It is taken for granted that the wise pastor will think twice before organizing a boys’ club.  It were better for him to leave the whole enterprise in the innocent realm of his castles in Spain than to add another failure to the many that have been made in this attractive and difficult field.  Enthusiasm is essential, but taken alone it is an embarrassing qualification.  Therefore he should make a careful inventory of his available assets.  If he contemplates personal leadership he would do well to list his own qualifications.  In any event he will need to be familiar with the boy-life of his community, with all that endangers it and with all that is being done to safeguard and develop it in accord with Christian ideals.  If the boys of his parish are already adequately cared for he will not feel called upon to bring coals to Newcastle.

His personal inventory must needs take into account his tastes and ability.  These will be determined frequently by the mere matter of age; for undoubtedly the earlier years of one’s ministry lie a little nearer to the interests of boyhood and at this time the knack of the athletic training received in school or college has not been wholly lost.  The leader may recover or increase his ability in games by taking a course at the Y.M.C.A.

If he finds within himself a deep love for boys that gets pleasure rather than irritation from their obstreperous companionship, if he is endowed with kindness that is as firm as adamant in resisting every unfair advantage—­which some will surely seek to take—­if he is noise-proof and furnished with an ample fund of humor that is scrupulously clean and moderately dignified, if he possesses a quiet, positive manner that becomes more quiet and positive in intense and stormy situations, if he is withal teachable, alert, resourceful, and an embodiment of the “square-deal” principle, and if he is prepared to set aside everything that might interfere with the religious observance of every single appointment with his boys—­then he may consider himself eligible for the attempt.

But how will he go about it?  Shall he print posters of a great mass-meeting to organize a boys’ club?  Shall he besiege his church for expensive equipment, perhaps for a new building?  Shall he ask for an appropriation for work which most of the people have not seen, and of whose value they cannot judge except from his enthusiastic prophecies?  Let us hope not.  To succeed in such requests might be to die like Samson; while to fail in them would be a testimony to the sanity of his responsible parishioners.

There is a better way—­a way that is more quiet, natural, and effective.  Possibly there is already in the Sunday school a class of eight or ten boys between the ages of twelve and fifteen years.  Let the pastor become well acquainted with them and at first merely suggest—­in their class session or when he has them in his study or home—­what other boys have done in clubs of their own.  He