having fun?"

"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