John Wesley, Jr. Part 2

"Well, at first I thought they were all away ahead of our bunch at home, and some of them are; but you soon find out that the majority is pretty much of the same sort as ours. I think I've spotted a few slackers, but mighty few. Most of the crowd seems to be all right, and I've already made some real friends. But do you know which one of them all is the most interesting fellow I've met?"

The pastor thought he did, but he merely asked, "Who?"

"Why, that Greek boy, Phil Khamis. He is from Salonika, you know. He knows the old country like a book, and he's going back some day, maybe to be some kind of missionary to his people, in the very places where the apostle Paul preached. Honest, I never knew until he told me that his Salonika is the town of those Christians to whom Paul wrote two of his letters; those to the Thessalonians--'Thessalonika,' you know. Well, you ought to hear Phil talk. He came over here seven years ago, and learned the English language from the preacher at Westvale."

"Yes, I have heard about him," said Mr. Drury. "They say he lived in the parsonage and paid the preacher for his English lessons by giving him a new understanding of the Greek New Testament. Not many of us have found out yet how to get such pay for being decent to our friends from the other side."

"Well, he is a thoroughbred, anyway; and do you notice how he is right up in front when there is anything doing? The only way you can tell he isn't American born is that he is so anxious to help out on all the unpleasant work. When I look at Phil it makes me boil to think of fellows like him being called 'Wop.'"

By this time the two had swung back into the campus, and J.W. found himself drafted to hold down second base in the Faculty-Student ball game. But that is a story for others to tell.

On the steps of the library Marcia Dayne and some other girls were holding an informal reception. Joe Carbrook, with one or two of his friends, was finding it agreeable to a.s.sume a superior air concerning the Inst.i.tute. The impression the boys gave was that their coming to the Inst.i.tute at all had been a great concession, but that they were under no illusions about the place.

"All this is all right," Joe was saying, "for those who need it, but what's the good of it all to us? For instance, what do you get out of it, Marcia?"

"What do you think I want to get out of it? If you cared for the young people's work at home, I should think you could see how 'all this,' as you call it, would help you to do better work and more of it at Delafield."

"As you ought to know pretty well, Marcia," Joe replied, "back home they think I don't care much for the young people's work. It is a little too prim and ready-to-wear for me, if you'll excuse me for saying so. No fun in it at all, though I'll admit some of the cla.s.ses here have more life in them than I looked for."

One of the other girls, who knew him well enough to speak with large frankness, came to the defense of them all, saying: "Well, Joe, I don't see that you get very far with what you call fun. It's mostly at the expense of other people, including your father, who pays the bills.

Besides, since you came home from college this spring, you seem to have run out of nearly all the bright ideas you started with. I wonder if it ever strikes you that being a sport, as you call it, is mostly being a nuisance to everybody? Some of us long ago got over thinking you clever and original. You must be getting over it yourself, by now, surely."

"Many thanks, dear lady, for them kind words," Joe responded, as he bowed low in mock acknowledgment; "you make yourself quite plain, Miss Alma Wetherell." He flung back the insult jauntily, as he and his companions moved on, but at least one of the group suspected that the words had struck home.

You who know the General Secretary could easily forgive J.W. his delight in the cla.s.s of which the program said the subject was "Methods." This is the only hour in an Inst.i.tute which the Epworth League takes for its own work. Rightly enough, it is a crowded hour, with the whole Inst.i.tute present, and usually it is an hour of unflagging interest.

J.W. and Marty were enjoying their first Inst.i.tute too much to be late at any cla.s.ses. They were merely a little earlier at this cla.s.s; to miss any of it would be a distinct loss.

Now, what the General Secretary talked about was no more than the everyday work of the League--how it meant the young people of the church and their work for and with young people for the sake of the future. But he had a way with him. He said the League was a great scheme of self, with the "ish" left off. In the League one practiced self-help, and enjoyed the twin luxuries of self-direction and self-expression, and came sooner or later to that strange new knowledge which is self-discovery. He explained how Epworthians as such could live on twenty-four hours a day, the plan being an ingenious and yet simple financial arrangement for keeping the League work moving, both where you are and where you aren't, even around the world. He had innumerable stories of the devotional meeting idea, the Win-My-Chum idea, the stewardship idea, the Inst.i.tute idea, the life service idea, the recreation idea, the study-cla.s.s idea, and every other League idea so far invented.

But all this is merely a hint of what the General Secretary meant to the Inst.i.tute, and particularly to the delegates from Delafield. Even Joe Carbrook had been impressed. He heard the General Secretary the morning after that little exchange of compliments on the library steps, and for an hour thereafter let himself enjoy the rare luxury of thinking. The results were somewhat disconcerting.

