"No, it will be a greater change than that," continued Dick. "At fifty he will probably be a keen, representative business man. He will be celebrated for being better able than any one in Wall Street to cheat his neighbor, and he will be absorbed in the occupation. He will be a man of strength and stamen, a man of industry, a plain, hard-working man. He will publish Letters of a Parent, in bad English, about the degeneracy of education at Harvard, and will refuse to send his sons here for fear of their becoming dudes and loafers. He won't spoil good paper then with odes and fantasies; he will devote it, instead, to watering stock and foreclosing mortgages. Just see if he doesn't." "Are you narrow enough to think," asked Gray, defiantly, "that a man cannot work in this world, and work hard, without shutting his mind to everything outside of his tool shop?" "Perhaps he can," answered Stoughton, "but he never does in this country; he hasn't time. Whatever we take up, we have got to keep at fever heat or else go to the wall. It will be work, work, work until we become utterly uninteresting machines. It can't be helped, we have got to make up our minds to it some day and we had better do so now. We are all wasting four valuable years in this anomalous spot of Cambridge, when we ought to be learning bookkeeping. We are a nation of one-sided workers, and we might just as well accept the situation philosophically. I am sure I for one don't care a cent. Only I wish I had not fooled away my time so long, with a set of men made up of dilettantes and bummers." Dick emphasized the concluding word by handsomely scooping the last sausage just ahead of Jack Randolph, who with a bow and wave of his hand gracefully acknowledged the defeat. It was a strict rule of etiquette at the club table to take the odd trick of any dish, whether you wanted it or not. "Hello," exclaimed Burleigh, with a happy light in his face, "Dick has waked up to the seriousness of life again. That is the third time this month." Stoughton's occasional pessimism was as fair game to his friends, as Gray's poetry, so the victim for that day's lunch was promptly changed. "So he has," added Hudson. "He has a good, old-fashioned attack of remorse. Where were you last night, Dick? Must have been an awful spree." "Is it a letter from your governor?" queried Rattleton, sympathetically. "Perhaps it is the letter on your forensic," suggested Randolph. "Jack Rat got an E. on his, but just see how sweetly _he_ takes it." "A little serious reflection is undoubtedly a good thing for you, my son," observed Hollis Holworthy. "But though I don't want to flatter you, excuse my saying that you talk like an ass. Even if your premises were true your conclusion is false. If we Americans are all such narrow-minded money-makers, that is all the more reason for trying to be something better. But it isn't so. I don't believe work has necessarily any such effect. Gray is right."