“I’ve been working in the mill till last week,” I said. “I always have been eager to get an education. I haven’t been able to save any money. I heard about this place. I came on. If you can’t take me, then please let me live here; just live here, it will do me good even if I don’t take any studies. I can work out and earn my board, I promise you. I have been earning my own living for a long time now, sir.”
“How much money have you brought?” he asked.
“Three dollars,” I said. “But you don’t need to take me in yet, sir,” I explained, hurriedly, for I felt that he would surely turn me off.
“A young woman came here, last year, with just four cents in her pocket and only her own strength to rely upon, young man,” replied the President. “Her own strength and God to rely upon, I should say, sir.”
“Yes?”
“There are several here who, at middle age, have arrived with wives and families and hardly more than enough to keep them a week, save their own strength and God’s.”
“Yes?”
“There is one student here who, at forty-five, has given up his position in business to begin in the lowest grade of study, with arithmetic, that he may receive an education.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So that you, with your youth, your three dollars, your opportunity, ought really to get along fairly well here.”