the brother-in-law he was so proud of,
persuaded him to abandon the law at once, and forever, and go into the
jobbing and retail dry-goods business with him, on the corner of Court
and Marlborough, now Washington Street. He had no capital, to be sure,
but then he wrote a beautiful hand, was very methodical, and had made
himself acquainted with bookkeeping, after the Italian method, from
Rees's Cyclopaedia. I took the chamber which Mr. Pierpont left, and went
into the jobbing business also, with a capital of between two and three
hundred--dollars, and a credit amounting to perhaps five hundred more,
which enterprise terminated after a few months, not in my failure, but
in my taking a trip to New York with a large quantity of smuggled goods,
belonging to Messrs. Pierpont and Lord, where I disposed of them to such
advantage, that, on my return, I was persuaded to go into the retail
haberdashery line, at 103 Court Street, next door to Pierpont and Lord,
and just underneath the chamber, not chambers, which I had occupied at
first with my wholesale establishment. I had for a partner, at first,
Erastus, a brother of "Joe's," whom I had known as a bookbinder in
Portland two or three years before. He was now manufacturing
pocket-books, and appeared to be doing, not only a large and profitable,
but safe business,--selling for cash, running a horse and gig, and
paying the bills of all the "dear five hundred friends" who rode with
him.

Our copartnership did not last long. His brother "Joe," being a shrewd
man of business, of uncommon foresight and comprehensiveness, though
rather adventurous, gave me a hint, and soon provided me with another
partner, a graduate of Cambridge, named Fisher, with whom I was
associated a few months longer. Then came the peace of 1815, which threw
the whole country into a paroxysm of joy, unsettling business
everywhere, at home and abroad, and setting people together by the ears
upon all the great questions of the day.

And here began the new and very brief career of Mr. Pierpont as a man of
business. Wholly unfitted as he was for even the regular course of
trade, he was the last man in the world for the great emergencies of the
hour. The whole business of the country was little better than gambling.
Our largest importing houses were lotteries or faro-banks; and we had no
manufactures worth mentioning. We made no woollen goods, and our few
cottons, if sold at all, were sold for British, and stood no c