“As you ought to know pretty well, Marcia,” Joe replied, “back home they think I don’t care much for the young people’s work.  It is a little too prim and ready-to-wear for me, if you’ll excuse me for saying so.  No fun in it at all, though I’ll admit some of the classes here have more life in them than I looked for.”

One of the other girls, who knew him well enough to speak with large frankness, came to the defense of them all, saying:  “Well, Joe, I don’t see that you get very far with what you call fun.  It’s mostly at the expense of other people, including your father, who pays the bills.  Besides, since you came home from college this spring, you seem to have run out of nearly all the bright ideas you started with.  I wonder if it ever strikes you that being a sport, as you call it, is mostly being a nuisance to everybody?  Some of us long ago got over thinking you clever and original.  You must be getting over it yourself, by now, surely.”

“Many thanks, dear lady, for them kind words,” Joe responded, as he bowed low in mock acknowledgment; “you make yourself quite plain, Miss Alma Wetherell.”  He flung back the insult jauntily, as he and his companions moved on, but at least one of the group suspected that the words had struck home.

You who know the General Secretary could easily forgive J.W. his delight in the class of which the program said the subject was “Methods.”  This is the only hour in an Institute which the Epworth League takes for its own work.  Rightly enough, it is a crowded hour, with the whole Institute present, and usually it is an hour of unflagging interest.

J.W. and Marty were enjoying their first Institute too much to be late at any classes.  They were merely a little earlier at this class; to miss any of it would be a distinct loss.

Now, what the General Secretary talked about was no more than the everyday work of the League—­how it meant the young people of the church and their work for and with young people for the sake of the future.  But he had a way with him.  He said the League was a great scheme of self, with the “ish” left off.  In the League one practiced self-help, and enjoyed the twin luxuries of self-direction and self-expression, and came sooner or later to that strange new knowledge which is self-discovery.  He explained how Epworthians as such could live on twenty-four hours a day, the plan being an ingenious and yet simple financial arrangement for keeping the League work moving, both where you are and where you aren’t, even around the world.  He had innumerable stories of the devotional meeting idea, the Win-My-Chum idea, the stewardship idea, the Institute idea, the life service idea, the recreation idea, the study-class idea, and every other League idea so far invented.

But all this is merely a hint of what the General Secretary meant to the Institute, and particularly to the delegates from Delafield.  Even Joe Carbrook had been impressed.  He heard the General Secretary the morning after that little exchange of compliments on the library steps, and for an hour thereafter let himself enjoy the rare luxury of thinking.  The results were somewhat disconcerting.