John Wesley, Jr.: The Story of an ExperimentBrummitt, Dan B. (Dan Brearley)
Religion
John Wesley, Jr.: The Story of an Experiment
Brummitt, Dan B. (Dan Brearley)
Christian fiction; Methodists -- Fiction
"Ye-es, I am," J.W. answered, "and then, again, I'm not. It seems to me
as if I had always known a lot of what we are getting in these classes,
though there is plenty of new stuff too. But until now I didn't get much
out of what I knew. I've always liked to hear you, but you're different.
As for most of the things I've heard, I just thought of it as religious
talk, church stuff, you know. It didn't seem to matter, but here it is
beginning to matter in all sorts of ways, and I can see that it matters
to me."
"How, for instance?"
Well, take the class in home missions; Americanization, they call it.
Maybe you noticed that the first thing the teacher did was to divide the
class right down the middle, and tell those on the left hand--yes, I'm
one of the goats--that for the rest of the week they were to consider
themselves aliens. The others were to play native-born Americans. And so
the study started, but believe me, we aliens have already begun to make
it interesting for those natives. Some of 'em want to come over on our
side already, but they can't. A few of us have found some immigration
dope in the college library, and it is pretty strong. We'll show up
those Pilgrim Fathers before the week is out. They think they have done
everything an alien could ask when they let him into the country, and
then they work him twelve hours a day, seven days a week, or else let
him hunt the country over for any sort of a job. They rob him by making
him pay higher prices than other people for all he has to buy. They
force him to live in places not fit for rats, and on top of everything
else they call him names, so that their kids stick up their noses at his
children in the school grounds. After all that they expect he'll become
a good citizen just by hearing 'The Star-Spangled Banner' at the movies
and watching the flag go by when there's a parade.
"Say, Mr. Drury, it makes me sick, and, if I feel that way just to be
pretending I'm a 'Wop' for a week, how do you suppose the real aliens
feel? Excuse me for talking like this, but honestly, something like that
is going on in all these classes; I wish we could take up such things in
the League at home." And he forced an embarrassed little laugh.
Pastor Drury laughed too, and said of course they could, as he linked
arms with J.W., and they passed on down the road. The preacher talked
but little, contriving merely to drop a question now and then; and J.W.
talked on, half-ashamed to be so "gabby," as he put it, and yet moved by
an impulse as pleasant as it was novel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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