On the following morning, at the hour set, I called at the door of his office on the top floor of No. 7 Beacon Street, which was an old-fashioned one-story building without an elevator.
Brown asked me where I came from, what my plans were, and I replied with eager confidence. Then we grew harmoniously enthusiastic over Herbert Spencer and Darwin and Mantegazza and I talked a stream. My long silence found vent. Words poured from me in a torrent but he listened smilingly, his big head cocked on one side, waiting patiently for me to blow off steam. Later, when given a chance, he showed me the manuscript of a book upon which he was at work and together we discussed its main thesis. He asked me my opinion of this passage and that—and I replied, not as a pupil but as an equal, and the author seemed pleased at my candor.
Two hours passed swiftly in this way and as the interview was about to end he asked, "Where do you live?"
I told him and explained that I was trying to fit myself for teaching and that I was living as cheaply as possible. "I haven't any money for tuition," I confessed.
He mused a moment, then said, "If you wish to come into my school I shall be glad to have you do so. Never mind about tuition,—pay me when you can."
This generous offer sent me away filled with gratitude and an illogical hope. Not only had I gained a friend, I had found an intellectual comrade, one who was far more widely read, at least in science, than I. I went to my ten-cent lunch with a feeling that a door had unexpectedly opened and that it led into broader, sunnier fields of toil.
The school, which consisted of several plain offices and a large class-room, was attended by some seventy or eighty pupils, mostly girls from New England and Canada with a few from Indiana and Ohio. It was a simple little workshop but to me it was the most important institution in Boston. It gave me welcome, and as I came into it on Monday morning at nine o'clock and was introduced to the pretty teacher of Delsarte, Miss Maida Craigen, whose smiling lips and big Irish-gray eyes made her beloved of all her pupils, I felt that my lonely life in Boston was ended.
The teachers met me with formal kindliness, finding in me only another crude lump to be moulded into form, and while I did not blame them for it, I instantly drew inside my shell and remained there—thus robbing myself of much that would have done me good. Some of the girls went out of their way to be nice to me, but I kept aloof, filled with a savage resentment of my poverty and my threadbare clothing.
Before the week was over, Professor Brown asked me to assist in reading the proof-sheets of his new book and this I did, going over it with him line by line. His deference to my judgment was a sincere compliment to my reading and warmed my heart like some elixir. It was my first authoritative appreciation and when at the end of the third session he said, "I shall consider your criticism more than equal to the sum of your tuition," I began to faintly forecast the time when my brain would make me self-supporting.
My days were now cheerful. My life had direction. For two hours each afternoon (when work in the school was over) I sat with Brown discussing the laws of dramatic art, and to make myself still more valuable in this work, I read every listed book or article upon expression, and translated several French authorities, transcribing them in longhand for his use.