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God allowed the Devil to tempt and try him; but he liked it none the better for that, and got within the Satanic influence as seldom as possible.

So dispirited was Joshua that even prayer, religious meditation, and Bible reading were powerless to lift him up. For over two weeks he never looked into the Commentary, and read the Bible hardly at all, except a chapter each night at bedtime before family prayers, which were resumed the next night after the revival ended; with the addition of a prayer by Paul after his father and mother had finished. Here Paul could pray without weeping, and his prayers grew rapidly in length, breadth, and fluency. Once during the second week after the revival 'closed his voice was not heard immediately after his mother concluded, and he was found settled down all in a heap, his arm on his chair and his head on his arm, fast asleep. But on being roused he insisted on fulfilling his devotional duty.

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Owing to bad weather, the late date at which the revival closed, the coming on of spring work, and perhaps a dash of Satanic interference, the customary donation for Joshua was not held after this revival. Joshua was sorely grieved and indignant-the folks said. mad "at this unlookedfor failure to recognize and reward his laborious self-sacrifice. He felt that the people of Sugar Hill were cheating him out of his honest due, refusing to pay a just debt. Once or twice he was conscious of a suspicion that even God was not doing exactly right by him. But he resolutely refused to entertain such a thought. He did, however, throw out hints, sometimes pretty broad ones, among his neighbors, that the time he had spent in revival work had prevented him from earning money, that the laborer was worthy of his hire, and sundry other reminders of the duty everybody owed to God to give freely of his substance for the support of the gospel. He dropped such a hint at 'Squire Nettle's one day, and after his departure the 'Squire said to his wife:

"Josh feels so bad 'bout it I guess I'd better take over a chunk o' pork an' a few taters. I don't keer much 'bout him, but his wife and boy reelly needs it, I guess."

Several others in the neighborhood came to the same conclusion, and the result was a number of contributions that somewhat soothed Joshua's troubled spirit. Nothing came from Deacon Willett's, however, much to Joshua's surprise;

JOSHUA'S WORLDLY INTEREST REVIVES

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though Mary said they ought not to expect it, because they had had so much from that quarter already. The fact was that the Deacon wanted to give Joshua something, as others were doing, but Aunt Sue was decided against it; and this being a quasi-religious matter, he gave up without protest.

'I don't b'lieve in incouragin' Josh Granger no more in disertin' of his fambly an' spendin' of his time an' strength in preachin' an' gallivantin' roun' the country," said Aunt Sue emphatically, when the Deacon proposed to "donate so'thin." "I ain't the one, an' you ain't nuther, Hez, to stan' by an' see his wife an' boy suffer; but what we wan' to do fer 'em we'll do so 's not to incourage his goin's-on no more. It's high time he settled down an' worked stiddy 's other folks dooz, an' give up thet shif'liss, half-beggin' way o' his'n."

As the weeks rolled by the religious fervor that had fired Joshua's heart during the revival period gradually died down, and contemporaneously his interest in worldly things returned and steadily increased. He had long ago learned that the more his thoughts dwelt upon heaven and the more he preached, the more insignificant and distasteful seemed the things of earth; and conversely, the more attention he gave to the material things of this life, the more cheerful and inviting appeared the world about him and the less he thought and cared about heaven. He knew this to be the experience of Christians generally, and he was well aware that it was due to the natural and inevitable antipathy between the interests of earth and those of heaven. Hence he always tried to keep the trifling, perishable things of earth in due subjectton to the eternal verities of the life to come; but this he found it difficult to do during the long summer season of farm labor.

CHAPTER 10

A YOUNG INFIDEL

NED GARDNER had matured young, physically and mentally. At fifteen years of age he looked eighteen, and now at eighteen he looked three or four years older. He was a trifle under six feet tall, weighed a hundred and eighty pounds, and was heavily though finely proportioned in frame

work, but not yet quite so well rounded as he would be when he had taken on twenty pounds more flesh. His face was not handsome, measured by commonly accepted standards of masculine facial beauty. It was too rugged, the features too irregular. But it was a strong, manly, noble face, full of force and determination, with a broad, high brow overhung with wavy brown hair, and large, blue eyes that had a peculiarly tender, almost feminine look. He usually wore a kindly, half-humorous expression. But when roused to anger, as Ned had been a few times in his life, his face took on an expression before which his companions quailed even more than before his swelling muscles. He had always been a leader among the boys at The Forks in feats of physical strength, agility, and endurance, even among boys several years older than he. He had never been known to fight. There had been two or three occasions when he stood ready to enter upon such a personal encounter in what he deemed a just cause, but in each case the other fellow had failed to force the issue.

