"I don't know HOW to matriculate. How DO you matriculate? What is matriculating?"
"I'LL go with you. I'LL show you," said the simple fatherly guide.
"Thank you, if you will," breathed the lad, gratefully.
After a brief silence his companion spoke again.
"I'm late in life in entering college. I've got a son half as big as you and a baby; and my wife's here. But, you see, I've had a hard time. I've preached for years. But I wasn't satisfied. I wanted to understand the Bible better. And this is the place to do that." Now that he had explained himself, he looked relieved.
"Well," said David, fervently, entering at once into a brotherhood with this kindly soul, "that's what I've come for, too. I want to understand the Bible better—and if I am ever worthy—I want to preach it. And you have baptized people already?"
"Hundreds of them. Here we are," said his companion, as they passed under a low doorway, on one side of the pillared steps.
"Here I am at last," repeated the lad to himself with solemn joy, "And now God be with me!"
By the end of that week he had the run of things; had met his professors, one of whom had preached that sermon two summers before, and now, on being told who the lad was, welcomed him as a sheaf out of that sowing; had been assigned to his classes; had gone down town to the little packed and crowded book-store and bought the needful student's supplies—so making the first draught on his money; been assigned to a poor room in the austere dormitory behind the college; made his first failures in recitations, standing before his professor with no more articulate voice and no more courage than a sheep; and had awakened to a new sense—the brotherhood of young souls about him, the men of his college.
A revelation they were! Nearly all poor like himself; nearly all having worked their way to the university: some from farms, some by teaching distant country or mountain schools; some by the peddling of books—out of unknown byways, from the hedges and ditches of life, they had assembled: Calvary's regulars.