago about J.W."

Albert Drury had unbounded confidence in his brother's sincerity and

sense, so he lost no time in getting an interview with his friend

McDougall.

"See here, Peter," said he, "I'll be frank with you; I know you think

I'd better be if I'm to get anywhere."

"That's very true," said McDougall, with assumed severity.

"Well, then, read my brother's letter; and then tell me if he's wanting

the impossible."

Peter McDougall read the letter twice. "No," he said, when he handed it

back, "he's not wanting the impossible. He's given me an idea. I owe you

something already, for finding this young fellow, and I'll tell you what

I'm thinking of. Of course the boy isn't seasoned enough yet, but he's

getting there fast. A couple of long trips, a few months under my own

eye here in the office, and he'll be ready. Now, your brother has hinted

at exactly what young Farwell is good for. That boy sells goods by

getting over onto the buyer's side. And he knows tools--knew 'em before

we hired him. Well, then, here's the idea; one big need of our foreign

trade is to show our agencies what can really be done with American

hardware and tools. It takes more than a salesman; and Farwell has the

knack. So there you are. Tell your brother the boy shall have his

chance."

A few months later McDougall sent for J.W. and put the whole proposal

before him.

"But I'm not an expert, Mr. McDougall," J.W. protested. "I haven't the

experience, and I might fall down completely in a new field like that."

"We're not looking for an expert," said McDougall, shortly. "You know

what every user of our stuff ought to know; you can put yourself in his

place; and you'll be a sort of missionary. How about it?"

At the word J.W.'s memory awoke, and he heard again what had been said

in the living room at Delafield when he was last at home. A missionary!

And here was the very chance they had all talked about.

"Of course I should like to go, if you think I'll do," he said.

Peter looked at him more kindly than was his wont. "My boy," he said, "I

know something about you outside of business, though not much. And I

think you'll do. Mind you, your missionary work will be tools and

hardware, not the Methodist Church. You will have to show people who

have their own ideas about tools how much more convenient our goods are;

handier, lighter, more adaptable. What they need over there is modern

stuff. It will help them to raise more crops and do better work and earn

a better income. You've nothing to do with selling policies, finance,

credits, and all that. Just be a tool and hardware missionary."

"Where had you thought of sending me?" asked J.W., still somewhat

dazed.

"Oh, wherever we have agencies that you can use as bases: China, the

Philippines, Malaysia, India. You will have to figure on a year or

nearly that. And you mustn't stick to the ports or the big cities. Get

hold of people who'll show you the country; the places where our goods

are most needed and least known. Study the people and their tools. Work

out better ways of doing things. Don't try to hustle the East, but

remember that the East is doing a little hustling on its own account

these days. And talk turkey to our agencies--when you're sure you have

something to talk about."

The rest is detail. The trip determined on, preparations were hastened.

A month before the date of starting J.W. had time for no more than a

hurried visit to Delafield, to say good-by to the home folk and to the

preacher whom he had come to think of as Timothy might have thought of

Paul. Then he had something else to say to Jeannette. His prospects were

becoming so promising that he could ask her a very definite question,

and he dared to hope for a definite answer.

Jeannette, troubled at the thought of his long absence in strange lands,

consoled herself by her promise, which was his promise also. As soon as

he came home again they would be married. Brother Drury should

officiate, assisted by "the Rev. Martin Luther Shenk, brother of the

charming bride," as J.W. put it.

Walter Drury was not his usual alert self, J.W. thought, and it hurt him

to see his much-loved friend touched even a little by the years. But

the pastor brightened up, and grew visibly better as J.W. told him all

his plans.

"Just think, Mr. Drury," he said with animation, "I'm to be a

missionary, after all. Once long ago I remember you suggested I might go

to China and see for myself the difference between their religion and

ours; and now I'm going to China. Who knows, maybe I'll see Joe Carbrook

at his work. And then I'm to go all over the East, to preach the gospel

of better tools." Then he became thoughtful. "Don't you think that's

almost as good as the gospel of better bodies--Joe's gospel?"

"Surely, I do," said the pastor, "if you and Joe preach in the same

spirit, knowing that China won't be saved even by hospitals and modern

hardware. They help. But remember our understanding; you have your

chance now to see the religions of the East. Going right among the

people, as you will, you can find out more in a week than the average

tourist ever discovers. I'll give you the names of some people who will

gladly help you. And we shall want a full report when you come back. God

bless you, J.W."

It was a tired preacher who went to bed that night. This new adventure

of his boy's; what would it mean to the Experiment? He had done his best

to keep that long-ago pledge to himself. Not always had the project been

easy; he could not control all its circumstances, but in the main it had

gone well.

And now J.W. was in the last stage of the Experiment Walter Drury had

contrived to shape its larger conditions, with the help of many friendly

but unsuspecting conspirators. This tour in the interest of better tools

was due mainly to his initiative. But he could do nothing more. The

event was now out of his hands. The relaxed tension made him realize

that his nerves were shaky, and he had a sense of great depression. But

before he went to bed he pulled himself together long enough to write to

five missionaries, including Joe Carbrook, whose fields were on or near

the route J.W. would travel. He had told J.W. that he would let these

men know of his coming, but he did more. To each one he said a word of

appeal. "Don't argue much with this boy of mine; I want him to see it

without too many second-hand opinions. Explain all you please, and let

him get as near as he can to the people you are dealing with. If, as I

hope, he gets a glimpse of the work's inner meaning, I shall be

satisfied."

* * * * *

The first day which J.W. spent in Shanghai was a big day for him. Even

amid the strangeness of the scene he felt almost at home. The people who

had the Cummings agency had received their instructions, and were

prepared to help him every way. He could begin an up-country trip at

once if he wished. Then he met the first of the men to whom Pastor Drury

had written, Mark Rutledge, and at once he saw that this well-groomed,

alert young missionary, who used modern speech in deliberate but direct

fashion, would be of immense service to him.

Rutledge received J.W.'s gospel of tools with almost boyish

enthusiasm. "I've always said," he exclaimed, "that if the other

business men of America had as much sense as the tobacco folks they

would hasten the Christianizing of China by many a year. Not that

tobacco is helping; far from it. But it's the idea of fitting their

product to this particular market. And your house has evidently caught

that idea. You must have a real sales manager in Saint Louis! Of course

I'll help you all I can."

Some of the help which Mark Rutledge gave him was of a sort that J.W.

could not rightly estimate at the time, but he knew it was good. As long

as he stayed in Shanghai, and as often he came back to the city as a

base, he and Rutledge were pretty frequently together. The missionary

kept his own counsel as to the Drury letter, merely dropping a hint now

and then, or a suggestion which fitted both the Cummings agency's

program and the pastor's desire.

The inland trips for business purposes kept J.W. busy for weeks; he

found himself in so utterly novel a situation that he saw he could not

work out anything without careful study and expert Chinese cooperation.

As he came and went he saw, under Rutledge's guidance, much of the

inside of mission work. In Shanghai he found a Methodist publishing

house, sending out literature all over China, as well as two monthly

papers, one in Chinese and one in English. Many missionary boards had

headquarters here. From Shanghai as a business center every form of

missionary work was being promoted, reaching as far as the foothills of

the Thibetan plateau. Hospital equipment was distributed, and school

equipment, and supplies of every variety. He saw that it was the

financial center too, and mission finance is a special science. Shanghai

seemed to J.W. to be one of the great capitals of the missionary world.

Rutledge's own work, many sided as J.W. saw it was, had two aspects of

special significance. Rutledge was sending back to America all the

information he could gather from the whole field. With the skill of a

trained reporter he showed the missionaries how to write so as to make a

genuine story seem convincing, and how to subordinate the details to the

importance of making a clear and single impression.

