Making Men [excerpt]

There were two boys who grew up together. They did everything together that boys would do. They ate together, they slept together, they went to school together, they played together, they did everything together except one thing. One of these boys was influenced by another boy to go to a little mission Sunday School established by the Congregational Church in Cleveland, in the back of a saloon. This boy grew up in the atmosphere of that Sunday School. He was influenced to keep on through high school, and to go to college, and during his college course he dedicated his life to the ministry of the Master, and today in the City of Cleveland, in the Pilgrim Congregational Church, the Bohemian pastor is John Pruke, second to none in his influence for good among the Bohemians of this land of ours. That is the boy that grew up in the little mission school in the atmosphere of Christ. I said he had a chum, and they did everything in common except the one thing. The chum didn’t go with John Pruke to Sunday School, to this Sunday School that I speak about. He did go to what he called a Sunday School, but not in our understanding of that word. It was only because it was held on Sunday that it was called a Sunday School. He learned a lot of things there, and he learned, in what is very similar to our Catechism, a lot of things boys should not learn. One of the questions he answered was this, and it sounds very similar to one we have had in our boyhood. What is my duty to God? And here is the difference. This boy, with the others in that class, answered, I have no duty to God, because there is no God. This boy grew up in that atmosphere, and one day when the eyes of this whole nation were turned towards the city of Buffalo, New York, yes, when the ears of the whole world were opened in that direction because that day at the Pan American Exposition the President of our country was to voice sentiments of worldwide interest, because it was expected that day [68][69] that William McKinley would utter principles that would never die, the whole world was looking towards Music Hall and the delighted folk began coming up to the platform to shake hands with William McKinley. As that line filed past the President there was a young fellow coming along, and as he extended his hand, his bandaged hand, from beneath this bandage came the two shots that sent William McKinley to his martyr’s grave and Leon Czolgocz, murderer of William McKinley, was the chum of John Purke, who did everything that Purke did excepting honor Almighty God.