LOOKING FORWARD

It was on the last night of the voyage that Phil broached the thought that he had been turning over in his mind ever since his talk with the rescued Mississippi planter. The journey was practically finished. The Last of the Flatboats would reach New Orleans about ten o’clock the next morning. The big round moon illuminated the broad, placid river. Supper was ended. The lights were in their places. There was no water in the bilge. The day’s work was done, and the hardy young fellows were lolling about the deck, talking all sorts of trivial things, when Phil introduced the subject.

“I say, boys, does it occur to you that we fellows have a splendid opportunity before us if we choose to accept it?”

“Are you meditating a jump overboard?” asked Irv, “or did you just now remember the great truth that fills my mind, namely, that there’s enough of that beef pie left to make a good midnight supper all round?”

“No, for once I’m serious, Irv,” said Phil, whose new habit of seriousness had grown upon him with increasing responsibility, until all the boys observed the change in him with wonder, not unmixed with amusement.

“All right, then,” said Irv; “go ahead. We’re ‘at attention.’”

“What is it, Phil?” asked Will Moreraud, seeing that Irv’s light chatter annoyed the boy, or at the least distracted his attention. “You’ve something worth while to say. So we’ll listen.”

Phil broke into the middle of his subject.

“Why shouldn’t we fellows all get a college education?” he asked.

“Our parents aren’t able to give it to us,” answered Constant.

“No, but we are able to get it for ourselves,” answered Phil. “That gentleman up there in Mississippi wanted to help us do it, but I refused that offer for the whole party.”

Then he reported the conversation he had had with the planter, and his comrades heartily approved his course in refusing assistance.

“But we can do the thing ourselves,” Phil continued. “Let me explain. After we built this flatboat and equipped her and made up a purse for our running expenses, we each had about a hundred dollars of our pig-iron money left. Since then we have made one thousand dollars apiece out of the Jim Hughes affair. So when we get back home we shall have eleven hundred dollars apiece to the good, besides whatever we make clear out of the trip. That ought to be considerably more, but we won’t count it because it’s a chicken that isn’t hatched yet. At any rate, it will more than pay our fares back to Vevay, so when we get home we shall have eleven or twelve hundred dollars apiece. Now that is plenty to take us through college.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Irv. “I hear of young college men who spend from one thousand to five thousand dollars a year.”

“Yes,” replied Phil, “and I read in a newspaper the other day of a man who paid five hundred dollars for a bouquet to give to the girl he was about to marry. But we aren’t young men with ‘liberal allowances’ and we aren’t bouquet buyers. Listen to me. I have figured it all out carefully. At many colleges there is no charge at all for tuition. At others there are scholarships that can be made to cover tuition. At most of the colleges in the West and South the tuition fees are very small, even if we must pay them. The principal things we’ve got to look out for are board, clothes, and books. We can wear the same clothes at college that we should wear at home, and our parents will provide them, or if they can’t, we can earn them during vacations. Our necessary books for the whole course won’t cost us more than fifty or sixty dollars apiece if we work together as I’m going to suggest. That leaves only the question of board.”

“Well, board will cost us five dollars a week apiece or two hundred a year, at any decent boarding-house,” said Irv.

“Of course,” answered Phil. “But I propose that we shan’t live at any decent boarding-house.”

“How, then?”

“Why, you see we’re an exceptional lot of young fellows in some respects. Our classmates in college, when we go there, may know a great deal more than we do about many things, and probably they will. But we know some very valuable things that they do not. We know how to take care of ourselves. For a good many weeks now we have bought and cooked our own food and washed our own dishes, and even our own clothes. At college we could hire the laundry work done, but why shouldn’t we do all the rest for ourselves?”

“Go on,” cried Irv when Phil paused. “I for one am interested, and it’s obvious you’ve thought out the whole thing, Phil. Tell us all about your plan.”

Phil hesitated a little, abashed by the approval and admiration which he easily detected in Irv’s eager tone and in the faces of his comrades. At last he resumed:—

“Well, you see, we five fellows not only know how to cook and all that sort of thing, but we know how to live together without quarrelling, and how to work together for a common purpose. Why shouldn’t we go to some college where there are no tuition fees, or very small ones, hire two rooms, one to cook and eat in, and the other to sleep in, buy the ten or twenty dollars’ worth of plain furniture necessary, and board ourselves just as we are doing now?”

The other boys paused, interested in the idea. Presently Constant asked:—

“How much apiece do you reckon the cost of board to be?”

“I haven’t figured it out in detail,” said Phil. “I’ve left that for Ed to do. You remember he made a calculation away up the river as to how much it costs to feed a man for a year.”

“Yes,” said Ed, speaking the word slowly as if thinking; “but that calculation hardly fits the case. It related to a single person, and we are five persons. We can live more cheaply together than five persons could live separately. Besides, that calculation up the river was made on a guess-work basis. It is very much better to base the calculation on facts, and fortunately I have the facts.”

“What?” “Where did you get them?” These and like exclamations greeted Ed’s announcement.

“Well, you see,” said Ed, “I have been keeping accounts in order to find out what it has cost us just to live on this voyage. I’ve set down the exact cost of everything we started with and everything we have bought since, including the two cords of wood we bought for the cooking-stove, and which we haven’t used up yet. I’ll figure the thing up and tell you exactly what it will cost us to board ourselves at college, provided we are willing to live as plainly there as we do on this boat.”

“Why not?” called out Irv. “We’ve lived like fighting cocks all the way down the river—except that we’ve run out of milk pretty often.”

“Do fighting cocks consume large quantities of milk, Irv?” asked Phil.

“No, of course not. You know what I mean. I’m satisfied to live in college precisely as we have lived on the flatboat, and if I drink more milk, I suppose I shall make it up by eating just so much less of other things.”