"It's funny," said Marty, as the four of them, the other three being Joe, Marcia, and J.W., sat under a tree in the afternoon, "but I believe that man could make even trigonometry interesting. I thought I'd heard all that could be said about the devotional meeting; but did you get that scheme for leaders he sprung this morning? Watch me when we get back home, that's all."

"You needn't suppose you are the only one who got it," said Marcia.

"Everybody was trying to watch the General Secretary and to take notes at the same time, and I don't believe you are any quicker at that than the rest of us. Of course all of us will use as many of his ideas as we can remember, when we get home again."

Joe Carbrook, with a new seriousness which sat awkwardly on him, confessed that he could not understand just what was happening. It was evident that he was ill at ease; Marcia had noticed it every time she had seen him since that encounter with Alma Wetherell.

"I guess you folks know I am not easily caught; but I'm ready to admit that man has hold of something. Yes, and I'm half convinced that this Inst.i.tute has hold of something. I wish I knew what it is. If I could really believe that all I hear and see at this place is part of being young and part of being a Christian, I might be thinking before long about getting into the game myself. The trouble is you three and the other Leaguers I've watched at home are just you three and the others, and that's all. I know, and you know, what you can do. You'll take all these ideas of League work and use them, maybe; but what I can't see is how you will pick up the Big Idea of this place and get back home without losing it."

"We can't," said Marcia, "not without all sorts of help, visible and invisible. You, for instance; if you would really get into the game, as you say, n.o.body could guess how much it would mean to our League. And it might mean more to you."

"Marcia's right about that," said J.W. "The Big Idea of this place, that you speak of, is a lot too big for us to take home alone. Maybe you'll think I'm preaching, but I don't care, if I say that for G.o.d to handle alone, it is not big enough. He makes the stars, and gives us his Son, without any help from us. n.o.body else can do that. But he won't make our League at home a success without us; and all of us together can't do it without Him. I'm not saying I know how to do it, even then, but that's the way it looks to me. Why, Joe," he said with sudden intensity as he faced Joe Carbrook, "if you ever get hold of the Big Idea, and the Big Idea gets hold of you, something is sure to happen, something bigger than any of us can figure out now. I know you have it in you."

All four showed a surprised self-consciousness over J.W.'s unexpected venture into these rather deeper conversational waters than usual, and there was more surprise when Joe Carbrook began to talk about himself.

He laughed to hide a touch of embarra.s.sment, but with little mirth; and then he said, "Well, J.W., that's not all foolishness, though I don't see why you should pick on me. Why not Marty? Of course, I came here for fun, and I have had some, though not just the sort I expected. And I've had several jolts too. I might as well admit that if I could just only see how you hitch all of this League and church business to real life, I would be for it with all I've got. The trouble is, while I've never been especially proud of my own record, neither have I seen much excuse yet for what you 'active members' have been busy with. I have been playing my way, and you have been playing yours; but it all seems mostly play to me. All the same, I guess I am getting tired of my kind." If Joe could ever have spoken wistfully, you might have suspected him of it just then.

Clearly, thought Marcia Dayne, in the silence that followed, something big was already happening. But how to help it on she could not tell; so, with a desperate effort to do the right thing, she contrived to turn the subject It seemed to her it had become too difficult to go further just now without peril to Joe's strange new interest, as well as to a very new and tremulous little hope that had begun to sing in her own heart.

The shift of the talk was a true Inst.i.tute change, and would have been most disconcerting to anyone unfamiliar with the ways of young Christians; but Marcia was sure that what had been said would not be forgotten, and she knew there would be another time.

It was this that made her say, "I wish you boys would suggest what sort of stunt our district should give on stunt night; you know the time is getting short."

"That's a fact," exclaimed Marty, sitting up. "Stunt night is to-morrow, and our delegation has to fix up the stunt for the Fort Adams District.

Let's get to work on something. We've been mooning long enough."

For though Marty never thought as quickly as Marcia, he too felt some instinct of fear lest by an unfortunate word they should break the spell of Joe Carbrook's interest in the "Big Idea," and promptly the four were deep in a study of stunts.

To the uninitiated, stunt night at the Inst.i.tute is without rime or reason, but not to those in charge who are looking ahead to Sunday. They know that the converging and c.u.mulative psychic forces which the Inst.i.tute invariably produces must be tempered, along about midway of the week, by some sharp contrast in the communal life. Otherwise, the group, like over-trained athletes, will grow emotionally stale before the week is done, and at the end of that is let-down and flatness. Hence "stunt night."

In the early Inst.i.tute years it was easy, as in some places it still is, for stunt night to be no more than clowning, witless and cheap; but there is a distinct tendency to exercise the imagination in producing more self-respecting efforts.

