"Then within the next year you had better go after the problem and make your decision hard and fast. Fasten your gaze on something in life that you want, and then don"t stop traveling until you get it, and it"s all yours! A boy of seventeen, without an idea of what he intends to do in life has already turned down the lane that leads to the junk heap. Get out of that road, Danny!"
"What are you going to do in life yourself?" challenged Danny Grin.
"I"m going to West Point if there"s any possible chance of my winning the nomination from our home district. There"s a vacancy to be competed for next spring."
"Some smarter boy may win it away from you," Danny Grin retorted.
"He"ll have to hustle, then," d.i.c.k rejoined, his eyes flashing.
"But suppose you do lose the nomination and can"t go to West Point---what will you do then?"
"I have plans, in case I can"t get to West Point," Prescott answered quietly. "However, as yet I won"t admit the defeat of my West Point ambition."
"I"d try for West Point myself, if it weren"t for d.i.c.k being in the way," Greg declared. "But I never could get past d.i.c.k in an exam."
"If you want it, come on and try," begged d.i.c.k. "Our Congressman gives the nomination to the boy in the district who can stand up best under an exam. Go in and try for it, Greg! Work like a horse when high school opens. You might get it."
"And take it away from you?" blurted Holmes.
"If you can get it from me, you ought to do it, Holmesy. The best men are needed in every walk of life. I"ll promise, in advance, not to be "sore" if you can win it away from me."
"Yes! I"d try all winter," scoffed Greg, "and then in the end some sad-eyed fellow from a back-country village would bob up and win it away from us both."
"Let the sad-eyed fellow have it, if he is the better man," d.i.c.k agreed heartily. "But fear of defeat isn"t going to hold me back.
Don"t let it stop you, either, Greg!"
"It"s going to be Annapolis for mine---the United States Naval Academy and a commission in the United States Navy!" Darry declared, his eyes snapping.
"I"d rather like that, too," Danny Grin declared.
"Then go after it," urged d.i.c.k Prescott. "Get some real plan in your mind of what you"re going to do in life, and then follow that plan, night and day, until you either win or drop from exhaustion."
"Wouldn"t I be a funny-looking lamb in a midshipman"s uniform?"
queried Dalzell blinking fast.
"No funnier looking than any of the rest of us," d.i.c.k retorted.
"Now, Tom isn"t talking much, but we all know what he"s going to do, for he has already been working at it. He has been studying surveying, for he means to make a great civil engineer of himself one of these days."
"And I"m going into the game with him," declared Hazelton.
"That"s because you"ve always had Tom about to tell you what to do, and to keep you from b.u.t.ting your head into things in the dark," jeered Danny Grin. "Hazy, you"re going to become an engineer just because you shiver at the thought of trying to do anything in life without having old Tommy Long-legs to advise you when to wash your face or come in out of the rain."
"Harry is a pretty bright surveyor already," Tom declared. "He has been keeping mum about it, but Harry can go out into the country with a transit and run up the field notes for a map about as handily as the next kid in his teens."
"I should think you"d like the Army or the Navy, Tom," mused Dalzell aloud.
"Nothing doing," Reade retorted. "I want to be one of the big and active men of the world, who do big things. I want to map out the wilderness. I want to dam the raging flood and drive the new railroad across the desert. I want to construct. I want to work day and night when the big deeds are to be done. That"s why I wouldn"t care for the Army or Navy; it"s too idle a life."
"An idle life!" exclaimed d.i.c.k and Dave in the same breath.
"Yes," Tom went on dryly. "Did you ever see an Army or a Navy officer?"
"I"ve seen several of them," d.i.c.k replied, "and have talked with some of them."
"Same here," added Darrin.
"Did you see the officers in uniform?" Reade pressed.
"Yes, of course-----" said Prescott.
"Their uniforms were nice and neat, weren"t they?" Tom asked.
"Of course," Prescott answered.
"Then that was because your Army or Navy officers hadn"t been doing any hard work that would ruffle the neatness of their uniforms,"
finished Tom triumphantly, "and there you are! I can dress up on Sundays or holidays, but on the work days, when I"m a civil engineer, I want to wear clothes that show that I"m not afraid to tackle the rough and hard things of life."
"Then you might join Dan in being a day laborer," teased d.i.c.k laughingly.
"Oh, no! I want to use my brain along with my muscles, and that"s why I"m going to be a civil engineer."
"Army a Navy officers may have had an easy time of it once," Dave went on warmly, but times have changed. Our fighting men, to-day, are obliged to hustle all the time to keep up with the march and progress of science. I asked an Army officer, once, what he did in his spare time. He looked at me rather queerly, then replied, "I sleep.""
"He was lazy as well as offensively neat, then," laughed Tom.
"As for me, I enjoy my old clothes, and that is one of the reasons why I"m having so much fun out of this trip. I don"t have to dress up!"
"You"d feel first rate if you could be dressed up for a few hours, go into a hotel dining room, have a good meal and then slip into a ballroom for a dance," laughed Prescott.
"Bosh!" flared Tom. "I"m no dandy, and all I want is to be a man."
"How do you stand, Harry?" grinned Dave Darrin. "Do you agree with Tom that dirt is the best stuff with which to decorate one"s clothing?"
"I never said that," broke in Tom hotly. "I"m as ready for a bath and clean clothing as any of you. I like to wear old clothes---not soiled ones!"
"If anyone happens to overhear us talking," laughed Hazy, "he"ll think that we"re all planning to take up prize fighting as our work in life."
"I don"t like to hear the officers of the Army and Navy scoffed at as a lot of idling, time-wasting dandies," Darry a.s.serted.
"And I don"t like to be accused of liking dirt on my clothes, just because I am going to be a civil engineer," Tom explained in a milder voice.
An ideal bit of green forest, at the edge of a limpid lake, appealed to d.i.c.k & Co. as the noon stopping place.
"I"ve a good mind to fish," remarked Danny Grin.
"Go ahead, if you want to," d.i.c.k a.s.sented, "but we"ve got a lot of fresh meat that we simply must cook this noon, for it may not keep until night."
"It would take you an hour or more, even though the fish bit readily, to catch enough fish to feed this little mult.i.tude," Tom remarked.