John Wesley, Jr. Part 21

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 c.u.mmings 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 Inst.i.tute, 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?"

n.o.body 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 c.u.mmings 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 a.s.sumed 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, a.s.sisted 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. G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 c.u.mmings 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 c.u.mmings 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 publis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sured 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."