Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1870-09-14
How Daniel LiyermOre got his Gold

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He was born in one of the toughest
towns in all New England, and his father
was one Of the toughest of men. When
the boy was ten and the father was sixty
they separated forever. Daniel wanted to
20 to school, and the old man would not
let him. 1t would cost money to pay the
schoo-bill, and both money and trouble to
board the teacher, and so he ran away
from home, and an old uncle past eighty
took him in.
Dan, as the boys called him, improved
in his reading learned to write, and did
the old mans chores so well that when he
died, five years after, he gave him twelve
acres of land.
This gift awakened in the boy desire
for wealth, and as land was the only form
in which he had ever seen it, his thoughts
of course run to that, and at sixteen he be-
gan to work and save. He had but one
hope, and that was-a farm of one hun
dred and fifty acres. For ten years he
never spent a dollar, nor cent except for
clothing, and but few dollars even for
that. His shrewdness all the time grew
apace He did not lend his money, even
to the best of men, without mortgage on
real estate worth four times the amount
+ lent, and generally, as he grew older, to
those whom he hoped, not being able to
pay, would be obliged to sell his land to
him at his own price. At twenty-four,
toughened by nine years of unceasing work
he married a woman who had listened TO
the story OF his gains, and shared with
him in the joy Of coming possessions. The
day they were married witnessed the ex-
penditure of the first dime for any thing
outside OF food and clothing, and that was
five shillings, sizing money, 10 the man
who married AIN
ev was scarce a ssfu,,o worS; ......s, e6GEd n3ERdI
be got, there he sought it. Living forty
miles from the Eastern city, he carted coal
which he had previously burned, when he
had nothing else 10 cart, with q yoke of
oxen and horse ahead, spending one
night and 4 part of another and two days
on the road, always carrying the food for
his team and his own, aud never spending
penny except for toll-ga fees, which he
sometimes escaped by passing them after
the middle OF the night. His one thought
in all his work was to have something to
sell and while his neighbors who owning
farms were only making both ends meet,
be paid his rent and laid up money. In
six years, he bought a farm and paid for
it, and when the man of whom he made
the purchase delivered him the deed,
signed and sealed, his JOY was boundless-
be had attained the first object of his early
ambition.
Il process of time, four boys were born
to this pair-children that mainly looked
out for themselves at six months, and en-
tirely so at sixteen months old, spending
the long days making mud pies in the dirt
that begrimed them. while it made perpet-
ually filthy the forbidding doorway !; until
they were old enough to be helpful upon
the farm, when, like the boy in Burritt's
story of the English Nailers, their little
hands grew horny and hard, and their
bodies prematurely old by the ineessant
work.
All this time, Daniel throve amain
Once in about eight years he doubled his
acres and doubled his money, salted
down. as he used to say. His expendi.
lures for benevolent objects were measured
by those for objects of comfort and object,
of taste, and for neither of the last did be
ever appropriate a dollar.
Money once his was always his. He
never bought clothes even for cash, but
bartered for them what he could not sci
for any thing else. Even his table wa:
set in the most meager municipalities
Johnny-cakes, and salt pork making VI
ninety-nine one-hundredths of the family
! food.
At length, at sixty-two years of age, il
the presence of his wife and four children
in a house that had neither taste without
nor comfort within, he died, the owner O.
more than twelve hundred acres of land
and with over seven thousand dollars
worth of bonds and mortgages in an ole
rawhide pocket-book under his pillow.
His wardrobe was appraised at thirteer
dollars, and the fight over his property
commenced within two days after hi
burial.
OF his maxims for growing rich thes'
remain:
Sell all that you can; what you can
sell, either eat yourself or feed to you
hogs and when you get dollar keep it
Hearth and Home.