oups of the faithful longing for home, were, in brief,
the things that we saw and heard. It was pathetic.

"I began to think about it. Here were five church organizations, all
weak, infirm, begging, struggling for life. The automobile and the
golf and yacht clubs had nearly finished the work of destruction which
incompetence had so ably begun. There was not much left of them; yet
their combined property was worth about one hundred thousand dollars.
They spent in the aggregate fifty-six hundred dollars for ministers'
salaries, and their total average attendance was only four hundred and
forty-nine. I could see no more extravagant waste of time, work, and
capital in any other branch of human effort. Some would call it
wicked, but, though we speak with the tongues of men and of angels,
and have not charity, we had better have kept still.

"The Reverend Mr. Knowles came to me within a day or two and
apologized for his sermon. He complained that he couldn't be
himself--that he didn't dare speak his thoughts.

"'Whose thoughts do you speak?' I asked.

"'Well, I trail along in the wake of the fathers.'

"'Then you are feeding your flock on corned and kippered thoughts--on
the dried and dug-up convictions of the dead. It isn't fair. It isn't
even honest. The church here is dying of anemia for want of fresh
food. The new world must have new thought to fit new conditions. Its
outlook has been utterly changed. If a man who had never seen a
locomotive or a motor-car or a tandem or a telephone or an electric
light or the sons and daughters of a new millionaire or the home and
crest of the same or a bill of a modern merchant were to come down out
of the backwoods and try to tell us how to run the world, we should
think him an ass, and wisely. Consider how these things have changed
the spirit of man and surrounded it with new perils.'

"'But think of the old fellows--the mossbacks--who hate your new
philosophy,' said the minister.

"'And think of the young fellows who are so easily tossed about. The
moss of senility is covering the bloom of youth and the honor of
youth.'"

XV

IN WHICH HARRY RETURNS TO POINTVIEW AND GOES TO WORK

"Betsey and I were giving a dinner-party at our house. Mr. and Mrs.
Henry Delance and the Warburtons and Dan and Lizzie had come over to
discuss a plan for the correction of the greatest folly and
extravagance in the village--namely, the waste of its spiritual
energy.

"At first we had