John Wesley, Jr. Part 8

You are still part of my flock, you know."

So they talked of anything and everything. By and by Marty said he must go over to the library, and pretty soon J.W. was telling his friend the pastor all that had been disturbing him.

"It all began in the summer before I came to college, at the Inst.i.tute here, you know, when you spoke at the camp fire on Sat.u.r.day night."

"I remember," the pastor replied. "You hadn't taken much interest in your future work before that?"

"No real interest, I guess," J.W. admitted. "I'd always taken things as they came, and didn't go looking for what I couldn't see. I was enjoying every day's living, and didn't care deeply about anything else. Why, though I've been a Methodist all my life, you remember how I knew nothing at all about the Methodist Church outside of Delafield, except what little I picked up about its Sunday schools by serving as an a.s.sistant to our Sunday school secretary. And when I began to hear, at the Inst.i.tute, about home missions and foreign missions, about Negro education and other business that the church was doing, I saw right off that it was up to us young people to supply the new workers that were always needed. But, even so, only those who had a real fitness for it ought to offer themselves, and I thought too that something else would be needed. I wasn't any duller than lots of other church members--even the older ones didn't seem to know much more about the church outside than I did. You would take up collections for the benevolences, but if you told us what they meant, we didn't pay enough attention to get the idea clearly, so as to have any real understanding. I suppose the women's societies had more. I know my mother talks about Industrial Homes in the South, and schools in India--she's in both the societies, you know--but that is about all."

"And it seemed when I began to find out about things, Mr. Drury, that if our whole church needed workers for all these places, it needed just as much to have in the local churches men and women who would know about the work in a big way, and who would care in a big way, to back up the whole work as it should be backed up. So, when you spoke at the camp fire it was just what I wanted to hear, and when I was called on, I made that sort of a declaration the next day at the life decision services."

"Yes I remember that too," said Mr. Drury, "and I remember telling Joe Carbrook that you had undertaken as big a career as any of them."

"That's what I kind of thought too," said J.W., simply, "but rooming with Marty Shenk--he's going to make a great preacher too--keeps me thinking, and I know about all the students who are getting ready for special work, and lately I've been wondering----"

"About some special sort of work you'd like to do?" Mr. Drury prompted.

"No; not that at all. I'm just as sure as ever I'm not that sort. If only I can make good in business, there's where I belong. But can a fellow make good just as a Christian in the same way I expect Marty Shenk to make good as a Christian preacher?"

The pastor stood up and came over to J.W.'s chair. "My boy, I know just what you are facing. It is a pretty old struggle, and there's only one way out of it. G.o.d hasn't any first place and second place for the people that let him guide them. A man may refuse his call, either to go or to stay, and then no matter what he does it will be a second best.

But you--wait for your call. For my part, I think probably you've got it, and it's to a very real life. If you and those like you should fail, we should soon have no more missionaries. And if the missionaries should fail, we should soon have no more church. G.o.d has little patience with a church that always stays at home, and I doubt if he has more for a church that doesn't stand by the men and women it has sent to the outposts. It is all one job."

There was much more of the same sort, and when J.W. walked with his pastor to the train the next morning, the only doubt that had ever really disturbed him in college was quieted for good.

Walter Drury went back to Delafield and his work, surer now than ever that the Experiment was going forward. He knew, certainly, that all this was only the getting ready; that the real tests would come later But he was well content.

It was early football season of the junior year. The State University took on Cartwright College for the first Sat.u.r.day's game, everybody well knowing that it was only a practice romp for the University. Always a big time for Cartwright, this year it was a day for remembering. Joe Carbrook, who had been graduated from the University in June, and was now a medical student in the city, drove down to see the game. For loyalty's sake he joined the little bunch of University rooters on the east stand. Otherwise it was Cartwright's crowd, as well as Cartwright's day.

To the surprise of everybody, neither side scored until the last quarter, and then both sides made a touchdown, Cartwright first! A high tricky wind spoiled both attempts to kick goal, and time was called with a score at 6-6. Cartwright had held State to a tie, for the first time in history!

Joe came from the game with the chums and took supper with them. The whole town was ablaze with excitement over its team's great showing against the State, and the talk at table was all of the way Cartwright's eleven could now go romping down the schedule and take every other college into camp, including, of course, Barton Poly, their dearest foe.

