“You see, Craighill, when I got out of college my father wanted me to go into the law, but I tried the law school for about a month and it was no good, so I chucked it. The fact is, I didn’t want to do anything, and I used to hit it up occasionally and paint things to assert my independence of public opinion. It was no use; couldn’t get famous that way; only invited the parental wrath. Then a yellow newspaper printed a whole page of pictures of American degenerates, sons of rich families, and would you believe it, there I was, like Abou Ben Adhem, leading all the rest! It almost broke my mother’s heart, and my father stopped speaking to me. It struck in on me, too, to find myself heralded as a common blackguard, so I went into exile--way up in the Maine woods and lived with the lumber-jacks. Up there I met Paul Stoddard. He’s the head of the Brothers of Bethlehem who have a house over here in Virginia. The brothers work principally among men--miners, sailors, lumbermen. It’s a great work and Stoddard’s a big chap, as strong as a bull, who knows how to get close to all kinds of people. I learned all I know from Stoddard. One night as I lay there in my shanty it occurred to me that never in my whole stupid life had I done anything for anybody. Do you see? I wasn’t converted, in the usual sense”--his manner was wholly serious now, and he bent toward Wayne with the sad little smile about his lips--“I didn’t feel that God was calling me or anything of that kind; I felt that Man was calling me: I used to go to bed and lie awake up there in the woods and hear the wind howling and the snow sifting in through the logs, and that idea kept worrying me. A lot of the jacks got typhoid fever, and there wasn’t a doctor within reach anywhere, so I did the best I could for them. For the first time in my life I really felt that here was something worth doing, and it was fun, too. Stoddard went from there down to New York to spend a month in the East Side and I hung on to him--I was afraid to let go of him. He gave me things to do, and he suggested that I go into the ministry--said my work would be more effective with an organization behind me--but I ducked and ducked hard. I told him the truth, about what I didn’t believe, this and that and so on; but he put the thing to me in a new way. He said nobody could believe in man who didn’t believe in God, too! Do you get the idea? Well, I was a long time coming to see it that way.