uence with
which Fox, Pitt, Burke, and Sheridan were nightly defending the
American cause in the House of Commons, and assailing the infatuation
of the Government in prosecuting a hopeless war. As often, however, as
our youth met with any one who had been in America, he plied him with
questions, and occasionally he heard from his brother in New York.
Henry Astor was already established, as a butcher on his own account,
wheeling home in a wheelbarrow from Bull's Head his slender purchases
of sheep and calves. But the great difficulty of John Jacob in London
was the accumulation of money. Having no trade, his wages were
necessarily small. Though he rose with the lark, and was at work as
early as five in the morning,--though he labored with all his might,
and saved every farthing that he could spare,--it was two years before
he had saved enough for his purpose. In September, 1783, he possessed
a good suit of Sunday clothes, in the English style, and about fifteen
English guineas,--the total result of two years of unremitting toil
and most pinching economy; and here again charity requires the remark
that if Astor the millionaire carried the virtue of economy to an
extreme, it was Astor the struggling youth in a strange land who
learned the value of money.

In that month of September, 1783, the news reached London that Dr.
Franklin and his associates in Paris, after two years of negotiation,
had signed the definitive treaty which completed the independence of
the United States. Franklin had been in the habit of predicting that
as soon as America had become an independent nation, the best blood in
Europe, and some of the finest fortunes, would hasten to seek a career
or an asylum in the New World. Perhaps he would have hardly recognized
the emigration of this poor German youth as part of the fulfilment of
his prophecy. Nevertheless, the news of the conclusion of the treaty
had no sooner reached England than young Astor, then twenty years old,
began to prepare for his departure for the "New Land," and in November
he embarked for Baltimore. He paid five of his guineas for a passage
in the steerage, which entitled him to sailors' fare of salt beef and
biscuit. He invested part of his remaining capital in seven flutes,
and carried the rest, about five pounds sterling, in the form of
money.

America gave a cold welcome to the young emigrant. The winter of
1783-4 was one of the celebrated severe winters on both sides of the
ocea