IT was like taking off an old, worn, unadorning suit of clothes as the Boston Express whirled me away from the City of Mills. It hummed with me over the streets on which I had walked to and from work as a mill boy. It darted me past the rows of tenements where sordid and sinful memories lingered. “Thank God! Thank God!” Out and away from it all. Away from the hum, the bee-like, monotonous hum of the mill machines that overpower the nerves and dull the spirit of the workers! Away from the bells and blaring fog whistles that disturb the sleep of tired, weary, discouraged toilers; the bells and whistles that sometimes mean the jubilant clamor of the mills over their moaning, rebellious workers. Past the pale faces that waited at the crossings for the train to pass; faces whose eyes gleamed with an instant’s wish that the train had them in it, too! Yes, I was the chosen from among over twenty thousand workers that day. I was actually on my way to seek an education! There, for proof that it was no dream, was my long green ticket with its dozen coupons in my hands! There was my brand new suit-case! How lucky I was! Think of the fellows who had better mental furnishing than I, who had even money in the bank, parents who were urging them to strive for an education, friends who would loan them money, and yet, they were going to the mill at that very moment, and would go tomorrow, and the day after, because they were afraid to make the break! Then I thought: “Well, they would have made the break long ago if they had lived with an aunt and uncle who wasted their money on drink. That would frighten them into it. There’s some good in evil after all. I shouldn’t be on this train today if my foster parents had been kinder, more considerate! I guess it’d be a good thing if a few of the other mill fellows, who are ambitious, had something like it to frighten them off. It’s probably the only way they’ll go out and make their chance!”

Then the vision of the country-side, painted in the glories of Autumn, the flashing views of cranberry bogs, crowded with sun-bonneted pickers, called my mind to the new joys of existence. Here I was, out in the world at last! Not the romp of a holiday, with the mill room for next morning, not a vacation of two days with a return at the end of it; but the beginning of an education, a start towards a profession, a great big chance at last to “make something of myself!”

“Here,” I said to the train boy, as he was about to pass me, “give me a packet of that there gum—the peppermint sort.” That train boy didn’t know, as I paid him the five cents by giving him a dollar bill to change, that the purchase was the greatest luxury I should have on that trip of fifteen hundred miles.

While working in the mill, I had never been able to afford a trip to Boston, so when I arrived in the station, and realized that I was even going beyond it, on my first excursion, I said to myself, “Boston is only the first, small step in your travel!” The next coupon on my long ticket paid my fare from the South Station to the North—in a Cab with a Uniformed Driver!! It was the first time I had been in a cab, except at a funeral. I was pleased when the driver took me through the main streets; glad when he had to move cautiously through congested traffic, because people could see me, as I sat nonchalantly in the cab. I took care to see that the blinds were up as far as possible.

In the North Station, when the cab driver had taken me to the train, the car that I was to travel on, to Montreal, was marked off from its fellows by its salmon color. Awed, impressed, I went groping through the dim car until I found a vacant seat into which I comfortably arranged myself. But as the train pulled out, I studied my railroad map, and, on discovering that the Green Mountains would be on the opposite side of the railroad, I made haste to change my seat, so that I might insure myself a view of them; for I had never seen a mountain in my life.

That ride of twelve hours, on an express, did not tire me one bit. I was before the world with a starved, hungry mind and starved, hungry eyes. I kept my eyes glued on the out-of-doors. Yes, I watched both sides of the car at once. I listened for the comments around me and if anything of interest was mentioned I bobbed up my head to look. I watched the time-table for the stations so that I might know when the train passed from one state to another I was actually passing through whole states—five of them in all! Five states of the United States of America! There were few details that I did not observe. I watched the farms, the villages, the back yards of cities; watched the flying trees, the colors of soil, the crops that were being reaped, the winding roads, and the vehicles that waited for us at the country crossings.

At noon we were lumbering through the streets of Manchester, N.H., past the long canal which flows like a sluggish moat along the dismal wall of the mill. Crowds of workers were waiting for us at the crossings; watching us with looks of envy, I thought. I threw up my window, leaned back in my seat, and ostentatiously chewed gum with a smug, proud look, with which I hoped to show the mill boys how unconcerned I was about being a passenger on a Montreal Express!

It was not until we had cleared the big cotton factory towns and cities of New England that I felt entirely like an adventurer, however. Only by the time the cities had been left, the big cities, and the small towns were succeeded by country villages, and the country villages by vast wildernesses of woods and uncultivated fields, did I feel satisfied. Then I knew that if a train wreck should end my journeying, I could settle down on some farm. I should not have to go back into the mill.

