liant Miss Dickinson with the trustfulness of
youth in my eyes. I remembered Mrs. Livermore and I thought all
great women were like her, but I was now to experience a bitter
disillusionment. Miss Dickinson barely touched the tips of my fingers
as she looked indifferently past the side of my face. "Ah," she said,
icily, and turned away. In later years I learned how impossible it is
for a public speaker to leave a gracious impression on every life that
for a moment touches her own; but I have never ceased to be thankful
that I met Mrs. Livermore before I met Miss Dickinson at the crisis in
my career.

In the autumn of 1873 I entered Albion College, in Albion, Michigan. I
was twenty-five years of age, but I looked much younger--probably not
more than eighteen to the casual glance. Though I had made every effort
to save money, I had not been successful, for my expenses constantly
outran my little income, and my position as preacher made it necessary
for me to have a suitable wardrobe. When the time came to enter college
I had exactly eighteen dollars in the world, and I started for Albion
with this amount in my purse and without the slightest notion of how I
was to add to it. The money problem so pressed upon me, in fact, that
when I reached my destination at midnight and discovered that it would
cost fifty cents to ride from the station to the college, I saved that
amount by walking the entire distance on the railroad tracks, while my
imagination busied itself pleasantly with pictures of the engine that
might be thundering upon me in the rear. I had chosen Albion because
Miss Foot had been educated there, and I was encouraged by an incident
that happened the morning after my arrival. I was on the campus, walking
toward the main building, when I saw a big copper penny lying on the
ground, and, on picking it up, I discovered that it bore the year of my
birth. That seemed a good omen, and it was emphatically underlined by
the finding of two exactly similar pennies within a week. Though there
have been days since then when I was sorely tempted to spend them, I
have those three pennies still, and I confess to a certain comfort in
their possession!

As I had not completed my high-school course, my first days at Albion
were spent in strenuous preparation for the entrance examinations; and
one morning, as I was crossing the campus with a History of the United
States tucked coyly under my arm, I met the president of the college,