The boys were happy to have Joe with them, he looked so big and fine, and had the same easy, breezy bearing as of old. Nor had he lost any of that frank att.i.tude toward his own career which never failed to interest everybody he met. After supper they had an hour together in the room.

"Those boys in the medical school surely do amuse me," he laughed. "When I tell 'em I'm to be a missionary doctor, which I do first thing to give 'em sort of a shock they don't often get, they stand off and say, 'What, you!' as if I had told 'em I was to be a traffic cop, or a trapeze artist in the circus. Some of 'em seem to think I'm queer in the head, but, boys, they are the ones with rooms to let. When the others talk about hanging out a s.h.i.+ngle in Chicago or Saint Louis or Cleveland or some other over-doctored place, I tell 'em to watch me, when I'm the only doctor between Siam and sunrise! Won't I be somebody? With my own hospital--made out o' mud, I know--and a dispensary and a few native helpers who don't know what I'm going to do next, and all the sick people coming from ten days' journey away to the foreign doctor!" And then his mood changed. "That's what'll get me, though; all those helpless, ignorant humans who don't even know what I can do for their bodies, let alone having any suspicion of what Somebody Else can do for their souls! But it will be wonderful; next thing to being with him in Galilee!"

There was a pause, each boy filling it with thoughts he would not speak.

"Where do you expect to find that work, Joe?" J.W. asked him.

The answer was quick and straight: "Wherever I'm sent, J.W., boy," he said. "Only I've told the candidate secretary what I want. I met him last summer in Chicago, and there's nothing like getting in your bid early. He's agreed to recommend me, when I'm ready, for the hardest, neediest, most neglected place that's open. If I'm going into this missionary doctor business, I want a chance to prove Christianity where they won't be able to say that Christianity couldn't have done it alone.

It _can_!"

Then, with one of those quick turns which were Joe Carbrook's devices for concealing his feelings, he said, "And how's everything going at this Methodist college of yours? Your boys put up a beautiful game to-day, and they ought to have won. How's the rest of the school?"

Both the boys a.s.sured him everything was going in a properly satisfactory fas.h.i.+on, but Marty had caught one word that he wanted Joe to enlarge upon.

"Why do you say 'Methodist college'? It is a Methodist college; but is there anything the matter with that?"

Joe rose to the mild challenge. "Don't think I mean to be nasty," he said, "but I can't help comparing this place with the State University, and I wonder if there's any big reason for such colleges as this. You know they all have a hard time, and the State spends dollars to the church's dimes."

"Yes, we know that, don't we, J.W.?" and Marty appealed to his chum, remembering the frequent and half-curious talks they had on that very contrast.

J.W. said "Sure," but plainly meant to leave the defense of the Christian college to Marty, who, to tell the truth, was quite willing.

"There's room for both, and need for both," said that earnest young man.

"Each has its work to do--the State University will probably help in attracting most of those who want special technical equipment, and the church colleges will keep on serving those who want an education for its own sake, whatever special line they may take up afterward: though each will say it welcomes both sorts of students."

This suited Joe; he intended Marty to keep it up a while. So he said, "But why is a church college, anyway?" And he got his answer, for Marty too was eager for the fray.

"The church college," he retorted with the merest hint of asperity, "is at the bottom of all that people call higher education. The church was founding colleges and supporting them before the State thought even of primary schools. Look at Oxford and Cambridge--church colleges. Look at Harvard and Yale and Princeton and the smaller New England colleges--church colleges. Look at Syracuse and Wesleyan and Northwestern and Chicago. Look at Vanderbilt, and most of the other great schools of the South. They are church colleges, founded, most of them, before the first State University, and many before there was any public high school. The church college showed the way. If it had never done anything else, it has some rights as the pioneer of higher learning."

J.W. had been getting more interested. He had never heard Marty in quite this strain, and he was proud of him.

"That's a pretty good answer he's given you, Joe," he said with a chuckle. "Now, isn't it?"

"It is," admitted Joe. "I reckon I knew most of what you say, Marty, but I hadn't thought of it that way before. Now I want to ask another question, only don't think I'm doing it for meanness; I've got a reason.

