"Can you tell us all just the way to the Bible College?"
"Ministers of grace!" he said, "without the angels!" Then turning to
the lad, he continued: "You see this path? Take it! Those steps? Go
straight up those steps. Those doors? Enter! Then, if you don't see the
Bible College, maybe you'll see the janitor--if he is there. But don't
you fear! You may get lost, but you'll never get away!"
The lad knew he was being guyed, but he didn't mind: what hurt him was
that his Bible College should be treated with such levity.
"Thank you," he said pleasantly but proudly.
"Have you matriculated?" one of the three called after him as he
started forward.
David had never heard that word; but he entertained such a respect for
knowledge that he hated to appear unnecessarily ignorant.
"I don't think--I have," he observed vaguely.
The small eyes of the full moon disappeared altogether this time.
"Well, you've got to matriculate, you know," he said. "You'd better do
that sometime. But don't speak of it to your professors, or to anybody
connected with the college. It must be kept secret."
"Will I be too late for the first recitations?"
The eager question was on the lad's lips but never uttered. The trio
had wheeled carelessly away.
There passed them, coming toward David, a tall, gaunt, rough-whiskered
man, wearing a paper collar without a cravat, and a shiny, long-tailed,
black cloth coat. He held a Bible opened at Genesis.
"Good morning, brother," he said frankly, speaking in the simple
kindness which comes from being a husband and father. "You are going to
enter the Bible College, I see."
"Yes, sir," replied the lad. "Are you one of the professors?"
The middle-aged man laughed painfully.
"I am one of the students."
David felt that he had inflicted a wound. "How many students are here?"
he asked quickly.
"About a thousand."
The two walked side by side toward the college.
"Have you matriculated?" inquired the lad's companion. There was that
awful word again!
"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.
One scene in his new life struck upon the lad's imagination like a
vision out of the New Testament,--his first supper in the bare dining
room of that dormitory: the single long, rough table; the coarse,
frugal food; the shadows of the evening hour; at every chair a form
reverently standing; the saying of the brief grace--ah, that first
supper with the disciples!
Among the things he had to describe in his letter to his father and
mother, this scene came last; and his final words to them were a
blessing that they had made him one of this company of young men.