"No. That would scare the boys away," interposed Janice, with finality.
"Why, my dear? You speak as though the church was a bogey!"
"Well—but—dear Mr. Middler! Just ask the boys themselves. How many of them love to go to church—even to Sunday School? I mean the boys that hang about the village stores at night."
"It is so—it is so," he admitted, with a sigh.
From this sprang the idea of the Poketown Free Library. It was of slow growth, and there is much more to be said about it; but Janice found her personal troubles much easier to bear when she began trying to interest the people of Poketown in the reading-room idea.
And didn't Mr. Middler bear something of his own away from that visit to The Overlook—something that glowed in his heart? He preached quite a different kind of a sermon that next Sunday, and the text was one of the most helpful and living in all the New Testament.
Some of the older members of his congregation shook their heads over it. It was not "strong meat," they said; there was nothing to argue about! But a dozen troubled, needy members who heard the sermon, felt new hope in their hearts, and they got through the following week—trials and all!—much easier than usual.