ned to be a preacher's wife.
This gave her a certain advantage when she told the listening girls that
the greatest of all occupations for them was not some special vocation,
but what Ida Tarbell has called "the business of being a woman." It was
good preparation for the next day's program, with its specific and
glamorous appeal, for it put first the great claim, so that special
vocations could be seen in clear air and could be fairly measured.

Pastor Drury, who talked to the boys, was talking to them all, as J.W.
very well knew, but every word seemed for him; as, indeed, it was, in a
sense that he did not suspect. He was not surprised that his pastor
should present the Christian life as effectively livable by bricklayers
and business men as surely as by missionaries. He had heard that before.
But to J.W. the old message had a new setting, a new force. And never
before had he been so ready to receive it.

The songs had sung themselves out, as the fire changed from roaring
flame and flying sparks to a great bed of living coals. From the world's
beginning a glowing hearth has been perfect focus for straight thought
and plain speech. The boys found it so this night.

The minister began so simply that it seemed almost as if his voice were
only the musings of many, just become audible. "I know," said he, "that
to-morrow some of you will find yourselves, and will eagerly offer your
lives for religious callings. We shall all be proud of you and glad to
see it. But most of you cannot do that. You are already sure that you
must be content to live 'ordinary Christian lives,' It is possible that
to-morrow you may feel a little out of the picture. And those who are
hearing a special call might regard you, quite unconsciously, of course,
as not exactly on their level."

"Now, suppose we get this thing straight to-night. There is no great nor
small, no high nor low, in real service. The differences are only in the
forms of work you do. The quality may be just as fine in one place as in
another. The boy who goes into the ministry, or who becomes a medical
missionary, will have peculiar chances for usefulness. So also will the
boy who goes into business or farming or teaching, or any other
so-called secular occupation. Just because he is not called to religious
work as a daily business he dare not think that he has no call. God's
calling is not for the few, but for the many. And just now the man who
puts his whole soul into being an