of re-creatin' men is different; he believes in
takin' bad men and re-creatin' 'em into good ones, and I wish that
every minister on earth would go and do likewise."

"I know nothin' about Elder White," sez Elder Wessel hautily.

"He's our minister in Loontown," sez Arvilly. "He has his church open
every night in the week for re-creatin' in the right way."

"I don't approve of that," sez Elder Wessel. "The church of the Most
High is too sacred to use for such purposes."

"A minister said that once to Elder White," sez Arvilly, "and he
answered 'em with that warm meller smile of hisen, 'Where are my boys
and girls more welcome and safe than at home, and this is their
Father's house,'" sez he.

"Using that holy place for recreation is very wrong," sez Elder
Wessel.

Sez Arvilly, "I told you that he used it to re-create anew to goodness
and strength. He has music, good books, innocent games of all kinds,
bright light, warmth, cheerful society, good lectures, and an
atmosphere of good helpful influences surroundin' 'em, and he has
sandwiches and coffee served in what wuz the pastor's study, and which
he uses now, Heaven knows, to study the big problem how a minister of
the Most High can do the most good to his people."

"Coffee," sez Elder Wessel, "is all right in its place, but the common
workman hankers after something stronger; he wants his beer or toddy,
the glass that makes him forget his trouble for a time, and lifts him
into another world."

"Well, I spoze the opium eater and cocaine fiend hanker after the fool
paradise these drugs take 'em into, but that's no sign that they ort
to destroy themselves with 'em."

"Coffee, too, is deleterious," sez Elder Wessel. "Some say that it is
worse than whiskey."

I spoke up then; I am a good coffee maker, everybody admits, and I
couldn't bear to hear Ernest White talked aginst, and I sez: "I never
hearn of a workman drinkin' so much coffee that he wuz a danger to his
family and the community, or so carried away with it that he spent his
hull wages on it. Such talk is foolish and only meant to blind the
eyes of justice and common sense. Elder White's Mutual Help Club, as
he calls it, for he makes these folks think they help him, and mebby
they do, is doin' sights of good, sights of it. Young folks who wuz
well started towards the drunkard's path have been turned right round
by it, and they save their wages and look like different men since
they have left the Poor Ma