Then Mr. Woodward put his hand into his pocket and brought out from thence a cluster of crinkling bills.
“Hold your hand, Albert,” he smiled. “It’s money!”
He counted into my hand fifty dollars and said,
“If you are energetic, this is all the money you will have to borrow for awhile. I am glad for you, my lad. Now I have to attend a funeral. You go out for a walk with Mr. Blake and come back with him in time for supper. We’re to have an informal celebration together.”
I led Mr. Blake to the Point Road, the peninsula which juts out like a forefinger from the south end of New Bedford into Buzzard’s Bay. We walked along the grassy foot-path, near the low wall, past the shimmering sea, the flying, croaking gulls, and a parade of scallop boats. My companion had a very ambitious moustache which was trying hard to mature, and he had a trick of unconsciously aiding the ends by pulling them as he talked. While he interjected theological shop talk, and had a long dissertation on Textual Criticism versus Literal Inspiration, when he found that I had been in such a conservative theological atmosphere as Evangelical University, and though he prattled familiarly the names of Renan, Weissmann, Schleiermacher, and Ritschl, I found inspiration in the man himself, for I kept thinking to myself on that walk, “He has attained to what you are after.” We came to a grove of spruces that had grown on the edge of some rocks by the side of the road. Here, a quartet of blue-bloused Chinamen were celebrating some sort of a holiday by playing strident tunes on queer pipes and tom-toms, joining in with their falsetto voices. Mr. Blake and I found a secure place on some ledges, from which we could throw pebbles at the white gulls that walked up and down the beach in lady-like fashion.
When we returned, at the supper hour, we sat down with Mr. Woodward at the table, where both men set my head to whirling by the confidence with which they recounted my future enjoyment of the Seminary. Had it not been for the crumpled fifty dollars in my pocket, the entire experience would have had the shape of a dream, for only two days before I had stood before my critical aunt with no plans and with thirty-five cents for my fortune. My freight ride and Buffalo experience seemed years back, in a dim haze.
On arriving home, I pulled out the fifty dollars and showed the amount to my aunt and uncle.
“Where did you get all that?” gasped my uncle.
“Borrowed it,” I replied. “I go to a theological seminary in two days.”
My aunt wanted to know what sort of a lunatic I was to borrow money on which to get an education. Her theory yet remained, that only those with large fortunes were entitled to an education.