I had found out from a ticket agency in the city that my fare to the Middle West would cost approximately seventeen dollars. I knew that in two weeks, with the week’s wage that the mill always kept back and with the seven dollars my Uncle Stanwood had promised to let me have, that I should have my railway fare and incidental expenses, anyway. So there, in the ticket agency, I had the clerk take me, with his pencil, over the route I should later take in the cars. It was a wonderful itinerary. I was to see the mountains of New England, the lakes of the border, and to plunge into a new part of the country! It would take me three days. How I stared at the prospect of so much traveling! I obtained time-tables with maps containing the route over the different railways I should ride on during that journey away from the mill. Three days from the cotton mills! That was a thought to make a fellow dance all day without rest. One day I lay sprawled out at full length in an alley behind a box, so that the overseer might not see me, when Micky Darrett peeped over my shoulders at the maps I had spread out on which I had traced and retraced my great journey with a pencil. “What yer’ doin’, Priddy?” said Micky. “Oh,” I announced with studied nonchalance, “just planning out the road I shall take in two weeks. I’m going to college, you know.” “Oh,” laughed Micky, “quit yer kiddin’ like that! _What_ are you doin’, really?” “Just what I said, Micky. I mean it.” “Gee!” gasped the little Irishman; “yer a sporty bluffer, Priddy!” “But ’tis true, though,” I insisted. “What yer givin’?” growled Micky. “It’s only swells goes ter college.” “That’s what you think, Micky, but it’s God’s truth that I go in two weeks and try to make a start.” “Gee!” he gasped; “I allus thought you was poor. You must have got a lot of money saved, all right, all right!” “That’s where you’re wrong, Micky. I shall have about three weeks’ wages and what my uncle gives me--seven dollars--if he gives it to me at all. That’s all I’ve got to start on.” “Don’t stuff that down me, Priddy!” cried Micky, in great disgust, for he hated to be made sport of. “You can’t bluff yer uncle.” But nevertheless he published all over the room what I had told him, and thereafter I answered many questions about myself and my plans, and had to spend much energy in rebutting the prevalent suspicion that I was “bluffing the room.” Then came my last Saturday in the mill--the last day I have ever spent in the mill. I did my work with a great conscience that day. I don’t believe the second hand had to look twice to see if I had done my sweeping well. The spinners had become very friendly, as if my ambition had won respect from them, and even the overseer came to me just before I left the room, took me by the hand, and said: “I wish you the very best of luck, Priddy. Keep to it!”