on--and by which
he might realize the greatest profit. After duly weighing matters,
therefore, and balancing the various considerations that occurred, with
all appropriate gravity, he determined to engage in merchandise--a
branch of business for which of all men he possessed the least possible
fitness. His worthy parents, moreover, were thereunto consenting. Fond
and unhappy people! They had never read the splendid philippic of Burke
against the mercantile character, in which the indignant senator
denounced the members of that enterprising occupation as having no
altar but their counter, no Bible but their leger, and no God but their
gold! Nor, (being neither prophets nor descendants of prophets,) could
they foresee that another Burke was soon to illuminate this occidental
hemisphere, by the blaze of his genius,--embodying in his own person
half the wisdom of the whole nation of Rhode Island,--who should revive
and indorse the dictum of the florid British rhetorician, and fix upon
the name of the American merchant as fact, the fancy sketch first drawn
by a brilliant but libellous imagination! Had it been otherwise, I am
sure my friend would have been spared the toils and perplexities
incident alike to the mercantile calling, whether dealing in foreign
commerce by millions, or vending tape and buckram by the yard in
Chatham-street or Albany.

But it was written that Daniel was to be a merchant; and an opportunity
was soon presented for purchasing the odds and ends of a fashionable
fancy and jobbing concern in Albany. His father, moreover, who had by
this time accumulated a snug property by his own honest calling--who
knew little of the perils of the mercantile business, and still less of
the skill and attention necessary for its successful prosecution,
consented in an evil hour to become his indorser. The chief clerk of
the concern, a young man by the name of John Smith, was continued in
the establishment; new goods were bought in New-York in most
enterprising quantities; and although both old and new were purchased
at no small disadvantage, yet a plausible exterior, and a fair credit,
enabled Mr. Wheelwright to drive a brisk, and, as he no doubt honestly
thought, a thriving business. It was indeed true that the return of
every six months found him somewhat deeper in debt. He was obliged to
fill up the blanks in the notes which his kind parent had indorsed in
advance, and by the quantity, for larger and yet larger sums,