ing is based on personal grounds, for I have
indeed endured grievously both laceration of the tenderest sensibilities
and anguish of the corporeal body; but I feel also that I have a public
duty to perform. If this unhappy recital but serves to put others on
their guard against a too-ready acceptance of certain specious
literature dealing with the fancied delights--I say fancied advisedly
and for greater emphasis repeat the whole phrase--against the fancied
delights of life in the greenwood, then in such case my own poignant
pangs shall not have entirely been in vain.

With these introductory remarks, I shall now proceed to a calm,
temperate and dispassionate narration of the various occurrences leading
up to a climax that left me for a measurable space prone on the bed of
affliction, and from which I have but newly risen, though still much
shaken.

When I came to St. Barnabas' as assistant to the Reverend Doctor Tubley
my personal inclination, I own, was for parish work among our female
members. I felt that, both by natural leanings and by training, I was
especially equipped to be of aid and comfort here. Instinctively, as it
were, I have ever been drawn toward the other and gentler sex; but my
superior felt that my best opportunities for service lay with the males
of a tender and susceptible age.

He recommended that, for the time being at least, I devote my energies
to the youthful masculine individuals within the parish fold; that I
make myself as one with them if not one of them; that I take the lead in
uniting them into helpful bands and associations. He felt that the
youth of St. Barnabas' had been left rather too much to their own
devices--which devices, though doubtlessly innocent enough in character,
were hardly calculated to guide them into the higher pathways. I am
endeavouring to repeat here the Reverend Doctor Tubley's words as
exactly as may be.

Continuing, he said he felt that our boys had been in a measure
neglected by him. He had heard no complaint on this score from the lads
themselves. Indeed, I gathered from the tenor of his remarks they had
rather resented his efforts to get on a footing of comradeship with
them. This, he thought, might be due to the natural diffidence of the
adolescent youth, or perhaps to the disparity in age, he being then in
his seventy-third year and they ranging in ages from nine to fifteen.

Nevertheless, his conscience had at times reproached him. With these
words, o