The other work of Rutledge's which caught J.W.'s eye was his activity

in behalf of the young people of China. Until lately nothing at all had

been done comparable to the specialized development of young people's

work in America, but now the Epworth League was beginning to be utilized

and adapted to Chinese ways. Funds were available--not much, but a

beginning. Leaders were being trained. A larger measure of local,

Chinese help was being employed.

J.W. asked Mark Rutledge about all this one day. "Isn't it going to

make a difference with the work by and by, if you get so many natives

into places of responsibility? Are they ready for it?"

"No," said Rutledge, "they're not. But we must make them ready. You

haven't begun to see China yet, but already you can see that the

country could never be 'evangelized,' even in the narrowest use of that

word, by foreign missionaries. And it ought not to be."

"You mean that we Americans ought to consider our work in China as

temporary?" J.W. asked.

Rutledge answered, "Frankly, I do, if you let me put my own meaning into

'temporary,' We must start things. And much that must be done in the

long run has not yet been started. We must stay here beyond my life

expectation or yours. But China will be Christianized by the Chinese,

not by foreigners. As far ahead as we can see the work will have help

from outside, but I honestly want the time to come when we missionaries

will be looked upon as the foreign helpers of the Chinese Church; not,

as now, controlling the work ourselves and enlisting the services of

'native helpers.'"

"Then tell me another thing," J.W. persisted. "Is our Christianity, as

the Chinese get it, any advance on their own religion? Or is their

religion all right, if they would work it as we hope they may work the

Christian program?"

"That's two questions," said Rutledge, dryly, "but, after all, it is

only one. Our Christianity as the Chinese get it is far ahead of the

best they have, in ideals, in human values, everything, even if they

were more consistent in responding to its claims than Christians are.

The old religions--and China has several--are helpless. We are not

killing off the old faiths. If we should get out to-morrow these would

none the less die out in time, but then China would be left without any

religion at all. Instead, she's going to have the Christian faith in a

form that will accord with the genius of the Chinese mind. That's my

sure confidence, or I wouldn't be here."

It was necessary that J.W. should run down the coast to Foochow, the

base for his next operations in the hardware adventure. "I know I'm

green," he said to Rutledge, "and I may be thinking of impossibilities,

but do you suppose there'll be any chance for me to get up to Dr.

Carbrook's place from Foochow? I've told you about him and his wife, and

I'd rather see those two than anybody else in all the East."

"It's not impossible at all," Rutledge assured him. "Carbrook's post is

not so very far from Foochow, as distances go in China, and Ralph Bellew

at the college will help you."

"Yes, my pastor at home told me to be sure and call on him," said J.W.,

and took his leave of a man he would long remember.

The call of Professor Bellew was not delayed long after J.W. had found

his bearings in Foochow, and the Professor's welcome was even more

cordial than that of the Cummings agency, though these gentlemen were,

of course, the soul of courtesy. If they were not so sure as Peter

McDougall that J.W. or any other American could teach them anything

about selling the Cummings line in China, at least they would not put

anything in his way.

One important interior town, Yenping, they had hoped J.W. might visit,

but unfortunately there was no one connected with the agency who could

be sent with him. They understood that some of his missionary friends

were ready to help him in the general enterprise, and perhaps they might

be able to suggest something.

When the difficulty was stated to Professor Bellew he said: "Why, that's

one of our stations. It is a little out of the way to go up to Dr.

Carbrook's place on the way to Yenping, but we'll see that you get to

both towns."

"That's certainly good of you, Professor," said J.W., gratefully. "I've

told you about Joe Carbrook, and I can hardly wait until I get to him."

As a matter of fact, he had told everybody about Joe Carbrook.

Professor Bellew was sympathetic. "I know," he said, "and I understand.

When you come back, if we can manage the dates, you may find something

here which you ought to see."

The Carbrook Hospital--it has another name in the annual reports, but

this will identify it sufficiently for our purposes--spread itself all

over the compound and beyond in its welcome to J.W. Joe and Marcia were

first, and joyfullest. The school turned out to the last scholar, and

even the hospital's "walking cases" insisted on having a share in the

welcome to the foreign doctor's friend.

"Tell us what you are up to," said the Carbrooks, when they were back in

the house after a sketchy inspection of the whole establishment;

hospital, dispensary, school, chapel, and so forth. And, "Tell me what

you are doing with it, now that you have the hospital you have been

dreaming about so long," said J.W.

But J.W. told his story first, just to get it out of the way, as he

said. Then he turned to Marcia and said, "How about it, 'Mrs.

Carbrook'?"

"Well, J.W.," said Marcia, "that name is not so strange as it was. I'm

feeling as if I had been married a long time, judging by the

responsibilities, that are dumped on me just because I am the doctor's

wife. And this doctor man of mine hardly knows whether to be happy or

miserable. He's happy, because he has found the very place he wanted.

And he's miserable because he ought to be learning the language and

can't get away from the work that crowds in on him."

"And you yourself, Marcia," J.W. asked, "are you happy or miserable, or

both?"

"She's as mixed up as I am, old man," Joe answered for her. "Talk about

the language! I don't hanker after learning it, but I've got to, some

time. If they would just let me be a sort of deaf-mute doctor I'd be

much obliged. The work is fairly maddening. You know, it was a question

of closing up this hospital or putting me in as a green hand. Of course

there are the nurses, and a couple of students. But I'm glad they put me

in; only, look at the job! Never a day without new patients. A steady

stream at the out-clinic. Why, J.W., I've done operations alone here

that at home they'd hardly let me hold sponges for. Had to do 'em."

"Well," J.W. commented, "isn't that what you came for?"

"It is," Marcia answered--these two had a queer way of speaking for each

other--"and it would be a good plenty if the hospital were all. But we

are putting up a new building to take the place of an adobe horror, and

Joe has to buy bricks and deal with workmen and give advice and dispense

medicine and do operations, all with the help of a none too sure

interpreter. He's the busiest man, I do believe, between here and

Foochow."

J.W. wanted to draw Dr. Joe out about the work in general. What of the

evangelistic work, and the educational work, and all the rest.

But Dr. Joe would not rise to it. "I'll tell you honestly, J.W., I just

don't know. Haven't had time to find out. When I got here I found people

standing three deep around the hospital doors, some wanting help for

themselves, and some anxious to bring relatives or friends. I was at

work before anything was unpacked except my instruments. And I've been

at it ever since. Everything else could wait, but all this human misery

couldn't. And I don't know much of what the evangelistic value of it all

will be. We have a Bible woman and a teacher in the school who are very

devoted. They read and pray every day with the patients, and as for

gratitude, I never expected to be thanked for what I did as I have been

thanked here. I'll tell you one thing; I didn't dream a man could be so

content in the midst of such a hurricane of work. I'm done to a

standstill every day; I bump into difficulties and tackle

responsibilities that I hadn't even heard of in medical school, though I

haven't killed anybody yet. And all the time I remember how I used to

wish I might be the only doctor between Siam and sunrise. I'm plenty

near enough to that, in all conscience. The only doctor in this town of

one hundred thousand, and a district around us so big that I'm afraid to

measure it. On one side the next doctor is a good hundred miles away.

Now, do you know how I feel? Oh, yes; insufficient until it hurts like

the toothache, yet somehow as though I were carrying on here, not in

place of the man who has gone home on furlough, but in place of Jesus

Christ himself. You know I'm not irreverent; I might have been, but this

has taken all of the temptation out of me. It is his work, not mine."

