turally if he has lived a life of adventure, so that, upon due
consideration, I gave up the idea altogether.

The patent-medicine business also looked well enough, but it is somewhat
overdone at all times, and requires a heavy outlay, with the possible
result of ill-success. Indeed, I believe fifty quack remedies fail for
one that succeeds; and millions must have been wasted in placards,
bills, and advertisements, which never returned half their value to the
speculator. If I live, I think I shall beguile my time with writing the
lives of the principal quacks who have met with success. They are few in
number, after all, as any one must know who recalls the countless
remedies which are puffed awhile on the fences, and disappear to be
heard of no more.

Lastly, I inclined for a while to undertake a private insane asylum,
which appeared to me to offer facilities for money-making; as to which,
however, I may have been deceived by the writings of certain popular
novelists. I went so far, I may say, as actually to visit Concord for
the purpose of finding a pleasant locality and a suitable atmosphere;
but, upon due reflection, abandoned my plan as involving too much
personal labor to suit one of my easy frame of mind.

Tired at last of idleness and of lounging on the Common, I engaged in
two or three little ventures of a semi-professional character, such as
an exhibition of laughing-gas; advertising to cure cancer; send ten
stamps by mail to J. B., and receive an infallible receipt, etc. I did
not find, however, that these little enterprises prospered well in New
England, and I had recalled to me very forcibly a story which my
grandfather was fond of relating to me in my boyhood. It briefly
narrated how certain very knowing flies went to get molasses, and how it
ended by the molasses getting them. This, indeed, was precisely what
happened to me in all my little efforts to better myself in the Northern
States, until at length my misfortunes climaxed in total and unexpected
ruin.

The event which deprived me of the hard-won earnings of years of
ingenious industry was brought about by the baseness of a man who was
concerned with me in purchasing drugs for exportation to the Confederate
States. Unluckily, I was obliged to employ as my agent a long-legged
sea-captain from Maine. With his aid, I invested in this enterprise
about six thousand dollars, which I reasonably hoped to quadruple. Our
arrangements were cleverly made to ru