could keep my end up
socially. But is all that worth my time for the next four years,
studying subjects that would be no earthly good to me in business, in
making a living, I mean? The other boys in hardware stores would have
four years the start of me."
"But don't you remember, J.W., what our commencement speaker said on
that very point? He told us we had to be men and women first, no matter
what occupations we got into. And he bore down hard on how it was a good
deal bigger business to make a life than to make a living. In these days
the most dangerous people, to themselves and to all of us, are the
uneducated people."
"Yes, I remember," J.W. admitted. "'Cultural and social values of
education,' he called that, didn't he? And that's what I'm not sure of.
It seems pretty foggy to me. But, old man, you're going, that's settled,
and maybe I'll just let dad send me to keep you company, if I can't find
any better reason."
"That's all very well for you to say, J.W.," Marty retorted, with the
least little touch of resentment in his tone. "You'll _let_ your dad
send you. My dad can't send me, though he'll do all he's able to do, and
how I can earn enough, to get through is more than I can see from here."
But J.W. asserted, confidently: "There's a way, just the same, and I
think I know how to find out about it. I haven't been a second assistant
deputy secretary in the Sunday school for nothing. You reminded me of
the commencement address; I'll ask you if you remember Children's Day?
It came the very next Sunday."
"Yes, I remember it; but what of it?"
"Well, my boy, we took up a collection for you!"
"We did? Not much we did, and anyway, do you think I'd accept that sort
of help? I'm not looking for charity, yet," and Marty showed the hurt he
felt.
"Steady, Martin Luther! I wouldn't want you to get that collection
anyway; it wasn't near big enough. But don't you know that every
Children's Day collection in the whole church goes to the Board of
Education, and that it has become a big fund, never to be given away but
always to be loaned to students getting ready to be preachers and such?
It's no charity; it's the same broad-minded business you want me to go
to college for. I can see that much without getting any nearer to
college than the Delafield First Church Sunday School. You borrow the
money, just as if you stepped up to a bank window, and you agree to pay
it back as soon as you can after you graduate. Then
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