ade about the
same progress as a missionary that he made as a cook. In so far as Lone
Moose was concerned he accomplished nothing because, like Archimedes, he
lacked a foothold from which to apply his leverage. He had the
intelligence to perceive that these people had no pressing wants which
they looked to him to supply, that they were apparently impervious to
any message he could deliver. His power to deliver a message was
vitiated by this utter absence of receptivity. He was, and realized that
he was, as superfluous in Lone Moose as sterling silver and cut glass in
a house where there is neither food nor drink.

Also he was no longer so secure in the comfortable belief that all
things work for an ultimate good. He was not so sure that a sparrow, or
even an ordained servant of God, might not fall and the Almighty be none
the wiser. The material considerations which he had always scorned
pressed upon him in an unescapable manner. There was no getting away
from them. Thrown at last upon his own resources he began to take stock
of his needs, his instincts, his impulses, and to compare them with the
needs and instincts and impulses of a more Godless humanity,--and he
could not escape certain conclusions. Faith may move mountains, but
chiefly through the medium of a shovel. When a man is hungry his need is
for food. When he is lonely he craves companionship. When he grieves he
desires sympathy. And the Providence Mr. Thompson had been taught to
lean so hard upon did not chop his wood, cook his meals, furnish him
with congenial society, comfort him when he was sad.

"Religion or nonreligion, belief in a personal, immanent God or a rank
materialism that holds to a purely mechanical theory of the universe, it
doesn't make much difference which you hold to if you do not set
yourself up as the supreme authority and insist that the other fellow
must believe as you do.

"Because, my dear sir, you cannot escape material factors. The human
organism can't exist without food, clothing, and shelter. Society cannot
attain to a culture which tends to soften the harshnesses of existence,
without leisure in which to develop that culture. Machinery and science
and art weren't handed to humanity done up in a package. Man only
attained to these things through a long process of evolution, and he
only attained them by the use of his muscle and the exercise of his
intellect. Strength and skill--plus application. Nothing else gets
either an in