Upon Entering My Seventeenth Year

The past summer was, by all of the usual standards, uneventful. It was the first summer I can remember that did not include an automobile trip to the East, West, or to the beloved north country. Instead, I attended summer school for six weeks, then suffered the worst month of absolute idleness that I have ever experienced. Although disappointing in its monotony, the vacation was not entirely without advantages. In my school course, I was introduced to a subject which interests me intensely, economics. Although totally different from the sciences I had studied previously, it fully satisfied my craving for scientifically organized knowledge. I found economics to be governed by laws as invariable as the laws of physics. I began to conceive of money, business, capital ,and labor as the gears and levers of a vast machine, all operating with mathematical regularity. My curiosity was aroused on several subjects related to economics. Again favored with the advantage of an excellent teacher, I gained a basic knowledge on a subject, which, like the physical sciences, I had always hoped to understand, at least in part