sponded to an invitation to preach, I never knew whether I was to be
paid for my services in cash or in compliments. If, by a happy chance,
the compensation came in cash, the amount was rarely more than five
dollars, and never more than ten. There was no help in sight from my
family, whose early opposition to my career as a minister had hotly
flamed forth again when I started East. I lived, therefore, on milk and
crackers, and for weeks at a time my hunger was never wholly satisfied.
In my home in the wilderness I had often heard the wolves prowling
around our door at night. Now, in Boston, I heard them even at high
noon.

There is a special and almost indescribable depression attending such
conditions. No one who has not experienced the combination of continued
cold, hunger, and loneliness in a great, strange, indifferent city can
realize how it undermines the victim's nerves and even tears at the
moral fiber. The self-humiliation I experienced was also intense. I had
worked my way in the Northwest; why could I not work my way in Boston?
Was there, perhaps, some lack in me and in my courage? Again and again
these questions rose in my mind and poisoned my self-confidence. The
one comfort I had in those black days was the knowledge that no
one suspected the depth of the abyss in which I dwelt. We were
all struggling; to the indifferent glance--and all glances were
indifferent--my struggle was no worse than that of my classmates whose
rooms and frugal meals were given them.

After a few months of this existence I was almost ready to believe that
the Lord's work for me lay outside of the ministry, and while this fear
was gripping me a serious crisis came in my financial affairs. The day
dawned when I had not a cent, nor any prospect of earning one. My stock
of provisions consisted of a box of biscuit, and my courage was flowing
from me like blood from an opened vein. Then came one of the quick turns
of the wheel of chance which make for optimism. Late in the afternoon
I was asked to do a week of revival work with a minister in a local
church, and when I accepted his invitation I mentally resolved to let
that week decide my fate. My shoes had burst open at the sides; for lack
of car-fare I had to walk to and from the scene of my meetings, though I
had barely strength for the effort. If my week of work brought me enough
to buy a pair of cheap shoes and feed me for a few days I would, I
decided, continue my theological cours