, and offered
no opportunities at all. The carpenter's trade, on the other hand, was
never crowded with good workmen, and always offered the prospect of
success to any enterprising and competent man. It was the custom then to
regard boys as little animals, possessed of a capacity for hard work,
but without any reasoning powers of their own. To the adage that
"children should be seen and not heard," the good people of that day
added another clause, in effect, "and should never pretend to think for
themselves." It was this profound conviction that induced parents and
guardians, in so many instances, to disregard the wishes of the children
committed to their care, and to condemn so many to lives for which they
were utterly unfitted. So it was with the guardian of Chauncey Jerome.
He listened to the boy's expression of a preference, it is true, but
paid no attention to it, and ended by apprenticing his ward to a
carpenter.

The life of an apprentice is always hard, and in those days it was
especially so. No negro slave ever worked harder, and but few fared
worse, so far as their bodily comfort was concerned, than the New
England apprentices of the olden time. Masters seemed almost to regard
the lads indentured to them as their property, and in return for the
support they gave them exacted from them the maximum amount of work they
were capable of performing. They granted them no privileges, allowed
them no holidays, except those required by the law, and never permitted
the slightest approach to laziness. Chauncey Jerome's master proved no
exception to the rule, and when the boy exhibited an unusual proficiency
and quickness in his trade, the only notice his employer took of it was
to require more work of him. When only a little over sixteen years old,
this boy was able to do the work of a full-grown man, and a man's work
was rigorously exacted of him. When sent to work at a distance from his
employer's home, he invariably had to make the entire journey on foot,
with his tools on his back, sometimes being required to go as far as
thirty miles in one day in this way. His mother was living at some
distance from the place where his master resided, and whenever he
visited her, he had to walk all night in order to avoid using his
master's time, not one hour of which was allowed him.

In 1811, he informed his master that he was willing to undertake to
clothe himself if he could have the five months of the cold season to
himself.