Thus passed the days, the weeks, the months in a sort of mishmash of architectural theology, and Louis came to see that it was not upon the spirit but upon the word that stress was laid, even though it were a weighty matter of sprinkling or immersion. He began to feel a vacancy in himself, the need of something more nutritious to the mind than a play of marionettes. He felt the need and the lack of a red-blooded explanation, of a valiant idea that should bring life to arouse his cemetery of orders and of styles, or at least to bring about a danse macabre to explain why the occupants had lived and died.
Moreover, as time passed he began to discover that this school was but a pale reflection of the École des Beaux Arts; and he thought it high time that he go to headquarters to learn if what was preached there as a gospel, really signified glad tidings. For Louis felt in his heart that what he had learned at Tech was after all but a polite introduction to the architectural Art—as much as to say, “I am glad to meet you.” He reflected with a sort of despair that neither immaculate Professor Ware nor sweaty, sallow, earnest Eugene Letang was a Moses Woolson. Ah, if but Moses Woolson had been versed in the story of architecture as he was in that of English Literature, and had held the professorship; ah, what glowing flame would have come forth to cast its radiance like a rising sun and illuminate the past. But why dream such foolish dreams?
Louis made up his mind that he would leave Tech at the end of the school year, for he could see no future there. He was progressive, aggressive and impatient. He wished to live in the stream of life. He wished to be impelled by the power of living. He knew what he wanted very well. It behooved him he thought before going to the Beaux Arts, to see what architecture might be like in practice. He thought it might be advisable to spend a year in the office of some architect of standing, that he might see concrete preparations and results; how, in effect, an actual building was brought about. So he said a warm goodbye to Boston, to Wakefield (to his dear South Reading of the past), to all his friends, and made straightway for Philadelphia where he was to find his uncle and his grandpa. On the way he stopped over in New York City for a few days. Richard M. Hunt was the architectural lion there, and the dean of the profession. Louis called upon him in his den, told him his plans and was patted on the back and encouraged as an enterprising youngster. He listened to the mighty man’s tale of his life in Paris with Lefuel, and was then turned over to an assistant named Stratton, a recent arrival from the École to whom he repeated the tale of his projects.
Friend Stratton was most amiable in greeting, and gave Louis much time, receiving him in the fraternal spirit of an older student toward a younger. He sketched the life in Paris and the School—and in closing asked Louis to keep in touch with him and be sure to call on him on the way abroad. Thus Louis, proud and inflated, went on his joyous way to face the world. He arrived in Philadelphia in due time, as they say. He had noticed in New York a sharper form of speech, an increase of energetic action over that he had left behind, and also a rougher and more arrogant type of life Stratton had mentioned that Louis, on his arrival in Philadelphia, should look up the firm of Furness & Hewitt, architects, and try to find a place with them. But this was not Louis’s way of doing. Once settled down in the large quiet village, he began to roam the streets, looking quizzically at buildings as he wandered. On the west side of South Broad street a residence, almost completed, caught his eye like a flower by the roadside. He approached, examined it with curious care, without and within. Here was something fresh and fair to him, a human note, as though someone were talking. He inquired as to the architect and was told: Furness & Hewitt. Now, he saw plainly enough that this was not the work of two men but of one, for he had an instinctive sense of physiognomy, and all buildings thus made their direct appeal to him, pleasant or unpleasant.
He made up his mind that next day he would enter the employ of said Furness & Hewitt, they to have no voice in the matter, for his mind was made up. So next day he presented himself to Frank Furness and informed him he had come to enter his employ. Frank Furness was a curious character. He affected the English in fashion. He wore loud plaids, and a scowl, and from his face depended fan-like a marvelous red beard, beautiful in tone with each separate hair delicately crinkled from beginning to end. Moreover, his face was snarled and homely as an English bulldog’s. Louis’s eyes were riveted, in infatuation, to this beard, as he listened to a string of oaths yards long. For it seems that after he had delivered his initial fiat, Furness looked at him half blankly, half enraged, as at another kind of dog that had slipped in through the door. His first question had been as to Louis’s experience, to which Louis replied, modestly enough, that he had just come from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. This answer was the detonator that set off the mine which blew up in fragments all the schools in the land and
