Not one sporting goods window can you pass without a curious glance. In fact, dear boy, you are in such a maze that when the teacher asks you to tell him how you would start for the North Pole you answer promptly: "From the Grand Central Station, on the Bar Harbor Express," and, for the life of you, cannot see why the class roars at you.
Some weeks never seem to come to an end, and this, the very longest week of your life, just crawls away. Saturday your fond father has promised to go with you and purchase the athletic goods, while mother attends to the rest.
You want to know where he is going to buy them and what he is going to get. Are told to come along and not fuss any more. If there is any smell on the face of this earth that smells nicer than new leather in an athletic goods shop, I want to smell it. Oh, me! Oh, my! what beauties, and you have to bite your tongue to keep from interrupting.
Business has been very good with father, and he, thinking back over his own boyhood, when money was as scarce as hens' teeth, makes up his mind to fit you out so as to be a credit to yourself and him.
Later in life you may blossom out in a Prince Albert and silk hat, a dinner or full dress suit, but never, as long as you live, will clothes ever give you the unalloyed pleasure that these camping togs do in your first year at Camp.
As a rule, you are not over and above fond of carrying bundles. The cook can vouch for that. How much bribery she had to practice to make you bring home quickly a bottle of milk or of water or a bunch of soup greens. But now you are perfectly willing to carry everything from sneakers to caps, and can hardly trust the salesman to send them home.
In the privacy of your room you strip off your clothes in a jiffy, for the joy of trying on the different sweaters, running pants and swimming trunks. In your baseball clothes you pose, in fancy, almost a miniature Mathewson; try a high dive from the bureau to the bed; do a hurdle over the towel rack. Nothing but the fear of breaking the furniture stops you in your wild gambols.
Another peep at the catalog to see if you have everything you need; a fervent hope that you may make good, and bring home with you in the fall a silver cup or trophy. Then, carefully folding each and every garment with almost reverent care, you vow to keep your trunk in order. If any one should mention the fact to you, you would be indignant at the idea of not caring a jot at the end of the season whether you collected your belongings or left them lying around loose.
Among the gifts you have thus far received are a compass, a kodak and a housewife filled with thread, needles, buttons, etc. There does not seem to be one thing wanting to make life one long, sweet song unless it is the canoe which you hope for next year. All through life that one little thing which would make us perfectly happy, if we had it, and yet the perfect happiness is not for mortals. Truly, the poet knew what he was talking about when he said,
"Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day."