He returned. He thrust his hand into his pocket and fetched forth a
two-dollar bill.
"Go downtown to one of the restaurants you will find on the main street.
You can get a square meal in one of them for a quarter or, at the most,
fifty cents ... a bed for the same price ... climb the hill again in the
morning, say about ten o'clock, and ask for me at the German Department
... I am sorry I can't invite you to stay here for the night ... but we
have no room ..." and he glanced timidly at the woman whom I had taken
to be his mother, but who, I afterward learned, was his wife.
* * * * *
I found a restaurant-hotel, as he had directed me, and procured my
supper for a quarter ... fried potatoes and a cold slab of steak ... and
a big Westerner who wore a sombrero and had a stupid, kindly, boyish
face, showed me to a bed ... which also cost but a quarter for the night
... with a scattered ambuscade of bedbugs thrown in for good measure.
In the morning, fried pork chops, pancakes and two cups of coffee--and I
set out for the hill.
The place buzzed with activity. The fall term was already in full swing,
and students poured in lines up and down both sides of the steep street
that led to the college ... girls and boys both, for it was
co-educational. They were well dressed and jolly, as they moved in the
keen windy sun of autumn.
I was not a part of this. I felt like an outcast, but I bore myself with
assumed independence and indifference. I thought everybody was looking
at me. Most of them were.
* * * * *
Langworth enrolled me as a special student. He himself paid my tuition
fee, which was a nominal one. I enrolled in Philosophy, Economics,
German, Latin.
My patron, furthermore, slipped a ten-dollar bill into my hand. "For the
books you will need."
He directed me to the Y.M.C.A. employment bureau. "They will see that
you get work at something, so you can be sure of board and room ... in
the early days we did not have things so well arranged. I worked my way
through college, too. I nearly perished, my first year. After you
settle somewhere, come and see me once in a while and let me hear how
you're getting on."
* * * * *
My first job was milking a cow and taking care of a horse, for board and
room.... The man for whom I worked was an old, retired farmer.
The disagreeable part of taking care of horses and cows is the smell. My
clothes, my room, even the skin of my body, soon reeked with the faint
yet penetrating odour of stable and barn.
But I was happy. Many great men had done as I was doing. Always trust me
to dramatise every situation!
I arranged my meagre row of text-books on the shelf in my attic. I set
Keats apart in a sacred nook by himself.