a blacksmith and nail-maker, to
which trade he added the cultivation of the little farm on which he
lived; and being poor, it was necessary for him to labor hard in all his
callings in order to provide his family with a plain subsistence. Young
Chauncey had little or no time given him for acquiring an education.

He learned to read and write, but went no further; for, when he was but
a little more than seven years old, and barely able to do the lightest
kind of labor, he was put to work on the farm to help his father, who
kept him at this until he was nine, when he took him into his shop. All
the nails then in use were made by hand, for there were no huge iron
works in the country to send them out by the ton; and such articles were
scarce and high. The boy was set to work to make nails, and for two
years pursued his vocation steadily. He was a manly little fellow, and
worked at his hammer and anvil with a will, resolved that he would
become thorough master of his trade; but when he had reached the age of
eleven, the sudden death of his father made an entire change in his
career, and threw him upon the world a helpless and penniless orphan.

In order to earn his bread, he hired himself to a farmer, receiving for
his labor nothing but his "victuals and clothes," the latter being of
the plainest and scantiest kind. He worked very hard; but his employer
was cold and indifferent to him at all times, and occasionally used him
very badly. The boy was naturally of a cheerful disposition, and it did
him good service now in helping to sustain him in his hard lot. Four
years were passed in this way, and when he was fifteen years old his
guardian informed him that he had now reached an age when he must begin
his apprenticeship to some regular trade.

The boy was very anxious to learn clock-making, and begged his guardian
to apprentice him to that trade; but the wise individual who controlled
his affairs replied, sagely, that clock-making was a business in which
he would starve, as it was already overdone in Connecticut. There was
one man, he said, engaged in that trade who had been silly enough to
make two hundred clocks in one year, and he added that it would take the
foolish man a life-time to sell them, or if they went off quickly, the
market would be so glutted that no dealer would have need to increase
his stock for years to come. Clock-making, he informed the boy, had
already reached the limit of its expansion in Connecticut