CHAPTER I 

THE BOYS OF OAK HALL 

"Hello, Dave; where are you bound?" 

"For the river, Phil. I am going out for a row. Want to come along?" 

"That suits me," answered Phil Lawrence, throwing down the astronomy he had been studying. "But I can't stay out late," he added, reaching for his cap. "Got two examples in algebra to do. Have you finished up?" 

"Yes," answered Dave Porter. "They are not so hard." 

"And your Latin?" 

"That's done, too." 

Phil Lawrence eyed the boy before him admiringly. "Dave, I don't see how you manage it. You're always on deck for fun, and yet you scarcely miss a lesson. Let me into the secret, won't you?" 

"That's right, Dave; pull the cover off clean and clear," came from a youth who had just entered the school dormitory. "If I can get lessons without studying----" 

"Oh, Roger, you know better than that," burst out Dave Porter, with a smile. "Of course I have to study--just the same as anybody. But when I study, I study, and when I play, I play. I've found out that it doesn't pay to mix the two up--it is best to buckle your mind down to the thing on hand and to nothing else." 

"That's the talk," came from a boy resting on one of the beds. "It puts me in mind of a story I once heard about a fellow who fell from the roof of a house to the ground----" 

"There goes Shadow again!" cried Roger Morr. "Shadow, will you ever get done telling chestnuts?" 
what did it not pay to mix according to Dave?
've found out that it doesn't pay to mix the two up--it is best to buckle your mind down to the thing on hand and t