The university was quarantined. The following Sunday, with no compulsory church attendance, the young men and women who usually walked together to the village church found it very interesting, very profit able, to take their Bibles and hold study classes under the shadow of the saplings; two in a class, and every sapling shade occupied. But the next morning in chapel the dean broke forth to Jason and his fellowculprits by venturing with sure tread and heavy on the stimulating theme, "The Sacrilege of Pretending to Study the Bible When You are Doing Nothing but Make Love." It was the Pro-Gymnasiums' turn to laugh then.

Then my first year at the university came to an end. The students dispersed ; some to go through the land holding religious revivals under tents, Pa Borden among them. Others took "The Devil in Society," with the intention of clearing big profits from that sensational book. Quite a number of the men went forth with the folding ironing-board invented and manufactured by the mathematical professor-a contrivance which stood up like a soldier, kneeled down like a camel, and folded up like a jackknife.

As for myself, I had neither the clothes nor the experience nor the opportunity to leave the campus of the university. I was too far from home, and without money, so I resolved to take my chances by helping the superintendent of the grounds until the reopening. But, as that would yield me no cash, I went along with a married student who had just been given his Ph.D., and, side by side, through four hot June days we wielded picks and shovels on hard clay, in competition with Irish laborers whose flesh was iron, whose wit was bubbling over, whose use of the pick and shovel was a wonder to behold. As I weighed but a hundred and twenty pounds and had stringy muscles, I undermined my strength to such an extent that the lightest gardening throughout the remainder of the vacation brought on an excessive weariness. Thoroughly disheartened, penniless, cooking my own meals, I wandered listlessly about the dreary campus day by day, watching the vultures wind circles in the air, and thinking all the time, "Is getting an education by your own effort worth while?" But always the reassuring answer came: "Wait till next fall, when all your friends get back! You will then begin on your second year. Two years of

education is worth all the effort." Then I would go back to my room, warm a can of beans, and eat in hope.

concerns.

IV

With the return of the students in the fall came the old emphasis upon religious I was used to it by then. Constant association with the students had toned down the novelty of it. I even found myself reacting to the zealous spirit that dominated the university. When one of the liberal supporters of the university paid us a visit and addressed us in chapel, I found myself discounting the man because he wore a brilliant ring on his finger! Jason's crowd came out on the campus alarmed that a man with pride in his heart, as indicated by that ring, should be a Christian! Did not John Wesley condemn such yielding to carnal pride, urged Jason, and pointed to the very passage in one of that noted man's books.

Finding myself given up to such Pharisaic concerns, it was with relief that I welcomed an attack of malaria, for that brought its simple human joys: flowers from the young women at my tables, eggs and other extras from the kitchen, concern from all my friends, and an unwonted interest in the simple worldly news from the outside. On my sickbed I heard the loud shouting as the ProGymnasiums carried the winner of an oratorical contest on their shoulders to the President's door. I heard the dancing and singing around the big bonfire, which proved to me, more than all that I had seen, that the student heart, even at such a formidable place as Evangelical University, loves pageantry and display in celebration.

But after the convalescence came the sterner aspect of things; hard study, hard work, worry over my empty purse, and frets about the future.

Not only was this seriousness personal. It filled the air of the university, for the annual advertised revival had been announced, and that in itself was an event, the event, at Evangelical University. Your educator says, "The prime work of an institution of higher education is intellectual instruction." The founders and trustees of Evangelical University differed, and said to us, "The prime work of this university is the converting of men and women. Beside this, studies, study hours, and recitations are as nothing." In arguing this matter with Jason one day, and differing from that argu

ment, I said, "But why not let the Church take care of conversion and preaching, and let the university center its effort entirely, undistractedly, on intellectual instruction? That's what I came for. I can get religion at camp-meetings and on Sunday, plenty of it." Jason's poetic face seemed bewildered, shocked, and he disposed of the whole matter categorically by saying, in his solemn way, "Brother Priddy, what are heads compared to souls? Now is the day of salvation"!"

At the announcement of the coming annual revival all the enginery of Christian effort was brought to bear on the student and faculty life. The prayer bands wove in extra sessions, the after-supper prayer-meetings were suddenly crowded, and their hour lengthened into an hour and a half, to give time for all the prayers, public confessions, and testimonies. Bands of men and women roamed about the dormitories holding inquisitions over new students, warning them before the revival started to make their peace with God.

Then the revivalists appeared an uneducated man and his wife, whose fame for doctrinal discussion and emotional zeal was considerable. With their coming Evangelical University seemed to reach its highest enthusiasm.

