oyed twenty-five years in this trade,
finding it inconvenient to be separated from the great body of
merchants, he embarked again in general mercantile business, by way of
re-uniting himself to his former associates. The experiment resulted in
ruinous losses. In less than three years he was a bankrupt, and owed his
creditors two hundred and ten thousand dollars more than he could pay.
The ice business being still profitable and growing, it was proposed to
him that he should conduct it as the agent of his creditors, retaining a
specified sum per annum for his personal expenses. To this he objected,
and said to them:--

"Allow me to proceed, and I will work for you better than I can under
any restriction. Give me the largest liberty, and I will pay the whole
in time with interest."

He was then fifty-two years of age, and he had undertaken to pay an
indebtedness, the mere interest of which was about ten thousand dollars
a year. By the time he had got fairly at work the treachery of an agent
whom he had raised from poverty to wealth lost him his Havana monopoly,
his principal source of profit. Then it became necessary to buy land
bordering the lakes from which he gathered ice, and to erect in
Calcutta, New Orleans, and elsewhere expensive and peculiarly
constructed buildings for storage. Occasionally, too, he experienced the
losses and adverse incidents from which no business is exempt.
Nevertheless, in fourteen years from the date of his bankruptcy he had
paid his debts, principal and interest, amounting to two hundred and
eighty thousand dollars, besides having acquired a large quantity of
real estate, some of which had increased in value tenfold. Thus, while
paying his debts, and in the very process of paying, and while thinking
only of his creditors' interest, he had gained for himself a very large
fortune. He continued an ice merchant for more than fifty years; or, as
he said himself:--

"I began this trade in the youthful hopes attendant on the age of
twenty-two. I have followed it until I have a head with scarcely a hair
that is not white."

It was this enterprising merchant who may be said to have created the
beautiful seaside retreat near Boston called Nahant, where he invented
many ingenious expedients for protecting trees and shrubs from the east
winds which lacerate that rock-bound coast. His gardens and plantations
in Nahant were famous many years before his death. He died in 1864, aged
eighty-one, leavin