J.W. turned to Marcia again. "I thought you said this Joe of yours was

miserable, I've seen him when he was enjoying himself pretty well, but I

never saw him like this."

"I know," Marcia admitted, "and I didn't mean he was really unhappy. But

it is a big strain, and there's no sign of its letting up until the

regular doctor gets back."

The next day J.W. watched his old friend amid the press of duties which

crowded the hours, and he marveled as much as the wretchedness of the

patients as he did at the steady resourcefulness of the man whom he had

known when he was Delafield's adventurous and spendthrift idler.

As he looked on, J.W. could understand something which had been a closed

book to him before. No one could stand by and see this abjectness of

need, this helplessness, this pathetic faith which was almost fatalistic

in the foreign doctor's miraculous powers--it recalled that beseeching

cry in the New Testament story, "Lord, if thou _wilt_ thou

_canst_"--without being deeply, poignantly glad that there were such men

as Joe Carbrook. It was all very well to talk at long range about

letting China and other places wait. But on the spot nobody could talk

that way.

The visit might have lasted two weeks, instead of two days, and then the

Carbrooks would have hung on and besought him to stay a little longer.

Torture would not have drawn any admission from them, but back of all

the joy in the work was a something that left them without words as J.W.

and his little group from Foochow set out for the next stopping place.

Just before the last silent hand-grips, J.W. told his friends about

Jeannette and himself, and promised Joe a wedding present. "You see," he

said, "I never sent you one when you were married, and I'd like to send

you a double one now, for yourselves and for us. You send me word what

it is you most need for the hospital, an X-ray outfit, or a sterilizer,

or a thingamajig for making cultures, microscope included, and Jeannette

and I will see that you get it. I'm a tither, you know, and my salary's

been raised, and I want to do something to show what a fool I was before

I knew what sort of a business you were really in out here. So don't be

modest; you can't hurt my feelings!"

Back at Foochow in the course of the slow days which Chinese travel

gives to those who go aside from the beaten path, Professor Bellew

welcomed J.W. with eager warmth. "You're back just in time, if you can

stay a few days; the celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the

college begins to-morrow."

J.W. had at least a week's business with the Cummings agents. He had

found some conditions on his inland journey which called for much

discussion. So he had time for sharing in a good deal of the

celebration. It was something to marvel at, that a Christian college had

been at work in this great city for forty years.

The president of the college and his wife started the proceedings with a

formal reception, at which a Chinese orchestra furnished music outside

the house, and Western musicians rendered more familiar selections in

the parlors. Alumni flocked to the reception, men of every variety of

occupation, but all one in their devotion to their Alma Mater. The next

afternoon was given over to athletics, and the evening to a lecture,

quite in the American fashion.

The third day being Sunday, J.W. listened to an American missionary in

the morning, who spoke boldly of the prime need for a college like this

if the youth of China were to be trained for the highest service to

their country. At night he sat through nearly three hours of the most

amazing testimony meeting he had ever seen. It was led by a Chinese who

had been graduated from the college thirty years before. The eagerness,

almost impatience, to confess what Jesus Christ and Christian education

had meant to these Chinese leaders--for it was evident they _were_

leaders--was a thing to stir the most sluggish Christian pulse. J.W.'s

mind took him back to a memorable love feast at Cartwright Institute,

when Joe Carbrook had made his first confession of and surrender to

Jesus Christ, and it seemed to him that the likeness between these two

so different gatherings was far more real than all their contrasts.

On Monday the anniversary banquet brought the American consul, a

representative of the provincial governor, and many other dignitaries.

And on Tuesday the students put on a pageant which illustrated in

gorgeousness of color and costume and accessories the history of the

college. Besides all this pomp and circumstance there was a wonderful

industrial exhibit. The president of China sent a scroll, as did also

the prime minister. Former students in the cities of China, from Peking

to Amoy, sent subscriptions amounting to twenty-five thousand dollars

for new buildings, and other old students in the Philippines sent a

second twenty-five thousand dollars.

All of which stirred J.W. to the very soul. Here was a Christian college

older than many in America. Its results could not be measured by any

visible standards, yet he had seen graduates of the school and students

who did not stay long enough to graduate, men of light and leading, men

of wealth and station, officials, men in whom the spirit of the new

China burned, Christian workers; and all these bore convincing testimony

that this college had been the one great mastering influence of their

lives. A Christian college--in China!

J.W. thought of it all and said to himself: "I wonder if I am the same

individual as he who not so many months ago was talking about the good

sense of letting China wait indefinitely for Christ? Anyhow, somebody

has had better sense than that every day of the last forty years!"

The "tour of the tools" was teaching J.W. more than he could teach the

merchants of Asia. And yet he was doing no little missionary work, as

evidenced both in his own reports to Peter McDougall, and still more in

the reports which went to that observant gentleman after J.W. had moved

on from any given place. The Cummings Hardware Corporation may be

without a soul, as corporations are known to be, but it has many eyes.

These eyes followed J.W.'s progress from Shanghai to Foochow, to Hong

Kong, to Manila. They observed how he studied artisans and their ways

with tools, and the ways of builders with house fittings, and the

various devices with which in field and garden the toilers set

themselves to their endless labor. As the eyes of the Cummings

organization saw these things, the word went back across the water to

Saint Louis, and Peter McDougall took credit to himself for a

commendable shrewdness.

But the ever-watchful eyes had no instructions to report on the tool

missionary's other activities, and therefore no report was made. None

the less they saw, and wondered, and thought that there was something

back of it all. There was more back of it than they could have guessed.

For J.W. had come to a new zest for both of his quests. The business

which had brought him into the East was daily becoming more fascinating

in its possibilities and promise. In even greater measure the interests

which belong especially to this chronicle were taking on a new

importance. Everywhere he went he sought out the missions and the

missionaries. He plied the workers with question on question until they

told him all the hopes and fears and needs and longings which often they

hesitated to put into their official letters to the Boards.

In Manila he saw, after a little more than two decades of far from

complete missionary occupation, the signs that a Christian civilization

was rising. The schools and churches and hospitals and other

organization work established in Manila were proof that all through the

islands the everyday humdrum of missionary service was going forward,

perhaps without haste, but surely without rest.

When he came to Singapore, that traffic corner to which all the sea

roads of the East converge, he heard the story of a miracle, and then

he saw the miracle itself, the Anglo-Chinese College.

They told him what it meant, not the missionaries only, but the Chinese

merchants who controlled the Cummings line for all the archipelago, and

Sumatra planters, and British officials, and business men from Malaysian

trade centers whose names he had never before heard.

The teacher who put himself at J.W.'s service was one of the men to

whom Pastor Drury had written his word of appeal on J.W.'s behalf. He

respected it altogether, and the more because he well knew that here was

no need for mere talk. A visitor with eyes and ears could come to his

own conclusions. If the college were not its own strongest argument, no

words could strengthen it.

The college had been started by intrepid men who had no capital but

faith and an overmastering sense of duty. That was a short generation

ago. Now J.W. saw crowded halls and students with purposeful faces, and

he heard how, at first by the hundreds and now by thousands, the product

of this school was spreading a sense of Christian life-values through

all the vast island and ocean spaces from Rangoon to New Guinea, and

from Batavia to Sulu.

But it may as well be told that, even more than China, India made the

deepest impress on the mind and heart of our tool-traveler. From the

moment when he landed in Calcutta to the moment when he watched the low

coasts of the Ganges delta merge into the horizon far astern, India

would not let him alone. He saw poverty such as could scarcely be

described, and religious rites the very telling of which might sear the

tongue. If China's poor had a certain apathy which seemed like poise,

even in their wretchedness, not so India's, but, rather, a slow-moving

misery, a dull progress toward nothing better, with only nothingness and

its empty peace at last.

