s and
thinkers, who, emerging like promontories, islands, entire new
countries, above the level of the world's knowledge, sent their waves
of influence rushing away to every shore. It was in those years that
they were flowing over the United States, over Kentucky. And as some
volcanic upheaval under mid-ocean will in time rock the tiny boat of a
sailor boy in some little sheltered bay on the other side of the
planet, so the sublime disturbance in the thought of the civilized
world in the second half of the nineteenth century had reached David.

Sitting at his window, looking out blindly for help and helpers amid
his doubts, seeing the young green of the locust, the yellow of the
dandelion, he recalled the names of those anathematized books, which
were described as dealing so strangely with nature and with man's place
in it. The idea dominated him at last to go immediately and get those
books.

A little later he might have been seen quitting the dormitory and
taking his way with a dubious step across the campus into the town.

Saturday forenoons of spring were busy times for the town in those
days. Farmers were in, streets were crowded with their horses and
buggies and rockaways, with live stock, with wagons hauling cord-wood,
oats, hay, and hemp. Once, at a crossing, David waited while a wagon
loaded with soft, creamy, gray hemp creaked past toward a factory. He
sniffed with relish the tar of the mud-packed wheels; he put out a hand
and stroked the heads drawn close in familiar bales.

Crowded, too, of Saturdays was the book-shop to which the students
usually resorted for their supplies. Besides town customers and country
customers, the pastor of the church often dropped in and sat near the
stove, discoursing, perhaps, to some of his elders, or to reverent
Bible students, or old acquaintances. A small, tight, hot,
metal-smelling stove--why is it so enjoyable by a dogmatist?

As David made his way to the rear of the long bookshelves, which
extended back toward the stove, the pastor rose and held out his hand
with hearty warmth--and a glance of secret solicitude. The lad looked
sheepish with embarrassment; not until accosted had he himself realized
what a stray he had become from his pastor's flock and fold. And he
felt that he ought instantly to tell the pastor this was the case. But
the pastor had reseated himself and regripped his masterful monologue.
The lad was more than embarrassed; he felt conscious of a new