Cartwright, happily, is one of the forward-looking Inst.i.tutes, and stunt night, crowded with most excellent fooling, produced two or three creditable and thought-provoking performances. One of them deserves remembering for its own sake. Besides, it is a part of this story.

The home missions cla.s.s furnished the inspiration for it, and called it "Sc.u.m o' the Earth," an impromptu immigration pageant. A boy who had memorized Schauffler's poem stood off stage and recited it, while group after group of "immigrants" in the motley of the steerage pa.s.sed slowly through the improvised Ellis Island sifting process. It was all make-believe, of course, all but one tense moment. Then Phil Khamis stepped on the platform, incarnating in his own proper person the poet's apostrophised Greek boy:

"Stay, are we doing you wrong, Young fellow from Socrates' land?

You, like a Hermes so lissome and strong, Fresh from the master Praxiteles' hand?

So you're of Spartan birth?

Descended, perhaps, from one of the band-- Deathless in story and song-- Who combed their long hair at Thermopylae's pa.s.s?

Ah, I forget the straits, alas!

More tragic than theirs, more compa.s.sion-worth, That have doomed you to march in our 'immigrant cla.s.s'

Where you're nothing but 'sc.u.m o' the earth!'"

The audience was caught unaware. It had been vastly interested in the spectacle, as a spectacle, the more because the unusual Americanization cla.s.s which produced it had attracted general attention. But, Phil Khamis, everybody's friend, standing there, an immigrant of the immigrants, smiling his wistful friendly smile, was a picture as dramatic as it was unexpected. First there were e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of astonishment and surprise. Then came the moment of understanding, and a shining-eyed stillness fell on all. Then, what a shout! J.W. led off, the unashamed tears falling from his br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes.

On Sat.u.r.day morning J.W. was sitting beside Phil Khamis at Morning Watch. The leader had asked for answers to the question "Why did I come to the Inst.i.tute?" getting several responses of the conventional sort.

Suddenly Phil nudged J.W. and whispered, "Shall I tell why I came?" and J.W. with the memory of stunt night's thrill not yet dulled, said promptly, "Sure, go ahead."

When Phil got up an attentive silence fell upon them all. The Greek boy had made many friends, as much by his engaging frankness and anxiety to learn as by his perpetual eagerness to have a hand in every bit of hard work that turned up. Since the stunt night incident he was everybody's favorite.

"Friends," he said, in his rather careful, precise way, "I am here for a different reason than any. When I was in America but a little time a Methodist preacher made himself my friend. I could not speak English, only a few words. He took me to his home. He taught me to talk the American way. He find me other friends, though I could do nothing at all for them to pay them back. Now I am Christian--real, not only baptized.

The young people of the church take me in to whatever they do. They call me 'Phil' and never care that I am a foreigner, so when I heard about this Inst.i.tute I say to myself, 'It is something strange to me, but I hear that many people like those in my church will be there.' I cannot quite believe that, but it sounded good, and I wanted to come and see. And now I know that many people are young people like those I first knew. They treat me just the same. It makes me love America much more; and if I could tell my people in the old country that all this good has come to me from the church, they could not believe it. Still, it is true. Everything I have to-day has come to me by goodness of Christian people."

There were some half-embarra.s.sed "Amens," and more than one hitherto unsuspected cold required considerable attention. All the way to breakfast Phil held embarra.s.sed court, while his hand was shaken and his shoulder was thumped and he was told, solo and chorus, by all who could get near him, that "He's all right!"--"Who's all right?" "Phil Khamis!"

But J.W. was walking slowly toward the dining hall, alone. As he had listened to Phil, at first he thought, "Good old scout, he's putting it over," but by the time the Greek's simple words were ended, J.W. was looking himself straight in the eye. "Young fellow," he was saying, "you have come mighty near feeling glad that you have had so many more advantages than this stranger, and yet can't you see that what he says about himself is almost as true about you? All you have to-day--this Inst.i.tute, your religion, your church, your friends, the kind of a home you have and are so proud of--everything has come to you by what Phil calls the goodness of Christian people."

And then it was breakfast time, with an imperative call on J.W. from the Fort Adams table for "that new yell we fixed up last night," and the minutes in which he had talked with himself were for the time forgotten.

But the memory of them came back in the days after the Inst.i.tute was itself a memory.

The Sat.u.r.day night camp fire at this Inst.i.tute, contrary to the usual custom, was not co-ed. The boys went down to the lake sh.o.r.e and sat around a big fire on the sand. The girls had their fire on the slope of a hill at the other edge of the campus.

Nor does this Inst.i.tute care for too much praise of itself. Its traditional spirit is to work more for outcomes than for the devices which produce complacency. It stages only a few opportunities of telling "Why I like this Inst.i.tute."