He could recall, as vividly as though it were yesterday, how his father
looked the time he said: "And I tell you now, once and forever, I ain't
going to spend my hard-earned money making a dude of any son of mine;
and that's all I have to say about it. On the first of next month you're
going to get to work in the bank; and you ought to be glad of it. Few
farmers' sons have such chances."
Young remembered how sarcastic seemed his father's answer to the
question, "Won't you just lend me the money, father? I'll pay it back
with interest, in time?"
"Lend you money!--where's your collateral, hey?" and Mr. Young laughed.
"Then that is your final decision, father?"
"Final as I can make. If you go to college you pay your _own_ way.
Good-night. I guess that settles it."
Until this offer of the place in the bank came, just after Will's
graduation from the High School, his father had only said, "What's the
sense of going to college? You can't make any more money by it." And
Will had quietly gone on with his Greek lessons, not doubting that his
father would give his consent in the end. But now it was: "This is too
good a chance to miss, Will--why, you'll soon make a rich man of
yourself. Of course, you must take it. What's the use of having your
father a director of the Farmers' National Bank, any way? You'll soon
get over your fool notions. Charlie hasn't any fool notions about
'higher education.' He's my right-hand man on the farm." And the farm
was one of the most prosperous in the county.
Will knew his father and said nothing more, and on July 1st took the
place in the bank and began to work at $5 a week. But he did not get
over his fool notions.
You see, ever since Young could remember, he had dreamed and planned
about going to college, and what is more he had put in a great many
hours of good, solid study with the minister during the past years
preparing himself for it, and in consequence it was often 'way after the
dark by the time he had driven out home and had finished his "chores."
And he did not propose to let all that work count for nothing. He had
made up his mind to get a university education.
It was out of the question now to study all summer and enter the next
fall, but the minister told him he was still young; he could enter the
following year.
* * * * *
"Your boy Will's catching on quicker than Henry Johnson or any of the
young men that ever worked under me yet." That's what the cashier said
to Mr. Young.
"That means he's getting over his fool notions," thought Mr. Young.
Really it meant that he still had them. Will never mentioned the word
college to his father again; and to those of his old friends who said,
"Oh, so you aren't going East after all: why's that?" he merely replied
in effect that that was _his_ business, and bent over the ledger again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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