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real building in every town and village. Is that also something that
the people are so used to that they don't notice it any more?"

"Oh, yes," Mr. Tanner assented. "I suppose the contrast between the
church and the miserable little hovels around it never occurs to any of
them. It has always been so. The church has built itself up out of the
community, and for the most part it puts very little back. It conducts
schools, to be sure; and yet eighty per cent of the Mexican people are
illiterate, it has some few institutions of help and mercy; but the
whole land cries out for doctors and teachers and friendly human
concern."

"Is that really so?" J.W. asked. "Do the people really want our
missionaries, or are we Protestants just shoving ourselves in? I can see
that something is desperately wrong, but we are mostly Saxon, and they
are Latins. Do these people want what to them must seem a queer religion
and a lot of strange ideas?"

"So long as they do not understand what we come for, naturally they are
suspicious. When they find out, they take to mission work and
missionaries with very little urging. I wish you would meet my
son-in-law," Mr. Tanner said with positiveness. "Why, the one tormenting
desire of that man's life is to see more missionaries sent down into
Mexico; more doctors, more teachers, more workers of every sort. He
writes letters to the Board of Foreign Missions that would make your
heart ache. The church at home couldn't oversupply Mexico with the sort
of help it desperately needs if it should turn every recruit that way,
and disregard all the rest of the world's mission fields."

"Do you mean," asked J.W., who was seeing new questions bob up every
time an earlier one was answered, "do you mean that so many missionaries
could be used on productive Christian work right away? Or is it that we
ought to have a big force to prepare for the long future of our work in
Mexico?" Now, J.W. was not so sure that this was an intelligent
question, but he had heard that in some mission fields it was necessary
to wait years for real and permanent results.

His companion saw nothing out of the way in the question. It was part of
the whole problem. "I mean it both ways," he said. "What I've seen of
our Methodist work down in these parts, particularly its schools and one
wonderful hospital, makes me sure we could get big harvests of interest
and success right off. We're doing it already, considering our
relatively sma