“I’ve too little money” I said, beginning to regret my loan to my brother.
“I told you I am a Socialist,” Smith retorted smiling: “I have three or four thousand dollars in the Bank, take half of it and come to study” and his luminous eyes held me: then it was true, after all; my heart swelled, jubilant, there were noble souls in this world who took little thought of money and lived for better things than gold.
“I won’t take your money”, I said, with tears burning: “every herring should hang by its own head in these democratic days; but if you think enough of me to offer such help, I’ll promise to come though I fear you’ll be disappointed when you find how little I know; how ignorant I am. I’ve not been in school since I was fourteen.”
“Come, we’ll soon make up the time lost” he said. “By the bye where are you staying?” “The Eldridge House,” I replied.
He brought me to the door and we parted; as I turned to go I saw the tall slight figure and the radiant eyes and I went away into a new world that was the old, feeling as if I were treading on air.
Once more my eyes had been opened as on Overton Bridge to the beauties of nature; but now to the splendor of an unique spirit. What luck! I cried to myself to meet such a man! It really seemed to me as if some God were following me with divine gifts!
And then the thought came: This man has chosen and called you very much as Jesus called his disciples:—Come, and I will make you fishers of men! Already I was dedicate heart and soul to the new Gospel.
But even that meeting with Smith, wherein I reached the topmost height of golden hours, was set off, so to speak, by another happening of this wonder-week. At the next table to me in the dining-room I had already remarked once or twice a little, middle-aged, weary looking man who often began his breakfast with a glass of boiling water and followed it up with a baked apple drowned in rich cream. Brains, too, or sweetbreads he would eat for dinner and rice, not potatoes: when I looked surprise, he told me he had been up all night and had a weak digestion, Mayhew, he said, was his name and explained that if I ever wanted a game of faro or euchre or indeed anything else, he’d oblige me. I smiled; I could ride and shoot, I replied; but I was no good at cards.
The day after my talk with Smith, Mayhew and I were both late for supper: I sat long over a good meal and as he rose, he asked me if I would come across the street and see his “lay-out!” I went willingly enough, having nothing to do. The gambling saloon was on the first floor of a building nearly opposite the Eldridge House: the place was well-kept and neat, thanks to a colored bar-tender and colored waiter and a nigger of all work. The long room too was comfortably furnished and very brightly lit—altogether an attractive place.
As luck would have it, while he was showing me round, a lady came in; Mayhew after a word or two introduced me to her as his wife: Mrs. Mayhew was then a woman of perhaps twenty-eight or thirty, with tall, lissom slight figure and interesting rather than pretty face: her features were all good, her eyes even were large and blue-gray: she would have been lovely if her coloring had been more pronounced: give her golden hair or red or black and she would have been a beauty: she was always tastefully dressed and had appealing, ingratiating manners. I soon found that she loved books and reading and as Mayhew said he was going to be busy, I asked if I might see her home. She consented smiling and away we went. She lived in a pretty frame house standing alone in a street that ran parallel to Massachusetts Street, nearly opposite to a large and ugly church.