Less annoying but also much duller were the minor classes which were being instructed in philosophy and Oriental ethnology by earnest spinsters. Most of them met in the highly varnished Sunday School room, but there was an overflow to the basement, which was decorated with varicose water-pipes and lighted by small windows high up in the oozing wall. What Babbitt saw, however, was the First Congregational Church of Catawba. He was back in the Sunday School of his boyhood. He smelled again that polite stuffiness to be found only in church parlors; he recalled the case of drab Sunday School books: “Hetty, a Humble Heroine” and “Josephus, a Lad of Palestine;” he thumbed once more the high-colored text-cards which no boy wanted but no boy liked to throw away, because they were somehow sacred; he was tortured by the stumbling rote of thirty-five years ago, as in the vast Zenith church he listened to: “Now, Edgar, you read the next verse. What does it mean when it says it’s easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye? What does this teach us? Clarence! Please don’t wiggle so! If you had studied your lesson you wouldn’t be so fidgety. Now, Earl, what is the lesson Jesus was trying to teach his disciples? The one thing I want you to especially remember, boys, is the words, ‘With God all things are possible.’ Just think of that always--Clarence, _please_ pay attention--just say ‘With God all things are possible’ whenever you feel discouraged, and, Alec, will you read the next verse; if you’d pay attention you wouldn’t lose your place!” Drone--drone--drone--gigantic bees that boomed in a cavern of drowsiness-- Babbitt started from his open-eyed nap, thanked the teacher for “the privilege of listening to her splendid teaching,” and staggered on to the next circle. After two weeks of this he had no suggestions whatever for the Reverend Dr. Drew. Then he discovered a world of Sunday School journals, an enormous and busy domain of weeklies and monthlies which were as technical, as practical and forward-looking, as the real-estate columns or the shoe-trade magazines. He bought half a dozen of them at a religious book-shop and till after midnight he read them and admired. He found many lucrative tips on “Focusing Appeals,” “Scouting for New Members,” and “Getting Prospects to Sign up with the Sunday School.” He particularly liked the word “prospects,” and he was moved by the rubric: “The moral springs of the community’s life lie deep in its Sunday Schools--its schools of religious instruction and inspiration. Neglect now means loss of spiritual vigor and moral power in years to come.... Facts like the above, followed by a straight-arm appeal, will reach folks who can never be laughed or jollied into doing their part.”