represents the normal and unfettered reaction of the human heart to a
given personality. The minister may be profoundly benefited by knowing
and heeding the frank estimate of a "bunch" of boys. They are the
advance agents of the final judgment; they will find the essential man.
May it not be with him as with Kipling's Tomlinson, who, under the
examination of both "Peter" and the "little devils," was unable to
qualify for admission either to heaven or hell:

And back they came with the tattered Thing, as
children after play,
And they said: "The soul that he got from God he has
bartered clean away.
We have threshed a stook of print and book, and
winnowed a chattering wind
And many a soul wherefrom he stole, but his we
cannot find:
We have handled him, we have dandled him, we have
seared him to the bone,
And sure if tooth and nail show truth he has no soul
of his own."

Fortunately, however, ministerial professionalism is on the wane.
Protestantism, in its more democratic forms, rates the man more and the
office less, and present-day tests of practical efficiency are adverse
to empty titles and pious assumption. To be "Reverend" means such
character and deeds as compel _reverence_ and not the mere "laying on
of hands." Work with boys discovers this basis, for there is no place
for the holy tone in such work, nor for the strained and vapid quotation
of Scripture, no place for excessively feminine virtues, nor for the
professional hand-shake and the habitual inquiry after the family's