"The Y.M.C.A. has summer classes which begin a little later on. Why don't you put him into some of those?"
I had always heard of the Y.M.C.A., but I had never got into touch with it, for I thought it was purely a religious organization. But that proposition sounded good. I'd passed the building a thousand times but had never been inside. I thanked him and started to leave.
"I hope this won't be your last visit," he said cordially. "Come down and see what we're doing. You'll find a lot of boys here at night."
"Thanks," I answered.
I went direct to the Y.M.C.A. building. Here again I was surprised to find a most attractive interior. It looked like the inside of a prosperous club house. I don't know what I expected but I wouldn't have been startled if I'd found a hall filled with wooden settees and a prayer meeting going on. I had a lot of such preconceived notions knocked out of my head in the next few years.
In response to my questions I received replies that made me feel I'd strayed by mistake into some university. For that matter it was a university. There was nothing from the primary class in English to a professional education in the law that a man couldn't acquire here for a sum that was astonishingly small. The most of the classes cost nothing after payment of the membership fee of ten dollars. The instructors were, many of them, the same men who gave similar courses at a neighboring college. Not only that, but the hours were so arranged as to accommodate workers of all classes. If you couldn't attend in the daytime, you could at night. I was astonished to think that this opportunity had always been at my hand and I had never suspected it. In the ten years before I was married I could have qualified as a lawyer or almost anything else.
This was not all; a young man took me over the building and showed me the library, the reading-room, rooms where the young men gathered for games, and then down stairs to the well equipped gymnasium with its shower baths. Here a boy could take a regular course in gymnasium work under a skilled instructor or if he showed any skill devote himself to such sports as basketball, running, baseball or swimming. In addition to these advantages amusements were provided through the year in the form of lectures, amateur shows and music. In the summer, special opportunities were offered for out-door sports. Moreover the Association managed summer camps where for a nominal fee the boys could enjoy the life of the woods. A boy must be poor indeed who could not afford most of these opportunities. And if he was out of work the employment bureau conducted here would help him to a position. I came back to the main office wondering still more how in the world I'd ever missed such chances all these years. It was a question I asked myself many times during the next few months. And the answer seemed to lie in the dead level of that other life. We never lifted our eyes; we never looked around us. If we were hard pressed either we accepted our lot resignedly or cursed our luck, and let it go at that. These opportunities were for a class which had no lot and didn't know the meaning of luck. The others could have had them, too—can have them—for the taking, but neither by education nor temperament are they qualified to do so. There's a good field for missionary work there for someone.
Before I came out of the building I had enrolled Dick as a member and picked out for him a summer course in English in which he was a bit backward. I also determined to start him in some regular gymnasium work. He needed hardening up.
I came home and announced my success to Ruth and she was delighted. I suspected by the look in her eyes that she had been worrying all day for fear there would be no alternative but to send the boy off.