By watching my time-table carefully, I knew when to look for the mountains; but long before we reached the place appointed for the vision, my heart was leaping with expectation. We had reached the hilly country, and every high knoll served me for a mountain. But on and on and on, past soaring foothills, went the train until what seemed a slate-colored storm-cloud, a thin veil of atmosphere, caught my attention. Then, as the train turned a bend, the foothills dropped away, and there, like a majestic dream, higher than anything on earth before imagined, were the mountains!

Following the delight of the mountains, I had to think of our approach into another country. We were actually going to leave the United States and enter Canada! Immediately the English blood stirred within me. I was actually entering the domains of the Queen. Just over the border, the train stopped at a little village for water. I spoke to the brakeman “Please, mister,” I said, “how long will we stop?” “Eight minutes altogether,” he replied; “eight sure.” “Are we really in Canada now?” I ventured. “Yep,” he said with decision, “this is Canada, sure enough.” “Then I’m going to get off, for a couple of minutes,” I said. I didn’t explain to him the motive I had in getting off. It was to put the soles of my shoes on FOREIGN SOIL! Unfortunately there had been a generous rain that had mixed with the dirt of the village road, so that when I sought to step on Canadian earth I was called upon to wallow in Canadian mud, and that I would not do. “Never mind,” I consoled myself with. “This board walk is a Canadian board walk and will do.” So I ran a hundred yards into the village along the board walk and came back to the train satisfied. I had stepped on Queen Victoria’s territory, come what might.

When the darkness shut out the view, even then I did not keep my eyes from the windows. I did not know what sights I should get a view of even in the darkness. But all I saw of towns were lights, like stars, followed by masses of inky night. Then we stopped at a Canadian city station. I pushed up the window, and heard the great French chatter that went on outside. Not a word of English could I pick out, neither did I want to hear such a word. It would have spoiled all. At last I was in a new country, among a people who spoke a different language from my own! I was a real traveler at last!

At ten o’clock the lights of Montreal, strings of stars, flashed by the windows. Three miles away from the station the passengers became restless. Some of them stood up and waited during all that time. At last the brakeman called out with finality, a downward deflection of the last syllable, as if that ended his day, “Mon-tree-AL!”

There my ticket told me I should have to change. The next stage of my journey would take me along the border of Canada as far as Detroit; an all-night journey.

During the hour that I had to wait in Montreal, I went on a thrilling, timid sight-seeing. I recollect to have seen a couple of dim-lit business streets, silent, ghostly, a couple of buildings which must have been structures of importance in daylight, and a sign which could be read because it was directly in the glare of an arc light, “National Bank.” Having seen so much, and satisfied my provincial soul on so spare a meal, I went back to get on my new train.

I found myself in a most comfortable car. The seat was well padded, the back was high enough to serve for a pillow, and there was no one in the seat in front. So I turned over that seat, took off my coat and hat, unlaced my shoes and put them on one side, leaned back with a sigh of content, ready for a night’s rest when—the conductor came down the aisle, looked at my ticket, and said, “This is a first-class car and you have a second class ticket. The next car ahead, sir!”

I slung my coat over my arm, picked up my shoes and suit-case and went into the car ahead. It was a Tourist Sleeping car and was filled, largely, with a medley of Europeans. Europeans, too, with peasant manners, with peasant dirt and peasant breath. There was odor of garlic mixed with odor of stale rye bread, as some ate lunches. There was odor of unwashed clothes mixed with odor of sour milk. Double seats, leather padded, had been pushed together into berths, while overhead shelves had been let down for upper berths, with thin pads of mattress for the colonists to find rest upon. The aisles were littered with paper, fruit remnants, broken cigarette stubs, empty bottles, and expectoration. The air was vapid, like a drunkard’s breath. I waded through it all to the lower end of the car where there seemed to be an oasis of cleanliness and order. Here, though, were men sprawled out in unpoetic postures of sleep. At the lowest end, even the train boy had left his basket of fruit and soda on one side, while he lay for the night, crumpled up, snorting like a pig.

I looked around and up for a place to sleep. There on one of the high shelves, I saw a young fellow sitting up, eating a sandwich. He saw me looking in his direction. “Hello, fellow,” he greeted cheerily, “you’re English, aren’t you, fellow?” I replied that I was and that I was wanting a place to sleep for the night. He said, “These places are for two. Get a leg up and bunk with me.” He reached down his hand, braced me as I stood on the edge of a lower berth, and then I found myself in the bed with my benefactor.

