"Say Fellows—" Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues   By: Wade C. (Wade Cothran) Smith (1870?-1960)

Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues

by

WADE C. SMITH

Author of "The Little Jetts Telling Bible Stories"

[Illustration]

New York Chicago Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh

1921

Adapted from the Author's weekly Sunday School Lesson Treatments in The Sunday School Times , by permission of the Editors.

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street

Dedicated to

her whose instruction and example first inspired in me the purposes and ideals which make for patience, courage, endurance and faith

MY MOTHER

Introduction

"My teacher told me to write a composition on the last picture I looked at," said Henry, a sixth grader, when he came in from school the other day. "I had seen a picture of a fire engine," he added, "so I wrote:

"'With a clatter of hoofs and a whirr of wheels, the fire engine dashed around the corner. The driver was crouched low in the seat. He was driving like Jehu.'

"But I could not spell Jehu, so I went to my teacher and asked, 'Please, how do you spell Jehu?'

"'Spell what, Henry?'

"'Jehu.'

"'What in the world are you trying to say, boy?'

"'I am trying to tell how fast a fire engine driver goes as fast as a chariot driver in the time of King David, I think it was.'

"'Well, Henry, I think you had better say the engine driver drove as fast as an ancient charioteer.'"

"And did you?" I asked.

"No, sir; I said, 'he was driving like mad.'"

It is plain that this grammar school teacher had never heard of the Bible character who had interested her pupil, but the author of this book knows how to spell "Jehu" to a questioning boy, or to a "gang" of boys, or to a Sunday school class of boys.

Is there any boy who does not have a motor in his mind? A writer of a method article in a recent issue of The Sunday School Times related an incident of a chap whom he described as "a motor minded boy." He said that he was sitting on top of a school desk at recess, kicking back with his heels, and when asked what he was thinking about, replied: "I was wondering, if my legs were horses, how fast they would go!"

It was with a realization of the fact that when a class of Sunday school boys assembles, their instinct is of one accord to turn their legs into horses and to drive them as Jehu drove his pair of Arabs, that our paper requested Wade Smith to take charge of its Lesson Help for boys' classes. The management realized the truth of the statement of Dr. Walter W. Moore, President of Union Theological Seminary at Richmond, Va., when he said that Mr. Smith was the most versatile man whom he ever knew.

Although Mr. Smith was already contributing to its columns "The Little Jetts Teaching the Sunday school Lesson," he was asked also to undertake the difficult but important task of writing the lessons for teachers of, and students in, boys' classes. His highly acceptable performance of this work is but another evidence of his versatility.

Out of his own richly eventful and happy boyhood, as well as his experience as a Christian father and a lifelong student of boys, small and grown up, Mr. Smith wrote the chapters of this book. They appeared week by week under the title of "Say, Fellows " Letters from our readers have testified to their helpfulness. The writer of this Introduction teaches two Sunday school classes one composed of his two boys in their home preparation for Sunday school, and the other an Adult Men's class in the church to which he belongs. When his own boys have finished studying their lesson in their Quarterlies, they almost invariably come to their father and say, "Now read us what Mr. Smith says, and then we will be ready for the lesson."