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My life, up to the age of forty, had been spent in
my native city of Philadelphia. Like thousands of others before me, I
began the world without a dollar, and with a very few friends in a
condition to assist me. Having saved a few hundred dollars by dint of
close application to business, and avoiding taverns, oyster-houses,
theatres, and fashionable tailors, I married and went into business the
same year. These two contemporaneous drafts upon my little capital proving
heavier than I expected, they soon used it up, leaving me thereafter
greatly straitened for means. It is true my business kept me, but as it
was constantly expanding, and was of such a nature that a large proportion
of my annual gain was necessarily invested in tools, fixtures, and
machinery, I was nearly always short of ready cash to carry on my
operations with comfort. At certain times, also, it ceased to be
profitable. The crisis of 1837 nearly ruined me, and I was kept struggling
along during the five succeeding years of hard times, until the revival of
1842 came round. Previous to this crisis, necessity had driven me to the
banks for discounts, one of the sore evils of doing business upon
insufficient capital. As is always the case with these institutions,
they compelled me to return the borrowed money at the very time it was
least convenient for me to do so—they needed it as urgently as myself. But
to refund them I was compelled to borrow elsewhere, and that too at
excessive rates of interest, thus increasing the burden while laboring to
shake it off.
Thousands have gone through the same unhappy
experience, and been crushed by the load. Such can anticipate my trials
and privations. Yet I was not insolvent. My property had cost me far more
than I owed, yet if offered for sale at a time when the whole community
seemed to want money only, no one could have been found to give cost. I
could not use it as the basis of a loan, neither could I part with it
without abandoning my business. Hence I struggled on through that
exhausting crisis, haunted by perpetual fears of being dishonored at
bank,—lying down at night, not to peaceful slumber, but to dream of fresh
expedients to preserve my credit for to-morrow. I have sometimes thought
that the pecuniary cares of that struggle were severe enough to have
shortened my life, had they been much longer protracted.
Besides the mental anxieties
they occasioned, they compelled a pinching economy in my family. But in
this latter effort I discovered my wife to be a
jewel of priceless
value, coming up heroically to the task, and relieving me of a world of
care. Without her aid, her skill, her management, her uncomplaining
cheerfulness, her sympathy in struggles so inadequately rewarded as mine
were, I should have sunk into utter bankruptcy. Her economy was not the
mean, penny-wise, pound foolish policy which many mistake for true
economy. It was the art of calculation joined to the habit of order, and
the power of proportioning our wishes to the means of gratifying them. The
little pilfering temper of a wife is despicable and odious to every man
of sense; but there is a judicious, graceful economy, which has no
connection with an avaricious temper, and which, as it depends upon the
understanding, can be expected only from cultivated minds. Women who have
been well educated, far from despising domestic duties, will hold them in
high respect, because they will see that the whole happiness of life is
made up of the happiness of each particular day and hour, and that much
of the enjoyment of these must depend upon the punctual practice of
virtues which are more valuable than splendid.
If I survived that crisis, it was owing to my wife's
admirable management of my household expenses. She saw that our
embarrassment was due to no imprudence or neglect of mine. She thus
consented to severe privations, uttering no complaint, hinting no
reproach, never disheartened, and so rarely out of humor that she never
failed to welcome my return with a smile.
But in this country one convulsion follows another
with disheartening frequency. I lived through that of 1837, paid my debts,
and had managed to save some money. My wife's system of economy had been
so long adhered to, that in the end it became to some extent habitual to
her, and she still continued to practice great frugality. I became
insensibly accustomed to it myself. Children were multiplying around us,
and we thought the skies had brightened for all future time. When in
difficulty, we had often debated the propriety of quitting the city and
its terrible business trials, and settling on a few acres in the country,
where we could raise our own food, and spend the remainder of our days in
cultivating ground which would be sure to yield us at least a respectable
subsistence. We had no longing for excessive wealth: a mere competency,
though earned by daily toil, so that it was reasonably sure, and free from
the drag of continued indebtedness to others, was all we coveted.
I had always loved the
country, but my wife preferred the city. I could take no step but such as
would be likely to promote her happiness. So long as times continued fair,
we ceased to canvass the propriety of a removal. We had children to
educate, and to her the city seemed the best and most convenient place for
qualifying them for future usefulness. Then, most of our relations
resided near us. Our habits were eminently social. We had made numerous
friends, and among our neighbors there had turned up many valuable
families. We felt
even the thought of breaking away from all these
cordial ties to be a trying one. But the refuge of a removal to the
country had taken strong hold of my mind.
Indeed it may be said that I
was born with a passion for living on a farm. It was fixed and
strengthened by my long experience of the business vicissitudes of city
life. For many years I had been a constant subscriber for several
agricultural journals, whose contents I read as carefully as I did those
of the daily papers. My wife also, being a great reader, came in time to
study them almost as attentively. Everything I saw in them only tended to
confirm my longing for the country, while they gave definite views of what
kind of farming I was fit for. In fact they educated me for the position
before I assumed it. I am sure they exercised a powerful influence in
removing most of my wife's objections to living in the country. I studied
their contents as carefully as did the writers who prepared them. I
watched the reports of crops, of experiments, and of profits. The leading
idea in my mind was this—that a man of ordinary industry and intelligence,
by choosing a proper location within hourly reach of a great city market,
could so cultivate a few acres as to insure a maintenance for his family,
free from the ruinous vibrations of trade or commerce in the metropolis.
All my reading served to convince me of its soundness. I did not assume
that he could get rich on the few acres which I ever expected to own; but
I felt assured that he could place himself above want.
I knew that his
peace of mind would be sure. With me this was dearer than all. My reading
had satisfied me that such a man would find Ten Acres Enough, and these I
could certainly command.
As I did not contemplate undertaking the management
of a large grain farm, so my studies did not run in that direction. Yet I
read everything that came before me in relation to such, and not without
profit. But I graduated my views to my means, and so noted with the utmost
care the experiences of the small cultivators who farmed five to ten acres
thoroughly. I noted their failures as watchfully as their successes,
knowing that the former were to be avoided, as the latter were to be
imitated. As opportunity offered, I made repeated excursions, year after
year, in every direction around Philadelphia, visiting the small farmers
or truckers who supplied the city market with fruit and vegetables,
examining, inquiring, and treasuring up all that I saw and heard. The fund
of knowledge thus acquired was not only prodigious, but it has been of
lasting value to me in my subsequent operations. I found multitudes of
truckers who were raising large families on five acres of ground, while
others, owning only thirty acres, had become rich.
On most of these numerous
excursions I was careful to have my wife with me. I wanted her to see and
hear for herself, and by convincing her judgment, to overcome her
evidently diminishing reluctance to leaving the city. My uniform
consideration for her comfort at last secured the object I had in
view. She saw so many homes in which a quiet abundance was found,
so many contented men and women, so many robust and bouncing children,
that long before I was ready to leave the city, she was quite impatient to
be gone.
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