Ned's mother had died at his birth, and his father, who had never married again, had taken direct supervision of his physical and mental training. The Gardners had been a family of physicians for generations. Ned seemed to take to medicine and surgery instinctively. Even from early childhood he had assumed, and had been tacitly accorded, a relation to his young companions not unlike that of his father to the adult population of the little hamlet. If there was a sliver to be got out, or a cut finger to be bound up, Ned was the one who attended to it.

It was with great satisfaction that Dr. Gardner observed this trait in his son; and, without pushing him, the father not only left him free to follow his bent but aided him to do so. Before he was twelve years old Ned had come to be a really valuable assistant to his father in many ways. The boy's physical senses, especially sight, hearing, and touch, were uncommonly acute and reliable.

Ned attended the district school at The Forks till he was thirteen years old, when he was as far advanced in the branches taught as were the teachers generally employed there. For the next two years Dr. Gardner was his son's sole instructor, grounding him in Latin, Greek, and higher mathematics, as well as in physics, chemistry, botany, and geology. Then Ned was sent for a year to the high school

NED'S INDICTMENT OF THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM 75

in the city of L- not so much for instruction in school as that he might be thrown among people and learn something more of the world than could be learned at The Forks. The next year, when he was sixteen years old, he was sent to a boarding-school, and the following year to the small sectarian college where Dr. Gardner had spent four years when a young man. The father hoped that his son would complete the four-years' course; but at the end of the first year he came home thoroughly dissatisfied.

"Father," he said, “I can't see the use of my going on for three years more as I have been doing for the past year, grinding away on dead languages, mathematics, mythology, with just a smattering of the sciences, in reality little if any more than I have already got from you. I have been looking ahead and learning all I could about the work laid down in my course for the next three years. Much of it, if not most of it, seems sheer waste of time for me; at any rate consumption of time that could be a good deal more profitably spent in some other way. College existence seems so unreal to me, as though it had little vital connection with human life and every-day affairs. Latin and Greek appear to be the center and circumference of the college curriculum, with just a few other things thrown in here and there—years given to the study of dead languages and the literatures of Greece and Rome, and not one term to the English poets, or to American history, or to critical study of the English language. It seems to me as though they begin at the wrong end of everything, and drag along till all the time is spent so that they never get to the right end. Instead of any more Latin and Greek, I want German and French, to enable me to get at the scientific works in those languages. I have found my studies for the last three months growing positively irksome. Besides, it seems to me that everything is presented from a wrong standpoint, either Christian or pagan, and nothing natural and rational, as I have learned here at home to look at things. In historical and philosophical reading, many of the books I want most are not to be found in the college library, because they are regarded as 'irreligious.' In those lines of study I had rather have your little cabinet of books than the whole college library."

After a few moments of thoughtful silence, Dr. Gardner asked:

What do you want to do?"

"I don't want to do anything without your advice and approval. But I have wondered whether it would not be better for me to stay here and study medicine with you the coming year, perhaps teaching school next winter; for I am aching to strike out for once and do something for myself, partly for the novelty of the thing and partly because I 'want to see human nature from that point of view. Then, next spring or summer I should like to enter the hospital corps of the army in whatever capacity or position I am found fitted for. The war cannot last many years, and when it closes, if not before, I can go to a medical college and complete my studies in that line. What do you think of it?"

Ned waited anxiously for his father's view, fearing it might run counter to his own. But Dr. Gardner was anything but displeased, for two reasons: first, Ned's plan was a good one in itself; and secondly, it showed that the young man was thinking and had definite, clear ideas about what he wanted to do and how he could do it.

"I had hoped, Ned," he said, "that you would take a full college course, especially since you are beginning so. young. But I feel the force of what you say in regard to the studies, and it may be just as well for you that you have not been imbued with the romantic spirit of college life and devotion to all things pagan. And so, while I think you magnify the objections and belittle the advantages and benefits to be derived from even as meagerly equipped and narrowly sectarian a college as you have been attending, yet I am by no means sure that your opinions and conclusions are not in the main correct, at least as to the proper course for you. If you are not going through college, I think the plan you have suggested is about the best you could adopt. After another year's study with me you will be better prepared for practical medical and surgical work than most young physicians on graduation from medical college. You will not have been over so much theory and seen so many demonstrations, but in working knowledge and in the trained judgment that comes only by the experience of practice, I had rather trust you even now than many a doctor who has had a full course and two or three years' practice. Besides, you are now mature enough to decide these matters for yourself. I have no disposition to oppose

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