“No, not that: not that!” protested my wife. “It is your chance, take it!”
As I descended from my pulpit the following Sunday morning, I was introduced to a quiet youth who was recommended to me as a Senior in the college. That afternoon my new acquaintance came down to the parsonage and willingly permitted me, in my curiosity, to question him concerning the traditions, the customs, and the personnel of the college. I asked him some very trivial and laughable questions, I remember, because, at the time, I had some very curious and perhaps too exalted notions concerning colleges, especially colleges of the high standard of the one in which I had just matriculated and to which I was to journey on the morrow.
After our conversation, the Senior promised to call for me next day and escort me to the college: a proffer which I was glad to accept.
That September Monday morning was a very pleasant one in the Northern country. The maple groves on the hill slopes made one think that God had let fall his color pots, for the leaves of the trees flamed with reds, with yellows, and with blacks. The mail wagon drove up to the parsonage door and collected myself, the Senior, and my trunk. My wife stood at the door telling me not to forget this and that, with true motherly solicitude. Then, with a dash through the dust, the wagon wheeled us on our way across the river to the train that should carry us to within four miles of college.
The Senior said, as we changed at a junction,
“The train that will get us to college does not go for some hours. Are you fit for a four-mile walk? We can eat lunch on the way. I have some in my suit-case.”
I agreed that I was ready for the walk, so we left the town precincts by walking through a lumber yard.
Our travel took us over a cinder path between the ties and switch rods of a railroad. At the right, far below us, flowed a very wide and swift river, whose surface twinkled through the shields of pine and white birch which lined the bluff. Here we met several young men walking slowly and engaged in earnest conversation.
“Those are students!” the Senior whispered, “out for a walk.”
When some mill whistles at a remote distance announced the noon hour, the Senior conducted me to a grove of stiff, tall pines where on the brown, fragrant needles he spread a lunch of sandwiches, jelly, and pears.