The boy confessed he was, and the preacher laughed one of those deep laughs of his that were so infectious.
"But here I am talking about myself. Tell me something about yourself?"
And when the boy told his object in coming to Boston, the rector of Trinity Church was immensely amused.
"Just to see us fellows! Well, and how do you like us so far?"
And in the most comfortable way this true gentleman went on until the boy mentioned that he must be keeping him from his work.
"Not at all; not at all," was the quick and hearty response. "Not a thing to do. I cleaned up all my mail before I had my breakfast this morning.
"These letters, you mean?" he said, as the boy pointed to some letters on his desk unopened. "Oh, yes! They must have come in a later mail. Well, if it will make you feel any better I'll go through them, and you can go through my books if you like. I'll trust you," he added laughingly, as Wendell Phillips's advice occurred to him.
"You like books, you say?" he went on, as he opened his letters. "Well, then, you must come into my library here at any time you are in Boston, and spend a morning reading anything I have that you like. Young men do that, you know, and I like to have them. What's the use of good friends if you don't share them? There's where the pleasure comes in."
He asked the boy then about his newspaper work, how much it paid him, and whether he felt it helped him in an educational way. The boy told him he thought it did; that it furnished good lessons in the study of human nature. "Yes," he said, "I, can believe that, so long as it is good journalism."
As he let the boy out of his house, at the end of that first, meeting, he said to him: