This ride was a further revelation of the beauty of New England. For half an hour the little horse-car ran along winding lanes under great overarching elm trees, past apple-orchards in bursting bloom. On every hand luscious lawns spread, filled with crocuses and dandelions just beginning to spangle the green. The effect upon me was somewhat like that which would be produced in the mind of a convict who should suddenly find his prison doors opening into a June meadow. Standing with the driver on the front platform, I drank deep of the flower-scented air. I had never seen anything more beautiful.
Dr. Cross, a sweet and gentle man of about sixty years of age (not unlike in manner and habit Professor Bush, my principal at the Cedar Valley Seminary) received his seedy visitor with a kindly smile. I liked him and trusted him at once. He was tall and very thin, with dark eyes and a long gray beard. His face was absolutely without suspicion or guile. It was impossible to conceive of his doing an unkind or hasty act, and he afterward said that I had the pallor of a man who had been living in a cellar. "I was genuinely alarmed about you," he said.
His small frame house was simple, but it stood in the midst of a clump of pear trees, and when I broke out in lyrical praise of the beauty of the grass and glory of the flowers, the doctor smiled and became even more distinctly friendly. It appeared that through Mr. Bashford he had purchased a farm in Dakota, and the fact that I knew all about it and all about wheat farming gave me distinction.
He introduced me to his wife, a wholesome hearty soul who invited me to dinner. I stayed. It was my first chance at a real meal since my visit to Portland, and I left the house with a full stomach, as well as a full heart, feeling that the world was not quite so unfriendly after all. "Come again on Sunday," the doctor almost commanded. "We shall expect you."
My money had now retired to the lower corner of my left-hand pocket and it was evident that unless I called upon my father for help I must go back to the West; and much as I loved to talk of the broad fields and pleasant streams of Dakota, I dreaded the approach of the hour when I must leave Boston, which was coming to mean more and more to me every day.
In a blind vague way I felt that to leave Boston was to leave all hope of a literary career and yet I saw no way of earning money in the city. In the stress of my need I thought of an old friend, a carpenter in Greenfield. "I'm sure he will give me a job," I said.
With this in mind I went into Professor Brown's office one morning and I said, "Well, Professor, I must leave you."
"What's that? What's the matter?" queried the principal shrilly.
"My money's gone. I've got to get out and earn more," I answered sadly.
He eyed me gravely. "What are you going to do?" he inquired.