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EVANGELISM IN THE COUNTRY DISTRICTS 199date, and you come and sit as pupils. The rabble seeingyou, will not dare molest or make us afraid." Andstrange to say, those leading men promised, came and sat.The rabble was overawed and the school went on. Theclimax of his month lay in a visit on the part of Mrs.Patton and myself. For the evening of the first day he hadarranged a special programme to display the attainments ofthe month. To our amazement, there were assembledseventy pupils, every man of whom was of the schoolteacher grade or upper class. Manyteachers had closed theirschools for the month in order to enter the class. At the tapof the bell the school would stand up, at another tap sitdown; the young preacher literally had the school under histhumb.The next, morning at seven o clock, he had7 SFirst Visit arranged a breakfast tea in our honour.The whole seventy were present. This wasfollowed by formal calls upon us by the guests. The seventywere arranged into squads of tens. The first ten came, wereproperly seated, made the usual formal inquiries, and aftera brief chat departed. So with each of the squads of ten,up to the seventh, who came at about two or three o clockin the afternoon.For that evening, at my own suggestion,sheWonhad arranged that they were to come againto question me. I had a twofold purpose.On the one hand I wished to add to his instruction, on theother to test his work and to see how much of the real gospelhe had talked during the month. For a full two hours,those men literally fired questions at me as rapidly as Icould make brief responses: and all their questions werepertinent. But here is the point:fully one-half of questionsasked bore directly upon the gospel and the Church, showing that he had done excellent work. The climax of theevening lay in a most eulogistic address delivered by theoldest man in the company, in which he tendered us the keysto the city, invited us to come in and open a chapel, a school,or whatever we chose. Today in that town, we have a