or a tailor's model.

With such a name you will understand that he's a Methodist by first
intention; born so. He is a pretty sturdy young Christian, showing it in
a boy's modest but direct fashion, which even his teammates of the
high-school football squad found it no trouble to tolerate, because they
knew him for a human, healthy boy, and not a morbid, self-inspecting
religious prig. Pastor Drury, you may be sure, had taken note of all
that, for he and J.W. had been fast friends since the day he had
received the boy into the church.

The morning after the Institute social J.W. announced at breakfast his
sudden change of plan.

"If you don't mind, Dad, I've about decided to go to the Institute
instead of Chicago. There is a bunch of us going, and Mr. Drury will be
there. Uncle Henry's folks might not want to be bothered with me now,
and anyway I don't know them very well. But I can go to the Institute
with the church crowd; and there will be tennis and swimming and plenty
of other fun besides the big program." Which was quite a speech for J.
W.

John Wesley, Sr., didn't know much about the Institute, but he had an
endless regard for his pastor, and the mother was characteristically
willing to postpone her boy's introduction to the unknown and, in her
thought, therefore, the menacing city.

So, after the brief but unhurried devotions at the breakfast table,
which had come to serve in place of the old-time family prayers,
parental approval was forthcoming. And thus it befell that J.W.
selected for himself a future whose every experience was to be affected
by so slight a matter as his impulsive choice of a week's holiday. That
choice expressed to him the new freedom of his years, for he had not
even been conscious of the quiet influence which had made it easier than
he knew to decide as he had done.

* * * * *

It was a mixed and lively company that found itself crowded around the
registrar's table at the Institute one Monday evening in July, with J.
W. and his own particular chum, Martin Luther Shenk, better known as
"Marty," right in the middle of it.

J.W. wondered where so many Epworthians could have come from. Did they
really hanker after the Institute, or had they come for reasons as
trivial as his own? He put the question to Martin Luther Shenk.

"Marty, do you reckon these are all here for real Epworth League work,
or does the Institute want anybody and everybody?"

Marty