Once in Calcutta, and his business plans set going, he started out to

find some of the city's Christian forces. They were not easy to find. As

in every Oriental city, missionary work is relatively small. Indeed, J.

W. began to think that this third city of Asia had little religion of

any sort.

He had been prepared in part for the first meager showing of mission

work. On shipboard he had encountered the usual assortment of missionary

critics; the unobservant, the profane, the superior, the loose-living,

and all that tribe. The first of them he had met on the second day out

from San Francisco, and every boat which sailed the Eastern seas

appeared to carry its complement of self-appointed and all-knowing

enemies of the whole missionary enterprise. While steaming up the Bay of

Bengal, the anti-mission chorus appeared at its critical best. J.W. was

told as they neared Calcutta that the Indian Christian was servile, and

slick and totally untrustworthy. Never had these expert observers seen a

genuine convert, but only hypocrites, liars, petty thieves, and

grafters.

In spite of it all, at last he found the Methodist Mission, and it was

not so small, when once you saw the whole of it. By great good fortune

his instructions from home ordered him up country as far as Cawnpore.

And to his delight he met a Methodist bishop, one of the new ones, who

was setting out with a party for the Northwest. So, on the bishop's most

cordial invitation, he joined himself to the company, and learned in a

day or two from experts how to make the best of India's rather trying

travel conditions.

Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Lucknow--J.W. came to these cities with a

queer feeling of having been there before. Long ago, in his early Sunday

school days, the names of these places and the wonders of them had been

the theme of almost the only missionary book he had at that age cared to

read.

At Allahabad, said his companions of the way, an All-India Epworth

League convention was to be held, and J.W. made up his mind that a

League convention in India would be doubly worth attending. He did

attend it too, but it left no such memory as another gathering in the

same city; a memory which he knows will last after every other picture

of the East has faded from his recollection.

The party had reached Allahabad at the time of the Khumb Mela, a vast

outpouring of massed humanity too great for any but the merest guesses

at its numbers. This "Mela," feast, religious pilgrimage, whatever it

might mean to these endless multitudes, is held here at stated times

because the two sacred rivers, the Jumna and the Ganges, come together

at Allahabad, and tradition has it that a third river flows beneath the

surface to meet the others. So the place is trebly sacred, its waters

potent for purification, no matter how great one's sin.

With the others J.W. set out for an advantageous observation point, on

the wall of the fort which stands on the tongue of land between the two

streams. On the way J.W. assured himself that if Calcutta seemed without

religion, here was more than enough of it to redress the balances. In

the throng was a holy man whose upraised arm had been held aloft until

it had atrophied, and would never more swing by his side. And yonder

another holy one sat in the sand, with a circle of little fires burning

close about him. The seeker after he knew not what who made his search

while lying on a bed of spikes was here. And once a procession passed,

two hundred men, all holy after the fashion of Hindu holiness, all

utterly naked, with camels and elephants moving in their train. As if to

show how these were counted men of special sanctity, the people fell on

their faces to the ground beside them as they passed, and kissed their

shadows on the sand.

The point of vantage reached, J.W.'s bewildered eyes could scarce make

his brain believe what they saw. He was standing on a broad wall, thirty

feet above the water, and perhaps a hundred feet back from it. Up and

down the stream was an endless solid mass of heads. J.W. looked for some

break in the crowd, some thinning out of its packed bodies, but as far

as he could see there was no break, no end. Government officials had

estimated the number of pilgrims at two millions!

A signal must have been given, or an hour had come--J.W. could not tell

which--but somehow the people knew that now was the opportunity to enter

the water and gain cleansing from all sin. A mighty, resistless movement

carried the human stream to meet the river. Inevitably the weaker

individuals were swept along helpless, and those who fell arose no more.

Horrified, J.W. stood looking down on the slow, irresistible movement

of the writhing bodies, and he saw a woman drop. A British police

officer, standing in an angle of the wall beneath, ordered a native

policeman to get the woman out But the native, seeing the crush and

unwilling to risk himself for so slight a cause, waited until his

superior turned away to another point of peril, and then, snatching the

red-banded police turban from his head, was lost in the general mass.

The woman? Trampled to death, and twenty other men and women with her,

in sight of the stunned watchers on the wall, who were compelled to see

these lives crushed out, powerless to help by so much as a finger's

weight.

What was it all for? J.W. asked his companions on the wall. And they

said that the word went out at certain times and the people flocked to

this Mela. They came to wash in the sacred waters at the propitious

moment. Nothing else mattered; not the inescapable pollution of the

rivers, not the weariness and hunger and many distresses of the way. It

was a chance, so the wise ones declared, to be rid of sin. Certainly it

might not avail, but who would not venture if mayhap there might be

cleansing of soul in the waters of Mother Ganges?

On another day J.W. came to a temple, not a great towering shrine, but

a third-rate sort of place, a sacred cow temple. Here was a family which

had journeyed four hundred miles to worship before the idols of this

temple. They offered rice to one idol, flowers to another, holy water

from the river to a third. No one might know what inner urge had driven

them here. The priest, slow to heed them, at length deigned to dip his

finger in a little paint and with it he smeared the caste mark on the

foreheads of the worshipers. It was heartless, empty formality.

J.W. watched the woman particularly. Her face was an unrelieved

sadness; she had fulfilled the prescribed rites, in the appointed place,

but there was no surcease from the endless round of dull misery which

she knew was her ordained lot. Thought J.W.: "I suppose this is a sort

of joining the church, an initiation or something of that sort. Not much

like what happened when I joined the church in Delafield. Everybody was

glad there; here nobody is glad, not even the priest."

At Cawnpore J.W. was able to combine business with his missionary

inquiries. Here he found great woollen and cotton mills, not unlike

those of America, except that in these mills women and children were

working long hours, seven days a week, for a miserable wage. It was

heathenism plus commercialism; that is to say, a double heathenism. For

when business is not tempered by the Christian spirit, it is as pagan as

any cow temple.

In these mills was a possible market for certain sorts of Cummings

goods, as J.W. learned in the business quarter of the city. He wanted

more opportunity to see how the goods he dealt in could be used, and,

having by now learned the path of least resistance, he appealed to a

missionary. It was specially fortunate that he did, for the missionary

introduced him to the secretary of the largest mills in the city, an

Indian Christian with a history.

Now, this is a hint at the story of--well, let us call him Abraham. His

own is another Bible name, of more humble associations, but he deserves

to be called Abraham. Thirty years ago a missionary first evangelized

and then baptized some two hundred villagers--outcasts, untouchables,

social lepers. Being newly become Christians, they deposed their old

village god. The landlord beat them and berated them, but they were done

with the idol. Now, that was no easy adventure of faith, and those who

thus adventured could not hope for material gain. They were more

despised than ever.

Yet inevitably they began to rise in the human scale. The missionary

found one of them a young man of parts. Him he took and taught to read,

to write, to know the Scriptures. He began to be an exhorter; then a

local preacher; and at last he joined the Conference as a Methodist

itinerant at six dollars a month. Now this boy was the father of

Abraham.

As a preacher he opened village schools, and taught the children their

letters, his own boy among them. Abraham learned quickly. A place was

found for him in a mission boarding school. Thence he moved on and up to

Lucknow Christian College. It was this man who escorted J.W. through the

great mills of which he was an executive. He had a salary of two hundred

dollars a month. If his father had been an American village preacher at

twelve hundred dollars a year, Abraham's salary, relatively, would need

to be twenty or thirty thousand dollars.

