I still had to rely upon my own efforts for money, but the days of loading brick, raking lawns, making furnace fires, were gone now, and I was enabled to earn money in a more professional way. I was given the task of organizing some children for one of the smaller churches of the city. One hundred of them met me on Sunday afternoons, in the body of the church, where for an hour we tried to get along harmoniously together and incidentally learn some concrete definitions of the Kingdom of God. I tried to preach through pictures on a blackboard and through objects like keys and nails, knives and flowers. Many of the little ones were not used to church etiquette, so I had to wander away from the Kingdom of God many times to instruct some of them concerning the necessity of taking off caps in church, of the inhumanity of pulling one another’s hair braids, of the injudiciousness of poking pins in one another’s necks. Often, too, when the neighborhood, after a Sunday feast of mutton and peas, was enjoying its mid-afternoon slumbers, some of the boys would whirl the church bell and make startled men and women imagine it was the fourth alarm of a fire. I had to correct that practise. We held several socials during the year, socials of a unique character. My assistants would keep the door locked in the little chapel until the oil lamps had been lifted out of danger. The popcorn and candy would be put on tables in heaps and the signal of admission given. Into the room the horde of yelling, scrambling children would come and fill it with all manner of wild romping. The refreshments would be given, there would follow another wild frolic, and at half-past eight the children would go home persuaded that they had had “a dandy time! Three helpings of popcorn and all the lemonade you could drink!” When the first of May arrived, I announced a picnic for the children, and though the day was cold, more than our actual membership appeared--with individual lunches. When we arrived at the grove I had to stand guard over the lunches until the noon hour. Then, after an afternoon of disordered fun and fight, I managed to secure order on the way home by permitting the children to hold the ribbons of the May-pole and to trail behind in orderly procession, singing, as we entered the residential section of the city, very piously and earnestly, “Onward, Christian Soldiers!” Meanwhile the arched elms on the seminary campus leafed out and shaded the walks with cool shadows. The students met after supper, threw off their coats, and played ball until darkness. The robins began to perch on my bedroom window ledge and waken me by their dulcet flutings long before breakfast. The fumes of burning leaves came through the open windows from the campus. It was spring and it was graduation time for the seniors.