d the Rev. James Harris, but like so many students who
are attendants and workers in their own churches, Walter on coming to
Burrton had found it easy to lapse into lazy Sunday morning habits.
After he had a late breakfast and read the Sunday morning _Daily
Megaphone_, it was generally too late to go to the Sunday School and it
was easier on stormy Sundays to curl up on a lounge and read a novel, or
on pleasant Sundays to stroll out to the lake two miles away and get an
appetite for a big dinner. Then an afternoon of sleep or visiting or
walking out used up the rest of the day for him. One of the topics he
had avoided with his mother on his recent visit home had been his Sunday
program, and he recalled even now the earnest wish she had expressed
that he would get to work in the Sunday School when he went back to
Burrton. No, he had been so indifferent to all church matters while a
student that he could not bring himself to go to the minister, he was
too much a stranger to him, and this was a matter that seemed to call
for a friend.

"Oh, I wish mother was here!" he exclaimed out loud.

And then because he felt so hungry for comfort and so eager to relieve
his mind of its burden, he went over to his writing desk, and wrote a
long letter to his mother.

When he finished, it was after one o'clock and he went to bed and slept
as if exhausted, but to his dismay when he awoke, his depression and
fear were there to greet him and he found himself waiting for his
mother's answer almost as if her letter were a reprieve from a sentence
of death.

A part of this letter will reveal Walter's excited and even chaotic
feeling.

"The bottom seems to be dropped right out of everything, mother. Of what
use is it to try to do right when there isn't any likelihood of a future
and no personal God and no Redeemer, and no standard for conduct? The
doctor said we could not depend upon Christ's own statements about his
own resurrection. How then can we trust Him for any statement He made
about Himself? The fellows here in Burrton who have money to spend and
do about as they please, the fast set that drinks and carouses and
gambles and gives the chorus girls wine suppers seems to be pretty
happy. They don't worry over the matter of sin or moral responsibility
or going to church or getting serious over the condition of the heathen
or the wrongs of the world, or the 'high calling' you are so fond of
calling my attention to. And why should I b