Professor Wilton was a Phi Alph. From that time he was spoken of as "the only Phi Alph Virgin."
The periods when I had rested secure in the knowledge of where my next meal was coming from, had been few. Life had pressed me close to its ragged edge ever since I could remember.
Now I was accorded a temporary relief. Penton Baxter wrote me that he had procured me a patron ... Henry Belton, the millionaire Single-Taxer, had consented to endow me at fifteen dollars a week, for six months. I had informed Baxter, in one of my many letters to him—for we had developed an intimate correspondence—that I had a unique fairy drama in mind, but could not write it because of the harassment of my struggle for bread and life.... I had laid aside for the present my projected "Judas."
Singing all the time, I packed my books in a large box which the corner grocer gave me, and, giving up my noisy room over the tinshop, I was off to the Y.M.C.A., where I engaged a room, telling the secretary, who knew me well, of my good luck, and enjoining him not to tell anyone else ... which I promptly did myself....
I selected one of the best rooms, a corner one, with three windows through which floods of light streamed. It was well-furnished. The bed was the finest I had ever had to sleep in.
Immediately I went to Locker's, the smart students' clothier, and put on a ready-made suit of clothes, of blue serge. And I charged new shirts and little white collars ... and several flowing ties. And a fine, new pair of shoes.
"You sure look nifty," commented Locker, who himself waited on me.
Then I went to a bookstore and plunged recklessly, purchasing Gosse and Garnett's Illustrated History of English Literature, in four volumes, an expensive set.