And my question is this: granting all that the church schools have done, is it worth all they cost to keep them up now; in our time, I mean?"

"I think it is," Marty answered, quieter now. "They do provide a different sort of educational opportunity, as I said. Then, they are producing most of the recruits that the churches need for their work.

Since the churches began to care for their members in the State Universities, a rather larger number of candidates for Christian service are coming out of the universities, but until the last year or two nearly all came, and the very large majority still comes, and probably for years will come, from the church colleges. And there's another reason that you State advocates ought to remember. Our Methodist colleges in this country have about fifty thousand students. If these colleges were to be put out of business, ten of the very greatest State Universities would have to be duplicated, dollar for dollar, at public expense, to take care of the Methodist students alone. When you think of all the other denominations, you would need to duplicate all the State Universities now in existence if you purposed to do the work the church colleges are now doing. And if you couldn't get the money, or if the students didn't take to the change, the country would be short just that many thousand college-trained men and women. The whole Methodist Church, with the other churches, is doing a piece of unselfish national service that costs up into the hundreds of millions, and where's any other big money that's better spent?"

When Marty stopped he looked up into Joe's good-natured face, and blushed, with an embarra.s.sed self-consciousness. "You think you've been stringing me, don't you?"

"Now, Marty," Joe spoke genially, "don't you misunderstand. I said I had a reason. I have. My folks have some money they want to put into a safe place. And they like Cartwright. I do too, but--you know how it is. I want to be sure. Anyhow I'm glad I asked these questions. You've given me some highly important information; and, honestly, I'm grateful. You surely don't think I'm small enough to be making fun of you, or of Cartwright. If I seemed to be, I apologize on the spot. Believe me?" and there was no mistaking his genuine earnestness.

"Of course I believe you, old man," Marty rejoined, just a wee bit ashamed. "Forgive me too, but I've been reading up on that college thing lately, and it's a little different from what most people think. So you got me going."

"I'm glad he did," said J.W. "It makes me prouder than ever of Cartwright College." And, as he got up he said, as though still at the game, "The 'locomotive' now!" and gave Cartwright's favorite yell as a solo, while Marty and Joe grinned approval and some students pa.s.sing in the street answered it with the "skyrocket."

There is material for a book, all mixt of interest varying from very light comedy to unplumbed gloom, in the life of two boys at college--any two; and some day the chronicles of the Delafield Duo may be written; but not now.

Senior year, with its bright glory and its seriously borne responsibilities. It found Marty a trifle less shy and reticent than when he came to Cartwright, and J.W., Jr., a shade more studious. Marty would miss Phi Beta Kappa, but only by the merest fraction; J.W. would rank about number twenty-seven in a graduating cla.s.s of forty-five.

Marty had successfully represented his college twice in debate, and J.W.

had played second on the nine and end in the eleven, doing each job better than well, but rarely drawing the spotlight his way.

Curiously enough, you had but to talk to Marty, and you would learn that J.W., Jr., was the finest athlete and the most popular student in school. Conversely, J.W., Jr., was prepared to set Cartwright's debating record, as incarnated in Marty, against that of any other college in the State. What was more, he cherished an unshakable confidence that the "Rev. Martin Luther Shenk" would be one of the leading ministers of his Conference within five years.

And so they came to commencement, with the Shenk and the Farwell families, Pastor Drury, and Marcia Dayne in the throng of visitors. Mr.

Drury rarely missed commencements at Cartwright, and naturally he could not stay away this year. The Farwells thought Marcia might like to see her old schoolmates graduate, and the boys had written her that they wanted somebody they could trot around during commencement week who might be trusted to join in the "I knew him when" chorus without being tempted to introduce devastating reminiscences. And Marcia, being in love with life and youth, had been delighted to accept the combined invitation. She was not at all in love with either of the boys, nor they with her. They thought they knew where her heart had been given, and they counted Joe Carbrook a lucky man.

"Tell us, Marcia," said J.W., Jr., one afternoon, as the three of them were down by the lake, "how it happens you went to the training school instead of the normal school last year."

"That's just like a man," said Marcia. "Here am I, your awed and admiring slave, brought on to adorn the crowning event of your scholastic career, and you don't even remember that I finished the normal school course in three years, and graduated a year ago!"