Page 48 - The Adventures of a Freshman

CHAPTER X

HOW HE STAYED IN COLLEGE

"Business is the systematic supplying of wants. When all visible wants are supplied, you must simply create
new wants to satisfy. Patient willingness to do whatever turns up will only bring success when things turn up.
Under the conditions of modern competition things seldom turn up of themselves."

Mr. Lee, Lucky's father, had said this one evening after dinner during the happy holidays; and Will
remembered every word of it, not only because he had great respect for successful Mr. Lee's opinions, but
because what he said seemed to apply to his own quandary. Mr. Lee seemed to have taken a fancy to Young,
and talked to him frequently. Mrs. Lee liked him, too. She seemed to consider his preferring to eat his peas
with a spoon a very small matter (though Will himself blushed scarlet when he discovered his mistake). She
said she was glad her son had chosen for one of his intimate friends a young man with so much maturity and
character--this she said to Young himself--"And I know you will look after him," she said; "he's such an
impressionable boy, but he admires you so much that you can influence him any way you desire."

The Deacon blushed and said he would try, but what Lucky's father said made more impression upon him at
the time.

"When all the wants are satisfied you must simply create new wants." It seemed to Young that this ought to
apply to the little world of college quite as well as to the big world of commerce of which Mr. Lee spoke.
Every day as he walked to and from recitations through the campus, now muddy and monotonous after a wet
snow, Young tried and tried and tried to think of some new want to satisfy.

Lucky said he was trying, too; but generally he forgot as soon as anyone yelled, "Hold up, there, Lucky!" and
joined him on the walk. It did not mean so much to him.

The Deacon was walking past Old Jimmy, the peanut-and fruit-vender, when the idea came to him. He
suddenly stopped short, slapped his thigh, and said: "I've got it! I've got it!" That night he unfolded his scheme
to Lucky, whose eyes grew big.

"Deacon, you're a dandy! But, say, are you sure it'll work?"

"Sure? No, I'm not sure it'll make much. But I'm sure I'll have to leave college, anyway, if I don't do
something, and--- "

"But why go to all the expense of the posters?"

"To advertise it, get 'em talking, create the want! That's the way to do business. And just now everything is
dull in the college world--no athletics to distract attention."

"Well, I'll help you stick 'em up. It'll remind us of pasting procs, eh?"

One morning, a few days later, the whole University, on its way to and from recitations and lectures, saw a
poster on the Bulletin Elm. It had two black letters on it, C. C. There was nothing else there. They glanced at
it, wondered what it meant, and passed on.

The next day a new one was there in letters twice as big, C. C. Again the college wondered what it meant; but
this time some of them did not pass on until they had asked someone else, "What's that thing for?" "What's the