Abraham was the superintendent of a Sunday school in Cawnpore. He was

giving himself to all sorts of betterment work which would lessen the

misery of the poor. He had a seat in the city council. A hostel for boys

was one of his enterprises. Here was a man doing his utmost to

Christianize the industry in which thousands of his country men spent

their lives; a second-generation Christian, and a man who must be

reckoned with, no longer spurned and despised as a casteless nobody.

J.W. followed Abraham about the mills with growing admiration. Inside

the walls, light, orderly paths, flowers, cleanliness. Outside the gate,

to step across the road was to walk a thousand years into the past,

among the smells and the ageless noises of the bazaar, with its

chaffering and cheating, its primitive crudities, and its changeless

wares. Certainly, a Cawnpore mill is not the ideal industrial

commonwealth, but without men like Abraham to alleviate its grimness the

coming of larger opportunities through work like this might well lay a

heavier burden on men's lives than the primitive and costly toil which

it has displaced.

There was just time for a visit to Lucknow, a city which to the British

is the historic place of mutiny and siege; to American Methodists a

place both of history and of present-day advance. J.W. worshiped in the

great Hindustani Methodist church, the busy home of many activities. In

the congregation were many students, girls from Isabella Thoburn

College, and boys from Lucknow Christian College. Lifelong Methodist as

he was, J.W. quickly recognized, even amid these new surroundings, the

familiar aspects of a Methodist church on its busy day. The crowding

congregations were enough to stir one's blood. A noble organ sounded out

the call to worship and led the choir and people in the service of

praise. There was a Sunday school in full operation, and an Epworth

League Chapter, completely organized and active. His guide confided to

J.W. that this church had yet another point of resemblance to the great

churches at home; it was quite accustomed to sending a committee to

Conference, to tell the bishop whom it wanted for preacher next year!

J.W. was not quite satisfied. The days of his wanderings must soon be

over, but before he left India he wanted to see the missionary in actual

contact with the immemorial paganism of the villages, for he had

discovered that the village is India. How was the Christian message

meeting all the dreary emptinesses and limitations of village life?

Once more he appealed to his missionary guide; this latest one, the last

of the five men to whom Pastor Drury had written before J.W. had set out

on his travels. Could he show his visitor a little of missionary work in

village environment?

"Surely. Nothing easier," the district superintendent said. "We'll jump

into my Ford--great thing for India, the Ford; and still greater for us

missionaries--and we'll go a-villaging."

The village of their quest once reached, the Ford drew up before a neat

brick house built around three sides of a courtyard, with verandas on

the court side. This was no usual mud hut, but a house, and a parsonage

withal. Here lived the Indian village preacher and his family. The

preacher's wife was neatly dressed and capable; the children clean and

well-mannered. The room had its table, and on the table books. That

meant nothing to J.W., but the superintendent gave him to understand

that a table with books in an Indian village house was comparable in its

rarity to a small-town American home with a pipe organ and a butler!

The lunch of native food seemed delicious, if it was "hot," to J.W.'s

healthy appetite, and if he had not seen over how tiny a fire it had

been prepared he would have credited the smiling housewife with a

lavishly equipped kitchen.

People began to drop in. It was somewhat disconcerting to the visitor,

to see these callers squatting on their heels, talking one to another,

but watching him continually out of the corners of their eyes. One of

them, the chaudrie, headman of the village, being introduced to J.W.,

told him, the superintendent acting as interpreter, how the boys' school

flourished, and how he and other Christians had gone yesterday on an

evangelizing visit to another village, not yet Christian, but sure to

ask for a teacher soon.

The preacher, in a rather precise, clipped English, asked J.W. if he

cared to walk about the village. "We could go to the _mohulla_ [ward],

where most of our Christians live. They will be most glad to welcome

you."

The way led through dirty, narrow streets, or, rather, let us say,

through the spaces between dwellings, to the low-caste quarter. Here

were people of the bottom stratum of Indian life, yet it was a Christian

community in the making. The little school was in session--a group of

fifteen or twenty boys and girls with their teacher. It was all very

crude, but the children read their lessons for the visitor, and did sums

on the board, and sang a hymn which the pastor had composed, and recited

the Lord's Prayer and the Twenty-third psalm.

"These," said the pastor, "are the children of a people which for a

thousand years has not known how to read or write. Yet see how they

learn."

"Yes," the superintendent agreed, "but that isn't the best of it, as you

know. They are untouchables now, but even caste, which is stronger than

death, yields to education. Once these boys and girls have an education

they cannot be ignored or kept down. They will find a place in the

social order."

"I can see that," J.W. said, thinking of Abraham. "But education is not

a missionary monopoly, is it? If these children were educated by Hindus,

would not the resulting rise in their condition come just the same?"

"It would, perhaps," the missionary answered, "but your 'if' is too big.

For the low caste and the out-caste people there is no education unless

it is Christian education. We have a monopoly, though not of our

choosing. The educated Hindu will not do this work under any

circumstances. It has been tried, with all the prestige of the

government, which is no small matter in India, and nothing comes of it.

Not long ago the government proposed a wonderful scheme for the

education of the 'depressed classes.' The money was provided, and the

equipment as well. There were plenty of Hindus, that is, non-Christians,

who were indebted to the government for their education. They were

invited to take positions in the new schools. But no; not for any money

or any other inducement would these teachers go near. And there you are.

I know of no way out for the great masses of India except as the gospel

opens the door."

"Is there no attempt of any sort on the part of Indians who are not

Christians? Surely, some of them are enlightened enough to see the need,

and to rise above caste." J.W. suspected he was asking a question

which had but one answer.

"Yes, there is such an effort occasionally," the superintendent

admitted. "The Arya Samaj movement makes an attempt once in a while, but

it always fails. If a few are bold enough to disregard caste, they are

never enough to do anything that counts. The effort is scarcely more

than a gesture, and even so it would not have been made but for the

activities of the missionaries."

* * * * *

And so ended J.W.'s Indian studies. Before many days he was retracing

his way--Calcutta, Singapore, Hongkong, Shanghai, Yokohama. And then on

a day he found himself aboard a liner whose prow turned eastward from

Japan's great port, and his heart was flying a homeward-bound pennant

the like of which never trailed from any masthead.

THIS EXPERIMENT TEACHETH--?

For the first day or so out from Japan J.W. behaved himself as does any

ordinary American in similar case; all the sensations of the journey

were swallowed up in the depths of his longings to be home. The voyage

so slow; the Pacific so wide!

But shortly he resigned himself to the pervading restfulness of

shipboard, and began to make acquaintances. Of them all one only has any

interest for us--Miss Helen Morel, late of Manila. Her place was next

to his at the table. Like J.W., she was traveling alone, and before they

had been on board twenty-four hours they had discovered that both were

Methodists; he, from Delafield in the Middle West, she from

Pennsylvania. J.W. found, altogether to his surprise, that she listened

with flattering attention while he talked. For J.W. is no braggart, nor

is he overmuch given to self-admiration; we know him better than that.

But it was pleasant, none the less, on good days to walk up and down the

long decks, and on other days to sit in comfortable deck chairs, with

nothing to do but talk.

Miss Morel, being a teacher going home after three years of steady,

close work in a Manila high school, was ready to talk of anything but

school work. She found herself immensely interested in J.W.'s

experiences. He had told her of the double life, so to say, which he

had led; preaching the good news of better tools, and studying the work

of other men and women, as truly salesmen as himself, who preached a

more arresting and insistent gospel.

"I'm glad to meet some one who knows about missions at first hand," Miss

Morel began one morning, as they stepped out on the promenade deck for

their constitutional. "You know, I think people at home don't understand

at all. They are so absorbed with their little parish affairs that they

can't appreciate this wonderful work that is being done so far from

home."

