John Wesley, Jr. Part 7

"What do you think it did to mine?" Marty observed quietly. "I'm still giddy from being relieved of so much money in one operation. And yet I can't see how they get along. Look at the big faculty they have, and all these buildings to keep up and keep going. When I think of how big a dollar seems to me, the tuition looks like the national debt of Mexico; but when I try to figure out how much it costs the college per student, I feel as though I were paying lunch-counter prices for a dining-car dinner. How _do_ they do it, J.W.?"

"Who told you I was to be looked on in the light of a World Almanac, my son? I could give you the answer to that question without getting out of my chair, but for one small difficulty--I just don't know. Tell you what--it's a good question--let's look in the catalogue. I'd like to find information in that volume about something besides the four centuries of study that loom before my freshman eyes."

So they looked in the catalogue and discovered that Cartwright College had an endowment of $1,750,000, producing an income of about $80,000 a year, and that the churches of its territory gave about $25,000 more.

They learned also that most of the buildings had been provided by friends of the college, with the Carnegie Library mainly the gift of the millionaire ironmaster. They learned also that about $500,000 of the endowment had been raised in the last two years, under the promise of the General Education Board, which is a Rockefeller creation, to provide the last $125,000. The college property was valued at about half a million dollars.

"And there you are, Martin Luther, my bold reformer," said J.W., cheerfully. "The people who put up the money have invested about two and a half millions on you and me, and the other five hundred students, say about $250 a year per student. And we pay the rest of what it costs to give us a college career, $125 to $175 a year, depending on our taste in courses. I remember I felt as if the John Wesley Farwell family had almost gone broke when dad signed up for $1,000 on that last endowment campaign. I thought the money gone forever, but I see now he merely invested it. I've come to Cartwright to spend the income of it, and a little more. Five or six people have given a thousand dollars apiece to make a college course possible for each of us. There's some reason in college endowments, after all."

And Marty said, "One good I can see in this particular endowment is that anybody but a selfish idiot would be glad to match four years of his life against all the money and work that Christian people have put into Cartwright College."

"I hope you don't mean anything personal by that remark," J.W. said, with mock solemnity, "because I'm inclined to believe you're more than half right. It reminds me again of what Phil Khamis said. I'm beginning to think I'll never have a chance to forget that Greek's Christian remark about Christians."

By being off at school together J.W. and Marty gave each other unconfessed but very real moral support in those first days when a lone freshman would have known he was homesick.

But another antidote, both pleasant and potent, was supplied by the Epworth League of First Church. It had allied itself with the college Y.M.C.A.--and for the women students, with the Y.W.C.A.--in various ways, but particularly it purposed to see that the first few Sundays were safely tided over.

So the two chums found themselves in one of the two highly attractive study courses which had been put on in partnership with the Sunday school. It was in the early afternoon of one of the early Sundays that J.W. called Marty's attention to a still more alluring opportunity.

"Looky here, Marty, it's raining, I know, but I've a feeling that you'd better not write that letter home until a little further on in the day.

What's to stop us from taking a look at this League fellowship hour we're invited to, and getting a light lunch? We don't need to stay to the League meeting unless we choose, though we're members, you know."

Marty picked up the card of invitation which J.W. had flipped across the table to him, and read it.

"Well," he commented, "it reads all right. Let's try it."

Out into the rain they went and put in two highly cheerful hours, including one in the devotional meeting, so that when Marty at last sat down to write home, he produced, without quite knowing how, a letter that was vastly more heartening when it reached the farm than it would have been if he had written it before dark.

Joe Carbrook set out for the State University in what was for him a fashion quite subdued. Before his experience at the Inst.i.tute he would have gone, if at all, in his own car, and his arrival would have been notice to "the sporty crowd" that another candidate for initiation into that select circle had arrived.

But Joe was enjoying the novelty of thinking a little before he acted.

Though he would always be of the irrepressible sort, he was not the same Joe. He had laid out a program which surprised himself somewhat, and astonished most of the people who knew him.

He knew now that he would become, if he could, a doctor; a missionary doctor. No other career entered his mind. He would finish his college work at the State University, and then go to medical school. He would devote himself without ceasing to all the studies he would need. Not for him any social life, any relaxation of purpose. Grimly he told himself that his play days were over. They had been lively while they lasted; but they were done.

