or drive. He would not trespass even so far as to the outer
edges of the boy's free personality. For the most part he would stay in
the background. But he would watch the boy, as for lesser outcomes
Darwin watched the creatures of wood and field. Without revealing all
his purpose he would set before this boy good and evil; the lesser good
and the greater. He would use for high and holy ends the method which
the tempter never tires of using for confusion. He would show this boy
the kingdoms of the children of God, and the glories of them, and would
promise them to him, not for a moment's shame but for a life's devotion.

As to the particular form in which the result of the Experiment might
appear he cared little. He had a certain curiosity on the subject
naturally, but he knew well enough that the Experiment would be useless
if he laid interfering hands on its inner processes. That would be like
trimming a whitethorn tree in a formal garden, to make it resemble a
pyramid. He was not making a thorn pyramid in an Italian garden; he
wanted an oak, to grow by the common road of all men's life. And oaks
must grow oak-fashion, or not at all.

* * * * *

Four years of the ten had passed. That part of the history of John
Wesley, Jr., which is told in the following pages, is the story of the
other six years.

CHAPTER I

AN INSTITUTE PANORAMA

"If anybody expects me to stay away from Institute this year, he has got
a surprise coming, that's all."

The meeting was just breaking up, after a speech whose closing words had
been a shade less tactful than the occasion called for. But the last two
sentences of that speech made all the difference in the world to John
Wesley, Jr.

The Epworth League of First Church, Delafield, was giving one of its
fairly frequent socials. The program had gone at top speed for more than
an hour. All that noise could do, re-enforced by that peculiar emanation
by youth termed "pep," had been drawn upon to glorify a certain
forthcoming event with whose name everybody seemed to be familiar, for
all called it simply "the Institute."

Pennants, posters, and photographs supplied a sort of pictorial noise,
the better to advertise this evidently remarkable event, which, one
might gather, was a yearly affair held during the summer vacation at the
seat of Cartwright College.

The yells and songs, the cheers and games and reminiscences, re-enforced
the noisy decoration