e
abandoned meetinghouses. So I made up my mind to persuade you out of it.
You know I wasn't much in favor of your coming here in the first place.
But maybe that's a bigger job than I thought."

"You're right, John Wesley, about that. I don't budge, if I can make
myself big enough for the job. It's too interesting. And things are
happening. There's no danger of this church being abandoned."

"But what do you do, Marty, to make things happen? I know they don't
just happen. I'm from the country too, remember that."

"What do I do? Not 'I' but 'we.' Well, we work with our heads first, and
our hearts. Then we get out and go at it. Take our very first social
difficulty; in Delafield you have a dozen places to go to. Here it's
either the church or the schoolhouse--that's all the choice there is.
And the schoolhouse has its limitations. So our folks have decided to
make the church, both here and at Valencia, the center of the community.
That explains the social hall; we call it 'Community House.' Everything
that goes on, except the barn dances over east that we can't do much
with so far, goes on in the church, or starts with the church, or ends
at the church. That's the first scheme we put over. It was fairly easy,
you know, because all our country people are pretty much one lot. We
have no rich, and no really poor. And they're not organized to death,
either, as you are in Delafield."

"Do you try to have something going on every night, and nearly every
day, as Brother Drury does with us?" J.W. asked.

"Not quite," replied Marty; "we can't. We're too busy growing the food
for you town folks. But we keep up a pretty stiff pace, for the
preacher; I have no time hanging on my hands."

"I should think not," J.W. commented, "if you try to run everything.
Mr. Drury always seems to have lots of time, just because he makes the
rest of us run the works in Delafield First."

"Oh, he does, does he?" said Marty, shortly, who knew something of the
older minister's strategy. "That's according to how you look at it. I'm
not above learning from him, and I don't run everything, either. But I'm
there, or thereabouts, most of the time."

"How do you get time for your study and your sermons, then," queried J.
W., "if you're on the go so much?"

Marty turned a quizzical look at J.W. "My beloved chum, how did you and
I get time for our studies at Cartwright?" he said. "Besides, I'm making
one hand wash the other. The social life here, for