“Do you hear that, boys?” called out Constant. “Irv agrees that if we go to college together he’ll eat one pancake less for every extra glass of milk he drinks. Remember that. We shall hold him rigidly to his bargain.”

By this time Ed, who had gone to the forward lantern to do his figuring,—for one really cannot “see to read” by even the brightest moonlight, as people often say and think they can,—was ready to report results. He said:—

“Counting in everything we have bought to eat, and everything that the Cincinnati banker gave us at Memphis, and the cost of our fuel, I find that it has cost us for our table, precisely $3.98 per week, as an average, since the day we left Vevay to drop down to Craig’s Landing. Let us say $4.00. That’s 80 cents apiece per week, for we won’t reckon Jim Hughes’s board. The college year is forty weeks, or a little less. At 80 cents a week apiece, we can feed ourselves on $32 a year each, or only $128 each for the whole four years’ course.”

“Good,” said Phil, “now let’s figure a little.” With that he went to the light and made some calculations. On his return he said, “I reckon it this way:—

or a grand total of $308 apiece for the whole course. For safety, and to cover miscalculations and accidents and illness and all the rest of it, let’s just double the figures. That gives us a total possible expense of $616, or just about one-half the money that each of us has in hand, and that we ought to be ready to spend to make the best men we can out of ourselves.”

“Boys!” said Will Moreraud, rising in his enthusiasm, “I move this resolution right here and now:—

“‘Resolved, that Phil Lowry is a brick! Resolved, that we five fellows shall go together to a college of Phil Lowry’s selection, live in the economical way he suggests, and so diligently do our work as to take all the honors there are going in that college, and astonish the fellows whose education has not included a flatboat experience in the art of taking care of oneself.’”

The resolution was adopted without dissent. Then Phil had something more to say:—

“Now, fellows, I’m a good way behind the rest of you in some of my studies. I’m younger than you—but that’s no matter. I’ll not ‘plead the baby act,’ anyhow. All of you can easily prepare yourselves for college between now and next fall. You probably don’t believe it, but so can I, and so I will. I have never set myself to study in earnest. I’m going to do it now. When we get home, I’ll bring to bear all that ‘obstinate pertinacity’ that you and Mrs. Dupont credit me with or blame me for—whichever way you choose to put it. If I don’t pass entrance examinations next fall with the best of you, you can count my share of the money as a voluntary contribution to the expenses of the mess. But you’d better not count on it in that way, I warn you.”

“Of course we hadn’t,” said Irv Strong, as Phil went below to look after things. “I’ve got a great, big, rosy-cheeked, candy apple at home, and I’ll wager it against the insignificant head of any fellow in the party—yours included, Ed—that when we five fellows present ourselves for our entrance examinations next fall, Phil Lowry will knock the spots out of every one of us.”

“You expect too much of him, Irv,” said Ed. “It isn’t fair. He’s from a year to two years behind us, and he is the youngest and most immature in the party.”

“Is he?” asked Irv, with challenge in his voice. “He may have been so when we left Vevay, but he isn’t now. He’s the oldest of us now and the most mature among us. You saw how he managed things in the woods, and how he handled Jim Hughes, and how he managed the difficult problem of the tarpaulin, and all the rest of it. I tell you, Ed, that, while Phil Lowry was much the youngest boy in this company when we made him ‘It’ for this voyage, he is several years older to-day than any of us. He may be a class behind some of you fellows in mere book work, but he won’t stay so long. I’ll tell you what, Ed, you’ll have to stir all your stumps to keep up with that fellow in college. He has got his mettle up now.”

“I believe that is so,” said Ed, thinking, and speaking slowly. “I hadn’t thought of it, Irv, but Phil has developed in his mind surprisingly during this voyage.”

“So much so,” replied Irv, “that nobody in this crew is his equal when it comes to real, hard, clear-headed thinking.”

“That is so,” said Ed, reflectively; “but in book study he is behind all of us because he is younger. He says he’ll catch up and—”

“And we now know him too well to doubt that he will do all that he says,” broke in Will Moreraud, whose admiration for Phil had grown day by day until now it scarcely knew any bounds. “But I say, fellows,” continued Will, “we’ve got to help Phil catch up. For that matter, there isn’t one of us that hasn’t a lame duck of some sort. Even you, Ed—”

“Don’t say ‘even’ me,” said Ed. “I’m in fact the worst of the lot. I’ve gone ahead of you fellows,—in my irregular fashion, of course,—but I’ve skipped a lot of things, and I’ve got to bring them up before I can pass my examinations for college.”

“That’s all right,” said Will, who was now enthusiastic. “Why shouldn’t we fellows form a ‘study club’ this fall, and work together? Of course the high school won’t and can’t prepare us for college by next year. But we can and will prepare ourselves; and now that Mrs. Dupont is out of the regular teaching harness, she’ll be delighted to help us. She will be in a positive ecstasy when she finds that five of ‘her boys’ have undertaken a job of this kind. By the way, let us stand up and bow low to Mrs. Dupont—the best and most loving teacher that any set of boys ever had or ever will have in this world!”

The obeisance to their teacher was made, and Will’s idea of a “study club” was resolved upon. The idea, as developed, was to do much more in a year than the school course marked out, especially to help Phil forward to the level of his fellows, and to help Ed repair the deficiencies that lay back of his irregular attainments. For Ed was now so robust that neither he nor any of his comrades thought of him as an invalid. Instead of spending the winter in the South, as he had intended, Ed had made up his mind to go back with the others, to join them in their “study club,” and to be one of the five when they should enter college.

It was long past midnight when this conversation was over. And the morning had active duties for the crew of The Last of the Flatboats to do.