I called at the door of his
office on the top floor of No. 7 Beacon Street, which was an
old-fashioned one-story building without an elevator.

Brown asked me where I came from, what my plans were, and I replied with
eager confidence. Then we grew harmoniously enthusiastic over Herbert
Spencer and Darwin and Mantegazza and I talked a stream. My long silence
found vent. Words poured from me in a torrent but he listened smilingly,
his big head cocked on one side, waiting patiently for me to blow off
steam. Later, when given a chance, he showed me the manuscript of a book
upon which he was at work and together we discussed its main thesis. He
asked me my opinion of this passage and that--and I replied, not as a
pupil but as an equal, and the author seemed pleased at my candor.

Two hours passed swiftly in this way and as the interview was about to
end he asked, "Where do you live?"

I told him and explained that I was trying to fit myself for teaching
and that I was living as cheaply as possible. "I haven't any money for
tuition," I confessed.

He mused a moment, then said, "If you wish to come into my school I
shall be glad to have you do so. Never mind about tuition,--pay me when
you can."

This generous offer sent me away filled with gratitude and an illogical
hope. Not only had I gained a friend, I had found an intellectual
comrade, one who was far more widely read, at least in science, than I.
I went to my ten-cent lunch with a feeling that a door had unexpectedly
opened and that it led into broader, sunnier fields of toil.

The school, which consisted of several plain offices and a large
class-room, was attended by some seventy or eighty pupils, mostly girls
from New England and Canada with a few from Indiana and Ohio. It was a
simple little workshop but to me it was the most important institution
in Boston. It gave me welcome, and as I came into it on Monday morning
at nine o'clock and was introduced to the pretty teacher of Delsarte,
Miss Maida Craigen, whose smiling lips and big Irish-gray eyes made her
beloved of all her pupils, I felt that my lonely life in Boston was
ended.

The teachers met me with formal kindliness, finding in me only another
crude lump to be moulded into form, and while I did not blame them for
it, I instantly drew inside my shell and remained there--thus robbing
myself of much that would have done me good. Some of the girls went out
of their way to be nice to me, but I kept aloof,