that she had had a
chance to listen to some awful good sermons and to some elegant hymns,
but that some way she did not seem to care for the society of the best
Christian people." The little sister reddened painfully under this
cruel indictment and could offer no word of excuse, but a curious
thing happened to me. Perhaps it was the phrase "the best Christian
people," perhaps it was the delicate color of her flushing cheeks and
her swimming eyes, but certain it is, that instantly and vividly there
appeared to my mind the delicately tinted piece of wall in a Roman
catacomb where the early Christians, through a dozen devices of spring
flowers, skipping lambs and a shepherd tenderly guiding the young, had
indelibly written down that the Christian message is one of
inexpressible joy. Who is responsible for forgetting this message
delivered by the "best Christian people" two thousand years ago? Who
is to blame that the lambs, the little ewe lambs, have been so caught
upon the brambles?

But quite as the modern city wastes this most valuable moment in the
life of the girl, and drives into all sorts of absurd and obscure
expressions her love and yearning towards the world in which she
forecasts her destiny, so it often drives the boy into gambling and
drinking in order to find his adventure.

Of Lincoln's enlistment of two and a half million soldiers, a very
large number were under twenty-one, some of them under eighteen, and
still others were mere children under fifteen. Even in those stirring
times when patriotism and high resolve were at the flood, no one
responded as did "the boys," and the great soul who yearned over them,
who refused to shoot the sentinels who slept the sleep of childhood,
knew, as no one else knew, the precious glowing stuff of which his
army was made. But what of the millions of boys who are now searching
for adventurous action, longing to fulfil the same high purpose?

One of the most pathetic sights in the public dance halls of Chicago
is the number of young men, obviously honest young fellows from the
country, who stand about vainly hoping to make the acquaintance of
some "nice girl." They look eagerly up and down the rows of girls,
many of whom are drawn to the hall by the same keen desire for
pleasure and social intercourse which the lonely young men themselves
feel.

One Sunday night at twelve o'clock I had occasion to go into a large
public dance hall. As I was standing by the rail looking