John Wesley, Jr. Part 13

"I'd think America was the melting pot if I could see more signs of the melting," Conover answered. "But look at Delafield; how much does the melting pot melt here?"

Then he looked across the store. "Do you know the proprietor, Mr.

Farwell?" he asked.

"Yes, indeed; Nick and I are good friends," answered J.W.

"Then I wish you'd introduce me," returned Conover.

"Oh, Nick," J.W. called, "will you come over here a minute?"

Nick came, wiping his hands on his ap.r.o.n.

"Nick," said J.W., doing the honors, "you know Mr. Drury, the pastor of our church. And this is Mr. Conover from Philadelphia, a very good friend of ours. He's been looking around town, and wants to ask you something."

Nick's brisk and cheerful manner was at its best, for he liked J.W., besides liking the trade he brought.

"Sure," said he, "I tell him anything if I know it. Glad for the chance."

"Mr. Dulas," said Conover--he had taken note of the name on the window, "you know the East Side pretty well, do you? Then, you know that many Italians live just north of Linden Street, and there's a block or so of Polish homes between Linden and the next street south?"

"Sure I do," said Nick, confidently, "I live on other side of them myself. See 'em every day."

"Very well," Conover went on. "What I want to know is this: how do the Italians and the Poles get along together?"

"They don't have nothing much to do with one another," Nick replied.

"It's like this, the Poles they talk Polish, and maybe a little English.

The Italians, they speak Italian, and some can talk English, only not much. But Poles they can't talk Italian at all, and Italians can't talk Polish. So how could they get together?"

"That's just the question, Mr. Dulas," Conover agreed. "I'm telling these gentlemen that it is harder for the different foreign-born people to know one another and to be friendly with one another than it is for them to know and a.s.sociate with Americans."

"Sure, Mister," Nick said, with great positiveness. "Sure. Before I speak English I know n.o.body but Greeks, and when I start learning English I got no time to learn Polish, or Italian, or whatever it is.

English I got to speak, if I run a candy store, but not those other languages."

And he went off to serve a customer who had just entered.

"There you have that side," said Conover to the minister and J.W. "The need of English as an Americanizing force, and the meed of it as a medium of communication between the different foreign groups. Looks as though we've got to bear down hard on English, don't you think?"

"As Nick says, 'Sure I do,'" Mr. Drury a.s.sented. "It will come out all right with the children, I hope; they're getting the English. But it makes things hard just now."

"What can the church do?" J.W. put in. "Should it undertake to teach English, as that preacher taught Phil Khamis, you remember, Mr. Drury; or Americanization, or what?"

"I think it should do something else first," said Conover. "Why should we Americans try to make Europeans understand us, unless we first try to understand them? Isn't ours the first move?"

"But this is the country they're going to live in," returned J.W. "They can't expect us to adjust ourselves to European ways. They've got to do the adjusting, haven't they?"

"Why?" Conover came back. "Because we were here first? But the Indian was here before us. We told him he needn't do any adjusting at all, and see what we've made of him. Maybe these Europeans can add enriching elements to our American culture."

"I guess so, but"--and J.W. was evidently at a loss--"but they've got to obey our laws, you know, and fit into our civilization. The Indian was different. We couldn't make Indians of ourselves, and he wouldn't become civilized."

"Americanized, you mean?" and Conover laughed a little at the irony of it.

"No, no; not that. But he wouldn't meet us half way, even," J.W. said.

"I think," suggested Pastor Drury, "that what Mr. Conover means is that we'd better be a little less stiff to newcomers than the Indian was to us. Am I right?"

"Exactly right," returned Conover. "Europe is in a general way the mother-land of us all. But many of her children were late in getting here. The earlier ones have made their contributions; why may not the later ones also bring gifts for our common treasure?"

"Well, what in particular do you mean?" asked J.W., who was finding himself adrift. He had been quite willing in the Inst.i.tute days to be an admirer of Phil Khamis, and to forget that Phil was of alien birth; but this was something more complicated.

"Particulars are not so simple," Conover said. "But, for instance: some European peoples have a fine musical appreciation. Some delight in oratory. Some are mystical and dreamy. Some are very children in their love of color. Some are almost artists in their feeling for beauty in their work. Some do not enjoy rough play, and others cannot endure to be quiet. Some have inherited a pa.s.sionate love of country, and great traditions of patriotism."

"We can't value all these things in just the way they do, but at least we can believe that such interests and instincts are worth something to America. Then our Americanization work will be not only more intelligent but far more sympathetic."

"If I may turn to the immediate business," Mr. Drury said with a smile of apology, "suppose you tell J.W. what your Board has to suggest for us here in Delafield, Mr. Conover?"

