Mr. Richards showed me all about the place, as he had promised he would. Then he took me with him into his "den" as he called it—a little room, just off the gymnasium, where he had his desk and filing cabinets and books. He sat me down opposite him on a canvas-covered chair, and, when he had gone over some reports which needed his signature, looked up at me and smiled.
"Well," he said, "what's the trouble?"
"Oh, I didn't—well, how did you know there was any trouble?"
The smile broadened. "None of you ever come down here unless you are in trouble. Trouble's a sort of bait that lands ambitious youths into doing settlement work—and into coming to me for advice. They say I'm pretty good at giving it. Why don't you try me?"
I did. I told him exactly how I felt: that I was growing impatient of all the tomfoolery of college; that I wanted work more sure of manly results, more broadening, more full of character. Then, too, I told him of what Trevelyan had said, and he laughed at it merrily.
"Trevelyan?" he said. "Oh, yes, I know him. He belongs to my fraternity, doesn't he? I've met him at one or another of our affairs. A good enough fellow—a little too much money, and a little too easy with himself in consequence. But he's a thorough gentleman at heart, isn't he?"
I almost gasped. He had summed up Trevelyan marvelously well in those few words. He saw my wonderment and smiled.
"I've only met him once or twice," he said, "but I have the faculty of knowing men. It's a faculty I have to have in this sort of work. It depends so much on the human equation. I meet thousands of young men and women every year—meet them, talk with them a little while, give them the best I have to give in that short space—and like to think that, even if I never see them again, I've helped them along a bit. That's all that a settlement can do, after all."
Outside the door, in the gymnasium, we could hear the joyful shrieks of a crowd of young boys playing basketball. From the upper floors came a scraping of feet to tell that the clubs were beginning to meet for the evening. From across the hall came the sound of young girls singing the parts of a cantata—and this was all planned, all created by Lawrence Richards who sat there at his desk and had a smile for each and everyone who came before him.
"Don't think you're different from all the other fellows at the university," he said to me. "You're not. You're all as much alike as a row of pins. Your problems are youth's problems—and you needn't be ashamed to have them, as long as you work them out to suit the best that is in you. You've nothing definite in mind, have you?"