need not volunteer to provide such a club, but merely indicate his willingness to help if they are interested and prepared to work for it.  If the boys respond, as they undoubtedly will, then the pastor will need to find a few sympathizers who will give some financial and moral assistance to the endeavor.  He may find some of these outside the church, and often such friends are the more ready to help, because they are not already taxed to carry on the established church work.

The best policy is for the pastor to figure out how boys’ work can be begun without coming before the church for an appropriation.  It is well to begin in a very humble way with such funds as the boys can raise and the backing of a few interested people, securing from the trustees of the church the use of some part of the premises subject to recall of the privilege on sufficient grounds; and—­a consideration never to be slighted although often hard to get—­the good-will and co-operation of the sexton.  With the sexton against him, no pastor can make a church boys’ club succeed.  The club will make no mistake in paying the church something for the heat and light consumed.

If an indoor area sufficient for basket-ball and a room suited to club meetings can be had, the initial apparatus for winter work need not exceed a parallel bar, a vaulting-horse, and three floor mats in addition to the basket-ball equipment.  This will involve an outlay of from $75 to $150.  Good parallel bars are as expensive as they are serviceable; but boys have been known to make their own, and this is highly desirable.  Indian clubs, dumb-bells, and wands may only prove a nuisance unless they can be carefully put away after the exercises.  Anyway, boys do not care greatly for calisthenics and most drills can be given without these trappings.  Granting that the boys have faithful and wise supervision, the undertaking should be allowed to rest upon them to the full measure of their ability.

When it has become clear that funds and quarters can be provided, the matter of formal organization should be taken up.  The ideal church club is not a mass club where certain privileges are given to large numbers of boys who take out memberships; but a group club, or clubs, under democratic control.  Prior to calling the boys together for organization, the pastor will have blocked out the main articles of a constitution, and will have formulated some ideas as to the ritual and procedure which shall have place in the weekly meetings of the club.  In order to do this intelligently, he will need to study such organizations as the Knights of King Arthur and various independent church clubs that have proven successful in fields similar to his own.  Often there is something in his own field that will lend definite color and interest to his local organization.  The following sample constitution is offered for purpose of suggestion only and as a concession to the sentiment attaching to my first boys’ club of a dozen years ago.