Conover turned to J.W. "I wonder if you know anything about Centenary Church?" he asked.

"That little old brick barn over in the East Bottoms? Why, yes, or I used to; if was quite a church when I was a youngster, but I haven't been that way lately. I guess it's pretty much run down, with all those foreigners moving in. Most of the old members have probably moved away.

I know there were two Methodist boys with me in high school who lived down there, but they've moved up to the Heights. One of them lives next to the Carbrooks."

"Mr. Drury should take you down that way one of these days," said Conover, "and you'd find that when your friends moved out of the church the foreigners who live nearby did not move in. Centenary Church is run down, as you say."

Mr. Drury added, "And the few members who are left don't know which way to turn. They have a supply pastor, who isn't able to do much. He gets a pitiful salary, but they can't pay more, and there's no money at all, nor any accommodations, for any special attention to the newcomers."

"Well," said Conover, "I'm instructed to tell you Delafield Methodists that the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension is ready to help make a new Centenary Church, for the people who now live around it. We have a department that pays special attention to immigrant and alien populations. Our workers know, in general, what is needed. We can put some trained people into Centenary, with a pastor who knows how to direct their work. I should not be surprised to see a parish house there, and a modernized church building, and a fine array of everyday work being done there."

"My, but that sounds great, Mr. Drury, doesn't it?" asked J.W., in a glow of enthusiasm. Then he checked himself. "It sounds well enough," he said, "but all that means a lot of money. Where's the money to come from?"

"From you, of course," Conover replied, "but not all or most from you.

My Board is a benevolent board--that is to say, it is the whole church at work in such enterprises as this. That's one way in which its share of the church's benevolent offerings is used"

"But you don't mean to tell us," said J.W., incredulously, "that you can drop in on a place like Delafield, make up your mind what is needed, and then dump a lot of money into a played-out church, just like that?"

"Oh, it's not so informal as all that," Conover said, "The thing has to go through the official channels, of course. Your district superintendent and Brother Drury and the Bishop and several others have had a hand in it already. All concerned have agreed as to the needs and possibilities. But Delafield is also a good place to put on a demonstration, an actual, operating scheme. I have been making ready for a survey of the whole East Side, just a preliminary study, and before anything positive is done we must make a more thorough inquiry. We expect to find out everything that needs to be known."

"There was only one anxiety I had about it," Pastor Drury said, "and that has been all taken away. I was keen to have this be a truly Christian demonstration--not just a settlement or a parish house or night school cla.s.ses, but a real demonstration of Christian service among people who now know little about it. In some places these activities are being set going because church people know they ought to do something, and it is easier to give money and have gymnasiums and moving pictures than to make real proof of partnership with Christ by personal service and sacrifice. Take your old friend Martin Luther Shenk, J.W.--do you know that he's working at this very difficulty? And I hear he's finding, even in the country, that some people will really give themselves, while others will give only their money and their time."

J.W. thought of Win-My-Chum week, and how he had had to drive himself to speak to Marty, so he knew the pastor was right. And he went home with all sorts of questions running through his mind, but with no very satisfying answers to make them.

Coming back in a wakeful night to Mr. Drury's casual mention of Marty, the thought of his chum set him to wondering how that st.u.r.dy young itinerant was making it go on the Ellis and Valencia Circuit, just as the pastor guessed it might. To wonder was to decide. He would take a long-desired holiday. A word or two with his father in the morning gave him the excuse for what he wanted to do. Then he got Valencia on the long distance, and the operator told him she would find the "Reverend"

Shenk for him in a few minutes. He had started out that morning to visit along the State Line Highway, as it was part of her business to know. At the third try Marty was found, and he answered J.W.'s hail with a shout.

After the first exchange of noisy greetings, "Say, Marty, dad's asked me to run down in your part of the world and look at some new barn furniture that's been put in around Ellis--ventilators and stanchions and individual drinking cups for the Holsteins--not like the way we used to treat the cows on our farm, hey? Well, what do you say if I turn fashionable for once and come down for the week-end--not this week, but next?"

No need to ask Marty a question like that. "Come on down. Make it Friday and I'll show you the sights. We've got something doing at the Ellis Church, something I want you to see."

Then Marty thought of a few books that he had left at home--"And--h.e.l.lo, J.W., are you listening? Well, how'd you like to go out to the farm before you come down here? Jeanette has gathered a bundle of my books, and I need 'em. Won't you get 'em for me and bring them along?"

Certainly, J.W. would. The farm was home to both the boys, and J.W. was almost as welcome there as Marty; to one member of the family quite so, though she had never mentioned it.