Of course that was foolish. If he had persisted in any such scholastic regimen, the effort would have lasted a few days, or possibly weeks; and then in a reaction of disgust he might easily have come to despair of the whole project.

Fortunately for Joe and for a good many other people, his purpose of digging into his books and laboratory work and doggedly avoiding any other interest was tempered by the happenings of the first week.

Doubtless he would have made a desperate struggle, but it would have been useless. Not even conversion can make new habits overnight, and in his first two years at college Joe had been known to teachers and students alike as distinctly a sketchy student, wholly inexpert at concentrated effort.

And so, instead of becoming first a grind and then a discouraged rebel against it all, he had the immense good fortune to be captured by an observant Junior whom he had met while they were both registering for Chemistry III.

"You're new here," said the Junior, Heatherby by name, "and I've had two years of it. Maybe you'll let me show you the place. I'm the proud half-owner of a decidedly second-hand 'Hooting Nanny,' you know, and I rather like b.u.mping people around town in it."

That was the beginning of many things. Joe liked it that Heatherby made no apologies for his car, and before long he discovered that the other half-owner, Barnard, was equally unaffected and friendly. It was something of a surprise, though, to learn that Barnard was not a student, but the youthful-looking pastor of the University Methodist Church, of late known as the Wesley Foundation.

"I'm not up on Methodism as I should be," said Joe to Barnard, a day or two later, "and I may as well admit that I never heard before of this Wesley Foundation of yours. Is it a church affair?"

"Well, rather," Barnard answered. "It is just exactly that. You know, or could have guessed, that a good many of the students here are from Methodist homes--about a fourth of the whole student body, as it happens. And our church has been coming to see, perhaps a bit slowly, that although the State could not provide any religious influences, and could certainly do nothing for denominational interests, there was all the more reason for the church to do it. That's the idea under the Foundation, so to speak, and the work is now established in nine of the great State Universities."

"Yes, I see," Joe mused, "but just what is the Foundation's duty, and how do you do it?"

Barnard laughed as he said, "We do pretty near everything, in this University. We have a regular Methodist church, with a membership made up almost entirely of faculty and students. The town people have their own First Church, over on the West Side. Our church has its Sunday school, its Epworth League Chapter, and other activities. We try to come out strong on the social side, and in a little while, when our Social Center building is up--we're after the money for it now--we can do a good deal more. There is plenty of demand for it."

"That's all church work, of course. I suppose you have no relation to the University, though," Joe asked, "studies and all that?"

"Yes, indeed, and we're coming to more of it, but gradually. We are already offering courses in religious subjects, with teachers recognized by the University, and credit given. It's all very new yet, you know, but we're hoping and going ahead."

"I should think so," said Joe with emphasis. "But where does the money come from for all this? It must be Methodist money, of course; who puts it up?"

"Oh, the usual people," said Barnard. "A few well-to-do Methodists have provided some of it, but the really big money has to come from the churches--collections and subscriptions and all that. This sort of work is being done in forty-odd other schools, where the Wesley Foundation is not organized. The money comes officially through two of the benevolent boards."

"Yes?" queried Joe. "I've often heard of 'the benevolences,' but I never thought of them as meaning anything to me. How do they hook up to a proposition like that?"

"Well," said Barnard, "the Board of Education, naturally, is interested because of the Methodist students who are here. And the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension is interested because at bottom this is the realest sort of home mission and church extension work."

"Do these boards supply all the money you need?" was Joe's next question.

"No, not all at once, anyway," Barnard answered. "We're needing a good deal more before this thing really gets on its feet; and when our people know what work can be done in State schools, and what a glorious chance we have, I think they'll see that the money is provided. The students are there, half a hundred thousand of them, and the church must be there too."

"Well," Joe said, "I admire the faith of you. And I want to join. You know, although I'm a mighty green hand at religious work, I've got to go at it hard. There's a reason. So please count me in on everything where I'm likely to fit at all. I didn't tell you, did I, that I'm headed for medicine?--going to be a missionary doctor, if they'll take me when I'm ready. Maybe your Foundation can do something with me."