J.W. agreed, though not without mental reservations. He knew how true

it was that many of the home folks did not rightly value mission work,

but he was not so sure about their "little parish affairs." He watched

to see if Miss Morel meant to expand that idea.

But she evidently had thought at once of something else. Said she,

"Sometimes I think that if the gossip about missionaries and missions

which is so general in the Orient gets back home, as it surely does in

one way or another, it must have a certain influence on what people

think about the work."

"Oh, that," said J.W., with no little scorn. "That stuff is always

ignorant or malicious, and I doubt if it gets very far with church

people. Of course it may with outsiders. I've heard it, any amount of

it; you can't miss it if you travel in the East And there's just enough

excuse for it to make it a particularly vicious sort of slander. You

could say as much about the churches at home, and a case here and there

would not be lacking to furnish proof."

"Certainly," said the teacher. "And yet missions are so wonderful; so

much more worth while than anything that is being done at home, don't

you think?"

There it was again. "I'm afraid I don't follow you, Miss Morel," J.W.

said, with a puzzled air. "Do you mean that the churches at home are not

onto their job, if you'll excuse the phrase?"

His companion laughed as she answered, "Maybe not quite as strong as

that. But they are doing the same old thing in the same old way. Going

to church and home again, to Sunday school and home again, to young

people's meeting and home again. But out here," and her hand swung in a

half circle as though she meant to include the whole Pacific basin, "out

here men and women are doing such splendid pioneer work, in all sorts of

fascinating ways."

"True enough," J.W. assented. "I've seen that, all right. But the home

church isn't so dead as you might think. Just before I left Delafield to

go to Saint Louis, for instance, a new work for the foreign-speaking

people of our town was being started, with the Board of Home Missions

and Church Extension backing up the local workers. They were planning to

make a great church center for all these people, and I hear that it is

getting a good start."

"Oh, yes, I can well believe that, Mr. Farwell," Miss Morel hastened to

say. "I think work for the immigrant is so very interesting, don't you?

But, of course, that's not quite what I meant. The usual dull things

that churches do, you know."

"Well, take another instance that I happen to remember," J.W. had a

touch of the sort of feeling he used to delight in at Cartwright, when

he was gathering his material for a debate. "My first summer after

leaving college, a few of us in First Church got busy studying our own

town. We found two of the general church boards ready to help us with

facts and methods. The Home Missions people gave us one sort of help,

and another board, with the longest name of them all, the Board of

Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals, showed us how to go about an

investigation of the town's undesirable citizens and their influence. It

is in that sort of business for all of us, you know."

"That must have been exciting," said Miss Morel. "I know I should enjoy

such work. What did you find out, and what could you do about it?"

That was a question not to be glibly answered, J.W. knew. But he meant

to be fair about it. "We found out plenty that surprised us; a great

deal," he added, "that ought to be done, and much more that needed to be

changed. We even went so far as to draw up a sort of civic creed, 'The

Everyday Doctrines of Delafield,' The town paper printed it, and it was

talked about for a while, but probably we were the people who got the

most out of it; it showed us what we church members might mean to the

town. And that was worth something."

Miss Morel was sure it was. But she came back to her first idea about

the home churches. "Don't you think that much of the preaching, and all

that, is pretty dull and tiresome? I came from a little country church,

and it was so dreary."

J.W. thought of Deep Creek, and said, "I know what you mean; but even

the country church is improving. I must tell you some time about Marty,

my chum. He's a country preacher, helped in his training by the Rural

Department of the Home Missions Board, and his people come in crowds to

his preaching. Country churches are waking up, and the Board people at

Philadelphia have had a lot to do with it."

"Well, I'm glad. But anyway, home missions is rather commonplace,

haven't you noticed?" and Miss Morel looked almost as though she were

asking a question of state.

"I can't say I've found it so," J.W. said, stoutly, "I was some time

learning, but I ran into a lot of experiences before I left home. Take

the work for colored people, for instance. I had to make a speech at a

convention, and I found out that our church has a Board of Education for

Negroes which is doing more than any other agency to train Negro

preachers and teachers and home makers, and doctors and other leaders.

That's not so very commonplace, would you say so?"

"Well, no," the young lady admitted. "It is very important work, of

course; and I'd dearly love to have a share in it. I am a great

believer in the colored races, you know. But you are making me begin to

think I am all wrong about the church at home. I don't mean to belittle

it. Perhaps I appreciate it more than I realized. Anyway, tell me

something else that you have found out."

"There isn't time," J.W. objected. "But if you won't think me a

nuisance, maybe I can tell you part of it. For example, Sunday school.

Long ago I discovered that the whole church was providing for Sunday

school progress through a Board of Sunday Schools, and there isn't a

modern Sunday school idea anywhere that this Board doesn't put into its

scheme of work. I was a very small part of it myself for a while, so I

know."

"Yes, and even I know a little about the Sunday School Board," confessed

Miss Morel. "It has helped us a lot in the Philippines. And so I must

admit that the church does try to improve and extend Sunday school work.

What else?"

J.W. told about his experiences on the Mexican border, where home

missions and foreign missions came together. Then, seeing that she was

really listening, he told of his and Marty's college days, how Marty had

borrowed money from the Board of Education, and how the same Board had a

hand in the college evangelistic work. He told about the deaconesses who

managed the hospital at Manchester, and the training school which Marcia

Dayne Carbrook had attended when she was getting ready to go to China.

That school had sent out hundreds of deaconesses and other workers.

The thought of Marcia made him think of Joe, and he told what he knew of

how the Wesley Foundation at the State University had helped Joe when he

could easily have made shipwreck of his missionary purpose. Of course

the story of his visit to the Carbrooks in China must also be told.

Miss Morel changed the subject again. "Tell me, Mr. Farwell," she asked,

"were you in the Epworth League when you were at home?"

"I surely was," said J.W. "That was where I got my first start; at the

Cartwright Institute." And the story jumped back to those far-off days

when he was just out of high school.

As he paused Miss Morel said, "I was an Epworthian, too, and in the

young women's missionary societies. We had a combination society in our

church, so I was a 'Queen Esther' and a 'Standard Bearer' as well. Those

organizations did me a world of good. You know, when I think of it, the

women's missionary societies have done a wonderful work in America and

everywhere."

"I guess they have," said J.W. "I know my mother has always been a

member of both, and she's always been the most intelligent and active

missionary in the Farwell family."

The talk languished for a while, and then Miss Morel exclaimed, "I know

why we've stopped talking; we're hungry. It is almost time for luncheon,

and if you have an appetite like mine, you're impatient for the call."

J.W. looked at his watch and saw that there was only ten minutes of the

morning left. So they separated to get ready against the sounding of the

dinner gong.

But J.W. was not hungry. He was struggling with an old thought that to

him had all the tantalizing quality of novelty. The talk of the morning

had become a sort of roll-call of church boards. How did it happen that

the church was busy with this and that and the other work? Why a Board

of Hospitals and Homes? Why a Deaconess Board, even though deaconess

work happened to be merciful and gentle and Christlike? What was the

church doing with a Book Concern? How came it that we had that board

with the long name--Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals? He had

traveled from Yokohama to Lucknow and back, and everywhere he had found

this same church doing all sorts of work, with no slightest suspicion

but that all of it was her proper business.