He sat there in his shirt, ready for bed, with a large basket of sandwiches in front of him. There were more sandwiches together in that one basket than I have ever seen piled up on the counter of any lunch room.

“You aren’t a train boy, are you?” I asked. “Oh, no,” said the young fellow, “that’s my lunch. I got a week’s go on the trains yet, so I brought enough to eat for that time. I’m going to college away out West. Have one,” he broke in and pointed to the basket. I had no scruples in assisting at the reduction of such a mountain of sandwiches, for I imagined that a company of soldiers could have subsisted on them for three days. I ate my fill, and the young fellow watched me with evident delight. “I’m going out to college, too,” I explained. “We’re birds of a feather, eh?” “What college?” he asked. “Evangelical University,” I replied. “It’s easy to get through there because expenses are moderate. I don’t think I’ll have a chance to get in right away,” I explained. “You see, I haven’t written them that I’m coming or asked for a chance even. I can get out there and get some kind of work, and when everything’s arranged, get into the University. A friend told me about it.”

“Why didn’t you go back with some one?” asked my friend. “Well, you see,” I answered, “I couldn’t afford to go the way the others go. It costs twenty-four dollars and this route only costs me fifteen dollars and sixty-five cents.” “Oh,” said the young fellow. “When you do enter the University what class will you join?” “I’ll have to join the beginners with common school branches,” I said. “Then I’ll work up into the Academic course to prepare for college, then go through college, you see.” “Oh, yes,” he said, “I see.” He then asked me to help myself to another sandwich. “You’ve got nerve, anyway,” he commented. “It’ll be a long pull, won’t it, to do what you plan? How old are you?” “Oh, around twenty,” I answered. “I wish, for your sake,” said the young man, “that you were through with it; this education business takes a lot out of a fellow. It’s a fight right from the start if you don’t have any money. I’m a sophomore in college. By the way, you haven’t told me your name, fellow. Mine’s Harlan M. N. I. Droughtwell. Plenty of initials because my folks wanted to please both branches of the family. In full, I am Harlan Micknell Norman Ingraham Droughtwell.” “And I,” I replied, “am just Al Priddy. No middle name. I suppose, though, that really I am Albert, but it ain’t used much.”

Harlan put the basket aside, after having put over the bread a damp towel and closed the cover. Then he told me to turn in near him. So we both gave ourselves into the keeping of the engineer and slept profoundly above the odors, the litter, the droning aliens:—two youths college bound.

I was first up, in the morning. Harlan, on opening his eyes, proposed that I “dive in” and he pointed to the sandwiches. First of all I wanted to wash my face. I did so at the drinking tank. I looked around. There was a stirring among the aliens; just a stirring. Some were turning over, yawning and giving guttural explosions of sleepy comment. Mothers were feeding hungry, lively babies; but at my end everything was profoundly still. The train boy’s basket was still where I had seen it the night before with the fruit exposed to the air. The boy himself was a tousled, sleepy, uninspiring bundle of blue and white. I looked at my berth-mate, the sandwich man, and noted that he combed his hair from the side. Immediately I was conscious that I combed mine down the middle, and I recollected that my aunt Millie had always said that I looked like a masher with it in that way. So I took out my pocket comb and changed the style of my hair-dressing, while Harlan, entirely unconscious of having wielded so powerful an influence over a fellow, sat in his berth and struggled with his clothes.

All through the morning we traveled; over high trestles, through deep cuts, skirting tobacco fields, whirling through little settlements until at last we were rolled to the deck of a massive iron ferry and, still in the cars, were taken across the lake and landed at Detroit. Meanwhile, I had parted company with Harlan, who had told me to “keep right at it,” meaning thereby, a college education.

Transfer after transfer was made for another night and a day, each time the trains seemed to get slower, to stop more at stations, while the cities grew less frequent. Friday turned into Saturday, Saturday into Sunday, and by Sunday, too, we plunged into an overpowering odor of gas. “Is the lamp leaking?” I asked the trainman mournfully. “It’s terrible. It must be leaking. It makes me seasick.” The man laughed. “Oh, you’re in the gas belt,” he said. “It’s in the air. You will get used to it. I can’t smell it at all, though at first it smells like being right in a gas house, doesn’t it?”

