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A college teacher learns much about far away places if he cares to do
so. This knowledge is also very intimate and very accurate. It is the
kind of knowledge that cannot be drawn from books of travel or from
encyclopedias. It is first-hand information given by people who have
lived there. It is obtained from his students. Most of those he is
called upon to teach come, probably, from within a radius of fifty or a
hundred miles. There is always a sprinkling, however, of boys from far
off places.
Rochambeau College always has a few such. I can remember among them
several from Japan, from China, India, South America, and one from Siam.
We sometimes hear from these boys after they have returned to their
homes and once in a great while we are rich enough to visit them. What a
fuss they make when we do and how glad they seem to be to see us. I have
been something of a traveler in a small way and everywhere I have gone,
and been able to turn aside to visit the boys, I have met the most
cordial welcome. This is one of the rewards that come to the teacher who
has tried to do his best. Sometimes he comes in contact with people from
distant lands in strange ways; and it is about one of these strange
happenings that I am about to tell.
After I had been teaching for several years I married Sally Lunn, the
daughter of a local baker. We had two sons and a daughter to bless our
union. I noticed as the years passed that my surplus cash was waning
rather than waxing. This led me to make a careful review of the
situation. My salary was scarcely opulent and was not mounting with
great rapidity. It was evident that if Providence saw fit to endow us
with a continued shower of childish blessings I must either find more
income or breakfast, lunch and dine on corn mush—and I was not fond of
mush.
Among my early investments had been the purchase of a printing press.
The outfit was a small one but it was complete and such as enabled me to
make a beginning as a printer in a small way. As I practised the art I
became constantly more skilful and could now print a very fair job. This
seemed to furnish an opening and I went to work. The venture was
moderately successful and led to a decided, though moderate, increase in
my income. Presently I was able to buy a larger press and more type and
to rent a room in the town in which to install it. Here I employed a
competent foreman and began my commercial career.
I had written a text book for my pupils in the meantime and this I
printed and published. Then I started a journal in which my book was
advertised, leading to orders from abroad and the influx of manuscripts
from my friends. In a few years I had a prosperous business on my hands
and all my spare time was usefully employed. It soon became necessary to
arrange for agents for the sale of my publications abroad. This was
easily arranged in London and Tokio but more difficult in other places.
I wrote to Secretary of Commerce Hoover for the name of an agent in
Melbourne and he sent me the names of about fifty firms, dealers in
books in that place. I immediately aimed at the flock and fired four
letters at random, but brought down no birds. Weeks and months passed on
without a response.
I am a late riser by preference and an early one only under compulsion.
I was finishing my breakfast at a moderate rate one morning when word
came that a gentleman had called and was waiting for me. My visitor was
a middle aged man, plainly dressed in tweed with a cloth cap. He
informed me that he was traveling for pleasure and had undertaken to go
from New York to San Francisco by auto. He had stopped for the night at
our local hotel and in descending a dark stairway had fallen and broken
his arm. He was admitted to the hospital, permitted the setting of the
arm and submitted to the necessary delay—for it was impossible to drive
with one arm. He found himself doomed to inaction, for his daily
occupation was confined to a visit to the hospital to have his arm
dressed, and time hung heavy on his hands. In this dilemma he inquired
of Dr. Kuhlmann, his attendant and one of my old students, whether there
was not some one else in the place with a taste for science. Dr.
Kuhlmann had referred him to me.
I told Mr. Humphreys that I was very glad to meet him and would do my
best to help him pass the time pleasantly during his enforced delay. I
found he was posted on his own country, Australia. He knew something
about its geology and about its politics also. I announced that we would
have an evening together with our professors of geology and economics in
a day or two, as soon as it could be arranged. In the meantime I asked
him whether he liked to dance? He said he did, and my wife, who had met
him by this time, invited him to spend that very evening with us—we
expected some young people in to dance and thought it might amuse him.
He came and was much liked by the young folks. A few evenings later he
came to tea with us and spent the evening with the two professors and
their wives. Of course they pumped him for first-hand information and
obtained it. We spent a delightful and very profitable evening together.
The next morning I proposed to take him over my publishing house. We met
there and made the rounds. I showed him some of our books and he
appeared to be more than ordinarily interested in them. As he was
leaving he informed me that he was starting for the West in the morning
after. “I don’t see why,” he said, “I might not sell some of your books
myself. I am a scientific bookseller in Melbourne, and I shall take
great pleasure in selling as many of your books as I can.”
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