Belle and I decided to go to a coeducational school to study medicine, and settled upon Boston University. I was a happy girl that summer, getting ready and picturing the future. Associating Boston with Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow, and Whittier, I loved it before going there. Belle, who had studied guide-books and maps, was glib in her knowledge of the city; she knew just where the railway station was, and the college, and how to get from one to the other. Her confidence impressed me, for maps and topography were ever a vexation to my spirit; her assurance impressed our parents also, and it was decided to let us make the journey alone. Our family physician, who had written to the Dean, had received an assuring letter: we were to go directly to the College and matriculate, and there obtain addresses for boarding-places. In later years I have realized what misgivings our parents must have had in letting us start out alone, mere schoolgirls who had never been more than thirty miles from home, green village girls, unused to city ways--ignorant of the world, of life, of themselves. The last picture I have of my grandfather, is the one as he rode into our door-yard the October afternoon of the evening I was to start for Boston. Sitting his horse firmly and proudly (he was then eighty-five) he brought me a fine full ear of yellow corn for a “keepsake.” I have often wondered what made him bring that particular thing. Was it that he knew the sight of it when far from home would be so dear, serving to bring back Grandma’s kitchen and the overhanging ears suspended by their turned-back husks? Or was it that he recollected what a fascination the full golden ears had had for me when I had played around the corn-house years before in the October weather? I never knew. I think I did not then question why. But that long yellow ear of corn which he brought to me on the eve of my first leaving home was a precious gift, inexplicably precious as I try to explain it now. I clung to him with unwonted tenderness as I bade him good-bye, and through my tears watched him slowly ride away. The night we left home, just before I started for the train, my class-mate, Walter, came to the door and asked for me. I wondered why he had not gone ahead to the station with the other young people. Drawing me out on the “stoop”, in the darkness he quickly kissed me, wrung my hand, and with a choked “good-bye” ran down the steps. Astounded as I was, and with my strict ideas about such things, still I did not resent that kiss. And as Father and I drove to the station in the darkness, leaving Mother alone at home, to weep, I was sure (though she had kept up till the good-byes were over) Walter’s kiss was a welcome diversion, a partial relief to the pang of leaving home and parting with Mother.