state and from other states. Some boys
out of his own neighborhood had started that morning, old
schoolfellows. He had gone to say good-by; had sat on the bed and
watched them pack their fine new trunks--cramming these with fond
maternal gifts and the thoughtless affluence of necessary and
unnecessary things; had heard all the wonderful talk about classes and
professors and societies; had wrung their hands at last with eyes
turned away, that none might see the look in them--the immortal hunger.

How empty now the whole land without those two or three boys! Not far
away across the fields, soft-white in the clear sunshine, stood the
home of one of them--the green shutters of a single upper room tightly
closed. His heart-strings were twisted tight and wrung sore this day;
and more than once he stopped short in his work (the cutting of briers
along a fence), arrested by the temptation to throw down his hook and
go. The sacred arguments were on his side. Without choice or search of
his they clamored and battered at his inner ear--those commands of the
Gospels, the long reverberations of that absolute Voice, bidding
irresolute workaday disciples leave the plough in the furrow, leave
whatsoever task was impending or duty uppermost to the living or the
dead, and follow,--"Follow Me!"

Arguments, verily, had he in plenty; but raiment--no; nor scrip. And
knew he ever so little of the world, sure he felt of this: that for
young Elijahs at the university there were no ravens; nor wild honey
for St. John; nor Galilean basketfuls left over by hungry fisherfolk,
fishers of men.

So back to his briers. And back to the autumn soil, days of hard
drudging, days of hard thinking. The chief problem for the nigh future
being, how soonest to provide the raiment, fill the scrip; and so with
time enough to find out what, on its first appearance, is so terrible a
discovery to the young, straining against restraint: that just the lack
of a coarse garment or two--of a little money for a little plain
food--of a few candles and a few coverlets for light and warmth with a
book or two thrown in--that a need so poor, paltry as this, may keep
mind and heart back for years. Ah, happy ye! with whom this last not
too long--or for always!

Yet happy ye, whether the waiting be for short time or long time, if
only it bring on meanwhile, as it brought on with him, the struggle!
One sure reward ye have, then, as he had, though there may be none
other--jus