hese few months as a Moses to lead a 'rural parish'--if that's
the right scientific name--out of such a wilderness as I saw at Deep
Creek last Sunday?"

Marty made a pass at his chum in the fashion of the Cartwright days, and
waited for the return punch before answering. "Don't you 'Moses' me,
John Wesley. Besides, this circuit was no wilderness. Henderson, the
preacher who was here before me, was just the man for this work. He knew
the country, and believed it had the makings of even more attractive
life than the town. Too bad he had to quit. But he started these folks
thinking the right way. And then, don't you remember I wrote last
summer that I was spending two weeks at a school for rural ministers?"

"Oh, yes, I remember that," J.W. answered, "but that's no explanation. I
spent four years at a college for town and country boys, and now look at
me! Two weeks is a little too short a course to produce miracles, even
with such an intellect as yours, notwithstanding your name is bigger
than mine, Martin Luther! Now, if you'd said four weeks, I might almost
have believed you, but two weeks--well, it just isn't done, that's all!"

"Make fun of it, will you!" said Marty, with another short-arm jab.
"Now, listen to me. That thing is simple enough. First off, I'd been
thinking four years about being a preacher. On top of that, I'd been a
country boy for twenty-three years. I know the Deep Creek neighborhood
better than you do, because I had to live there. You were just visiting
the farm your father paid taxes on. When I came here I found that
Henderson had set things going. He told me what his dream was. So, when
I went to that two-weeks' school I was ready to take in every word and
see every picture and get a grip on every principle. Maybe you don't
know that it was one of many such schools set up by the rural work
leaders of our Home Missions Board, and it was a great school. They had
no use for rocking-chair ruralists, so the faculty, instead of being
made up of paper experts, was a bunch of men who _knew_. It was worth a
year of dawdling over text-books. You see, I knew I could come back here
and try everything on my own people. It was like the Squeers school in
'Nicholas Nickleby,' 'Member? When the spelling class was up, Squeers
says to Smike, the big, helpless dunce, 'Spell window,'" And Smike says,
'W-i-n-d-e-r,' 'All right,' Squeers says, 'now go out and wash 'em,'
Well, I hope I got the spelling a little nearer ri