So picture after picture flickered before his mind's eye, as though his

brain had built up a five-reel mental movie from all sorts of memory

film; a hundred feet of this, two hundred of that, a thousand here,

there just a flash. It had all one common mark; it was all "the church,"

but the hit-and-miss of it, its lightning change, bewildered him. The

pictures leaped from Cartwright to Cawnpore, from the country church at

Ellis to Joe Carbrook's hospital in China; from New York and

Philadelphia and Chicago and Cincinnati and Washington to the ends of

the country and the ends of the earth; and in and through it all, swift

bits of unrelated yet vivid hints of _Advocates_ and _Heralds_, of

prayer meetings and institutes, of new churches and old colleges, of

revivals and sewing societies, of League socials and Annual Conferences,

of deaconesses visiting dreary homes, and soft-footed nurses going about

in great hospitals; of beginners' departments and old people's homes; of

kindergartens and clinics and preparatory classes. There seemed no end

to it all, every moment some new aspect of the church's activity showed

itself and then was gone.

It was a most confused and confusing experience; and all through the

rest of the day J.W. caught himself wondering again and again at the

variety and complexity of the church's affairs.

Why should a church be occupied with all this medley? Why should it be

so distracted from its main purpose, to be a Jack of all trades? Why

should it open its doors and train its workers and spend its money in

persistent response to every imaginable human appeal?

Perhaps that might be it; "_human_." Once a philosopher had said, "I am

a man, and therefore nothing human is foreign to me." What if the church

by its very nature must be like that? what if this really were its main

purpose--all these varied and sometimes almost conflicting activities no

more than its effort to obey the central law of its life?

J.W. was in his stateroom; he paced the narrow aisle between the

berths--three steps forward, three steps back, like a caged wild thing.

Something was coming to new reality in his soul; he was scarce conscious

of the walls that shut him in. Once he stopped by the open port. He

looked out at the tumbling rollers of the wide Pacific. And as he looked

he thought of the vastness of this sea, how its waters washed the icy

shores of Alaska and the palm-fronded atolls of the Marquesas; how they

carried on their bosom the multitudinous commerce of a hundred peoples;

how from Santiago to Shanghai and from the Yukon to New Zealand it was

one ocean, serving all lands, and taking toll of all.

In spite of all the complexities and diversities of the lands about this

ocean, they had one possession which all might claim, as it claimed

them--the sea. It gave them neighbors and trade, climate and their daily

bread. In the sociology and geography and economics of the Orient this

Pacific Ocean was the great common denominator. _And in the geography

and economics and sociology of the kingdom of God? Might it not be--must

it not be, the church_!

Not only the Pacific basin, but the round world was like that, every

part of it dependent on all the rest, and growing every day more and

more conscious of all the rest. Railways helped this process, and so did

steamships and air routes and telegraph and wireless. More than that,

all the world was becoming increasingly related to the life of every

part. With raw material produced in Brazil to make tires for the

limousines of Fifth Avenue and the Lake Shore Drive, what of the new

kinship between the producers in Brazil and the users in the States? All

good was coming to be the good of all the earth; and all evil was able

to affect the lives of unsuspecting folk half the earth's circumference

away.

In such a time, what an insistent call for the program and power of the

Christian faith! And the call could be answered. J.W. had seen the

church applying the program as well in a Chinese city and in an Indian

village as in his home town and on the Mexican border. He was sure that

the power that was in the Christian message could heal all the hurts of

the world, and bring all peoples into "a world-commonwealth of good

will."

This was what Jesus meant to do; not just to save here and there a

little group for heaven out of the general hopelessness, but to save and

make whole the heart of mankind. The church was not, first of all,

seeking its own enlargement, but extending the reach of its Founder's

purpose. It did all its many-sided work for a far greater reason than

any increase in its own numbers and importance; in a word, for the

Christianizing of life, Sunday and every day, in Delafield as well as in

the forests of the Amazon and the huddled cities of China.

J.W. sat on the edge of his berth. In the first glow of this new

understanding his nerves had steadied to a serenity that was akin to

awe. Yet he knew he had made no great discovery. The thing he saw had

been there all the time.

Then his mind set to work again on that motley procession of pictures

which he had likened to a patchwork film. Was it as disjointed as it

seemed? Could it not be so put together as to make a true continuity,

consistent and complete?

Why not? In the events of his own life, strangely enough, he had the

clue to its right arrangement. By what seemed to be accidental or

incidental opportunity it had been his singular fortune to come in

contact with some aspect or another of all the work his church was

doing. And every element of it, from the beginners' class at Delafield

to the language school at Nanking, from the college social in First

Church to the celebration at Foochow--it was all New Testament work. Its

center was always Jesus Christ's teaching or example, or appeal. There

was in its complexity a vast simplicity; each was a part of all, and all

was in each.

"John Wesley Farwell, Jr.," said that young man to himself, "this thing

is not your discovery--but how does that bit of Keats' go?"

'Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific--and all his men

Looked at each other with a wild surmise--

Silent, upon a peak in Darien,'

There you have it! But I might have known. Cortez, if it _was_ Cortez,

could not have guessed the Pacific. He had nothing to suggest it. But I

might have guessed the singleness of the church's work. What is my name

for, unless I can appreciate the man who said 'The world is my parish,'

and who would do anything--sell books, keep a savings bank, open a

dispensary--for the sake of saving souls? That's the single idea, the

simple idea. It makes all these queer activities part of one great

activity; and rests them all on one under-girding truth--'The Church's

one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.'

But the wonderful thing to me is that, after all this time, I should

suddenly have found this out for myself!

"What a story to take home to Delafield! Pastor Drury is going to have

the surprise of his life!"

* * * * *

Three people met J.W. as his train pulled in to the station at

Delafield. The other two were his father and mother.

After the first tearfully happy greetings, J.W. looked around the

platform. "I rather thought Brother Drury might have come too," he said.

The others exchanged meaning glances, and his father asked, "Then you

didn't get my second letter at San Francisco?"

"No," said J.W., in vague alarm, "only the one. What's wrong? Is Mr.

Drury--"

"He's at home now, son," said the elder Farwell, gravely. "He came home

from our Conference hospital at Hillcrest two weeks ago. We hope he's

going to gain considerable strength, but he's had some sort of a

stroke, we don't rightly know what, and he's pretty hard hit. He's

better than he was last week, but he can't leave his room; sits in his

easy chair and doesn't say much."

J.W.'s heart ached. Without always realizing it, he had been counting

on long talks with the pastor; there was so much to tell him. And

especially so since that wonderful day out in the middle of the Pacific,

when he had seen what he even dared to call his 'vision' of the church.

So he said, "You and mother drive on home; I'll walk up with Jeannette."

For lovers who had just met after a year's separation these two were

strangely subdued. They had everything to say to each other, but this

sudden falling of the shadow of suffering on their meeting checked the

words on their lips.

"Will he get better?" J.W. asked Jeannette.

"They fear not," she answered. "The doctors say he may live for several

years, but he will never preach again. He just sits there; he's been so

anxious to see you. You must go to-day."

"Of course. And what shall I say about the wedding? If he can't leave

his room----"

Jeannette interrupted him: "If he can't leave his room, it will make no

difference. Church wedding or home wedding I should have chosen, as I

have told you; but you and I, John Wesley, are going to be married by

Walter Drury, wherever he is, if he's alive on our wedding day."

"Why, yes," said J.W., with a little break in his voice, "it wouldn't

seem right any other way. We can have the dinner, or breakfast or

whatever it is, just the same, but we'll be married in his room. I'm

glad you feel that way about it too; though it's just like you."

And it was so. J.W. went up to the study as soon as he could rid himself

of the dust of the day's travel, more eager to show Walter Drury he

loved him than to tell his story or even to arrange for the wedding.

As to that ceremony, the plans had long ago been understood; nothing

more was needed than to tell Walter Drury his study afforded a better

background and setting for this particular wedding than a cathedral

could provide.

