“I don't want any drifting around in mine,” said Uncle Ike, as he got up from his chair, limped a little on his rheumatic leg, and went to the window and looked out, and wished he were young again. “Don't you ever drift when you are out in a boat. You just take the oars and pull, somewhere, it don't make any difference where, as long as you pull. Row against the current, and against the wind, and bend your back, and make the boat jump, but don't drift. If you get in the habit of drifting when you are a boy, you will drift when you are a man, and not pull against the stream. The drifting boy becomes a drifting business man, who sits still and lets those who row get away from him. The drifting lawyer sits and drifts, and waits, and sighs because people do not find out that he is great. He wears out pants instead of shoe leather. When you see a man the seat of whose pants are shiny and almost worn through, while his shoes are not worn, except on the heels, where he puts them on the table, and waits and dreams, you can make up your mind that he drifted instead of rowed, when he was a boy, out in a boat. The merchant who goes to his store late in the morning, and sits around awhile, and leaves early in the afternoon, and only shows enterprise in being cross to the clerk who lets a customer escape with car fare to get home, is a drifter, who stands still in his mercantile boat while his neighbors who row, and push, and paddle, are running away from him. The boy who drifts never catches the right girl. He drifts in to call on her, and drifts through the evening, and nothing has been done, and when she begins to yawn, he drifts away. She stands this drifting sort of love-making as long as she can, and by and by there comes along a boy who rows, and he keeps her awake, and they go off on a spin on their wheels, and they can't drift on wheels if they try, because they have got to keep pushing, and before he knows it the drifting boy finds that the boy who rows is miles ahead with the girl, and all the drifting boy can do is to yawn and say, 'Just my dumbed luck.' Dogs that just drift and lay in the shade, and loll, never amount to anything. The dog that digs out the woodchuck does not drift; he digs and barks, and saws wood, and by and by he has the woodchuck by the pants, and shakes the daylights out of him. He might lay by the woodchuck hole and drift all day, and the woodchuck would just stay in the hole and laugh at the dog. The pointer dog that stays under the wagon never comes to a point on chickens, and the duck dog that stays on the shore and waits for the dead duck to drift in, is not worth the dog biscuit he eats.