“Of course I’m serious!” he announced. “I am merely offering you the chance to go with Brook and myself to Macatawa, Michigan, to wait on table at one of the hotels there.” “Oh!” “But all the things I have enumerated, Priddy, are facts and not dreams. The work is very easy: six hours a day; two hours a meal, with the interims filled with all sorts of good times. What do you say? Our railway fares and steamer passages will be sent and later will be deducted from our wages. Will you go?” “Do they let the waiters eat calves’ brains on toast, Thropper?” I asked, seriously. “Extra orders which are not taken,” he responded. “Of course I’ll go, old fellow. It will be a wonderful chance, won’t it?” “It will give you a good chance to get a rest, Priddy,” he averred, solemnly. “Your poor, pinched body needs it!” “When do we leave?” “In two days; soon as Brock gets word to the hotel that we are coming. I can lend you some collars and things till we get there.” “The first month’s wages are to go for clothes,” I announced. “All aboard for Ma-cat-a-wa: last call for dinner!” I cried, and then Thropper and I, sharers of confidences and of dreams, linked arms and waltzed crazily around the room--for sheer joy. One week after having waltzed with Thropper over the creaky boards of the dormitory, I found myself adjusted to a new phase of existence, delicious and inspiring in its every aspect. After a lifetime spent in the midst of places where toil and only toil held the boards: after twenty years’ vision of strenuous tasks done by those about me, in mills, shops, and on the street, at last I found myself in the midst of a place set apart to idleness: where the indolent were given the palm branch, and where work, for a wonder, found itself, even by honorable people, spurned as a thing out of place. The six hours’ work a day put at my command all the recreational advantages of the resort: the shapely sand dunes, the boardwalks through cool, shaded pine groves, the smooth, sandy, slippery beach down which one walked past artists’ studios, soap box shanties, and pretentious pillared cottages. And the water! We bathed by day and by night. In it we fished and raced. Over it we rowed in boats that were tossed like light corks from engulfing wave to engulfing waves, while the life-boat man from the pier kept a sharp eye on our adventure. By its edge on a moon-light night we built a chain of fires and in the flames of them we roasted marshmallows, sang songs, and passed all sorts of banter.