his life had to do with the Sunday morning drive to the little
meetinghouse, which stood where the road to town skirted a low hill. It
had horse-sheds on one side, stretching back to the rear of the church
lot, and some sizeable elms and maples were grouped about its front and
sides. It was a one-room structure, unless you counted the space
curtained off for the primary class, as J.W. always did. For back of
this curtain's protecting folds he had begun his career as a Sunday
school pupil and had made his first friends. At that time even district
school was yet a year ahead of him, with its wider democratic joys and
griefs, and its larger freedom from parental oversight.

When J.W. was six, going on seven, the family moved to Delafield,
though retaining ownership of the farm, and for years J.W. spent nearly
every Saturday on the old place, in free and blissful association with
the Shenk children, whose father was the tenant. It was here that he and
Martin Luther Shenk, already introduced as "Marty," being of the same
age, had sworn eternal friendship, a vow which as yet showed no sign
whatever of the ravages of time. There were three other children, Ben
and Alice and Jeannette. Now, Jeannette was only two years younger than
J.W. and Marty, but through most of the years when J.W. was going every
week to the farm, she was "only a girl," and far behind the two chums by
all the exacting standards which to boys are more than law. But there
came a time----

J.W., Sr., reveling in reminiscences before so patient a listener as the
preacher, though it was an old story, rehearsed how he had served for
years as superintendent of the country Sunday school, and how Mrs.
Farwell was teacher of the Girls' Bible Class. Their home had always
been Methodist headquarters, he said, as old-time Methodists usually
say, and with truth.