reet. He remembered,
to his ninetieth year, the substance of the conversation which passed
between him and one of the partners in this business.

"Have you room for an apprentice?" asked Peter.

"Do you know anything about the business?" was the rejoinder.

The lad was obliged to answer that he did not.

"Have you been brought up to work?"

He replied by giving a brief history of his previous life.

"Is your father willing that you should learn this trade?"

"He has given me my choice of trades."

"If I take you, will you stay with me and work out your time?"

He gave his word that he would, and a bargain was made--twenty-five
dollars a year, and his board. He kept his promise and served out his
time. To use his own language:--

"In my seventeenth year I entered as apprentice to the coach-making
business, in which I remained four years, till I became 'of age.' I made
for my employer a machine for mortising the hubs of carriages, which
proved very profitable to him, and was, perhaps, the first of its kind
used in this country. When I was twenty-one years old my employer
offered to build me a shop and set me up in business, but as I always
had a horror of being burdened with debt, and having no capital of my
own, I declined his kind offer. He himself became a bankrupt. I have
made it a rule to pay everything as I go. If, in the course of business,
anything is due from me to any one, and the money is not called for, I
make it my business oh the last Saturday before Christmas to take it to
his business place."

It was during this period of his life, from seventeen to twenty-one,
that he felt most painfully the defects of his education. He had
acquired manual skill, but he felt acutely that this quality alone was
rather that of a beaver than of a man. He had an inquisitive, energetic
understanding, which could not be content without knowledge far beyond
that of the most advanced beaver. Hungering for such knowledge, he
bought some books: but in those days there were few books of an
elementary kind adapted to the needs of a lonely, uninstructed boy. His
books puzzled more than they enlightened him; and so, when his work was
done, he looked about the little bustling city to see if there was not
some kind of evening school in which he could get the kind of help he
needed. There was nothing of the kind, either in New York or in any city
then. Nor were there free schools of any kind. He found a teacher,
however, who,