"Just to see us fellows! Well, and how do you like us so far?"
And is the most comfortable way this true gentleman went on until the
boy mentioned that he must be keeping him from his work.
"Not at all; not at all," was the quick and hearty response. "Not a
thing to do. I cleaned up all my mail before I had my breakfast this
morning.
"These letters, you mean?" he said, as the boy pointed to some letters
on his desk unopened. "Oh, yes! Well, they must have come in a later
mail. Well, if it will make you feel any better I'll go through them,
and you can go through my books if you like. I'll trust you," he added
laughingly, as Wendell Phillips's advice occurred to him.
"You like books, you say?" he went on, as he opened his letters. "Well,
then, you must come into my library here at any time you are in Boston,
and spend a morning reading anything I have that you like. Young men do
that, you know, and I like to have them. What's the use of good friends
if you don't share them? There's where the pleasure comes in."
He asked the boy then about his newspaper work: how much it paid him,
and whether he felt it helped him in an educational way. The boy told
him he thought it did; that it furnished good lessons in the study of
human nature.
"Yes," he said, "I can believe that, so long as it is good journalism."
Edward told him that he sometimes wrote for the Sunday paper, and asked
the preacher what he thought of that.
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