tongue; they had common interests and common experiences. He told
himself that here was a suggestion as to the new friends he might make
in Delafield, without forgetting the old ones. And the prospect of life
in Delafield began to take on new values.

On the next Sunday night not so many college people were out to hear Mr.
Drury's straight-thinking and plain-spoken sermon on "What our town asks
of its college-trained youth"; and a few of those who came were inclined
to resent what they called a lecture on manners and duty.

But to J.W. the sermon was precisely the challenge to service he had
been looking for. It made up for his feeling at commencement that he was
"out of it." It completed all which Mr. Drury had suggested at the
Institute camp fire four years ago, all that he himself had tried to say
at the decision service on the day after the camp fire; all that the
pastor had urged two years ago when J.W., Jr., confessed to him his new
hesitations and uneasiness.

The pastor had not preached any great thing. He had simply told the
college folk in his audience that no matter where they had gone to
school, many people had invested much in them, and that the investment
was one which in its very nature could not be realized on by the
original investors. The only possible beneficiaries were either the
successive college generations or the communities in which they found
their place. If they chose to take as personal and unconditional all the
benefits of their education, none could forbid them that anti-social
choice; but if they accepted education as a trust, a stewardship,
something to be used for the common good, they would be worth more to
Delafield than all the new factories the Chamber of Commerce could coax
to the town.