Part 1 (2/2)

The meeting was just breaking up, after a speech whose closing words had been a shade less tactful than the occasion called for. But the last two sentences of that speech made all the difference in the world to John Wesley, Jr.

The Epworth League of First Church, Delafield, was giving one of its fairly frequent socials. The program had gone at top speed for more than an hour. All that noise could do, re-enforced by that peculiar emanation by youth termed ”pep,” had been drawn upon to glorify a certain forthcoming event with whose name everybody seemed to be familiar, for all called it simply ”the Inst.i.tute.”

Pennants, posters, and photographs supplied a sort of pictorial noise, the better to advertise this evidently remarkable event, which, one might gather, was a yearly affair held during the summer vacation at the seat of Cartwright College.

The yells and songs, the cheers and games and reminiscences, re-enforced the noisy decorations. At the last, in one of those intense moments of quiet which young people can produce as by magic, came a neat little speech whose purpose was highly praiseworthy. But, to John Wesley, Jr., it ended on the wrong note. Another listener took mental exception to it, though his anxiety proved to be groundless.

It was a recruiting speech, directed at anybody and everybody who had not yet decided to attend the Inst.i.tute.

The speaker was, if anything, a trifle more cautious than canny when he came to his ”in conclusion,” and his zeal touched the words with anti-climax.

”Of course,” he said, ”since ten, or at most twelve, is our quota, we are not quite free to encourage the attendance of everybody, particularly of our younger members. They have hardly reached the age where the Inst.i.tute could be a benefit to them, and their natural inclination to make the week a period of good times and mere pleasure would seriously interfere with the interests of others more mature and serious minded.”

Now, the pastor of the church, the Rev. Walter Drury, would have put that differently, he said to himself. If it produced any bad effects it would need to be corrected, certainly.

Just then, amid the inevitable applause, and the dismissal of the brief formal a.s.sembly for the social half-hour, something snapped inside of John Wesley, Jr., and it was the feeling of it which prompted him to say, ”If anybody expects me to stay away from Inst.i.tute this year, he has got a surprise coming, that's all.”

You see, John Wesley, Jr., had just been graduated from high school, and his family expected him to go to college in the fall, though he faced that expectation without much enthusiasm. He felt his new freedom.

He addressed his rebellious remark to the League president, Marcia Dayne, a sensible girl whom he had known as long as he had known anybody in the church.

”Last year everybody said I was too young. They all talked the way he did just now. But they can't say I am too young now,” and with that easy skill which is one of the secrets of youth, he managed to contemplate himself, serenely conscious that he was personable and ”right.”

The girl turned to him with a gesture of surprise.

”But I thought your father had agreed to let you take that trip to Chicago you have been saving up for. Will he let you go to the Inst.i.tute too?”

”Chicago can wait,” said John Wesley, Jr., grandly. ”Dad did say I could go to Chicago to see my cousins, or I could go anywhere else that I wanted. Well, I am going to the Inst.i.tute. It's my money, and, besides, I am tired of being told I am too young. A fellow's got to grow up some time.”

”That's all right,” said Marcia, ”but what's your special interest in the Inst.i.tute? Do you truly want to go? How do you know what an Inst.i.tute is like?”

Her voice carried further than Marcia thought, and a man who seemed a little too mature to be one of the young people, turned toward her. He was smiling, and any time these four years the town would have told you there wasn't a friendlier smile inside the city limits. He was in business dress, and suggested anything but the parson in his bearing, but through and through he looked the good minister that he was.

Marcia moved toward him with an unspoken appeal. She wanted help. He was waiting for that signal, for he depended a good deal on Marcia. And he was still worried about that unlucky speech.

”Well, Marcia, are you telling J.W. what the Inst.i.tute really is?” he asked.

”No, Mr. Drury, I'm not. I'm too much surprised at finding that he's about decided to go. You're just in time to tell him for me. I want him to get it right, and straight.”

”Well,” the pastor responded, ”I'm glad of that. If he's really going, he'll find out that definitions are not descriptions. Now, our Saint Sheridan used to say that an Inst.i.tute was a combination of college, circus, and camp meeting. I would venture a different putting of it. An Inst.i.tute is a bit of young democracy in action. Its people play together, for play's sake and for finding their honest human level. They study together, to become decently intelligent about some of the real business of the kingdom of G.o.d, and how the church proposes to transact that business. They wait for new vision together, the Inst.i.tute being a good time and a good place for seeing life clear and seeing it whole.”

”Yes,” said Marcia, ”that's exactly it, only I never could have found quite the right words. Do you think J.W. will find it too poky and preachy?”

”Tell him to try it and see, as you did last year,” said Pastor Drury.

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