“And you’re to have the hard end of the business,” I replied, “staying in this house alone and keeping an eye on the parish. Not much of a honeymoon to that through the long, winter days, while I am in the swirl of college events, with all the fellowship one can desire.” “But there’ll be holidays and Saturdays at home, for you,” she answered. “I shall see you once a week at least, for you will have to preach here every Sunday. We’re working together, now,” she added, quietly. “If there’s any suffering, any hardship, any self-denial involved, I am willing to undergo it, else I would not have married you!” In her voice ran an undertone of tragic feeling and for the first time I began dimly to realize, in the midst of my own opportunity for a college education, that in this little home, back over the hills, my wife would be waiting, and waiting, through the long hours of the day and night, for the two years’ study to be at an end: the study which would break up our home and separate us during the first days of our married life. I vowed then to give it all up: to plunge into the pastoral work: to send word to the college dean that he must not expect me. “No, not that: not that!” protested my wife. “It is your chance, take it!” As I descended from my pulpit the following Sunday morning, I was introduced to a quiet youth who was recommended to me as a Senior in the college. That afternoon my new acquaintance came down to the parsonage and willingly permitted me, in my curiosity, to question him concerning the traditions, the customs, and the personnel of the college. I asked him some very trivial and laughable questions, I remember, because, at the time, I had some very curious and perhaps too exalted notions concerning colleges, especially colleges of the high standard of the one in which I had just matriculated and to which I was to journey on the morrow. After our conversation, the Senior promised to call for me next day and escort me to the college: a proffer which I was glad to accept. That September Monday morning was a very pleasant one in the Northern country. The maple groves on the hill slopes made one think that God had let fall his color pots, for the leaves of the trees flamed with reds, with yellows, and with blacks. The mail wagon drove up to the parsonage door and collected myself, the Senior, and my trunk. My wife stood at the door telling me not to forget this and that, with true motherly solicitude. Then, with a dash through the dust, the wagon wheeled us on our way across the river to the train that should carry us to within four miles of college. The Senior said, as we changed at a junction, “The train that will get us to college does not go for some hours. Are you fit for a four-mile walk? We can eat lunch on the way. I have some in my suit-case.” I agreed that I was ready for the walk, so we left the town precincts by walking through a lumber yard.