Barnard thought it could, and the next two years justified his confidence. Joe Carbrook, as downright in his new purpose as he had been in his old scornful refusal to look at life seriously, quickly found a place for himself in the church and the other activities of the Foundation. It saved him from his first heedless resolution to study an impossible number of hours a day, and from the certain crash which would have followed. It gave him not a few friends, and he was soon deep in the affairs of the League and the church. Besides, it made possible some special friendships among the faculty, which were to be of immense value in later days.

While Joe Carbrook was fitting himself into the life of the University and the Wesley Foundation, the chums at Cartwright were quite as busy making themselves a part of their new world. As always, they made a good team, so much so that people began to think of them not as individuals, but as necessarily related, like a pair of shoes, or collar and tie, or pork and beans. And, though the old differences of temperament and interest had not lessened, the two had reached a fine contentment over each other's purposes. J.W. was happy in Marty's preacher-plans, and Marty believed implicitly in the wisdom of J.W.'s understood purpose to be a forthright Christian layman.

But it was not all plain sailing for J.W. n.o.body bothered Marty; he was going into the ministry, and that settled that. Among the students who went in for religious work were several who could not quite share Marty's complacence over J.W.'s program. They thought it strange that so active a Christian, with the right stuff in him, as everybody recognized, should not declare himself for some religious vocation.

And from time to time men came to college--bishops, secretaries, specialists--to talk to the students about this very thing. There was a student volunteer band, in which were enrolled all the students looking to foreign mission work. The prospective preachers had a club of their own, and there was even a little organized group of boys and girls who thought seriously of social service in some form or another as a career.

Now, J.W., before the end of soph.o.m.ore year, had come to know all, or nearly all, of these young enthusiasts. Some of them developed into staunch and satisfying friends. If he had run with the sport crowd, which was always looking for recruits, or if he had been merely a hard student, working for Phi Beta Kappa, he might have been let alone. But, without being able to wear an identifying label, he yet belonged with those who had come to college with a definite life purpose.

Just because n.o.body seemed to realize that being a Christian in business could be as distinct a vocation as any, J.W. was at times vaguely troubled, in spite of his confident stand at the Inst.i.tute. He wondered a little at what he had almost come to feel was his callousness. Not that he was uninterested; for Marty he had vast unspoken ambitions which would have stunned that unsuspecting youth if they had ever become vocal; and he never tired of the prospects which opened up before his other friends. He kept up an intermittent correspondence with Joe Carbrook, and found himself thinking much about the strange chain of circ.u.mstances which promised to make a medical missionary out of Joe. He more than suspected that Joe and Marcia Dayne were vastly interested in each other's future, and he got a lot of satisfaction out of that. They would have a great missionary career.

No; he was not unfeeling about all these high purposes of the boys and girls he knew; and if he could just get a final answer to the one question that was bothering him, his college life would need nothing to make it wholly satisfying. He had early forgotten all his old reluctance to put college before business.

Marty knew something of what was pa.s.sing in J.W.'s mind, and it troubled him a little. He thought of tackling J.W. himself, and by this time there was nothing under the sun they could not discuss with each other freely. But he did not quite trust himself.

At last he made up his mind to write to their pastor at home. He knew that for some reason Mr. Drury had a peculiar interest in J.W. and was sure he could count on it now.

"I know J.W.'s bothered," he wrote, "but he doesn't talk about it. I think he has been disturbed by hearing so much about special calls to special work. We've had several lifework meetings lately, and the needs of the world have been pretty strongly stated. But the stand he took at the Inst.i.tute is just as right for him as mine is for me. Can't you write to him, or something?"

Walter Drury could do better than write. He turned up at Cartwright that same week.

It happened that three or four prospective preachers and Christian workers had been in their room that afternoon, and J.W. was trying to think the thing through once more. He recalled what his pastor had said at the camp fire, and his own testimony on Inst.i.tute Sunday in the life-service meeting, after Marcia Dayne had put it up to him. But he was making heavy weather of it. And just then came the pastor's knock at the door.

There was a boisterous welcome from them both, with something like relief in J.W.'s heart, that he would not, could not speak. But he could get help now. For the sake of saying something he asked the usual question. "What in the world brings you to Cartwright?"

"Oh," said Pastor Drury, "I like to come to Cartwright. Your President's an old friend. Besides, why shouldn't I come to see you two, if I wish?