My sensitive imagination enkindled by all that Thropper had fed me on, in the waiting room, I appeared before the President considerably unnerved. He sat behind his desk, waiting for me: the embodiment of every austere report I had heard. His mouth twitched; twitched all the time. His eyes shone as brightly as those of an aroused lion from the dark mask of a cave. It was a race between his mouth and his eyes: the mouth slipped in and out, lip over lip, lip under and over lip, while those two small eyes snapped back and forth with electric suddenness. His gaunt features had the pallor of death. A world of woe, of hunger, of intellectual dissipation could be read in him. He tried to compose his features into a smile of welcome when he saw me, but it seemed so unusual a thing for those ascetic signs to be disturbed by the intrusion of anything pleasurable, that the first attempt ended in a sad failure. He did not try again. His voice was tired when he spoke. It had neither vibration nor health in it. I stood before that presence chilled, uninspired, while a strong temptation to flight pulled on my courage. “Sir,” began Thropper, fingering his cap, “I’ve brought Mr. Priddy in. He came yesterday, and I’ve been letting him share my room till he saw you.” “‘Had seen,’ you should say, sir,” corrected the President, “if you are after the proper tense of the verb. You may go.” Thropper sighed deeply as he left, probably over the grammatical correction just imposed on him. A seat was indicated and I was asked to place myself in it. Then the President said, “Just tell your story in your own way till I interrupt you, young man.” Thereupon I went into such minute details about myself, that I soon brought from the official a grunt of impatience. “No,” he said, “I’m not a bit eager to know how many times your family has moved about the country. I want to know the salient things about you yourself.” “I’ve been working in the mill till last week,” I said. “I always have been eager to get an education. I haven’t been able to save any money. I heard about this place. I came on. If you can’t take me, then please let me live here; just live here, it will do me good even if I don’t take any studies. I can work out and earn my board, I promise you. I have been earning my own living for a long time now, sir.” “How much money have you brought?” he asked. “Three dollars,” I said. “But you don’t need to take me in yet, sir,” I explained, hurriedly, for I felt that he would surely turn me off. “A young woman came here, last year, with just four cents in her pocket and only her own strength to rely upon, young man,” replied the President. “Her own strength and God to rely upon, I should say, sir.” “Yes?” “There are several here who, at middle age, have arrived with wives and families and hardly more than enough to keep them a week, save their own strength and God’s.” “Yes?”