I looked at her with great astonishment.
“But we cannot afford to go to college,” I protested.
“Oh, can’t we?” she smiled. “Well, I suppose it may be possible for you to get a little church to supply near a college, and I will stay at home through the week, keeping an eye on the parish work while you study for your degree.”
“I had never thought of that!”
“You will have to be idle if you go to a parish, you might as well use your time in getting a college degree,” she insisted.
In two weeks’ time I had written to the Dean of an old New England college, of great reputation, and, on the strength of my seminary study, was informed that I should be eligible to enter the junior class at the college the following fall. With that matter settled, I soon learned that I might supply a country church, some miles from the college, and let my wife occupy the parsonage. The financial end of college thus concluded, I resigned from the church: the church in which all the sentimental ties of student days, ordination, and marriage were merged.
An old seaman came and boxed my household goods, and as he worked, tried to blunt the sting of the task by reciting to me in great detail, how Moses, after becoming the wisest man among the Egyptians, likewise became the greatest war general of his time.
“How is that?” I asked.
“Well, you see,” said the seaman, “the ’Gyptians was allus goin’ over the sands of the desert to battle, and the sands of the desert was filled with biting snakes, and the men died by whole companies from the glare of the sun, so Moses, he invented some red umbrellas and give one to every soldier and took ’em onto the blazing, snake-ridden floor of the desert. Result was, when the snakes seen the glaring umbrellas they was scart off, and the men was covered from the hot blaze of the sun, and went into other lands and won big victories under that same Moses!”
“Where did you learn that?” I asked, in great curiosity.