Every person and activity was subordinated to the sweep of that winter's revival. The faculty stepped into the background. The valedictorian, the prize scholar, the grind, the "shark," the humble seeker after knowledge, gave way to Pa Borden, the converted gravestone dealer; to Mr. Truman, the converted barkeeper; to Allen, the reformed miner; for it was these men who were the "lions" of the revival. They stood up night after night and laid bare horrid morbid pasts, standing before us as "souvenirs of grace. It was these men, marked by sin, well advanced in years, ignorant, self-important, with an unmistakable zeal, who dominated all the services. To them the evangelists called for public prayer, to them the evangelists gave the command to seek out members of the faculty known to be lukewarm in their religious publicity and try to win them to a warmer profession.

And the meetings themselves! They were not the Moody-Chapman-Smith kind, which have as their only goal the correction of unethical lives. By the time the revivai began that winter it was an actual boast in the prayer-meetings that there were only three students who did not publicly profess to be

Christians; yet the revival was not primarily for these. These meetings were morbid, Scripture quibbling, legalistic, abnormally ecstatic, super-rational sessions, whose whole point consisted in emotionalizing Christians. The evangelist and his wife preached for hours and hours to prove from Scripture that professing Christians were not fully Christians until they had gone through a second consecration.

After the first week, when the meetings had opened and closed on time, the evangelists were discouraged, and openly said that there must be unbelief about! That day, then, the prayer bands redoubled their petitions in an effort to "make the meetings more what they should be." The second week the meetings began to be more exciting. The evangelists took more than their allotted time in chapel, saying sincerely to the President, "Well, brother, studies can give way to the Lord, can't they?" and the President nodded his head and gave orders to the bellman not to ring for recitations till the service was over-a half-hour later. This disposed of all the recitations for that hour. After the evening services, that second week, instead of getting to our rooms by half-past seven, many of us who stayed to the second service did not get back until eleven o'clock; this with the sanction of the faculty, who were determined not to interfere with " the work of the Spirit." After these sessions it was impossible for us to get any lessons, but we did not have to fret, for the next morning in the classes we had neglected we repeated our excuse: "Professor, I have no lesson; I stayed at the meeting last night," and the professor, who was not to interfere with" the work of grace," had to bow to the excuse by saying, "All right. The next one may recite."

The meetings were considered successful according to the amount of ecstatic display that came during the prolonged second service every evening. The meeting, once given into the hands of the students, took on alarming, hysterical proportions. One Thursday evening, after an hour's sermon by the evangelist's wife on a doctrinal theme, a young woman stood up in a trance and spoke in a jumble nobody could understand. That was the signal for a wild demonstration; a Pentecost, it was called. A group of young women paraded up and down the aisles, waving handkerchiefs and shouting in rapt ecstasy, "Praise, oh praise !" Suddenly one of the

young men near me, without any provocation, burst into tears, and, in writhing agony, sobbed as if his heart would break. Meanwhile at the lower end of the room three rows of students were singing a hymn at the top of their voices, while one of the faculty stood on the platform, gazing on the scene, beating rhythmic time with his hands. Then the young fellow who had fallen near me in tears leaped to his feet and burst into a wild torrent of laughter and ran about the room, clapping his hands. Near the platform, with heads soberly, quietly resting on their outstretched hands, knelt the evangelists in prayer, praying aloud for one of the faculty by name! The young woman in the trance came back and reported a vision, the description of which was fit to be framed in Miltonic verse. Towards eleven o'clock, after the hysteria had somewhat abated, though it had passed from student to student like the onward sweep of a wave over the sea, the whole company sang a revival hymn and went out with a benediction by Pa Borden.

Two weeks of the revival, and then the revivalist and his wife went forth. It was a distinct relief, a real, worldly, healthy touch to campus life, to go forth once again and, instead of hearing some reminiscence of the revival, hear "Bird" Thurlow shout across the walk, "Hey, Paddy, going to take Miss Adee to the lecture next Wednesday?" That was the surest indication that the revival was over until the following spring, when there would be another two weeks of it.

During that second year a very definite restlessness took hold of me. I went days at a time without seeing any of the sins with which the world was full. Like Johnson's "Abyssinia," Evangelical University was a place where "the evils were extracted and excluded." One never saw a pipe, cigar, or cigarette on the campus, or in any of the dormitories. Profanity, vulgarity, displays of temper, were very, very rare. When one student chanced to offend another, the apology was instantly forthcoming. One lapse in any of these directions meant expulsion from the university.

If heaven is one-sided, like that, then I have had my full taste of it, without a doubt. There were the students forgiving and forgetting faults, preaching charity one to another, sharing the common joy of Christian striving. Everywhere were eager hearts leaping at the opportunity of helping somebody else, yet I was restless. And that be

cause whatever Christian ideals I had were the ideals of practically every one around me. Faith did not stand out very definitely because there was no unfaith for a background. There were few opportunities for Christian discipline because there were so few temptations to worldliness. I said to my roommate one day: "How dull it is here! I mean trying to be a Christian does not thrill one here as it does out in the midst of worldly things. It is such a heaven here. There's so little reforming to be done. There are no sins to speak against. Everybody's trying to be good, to do good." "Yes," ventured my roommate, "I feel the same way. It's like eating the most delicious plums in the world. Nothing is left to be desired, so far as goodness goes; that is where the dullness comes in, I suppose. What a thing to complain of, to be sure !" He laughed. "It isn't often that you find two young people having an occasion to complain about the dullness of too much goodness."

