“How can I stay here if I can’t earn some money by preaching?” he asked. “If no church will take me, why, I shall have to leave the Seminary.”
“I wouldn’t leave before having a good talk with some of the professors,” I suggested. “I think you have the sort of a spirit which will finally prevail, Tucker.”
“Oh,” he replied, “I haven’t got much spirit—now—after that letter. They might have borne with me a month or two longer—perhaps I should have surprised them.” Then he laughed, bitterly. “You can’t guess why I came into the library with my troubles, Priddy, can you?”
“No.”
“You see this!” and he indicated a large, open book, on which his tears had been falling. It was a huge, ancient tome, with metal bands and chipped leather binding. The leaves were yellowed, and from them came a dampish odor of musty age. It was a Latin edition of “The Book of Martyrs” opened at the page where the fanciful wood-cut showed heaps of flaming fagots, blazing in Smithfield market, directly under the bare feet of a woman, tied to a stake and holding to her breast a crying infant.
“There is a story about here,” went on Tucker, with a smile, “to the effect that a former student in the Seminary, when discouraged, would come into the library and pore over these dismal, grewsome pictures, and persuade himself that his own sufferings were trivial when compared with the sufferings of these martyrs! I thought I’d come and try it, too, but it only intensified my own misery!” He shut the great book with such an explosion that the dust issued from it and gleamed in the rays of the sun which streamed in through the window.
“But I’d stay on till the end, Tucker,” I persisted. “It’s worth trying—if you feel that you have a call to preach!”
“I have the call clearly enough,” he insisted, evidently cheered by my confidence in him. “If I could only persuade others of it, though, I should feel happier.”
“Probably you’ll have another chance to preach before you expect it,” I said, in conclusion, and left him with the intention of speaking in his behalf to some of the students, who might be able to encourage him in a substantial manner.
I went, quite naturally, to Burner, the upper-classman who had manifested an interest in my arrival. The big student heard my version of Tucker’s experience without comment, and then, after a moment of thought, answered,