"It's a good loafing place for him and we have some evening classes." "I want him at home nights," I answered. "The Y.M.C.A. has summer classes which begin a little later on. Why don't you put him into some of those?" I had always heard of the Y.M.C.A., but I had never got into touch with it, for I thought it was purely a religious organization. But that proposition sounded good. I'd passed the building a thousand times but had never been inside. I thanked him and started to leave. "I hope this won't be your last visit," he said cordially. "Come down and see what we're doing. You'll find a lot of boys here at night." "Thanks," I answered. I went direct to the Y.M.C.A. building. Here again I was surprised to find a most attractive interior. It looked like the inside of a prosperous club house. I don't know what I expected but I wouldn't have been startled if I'd found a hall filled with wooden settees and a prayer meeting going on. I had a lot of such preconceived notions knocked out of my head in the next few years. In response to my questions I received replies that made me feel I'd strayed by mistake into some university. For that matter it _was_ a university. There was nothing from the primary class in English to a professional education in the law that a man couldn't acquire here for a sum that was astonishingly small. The most of the classes cost nothing after payment of the membership fee of ten dollars. The instructors were, many of them, the same men who gave similar courses at a neighboring college. Not only that, but the hours were so arranged as to accommodate workers of all classes. If you couldn't attend in the daytime, you could at night. I was astonished to think that this opportunity had always been at my hand and I had never suspected it. In the ten years before I was married I could have qualified as a lawyer or almost anything else.