as he understood it,they collected money from various interested or charitably inclined business men here and there who appeared tobelieve in such philanthropic work. Yet the family was always "hard up," never very well clothed, and deprivedof many comforts and pleasures which seemed common enough to others. And his father and mother wereconstantly proclaiming the love and mercy and care of God for him and for all. Plainly there was somethingwrong somewhere. He could not get it all straight, but still he could not help respecting his mother, a womanwhose force and earnestness, as well as her sweetness, appealed to him. Despite much mission work and familycares, she managed to be fairly cheerful, or at least sustaining, often declaring most emphatically "God willprovide" or "God will show the way," especially in times of too great stress about food or clothes. Yetapparently, in spite of this, as he and all the other children could see, God did not show any very clear way, eventhough there was always an extreme necessity for His favorable intervention in their affairs.
　　To-night, walking up the great street with his sisters and brother, he wished that they need not do this any more,or at least that he need not be a part of it. Other boys did not do such things, and besides, somehow it seemedshabby and even degrading. On more than one occasion, before he had been taken on the street in this fashion,other boys had called to him and made fun of his father, because he was always publicly emphasizing hisreligious beliefs or convictions. Thus in one neighborhood in which they had lived, when he was but a child ofseven, his father,Jordan shoes, having always preluded every conversation with "Praise the Lord," he heard boys call "Herecomes old Praise-the-Lord Griffiths." Or they would call out after him "Hey, you're the fellow whose sister playsthe organ. Is there anything else she can play?""What does he always want to go around saying, 'Praise the Lord' for? Other people don't do it."It was that old mass yearning for a likeness in all things that troubled them, and him. Neither his father nor hismother was like other people, because they were always making so much of religion, and now at last they weremaking a business of it.
　　On this night in this great street with its cars and crowds and tall buildings, he felt ashamed, dragged out ofnormal life, to be made a show and jest of. The handsome automobiles that sped by,Air Jordan 7, the loitering pedestriansmoving off to what interests and comforts he could only surmise; the gay pairs of young people, laughing andjesting and the "kids" staring, all troubled him with a sense of something different, better, more beautiful thanhis, or rather their life.
　　And now units of this vagrom and unstable street throng, which was forever shifting and changing about them,seemed to sense the psychologic error of all this in so far as these children were concerned, for they would nudgeone another, the more sophisticated and indifferent lifting an eyebrow and smiling contemptuously, the moresympathetic or experienced commenting on the useless presence of these children.
　　"I see these people around here nearly every night now--two or three times a week, anyhow,Air Jordan 11," this from a youngclerk who had just met his girl and was escorting her toward a restaurant. "They're just working some religiousdodge or other, I guess.""That oldest boy don't wanta be here. He feels outa place, I can see that. It ain't right to make a kid like that comeout unless he wants to. He can't understand all this stuff, anyhow." This from an idler and loafer of about forty,one of those odd hangers-on about the commercial heart of a city, addressing a pausing and seemingly amiablestranger.
　　"Yeh, I guess that's so," the other assented, taking in the peculiar cast of the boy's head and face. In view of theuneasy and self-conscious expression upon the face whenever it was lifted, one might have intelligentlysuggested that it was a little unkind as well as idle to thus publicly force upon a temperament as yet unfitted toabsorb their import, religious and psychic services best suited to reflective temperaments of maturer years.
　　Yet so it was.
　　As for the remainder of the family, both the youngest girl and boy were too small to really understand much ofwhat it was all about or to care. The eldest girl at the organ appeared not so much to mind, as to enjoy theattention and comment her presence and singing evoked, for more than once, not only strangers, but her motherand father, had assured her that she had an appealing and compelling voice, which was only partially true. It wasnot a good voice. They did not really understand music. Physically, she was of a pale, emasculate andunimportant structure, with no real mental force or depth, and was easily made to feel that this was an excellentfield in which to distinguish herself and attract a little attention. As for the parents, they were determined uponspiritualizing the world as much as possible, and, once the hymn was concluded, the father launched into one ofthose hackneyed descriptions of the delights of a release, via self-realization of the mercy of God and the love ofChrist and the will of God toward sinners, from the burdensome cares of an evil conscience.
　　"All men are sinners in the light of the Lord," he declared. "Unless they repent, unless they accept Christ, Hislove and forgiveness of them, they can never know the happiness of being spiritually whole and clean. Oh, myfriends! If you could but know the peace and content that comes with the knowledge, the inward understanding,that Christ lived and died for you and that He walks with you every day and hour, by light and by dark, at dawnand at dusk, to keep and strengthen you for the tasks and cares of the world that are ever before you. Oh, thesnares and pitfalls that beset us all! And then the soothing realization that Christ is ever with us, to counsel, toaid, to hearten, to bind up our wounds and make us whole! Oh, the peace, the satisfaction, the comfort, the gloryof that!""Amen!" asseverated his wife, and the d