“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:—