“IT”

There is not much more of this story for me to tell. The voyage up the river involved very little of work, and nothing at all of adventure. The steamboat was a slow one. She plodded along, day and night, never landing except when it was necessary to take on fifty cords or so of wood, with which to make steam.

Phil and his comrades took pride in keeping the decks in most scrupulously clean condition, and doing with earnest care the other tasks—mostly very small ones—which fell to their lot.

It took about nine days for the pottering old freight steamer to make the journey to Louisville; for although the great flood had considerably subsided, the Ohio was still sufficiently full for the boat to pass over the falls and land her cargo at the city, instead of discharging it at Portland, four miles below.

Bidding farewell to their captain, the crew of The Last of the Flatboats donned their new clothes, and took passage for Vevay on the mail boat.

They landed at their home town late in the afternoon, hired a drayman to haul their small baggage to their several homes, and proudly marched up Ferry Street like the returning adventurers that they were, while all the small boys in town trudged along with them precisely as they would have followed a circus parade.

After briefly visiting their homes and having reunion suppers there with their families, the boys reassembled in their old meeting-place, Will Moreraud’s room over a store. There they made out all their accounts, trying hard to make them look like those prepared by Mr. Kennedy’s bookkeepers in New Orleans. They were then ready to settle, on the next day, with all the owners of the cargo they had carried.

When all was arranged, Phil figured a while, and then said:—

“Fellows, we’ve netted a profit of exactly four hundred and fifty dollars clear, by our trip. That’s ninety dollars apiece to add to our college fund. The money’s in bank to my credit. I’ll draw a check for each fellow’s share.”

When he had delivered to each of his comrades a check for ninety dollars, he rose and stretched himself and said, with accents of relief:—

“Now I’m not ‘It’ any longer.”

“Oh, yes, you are,” said Irv. “We fellows are going to stick together now, you know. There’s the study club, you remember. That will need an ‘It,’ and you’ll be the ‘It,’ won’t he, boys?”

“You bet!” said all in a breath.

When Irv and Ed reported the voyage and the study club plan to Mrs. Dupont, she entered enthusiastically into the scheme.

“Don’t go to school at all this year,” she said. “Come to me instead. When bright boys have made up their minds to study as hard as they can without any forcing, all they need is a tutor to help them when they need help. I’ll be the tutor. The old schoolroom in my house, where I taught you boys and your fathers the multiplication table long before graded schools were thought of in this town, is unoccupied. Everything in it is just as it was when you boys were with me. I’ll have the maids dust it up, and it shall be the home of the ‘Study Club.’”

When the boys told the wise old lady how Phil had been made “It” on the voyage, and how splendidly he had risen to his responsibilities, she smiled, but showed no surprise.

“I’m glad you boys had the good sense to choose Phil for your leader,” she said. “If you had asked me, I should have told you to do just that. I am older than you by nearly half a century. I have taught several generations of boys, and I think I know boys better than I know anything else in the world. Now let me tell you about Phil. He was born to be ‘It,’ he will always be ‘It,’ though he will never try to be. He has a gift—if I didn’t detest the word for the bad uses it has been put to, I’d say he has a ‘mission’ to be ‘It’ in every endeavor that he may be associated with. Whenever you’re in doubt, be very sure that Phil is your best ‘It.’”

Here this story comes to an

END