“For a time mother was a trifle disappointed that J.W. hadn’t waited for the big revival we had the next year,” said J.W., Sr., “but I think she was glad afterward.”

“Yes, I was,” the mother said.  “You see, I had been brought up to believe in revivals, and I do yet, but we had no such chance to get the right Christian start when we were little children, as J.W. has had, if you’ll let his mother say so, and that made a revival a good deal more important to us when our church did get ready for one.  But the other way is all right too.  I’m mother enough to be glad J.W. hasn’t known some of the experiences the boys of my time went through, and the girls as well.  He’s no worse a Christian for having been right in the church ever since I put him in short dresses, are you, son?  And I will say that his father was always with me in holding to the promises we made when he was baptized.  We’ve not done what we might, but we’ve never forgotten that those promises were made to be kept.”

J.W. felt none of his old shrinking from such talk, especially since the Institute, and yet he had the healthy boy’s reluctance to discuss himself in company.  But this was interesting him, outside himself.

He turned to the pastor.  “That’s what I meant when I told you what Phil said.  I’m all for the church, and church people and church ways; why shouldn’t I be?  I’ve never known anything else.  I remember well the one thing I didn’t like when it first came along; and that was the new sort of Christmas celebration Dad and the others planned when I was ten or eleven.  You know what Christmas means to such kids, and I guess we were all selfish together, because we didn’t use our heads.  Well, the Sunday school proposed that instead of us all getting something we should all give something.  It looked pretty cheap to us little fellows at first, and our teacher had all he could do to hold us in line.  But let me tell you, every boy was for it when the time came.  We found that we could have as much fun giving things away as we could grabbing things, and, anyway, nobody really cared for those mosquito net stockings filled with nuts and candy and one orange.  It was only the idea of getting something for nothing.  That first ‘giving Christmas,’ I remember, our class dressed up as delivery boys, and we came on the platform with enough groceries for a small truck load, that we had bought with our own money.  The orphanage got ’em next day.  And one class was dusty millers, carrying sacks of flour, and another put on a stunt of searching for Captain Kidd’s treasure, and they found a keg of shining coins (new pennies, they were)—­more than a thousand of ’em.  Everything went to the orphanage, or the hospital; and then when the Board of Sunday Schools began to get us interested in other Sunday schools and in missions—­I remember a scheme they call a ‘Partnership Plan’ that was great; I don’t know what happened to it—­I got right into the game every time.”