trimming a whitethorn tree in a formal garden, to make it resemble a
pyramid. He was not making a thorn pyramid in an Italian garden; he
wanted an oak, to grow by the common road of all men's life. And oaks
must grow oak-fashion, or not at all.

* * * * *

Four years of the ten had passed. That part of the history of John
Wesley, Jr., which is told in the following pages, is the story of the
other six years.



CHAPTER I


AN INSTITUTE PANORAMA

"If anybody expects me to stay away from Institute this year, he has got
a surprise coming, that's all."

The meeting was just breaking up, after a speech whose closing words had
been a shade less tactful than the occasion called for. But the last two
sentences of that speech made all the difference in the world to John
Wesley, Jr.

The Epworth League of First Church, Delafield, was giving one of its
fairly frequent socials. The program had gone at top speed for more than
an hour. All that noise could do, re-enforced by that peculiar emanation
by youth termed "pep," had been drawn upon to glorify a certain