The young man was disposed to take rigid theology none too seriously on account of his increasing disrespect for his father. A and his brother both felt duty bound to return home every summer to help with the farm work. Their father was happy enough to have them rejoin him, but matters never ran smoothly. The father was quick to reassert his parental authority and to criticize freely. Most of the unpleasantness was as usual at the expense of the older son, but some of it was deflected against A. Both sons were uncomfortably aware of the uncouthness of their father in comparison with city preachers. He laughed too boisterously at his own stale witticisms. His ever present dignity was a little ludicrous when he wore an alpaca coat into the fields on the hottest midsummer day. The social life at the divinity school was wholly satisfying. The students were warmly welcomed by the maidens of the local churches, and several became engaged. A proposed to two girls during his career there, and was turned down as often. He very quickly recovered his good spirits after a night or so of melancholy. The first girl was a relative whom he had known for many years, and the second was a close friend of the family. The double defeat was something of a bruise to his dignity and fed his determination to make a dent on the world. A’s first congregation was in one of the poorer quarters of a little city. A had no doubt of his towering intellectual superiority over his parishioners, and he found it exasperating when an uneducated housewife presumed to gossip about the dubious orthodoxy of his beliefs. At the end of three years he resigned in disgust at the peppering of criticism directed against his ideas. Looking back at the incident, he feels that he was too hasty. It was at this first charge that A began to make good copy for the press, and to win a reputation as a sensationalist. He organized a Law and Order League to harry criminals and the police. His pulpit rang with stinging philippics against law-breakers and cowardly public officials. All this gave him a zestful sense of making a stir in the world of real affairs, so that he turned down an offer to join the faculty of a famous university where his old Sunday-school teacher was now located. A’s new pastorate was among working people in a large city. He at once began to hound the officials for non-enforcement of the law. He led raiding parties to visit the biggest gambling hells and put it up to the police to shut them. Renewed criticisms began to appear of his opinions, and the governing body of his denomination asked him to recant or resign. He refused to budge, and he was soon expelled. He was immediately called to lecture before an ethical society, where his comments on current religious and social problems won a wide hearing. Although attracting much attention, the society was exceedingly poor and A spent a little legacy which he had received upon it, indifferent to his own future.