Nevertheless, having received, by taking extra studies, what preparation I needed, I resolved to complete my education in the East. The university had given me a good start. It had put me under a deep debt toward it. The extreme religious doctrines it fostered, the narrowness and bigotry of the students, were mainly due to the absence of vice, of worldliness; religion in a place where practically every student was trying to live at his best was bound to be legalistic, Pharisaic. As there were no outstanding sins to denounce, and as expression must out, the students could only resort to schoolmen's quibbles.

Evangelical University took me, a fellow poor in purse and ill furnished in manners and mind. Without questioning, it welcomed me to its poverty and its inspiration. It gave me the open hand to all it had. It shaped life through the narrowest mold; but there was a great light held constantly before us. The ninety dollars a year it charged for board, room, light, heat, and tuition-how trivial a charge for the great ambitions it brought to life in me! To its grim cloisters, its bare rooms, to its campus whereon never stamped the feet of athletes in contest, are still going poor lads from farm, factory, mine, and shop. I can promise for them a full inspiration, a fair mental furnishing, a first-hand knowledge of religion, and a deep respect for the kindly men and women who have sacrificed so much to be their teachers.

T

HE longer we study social problems, the stronger become two seemingly different but really complementary feelings in our souls, if we are wise: first, the feeling of distrust for any one patent remedy that offers a complete solution for all our ills; and, second, the feeling that we are all the more bound to do everything in our power to secure the adoption of as large a number as possible of the partial remedies. that do each alleviate something of the misery of mankind and work a measurable betterment in the condition of men, women, and children.

Permanent good can come only if, with clear-sighted recognition of the manifold evils around us, and resolute courage to do away with them, we combine that broad and equable health of soul which declines to put its faith in any one patent cure-all, and which, above all, declines to let its indignation at wrong and sympathy for suffering be turned into an angry vindictiveness and uncharitableness which would in the end merely aggravate the suffering and increase the wrong.

It is curious to see how actual events give the lie to the theorist who finds the root of all human trouble in any one single tendency or set of tendencies; and it is no less curious and a little disheartening to see how men refuse to profit by the lessons before them. In this country, for instance, we have one set of entirely well-meaning men who insist that our present social system is as perfect as human nature will stand, that all we need is to stop agitation and unrest, and that the ills of poverty will be cured, and can only be cured, by each individual showing thrift, industry, temperance, and sobriety; and we have another set of reformers who insist that a complete cure can only come, and will assuredly come, if capitalism, or, as they term it, "capitalistic exploitation of the masses," be drastically done away with. I wish that the apostles of both schools could only be persuaded to look across the Pacific Ocean and see what is actually the case in China, or at least would read about it in the pages of a real observer like Professor Ross, of the University of Wisconsin. In China there are several hundred million workers whose condition, judged by

our standards, and indeed judged by any standards, is far lower than the condition of any class of anything like similar numbers in either America or Europe. The individuals of this class are industrious, thrifty, frugal, temperate, to a probably greater degree than is the case with any corresponding class of workers in Europe or America. Yet, for reasons the discussion of which would be aside from my present subject, they have remained for many generations at a level of want and misery below all but the very lowest depths of the lowest and most completely submerged strata of Western populations. Their condition shows the absurdity of thinking that the virtues named can, in the absence of other qualities and purely by themselves, save a people. But it also shows that the favorite remedy advocated by the professional Socialists is itself a quack remedy. Among these populations there is absolutely nothing even remotely resembling capitalistic exploitation.

In enormous stretches of the country where the misery is greatest, where the recurrent destruction by famine and the diseases incident to famine is most appalling, there is no kind of capitalistic development, no class of capitalists, and hardly any people of riches. Capitalism has had absolutely nothing to do with producing this misery; for in most of the region there is not much inequality of conditions, the rich have not grown richer, yet the poor have grown as poor as they possibly can be.

I hope I make myself clear. I do not mean that there are not evils of a very grave kind in this country due to our capitalistic system. I do not mean that it is possible to win success without being industrious, thrifty, frugal, and temperate. But I do mean that our Nation, to go forward as it should go, cannot afford to rely on any one set of virtues, however important, and, on the other hand, that we cannot afford to believe that we shall accomplish our aims by warring against any one set of evils, however real. We have to rely on a very great many manifestations of good qualities, individually and collectively, and we have to war against a great many different forms of evil, individual and collective. No