for his feeling at commencement that he was
"out of it." It completed all which Mr. Drury had suggested at the
Institute camp fire four years ago, all that he himself had tried to say
at the decision service on the day after the camp fire; all that the
pastor had urged two years ago when J.W., Jr., confessed to him his new
hesitations and uneasiness.

The pastor had not preached any great thing. He had simply told the
college folk in his audience that no matter where they had gone to
school, many people had invested much in them, and that the investment
was one which in its very nature could not be realized on by the
original investors. The only possible beneficiaries were either the
successive college generations or the communities in which they found
their place. If they chose to take as personal and unconditional all the
benefits of their education, none could forbid them that anti-social
choice; but if they accepted education as a trust, a stewardship,
something to be used for the common good, they would be worth more to
Delafield than all the new factories the Chamber of Commerce could coax
to the town.

And to those who might be interested in this view of education, Pastor
Drury said: "Young people of the colleges, you have been trained to some
forms of laboratory work, in chemistry, in biology, in geology--yes,
even in English. I invite you to think of your own town of Delafield as
your living laboratory, in which you will be at once experimenters and
part of the experiment stuff. Look at this town with all its good and
evil, its dying powers and its new forces, its dullnesses and its
enthusiasms, its folly and wisdom, its old ways and its new people, its
wealth and want. Do you think it is already becoming a bit of the
kingdom of God? Or, if you conclude that it seems to be going in ways
that lead very far from the Kingdom, do you think it might possess any
Kingdom possibilities? If you do, no matter what your occupation in
Delafield, Delafield itself may be your true vocation, your call from
God!"

For John Wesley Farwell, Jr., it was to become all of that.

CHAPTER IV

EXPLORING MAIN STREET

J.W., Jr., found small opportunity to make himself obnoxious by becoming
a civic missionary before the time. He was busy enough with his
adjustment to the business life of "Delafield and Madison county," this
being the declared commercial sphere of the John W. Farwell Hardware
Company. J.W. always had known