first. The next day the three started out, and succeeded in obtaining a
situation for the young man in the store of Mr. Robert Bowne, a Quaker,
and a merchant of long experience in the business, as well as a most
estimable man. He is said to have engaged Astor at two dollars per week
and his board.

Astor was at once set to work by his employer to beat furs, this method
of treating them being required to prevent the moths from lodging in and
destroying them. From the first he applied himself to the task of
learning the business. He bent all the powers of his remarkable mind to
acquiring an intimate knowledge of furs, and of fur-bearing animals, and
their haunts and habits. His opportunities for doing so were very good,
as many of the skins were sold over Bowne's counters by the hunters who
had taken them. These men he questioned with a minuteness that
astonished them, and the result was that in a few years he was as
thoroughly familiar with the animals, their habits, their country, and
the mode of taking them, as many of the trappers themselves. He is said
to have been in his prime the best judge of furs in America. He
appreciated the fact that no man can succeed in any business or
profession without fully understanding it, and he was too much
determined upon success to be satisfied with a superficial knowledge. He
was resolved that there should be no detail in the business, however
minute, with which he was unfamiliar, and he toiled patiently to acquire
information which most salesmen in his place would have esteemed
trivial. Nothing was trivial with him, however, and it is remarkable
that he never embarked in any scheme until he had mastered its most
trifling details. Few men have ever shown a deeper and more far-reaching
knowledge of their profession and the issues involved in it than he. He
fully understood that his knowledge would give him a power which a man
of less information could not obtain, and he never failed to use that
knowledge as a power. His instructions to his subordinates were always
drawn up with the strictest regard to details, and show not only how
thoroughly he had mastered the subject before him, but also how much
importance he attached to the conscientious fulfillment of a
well-digested plan of operations. He recognized no such thing as luck.
Every thing with him was the result of a deliberate plan based upon
knowledge. In this respect his career affords one of the best models to
be found in our