The Youth of Parnassus, and Other Stories

London Macmillan and Co. and New York 1895 All rights reserved
To Philip Morrell
He came straight to Oxford from his American home, Parnassus City, a town in the Western State of Indiana.
The first time Foley saw him was one wet October evening, when, splashing across the quadrangle towards his rooms, he noticed a large umbrella moving through the dripping twilight—an umbrella which, from its undecided motion, must belong, he had told himself, to some tourist, who, in spite of the rain and darkness, was finishing a day of sight-seeing at St. Mary's. But when the umbrella collapsed in front of his own staircase, and Foley saw the spectacles and pale face of a young man who turned to enter there, he decided that it must be an agent, come to collect money for missions or something of the kind. And as he followed upstairs, in the wet footprints of the feet he could still hear mounting above him, he asked himself with vague annoyance what right they had—people like that—to push themselves into the rooms of Oxford men.
The melancholy footsteps went on till they reached the top; nor did Foley hear them again descend. Soon after he was told that an American had come into College, and was living above him; and when he went to call, he recognized, in the person who awkwardly rose to receive him, the young man he had taken for a mission agent in the rain that evening. A thin, small young man, in a long, black broadcloth coat of provincial cut, he seemed at first sight nothing but the traditional Western American Foley had read of in books, or seen in the theatre sometimes—a student who looked curiously out of place in that old panelled room.
The young Englishman talked to him as best he could, asking the questions always asked of a new-comer; questions which this one answered with the usual shyness, but in a very unusual voice and accent.
He had just come from America; he had left there on the sixth. He had come to study under Dr. Joseph at the new Methodist College. Dr. Joseph had arranged for him to come to St. Mary's; their own College wasn't built yet. Foley asked if he thought he would like Oxford. Yes, sir, the other replied, drawing a large handkerchief from his coat-tails, I guess I will; though, he added cautiously after a moment, it does seem kind of old and mouldy.