Meantime Mr. Gwynne's attention was diverted from his delinquent debtors
by an enterprise which to an unusual degree awakened his sympathy and
kindled his imagination. The Reverend Heber Harding, ever since his
unfortunate encounter with the travelling evangelist, was haunted with
the uneasy feeling that he and his church were not completely fulfilling
their functions in the community and justifying their existence. The
impression had been the more painfully deepened in him by the sudden
eruption of a spirit of recklessness and a certain tendency to general
lawlessness in some of the young men of the village. As a result of a
conference with the leading men of his congregation, he had decided to
organise a young men's club. The business of setting this club in active
operation was handed over to Mr. Gwynne, than whom no one in the village
was better fitted for the work. The project appealed to Mr.
Gwynne's imagination. A room was secured in the disused Orange Hall.
Subscriptions were received to make purchase of apparatus and equipment
necessary for games of various sorts. With vivid remembrance of his
college days, Mr. Gwynne saw to it that as part of the equipment a place
should be found for a number of sets of boxing gloves.

There were those who were not too sure of the uplifting influence of
the boxing gloves. But after Mr. Gwynne had given an exhibition of the
superior advantages of science over brute force in a bout with Mack
Morrison before a crowded hall, whatever doubt might exist as to the
ethical value of the boxing gloves, there was no doubt at all as to
their value as an attractive force in the building up of the membership
of the Young Men's Club. The boxing class became immensely popular, and
being conducted under Mr. Gwynne's most rigid supervision, it gradually
came to exert a most salutary influence upon its members. They learned,
for one thing, to take hard knocks without losing their tempers.