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better of it, came to his messmate who had spanked him, and apologized for the blow he had given him, as well as for making him do double duty.

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RESPONDING TO THE CALL

I went a few weeks ago out to Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, to attend the dedication of the gymnasium there built in memory of Hugh McAllister Beaver; and as I came away, his father gave me the history of his regiment in the Civil War, the 148th Pennsylvania Volunteers. One of the first chapters of all is entitled "The Sister's Story." It is the story of how some of the lads of the regiment came to be enrolled. It was in the year of 1862. President Lincoln had issued a call for 300,000 men and then a call for 300,000 more, and the War Department had drawn up provisions for a draft in case the men were not voluntarily offered; and this one county in Pennsylvania did not wish to stand under the ignominy of a draft, but desired that the men who were to go from that county should offer themselves freely in response to that call. This sister tells of how the appeal came to the little village in which she and her brother lived, in Center County, Pennsylvania. There was a small country academy there, and the summer vacation was just over, and the boys and girls had come back from the farms for the first day of the academy year again. She said that she came walking up the village street with a friend of hers, another little child, and as they came up the pathway through the yard of the school, arm in arm, with a little bunch of flowers held in both their hands and their heads bowed down very close together, as little girls would talk with one another confidentially, they were suddenly imprest with the silence of the school-yard. Instead of the noise of play and the chatter of an opening day at school, all the boys and the little girls were sitting quietly on the school stoop, and when they came they asked the older boys what the trouble was. Was there any specially dark tidings from the war? And they said: "No, it was not that; but Professor Patterson had decided to enlist and he wanted to know how many of the boys of the school would go with him, and a meeting was to be held in the village church that evening, in which they were all to be given an opportunity to say what they would do. She said that at once she left her little companion and sought out her brother, and she said to him, "Harry, are you going to enlist?" and he said, "Yes, he thought he would." "Well, but," the mother argued after they reached home, "you are only sixteen years old; you can not enlist without father's allowing you to go, and you know how we have all built on you, on your brightness, and are making sacrifices at home in order that you might go to college. You must not go away now to the war." He insisted that when the opportunity came he was afraid he would have to respond. And the sister tells how that night, in the little village church, when Mr. McAllister, of Bellefonte, made his appeal for volunteers and had finished, the principal of the academy rose with a long paper in his hand; and her girlish heart almost stopt beating when she realized what it was that he was going to do, and then when he had made his careful, simple statement as to the purpose that led him and the motives that constrained him, he said he was going to call the school roll, and every boy who wanted to could respond "Ready" to his name; and in a silence like the silence of death he began at the top of the line: "Andrews," "Ready"; "Baker," "Ready"; and when he came down to K the little girl said her breath just absolutely stopt, and when the name Keller was called, she heard a clear, boyish voice answer without a tremor, "Ready" to his name.—, "Student Volunteer Movement," 1906.

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Response—See.

Response of God—See.

RESPONSIBILITY

God has crammed both thy palms with living seed; Let not a miser's clutch keep both hands tight, But scatter on the desert's barren need, That fragrant blossoms may reward God's sight.

God has dipt deep thy cup into his spring, Which drippeth over, it is so well filled; Lend it to some parched life, and let it bring Laughter and song to voices drought has stilled.

God gave to thee His only well-loved Christ, Whose steps have smoothed the road that leads thee home; Tell those whose road is rough, whose way is missed, That He has called all weary men to come.