J.W. was prepared for a great change in Pastor Drury, but he noticed no

such signs of breakdown as he had expected to see. He did not know that

the beloved pastor was keyed up for this meeting. He could not guess

that the beaming eye, the old radiant smile, the touch of color in a

face usually pale, were on special if unconscious display because the

pastor's heart was thanking God that he had been permitted to welcome

home his son in the gospel.

Those had been dreary days, in the hospital, despite the ceaseless

ministries of nurses and doctors and friends from Delafield. This

hospital was a place of noble service, one of many such places which

have arisen in the Methodism of the last forty years. It was a hospital

through and through--the last word in equipment and competence, but not

at all an "institution." It was at once a home for the sick and a

training school of the Christian graces, where the distressed of body

and mind could be given the relief they needed--all of it given gladly,

in Christ's name.

Walter Drury was not unmindful of the care and skill which the hospital

staff lavished on him, though no more faithfully on him than on many an

unknown or unresponsive patient. But he was in a pitifully questioning

mood. The doctors had told him he could not expect to preach again. When

the district superintendent had come to visit him, he carried away with

him Walter Drury's request for retirement at the coming session of the

Annual Conference.

In his quiet moments--there were so many of them now--the broken man

counted up his years of service, all too few, as it seemed to him, and

lacking much of what they might have shown in outcomes for the church

and the kingdom. His Conference was one of the few which paid the full

annuity claim of its retired preachers, but even so he had not much to

look forward to. His twenty-five years in the active ranks meant that he

could count on twenty-five times $15 a year, $375, on which to live,

when he gave up his work.

Perhaps he could live on this, with what little he had been able to put

aside; at any rate he could be glad now that there was none but himself

to think about. But was it worth all he had put into his vocation? His

brother in Saint Louis, not remarkably successful in his business, had

been able at least to make some provision for his old age. He too might

have been a moderately successful business or professional man. Truly it

was more than the older preachers had, this Conference annuity, which

would keep him from actual want; so much, surely, had been gained by the

church's growing sense of responsibility for its veterans.

But had it really paid? Was all the gentle efficiency of the hospital,

and all the church's money which would come to him from the Conference

funds and the Board of Conference Claimants, enough to compensate him

for the long years when he had been spendthrift of all his powers for

the sake of his work?

He knew, of course, the answer to his questions; no one better. But he

was a broken-down preacher, old before his time; and knowing the answer

was not at all the same as _having_ the answer. So he had been brought

home from Hillcrest, mind-weary and much cast down. Nor did he regain

any of his old buoyancy of spirit until the day when they told him J. W,

would be home next week.

It was then that he told himself, "If J.W. has come back with only a

story to tell"--and gloom was in his face; "But if he has come back with

_the_ story to tell"--and his heart leaped within him at the thought.

The pastor and J.W. were soon talking away with the old familiarity,

but mostly about inconsequentials. Neither was quite prepared for more

intimate communion; and, of course, the returning traveler had much to

do. The wedding was near at hand, and everybody but himself had been

getting ready this long time. So the call was too brief to suit either

of them, with the longer visits each hoped for of necessity deferred to

a more convenient season.

J.W. must make a hurried journey to Saint Louis to turn in his report

to Peter McDougall, which report Peter was much better prepared to

receive than J.W. suspected. And a highly satisfactory arrangement was

made for J.W.'s continued connection with the Cummings Hardware

Corporation.

Doubtless all weddings are much alike in their ceremonial aspects; short

or long, solemn-spoken ancient ritual or commonplace legal form, the

essence of them all is that this man and this woman say, "I will." So it

was in Walter Drury's study. And then the little group seated itself

about the pastor; Marty with Alma Wetherell, soon to become Mrs. Marty;

all the Shenks, the elder Farwells, John Wesley, Jr., and Jeannette. The

dinner would not be for an hour yet, and this was the pastor's time.

Pastor Drury could not talk much. He had kept his chair as he read the

ritual, and now he sat and smiled quietly on them all. But once and

again his eye sought J.W. and the look was a question yet unanswered.

"What sort of a voyage home did you have?" Mrs. Farwell asked her son,

motherlike, using even a query about the weather to turn attention to

her boy.

"A good voyage, mother," said J.W. "A fine voyage. But one day--will

you let me tell it here, all of you? I've hardly been any more eager

for my wedding day than for a chance to say this. I won't tire you, Mr.

Drury, will I?"

"You'll never do that, my boy," said the preacher. "But don't bother

about me, I've long had a feeling that what you are going to say will be

better for me than all the doctors." For he had seen the eager glow on

J.W.'s face, and his heart was ready to be glad.

Thus it was that J.W. told the story of his great moment; how he had

talked with Miss Morel one morning of the many-sided work of the church,

and how in the afternoon he had looked through the open port of his

stateroom and had seen an ocean that looked like the church, and a

church that seemed like the ocean.

"I shall remember that day forever, I think," he said. "For the first

time in my life I could put all the pieces of my life together; my home,

my church, the Sunday school, the League, college, the needy life of

this town, your country work, Marty, Mexico, China, India--everything;

and I could see as one wonderful, perfect picture, every bit of it

necessary to all the rest. Our church at work to make Jesus Christ Lord

of all life, in my home and clear to the 'roof of the world' out yonder

under the snows of Tibet. Can you see it, folks? I think _you_ always

could, Mr. Drury!" and he put his hand affectionately on the pastor's

knee.

Pastor Drury's face was even paler than its wont, but in his eyes glowed

the light that never was on sea or land. He was hearing what sometimes

he had feared he might not last long enough to hear. The Experiment was

justified, and he was comforted!

He picked up the Bible that lay near his hand, and turned to the Gospel

by Luke. "I hope none of you will think _I_ wrest the Book's words to

lesser meanings," he said, "but there is only one place in it that can

speak what is in my heart to-day." And he read the song of Simeon in the

temple: "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine

eyes have seen thy salvation," and so to the end.

It was very still when his weak voice ceased; but in a moment the

silence was broken by a cry from J.W.

"Why, Mr. Drury, it has been _you_, all these years!"

"What do you mean, J.W.?". said Marty, somewhat alarmed and thoroughly

mystified.

"Exactly what I say, Marty. Can't you see it too? Can't all of you see

it?" and J.W. looked from one face to another around the room.

"Jeannette, _you_ know what I mean, don't you?"

And Jeannette, at once smiling and tearful, said, "Yes, J.W., I've

thought about it many times, and I know now it is true."

Marty said, "Maybe so; but what?" for he was still bewildered.

"Why," J.W. began, with eager haste, "Mr. Drury planned all this--years

and years ago. Not our wedding, I don't mean that," and he paused long

enough to find Jeannette's hand and get it firmly in his own, "we

managed that ourselves, didn't we, dear? But--I don't know why--this

blessed minister of God began, somewhere far back yonder, to show me

what God was trying to do through our church, and, later, through the

other churches. He saw that I went to Institute. He steered me through

my Sunday school work. He showed me my lifework. He made me want to go

to college. He introduced me to the Delafield that is outside our own

church. He got me my job in Saint Louis--don't you dare to deny it," as

the pastor raised a protesting hand. "I've talked with our sales

manager; he put the idea of the Far Eastern trip into Mr. McDougall's

mind--and, well, it has been Pastor Drury all these years, _and he knew

what he was doing_!"

Pastor Drury had kept his secret bravely, but there was no need to keep

it longer, and now he was well content that these dear friends should

have discovered it on such a day of joy. After all, it had been a

beautiful Experiment, and not altogether without its value. So he made

no more ado, and in his heart there was a great peace.