Elizabeth daily monitor. [volume] (Elizabeth, N.J.) 1868-1880, 1869-05-17
gIisabetB RaiIp @onitor,
PUBLISHED AT 155 BROAD STREET, BY
J. MADISON DRAKE.
HOW A BOY BOUGHT A FARM.

Several years age, youth of sixteen
years, of good sense, and fair Eng
lish education, not having profitable
employment at his fathers home in
Kentucky, sought for employment
among his enterprising neighbors few
miles distant and although wages we're
low in those days of gold and silver cul.
rency, he saved from his first years
wages $40. He was then II years old,
healthy, lively looking, aspiring and
ambitious to become useful, noble, and
perhaps great. He had already learn
ed that money loaned at high rates of
interestwas oppressive to the borrower,
and reacted on the loaner, and the fall
ing of prices of nearly all articles in the
commercial world that men sought
Justification for their bankruptcy and
delinquency in the fact that they had
paid large rates of interest. Feeling,
therefore, that liberality, as well as
Justice, was necessary to every mans
dealing with his fellow men, he loaned
his $40 to an exemplary, enterprising,
and prosperous trading man in his
neighborhood, at the lowest rate of in
terest known in business in that State,
viz, six per cent. per annum. He
worked another year, clothed himself
in neat Kentucky jeans and other clean
but neat articles of apparel, and went
to country school three months in the
winter of that year, and learned the
rudiments of Latin and something of
the higher branches of mathematics,
working for q prosperous and liberal
farmer evenings and mornings to pay
the boarding; and ct the end of the
second year, or when he was Is years
of age, he had saved $96 more. His
character for integrity end industry
began to be better known in the neigh
borhood, and his services were sought
for.
He worked on farm and rode as
collector for trading men and the Sher-
If of his county ; and at the end OF his
nineteenth year Ehad saved $110 more.
With the interest accumulated on his
other two years wages he had now $500,
was comfortably clothed, and had a
good business education, which he i'm
proved from one winter another, till he
became a scholar, both literally and
scientifically. At twenty-one he accu-
INFLATED $3.50, and was well known for
his activity of life, as young man OF
intelligence, virtue, and usefulness, as
a young man of very attractive man
ners and ways.
He moved to a Western State where
land was cheap, and entered 100 acres
by land warrant, which he purchased
with $3.50 of his money. He made a
good selection of land, in good region
of country he used a portion of the
balance of his money in improving his
land, buying a little stock, and few
implements for farming, and the second
year he raised small crop. Having
gone to his new neighborhood with
about $500 in money, and used it cau-
tiously, he by degrees gained the name
Of responsible citizen and good pay
master and his influence rose gradually
from his appearance among his new and
scattering neighbors. Year after year
he raised crop, continuing to read the
best newspapers, periodicals, and books,
which still further improved his mind
till sheep, cattle, and other stock grew
up in focks around him, more land adj
joining him being purchased from time
to time, till now he finds himself, when
scarcely arrived at the middle of life, a
gentleman farmer of wealth, surrounds
ed by comfort and many luxuries, es-
teemed by neighbors both far and near,
and would receive the suffrage of those
who know him to any office for which
he might be nominated, irrespective of
party politics, 30 firm is their conf
dence in both his ability and integrity.
st. Louis Agricultural Journal.