When the congregation sat down after the first hymn John Dexter formally presented Grant Adams to the congregation. The young man rose, walked to the chancel rail and stood for a moment facing his audience without speaking. The congregation saw a tall, strong featured, uncouth man with large nose and a big mouth--clearly masculine and not finely chiselled. In these features there was something almost coarse and earthy; but in the man's eyes and forehead, there lurked the haunting, fleeting shadow of the eternal feminine in his soul. His eyes were deep and blue and tender, and in repose always seemed about to smile, while his forehead, high and broad, topped by a shock of red hair, gave him a kind of intellectual charity that made his whole countenance shine with kindness. Yet his clothes belied the promise of his brow. They were ill-fitting, with an air of Sunday-bestness that gave him an incongruous scarecrow effect. It was easy to see why Market Street was beginning to call him that "Mad Adams." As he lifted his glance from the floor, his eyes met Laura Van Dorn's, then flitted away quickly, and the smile she should have had for her own, he gave to his audience. He began speaking with his arms behind him to hide the crippled arm which was tipped with a gloved iron claw. His voice was low and gentle, yet his hearers felt its strength in reserve. "I suppose," he began slowly, "every man has his job in the world, and I presume my job seems rather an unnecessary one to some of my friends, and I can hardly blame them. For the assumption of superiority that it may seem to require upon the whole must be distasteful to them. For as a professional apostle of discontent, urging men to cease the worship of things as they are, I am taking on myself a grave burden--that of leading those who come with me, into something better. In the end perhaps, you will not be proud of me. For my vision may be a delusion. Time may leave me naked to the cold truth of life, and I may awaken from my dreaming to reality. That is possible. But now I see my course; now I feel the deep call of a duty I cannot resist." He was speaking softly and in hardly more than a conversational tone, with his hand at his side and his gloved claw behind him. He lifted his hand and spoke in a deeper tone. "I have come to you--to those of you who lead sheltered lives of comfort, amid work and scenes you love, to tell you of your neighbors; to call to you in their name, and in the name of our common God for help. I have come from the poor--to tell you of their sorrows, to beg of you to come over into Macedonia and help us; for without you we are helpless. True--God knows how true--the poor outnumber you by ten to one. True, they have the power within them to rise, but their strength is as water in their hands. They need you. They need your neighborly love."