“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:—
| Rent $10 a year for each, or for the course | $40 |
| Board for each, $32 a year, or for the course | 128 |
| Fuel, lights, and incidentals—say for each | 40 |
| Tuition, if we have to pay it, for each | 100 |
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:—