The gas tinged everything; food and drink. I felt like going to sleep to lose the sense of it. But deeper and deeper into it the train plunged, without mercy. “If you’ve got a piece of silver about you,” said the trainman, “a watch-chain or anything of gold or silver, this air will turn it black soon enough. But you’ll get used to it,” he added comfortingly enough. “I shall have to,” I complained, gloomily. “It tastes as if all the gas works in the world had exploded about here.”

Finally I was nearing Groat’s Crossing, the seat of Evangelical University. The train deposited me at a station within twelve miles of it, where I should have to take an accommodation four hours later. There was nothing to see in the place where I waited, but glaring brick buildings and houses on stilts. So I waited around the hot, splintered platform, seated now on a truck, watching a group of young men reading sections of a Sunday paper, or walking miserably up and down wishing for the train, for the gas had gotten into my system, and I felt lonesome, miserable. I might have gone to sleep in the waiting room, but the seats were spoiled for beds by having iron arm rests at intervals of two feet. I tried to thread myself through these, at full length, but could not. There was nothing to do, but stand around and taste gas, until the Groat’s Crossing train came.

With great joy I watched the accommodation come into the station. Only twelve more miles between me and Evangelical University! The end of three days’ travel. Three days from the cotton mills! In that thought I renewed my spirit. Soon I should at least be NEAR a college!

College! For me! It was the anticipation of a first watch twenty times intensified. I, go to college! Look back in the genealogies of the Priddys, rooted back in Britain’s centuries, and lay your finger on a single member of it who ever went beyond the secondary school! And there was the brakeman calling, inconsequently, “Groat’s Crossing!”

I half stumbled from that car, thanking God that He had allowed me this sweet day. Here I was on the platform at last. There was no one about. A Sabbath quiet lingered over everything. The black splinters on the platform went like knife blades between the soles of my worn shoes.

Groat’s was a very small station. Some sort of a village lay behind it. I asked a man on the street corner if this was where Evangelical University could be found. He pointed away from the village in the direction of a rutted, clay road bordered by a line of houses on stilts which ended in a pasture fence made from dry stumps interlocked. “The place’s up thar!” mumbled the man as he moved the morsel of tobacco from one cheek to the other. “You’ll run smack inter it ef yo’ keeps ergoin’.” “How far about?” I asked. “Uh, ’bout a mile or mo’, I guess.”

The fumes of gas half choked me. They drowned out the perfumes from decaying leaves which lay thick on the streets. It was a land given over to gas, evidently, for instead of cows grazing in the flat pastures, latticed derricks towered over oil and gas wells. In place of the twitter of Fall songsters reaching me from the trees along the roadside, came the mournful creaking of oil pumps and the gasps and barks from the sputtering engines. A well had just been shot. A crowd of spectators stood at the base of a derrick whose latticework glistened with the black baptism of oil, and the dead grass on which the spectators stood was soaked by a tarry iridescence; the thick, black, greasy mess which had spouted up from the torn heart of the underworld.

I walked along a board walk which gave me a level path over little brooks, open culverts, house drains, and masses of surface gas mains. It took me up a slight grade in a lonesome part of the road where were neither houses nor trees. I stood on the crest of the hill looking ahead for the University. It stood on the open plain ahead of me, in full sight, Evangelical University!

I had never seen a college before. I had feasted my imagination on photographs of the world’s leading universities: Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, and Harvard. I had revelled in the Tom Brown type of literature which has for its background armorial gateways, ivy-clothed turrets in which sparrows twitter all the day; which showed myriads of mullioned windows peeping shyly through the branches of sedate, century oaks; which showed grassy-carpeted lawns, yew gardens, swans breasting placid, rose-fringed lakes, lakes girded by pebbled paths whereon walked pale, lanky scholars in board caps and mourning gowns, walking with bulky tomes of Latin on their palms in serene meditation!

And there the reality of a college, Evangelical University, spread itself for my contemplation, a heart-choked contemplation, because that view shattered a lifetime’s romance! It brought to mind a group of tenements surrounding a big square, brick grammar school. The buildings stood open to the glare of the sun, for there were no tall trees for shade. The smaller houses, little cheaply constructed cottages, stood on cedar posts and were so fragile that the first tempest might readily twist them from their anchorages and carry them tumbling down the fields like empty hat-boxes.

After the armorial-gatewayed universities of my dreams had completely melted away, and the reality in its Puritan, pioneer severity challenged me, I took a firm hold on my slate-colored baggage and strode rapidly on towards my goal.

“What do you want for ninety dollars a year?” I argued with myself. “It’s your chance, and that’s enough.”

I soon came to a newly plowed road which led to the first of the university buildings. The hot sun had not been thirsty enough to suck all the rain which had fallen on the new road in the last storm. The clayey earth had mixed with it and formed a broth which waited for the first unwary foot to slip from the springy board walk, which led over it.

Directly ahead, I saw a salmon-colored, clapboarded building squat and frail like an evangelist’s tabernacle, over which I read on a sign the following explanatory inscription:

“Chief Pungo Hall, 1889.
Born in Africa. Died Here 1885.”

With but a mere glance at this Memorial Dormitory, I had need next to press my teeth over my under lip, stiffen my gait, bulge out my chest, and perform all the other affectations of courage, for in front of Pungo Hall stood a group of well-dressed young men, all looking at me! The heart of the horseman who dashed in the charge of the Six Hundred was a stouter one in feeling than mine when I charged on those lolling young men. My kneecaps vibrated like a cello string. My finger nerves leaped one over the other. My heart pumped double quantity of blood to my cheeks. The board walk dropped from under my shoes and I walked on a tipping cloud.

One of the students, in response to my waiting and my embarrassment, which must have been as clear to him as an electric advertisement over a skyscraper, advanced and asked if he could be of any service to me, saying that his name was Thropper, James Thropper.

Now, during the long, three days’ journey, I had spent much thought in preparation of the introduction of myself to the University upon arrival. I had succeeded in framing an introduction which had both the qualities of completeness and brevity. I had rehearsed it, mentally, in many hypothetical contingencies, so that I might let them see that I knew, definitely, what I had come for. But among all the contingencies I had invented not one of them had resembled the one in which I found myself: making my business known to a student. I had thought of meeting with a gowned don or a “bursar”—whatever he was—because I was saturated with Tom Brown. But I managed to explode my introduction to the student, with all its brevity, in all its boyish completeness.

“My name is Al Priddy. I have come from the mills. I have not been to school beyond common fractions. I am nineteen years old. I am willing to learn. I heard of this place from a friend. He said there was a chance. I have only three dollars. I am willing to work. If you think I can’t be taken in, right off, I shall be happy to live near here, so that when I have earned more money I can begin!”

James Thropper picked up my slate-colored suit-case and led me before the group of students, without comment. Then, after he had introduced me to them all, as “Brother Priddy,” he signalled to a tall, moustached German. “Come here, Brock.” The German came to one side, and Thropper repeated, though not so completely nor with equal brevity, the tale I had unfolded.

“You’ve come to just the right place, Brother Priddy,” said Brock. “We have plenty of students here who arrive without much money or much education. It’s a splendid place for getting a start, isn’t it, Brother Thropper?”

Thropper said, “It’s been a blessing to many a struggler.”

“But is there room?” I asked. “I could wait. It will be nice to live so near a college and join it—later,” I tremblingly ventured. “I didn’t come with the expectation of beginning studies right off, I thought I might go to work in the glass factory a while and then when I’d—”

“That would be a waste of time,” said Brock. “I think you’ll be able to start right away.”

“Excuse me—are—are you a professor—sir?” I enquired.

“No,” laughed Brock, “just a theologue, that’s all. I started late, you see.” Then he explained: “You’ll not be able to do any business here on Sunday. The President will see you the first thing in the morning; but you needn’t fear. There’s no turning of you off when you’ve come so far. Just remember that, Brother Priddy. Meanwhile, I think I might be able to place you at a job that will pay your board.”

With a wild leap of the heart, I gasped, thrilled,

“Oh, if you only could!”

“I’m head waiter in the dining-room,” he explained, “we have a place not filled yet. I’ll see you later about it. Better take him in with you,” he announced, turning to Thropper. “Yours is a double room. That’s where the President would put him, anyhow.”

“My, the gas does smell!” I announced, merely to say something as Thropper led me into the dimness of Pungo Hall. “Doesn’t it spoil the food, when it soaks in it?”

Thropper laughed.

“You won’t mind it, after a while. You’ll get so that you won’t notice it. Here’s the room, ‘9’. Come in, Priddy!”

I heard the scraping of a key against the lock, a frosty light overhead showed me where the transom was swung at an angle. Finally there came a click as the key snapped back the bolt, Thropper threw back the door and ushered me in my college room, a double room within a narrow compass of a few feet something. I swept a pair of greedy eyes over this, the first substantial step in my educational ambition.