Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1870-08-26
HOIv' D.F.NTBL LIT'BR.uORE COT
HIS GOLD.


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 sep
arated forever. Daniel wanted to go to
sch ool, and the old man would not let him.
1t would cost money to pay the school 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 y ears 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 began
to work and save. He had but one hope
and that was-a farm of one hundred and
fifty acres. For ten years he never spent
dollar, nor cent except for clothing, and
but few dollars even that. Hisshrewd-
ness 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 woman who
had listened to the story of his gains, and
shared with him in the joy of coming
posse essions. The day they were married
| witnes ssed the expenditure of the first dime
| for any thing outside of food and clothing,
| and that was five shillings sterling money,
| to the man who married him.
Hiring farm they went TO work. Mon
| ey was scarce, but wherever dollar could
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 to cart, with yoke of OK
en- and horse ahead, spending one night
and a part of another and two days on the
road, always carrying the food for his team
and his own, and never spending penny
except for toll-gate fees, which he some
times 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 he paid
| MS rent anu III olA gOaiSi
he bought q 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-he had attained the
first object of his early ambition.
In 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 forbdding doorway until
they were old enough to be helpful upon
the farm, when, like the boy in Burritts
story of the English Nailers, their little
hands grew horny and hard, and their bod
les prematurely old by the incessant 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 expenditures for be-
nevolent objects were measured by those
for objects of comfort and objects of taste
and for neither of the last did he ever ap'
propriate dollar
Money once his was always his. He
never bought clothes even for cash, but bar
tered for them what he could not sell fol
any thing else. Even his table was set il
the most meagre manner-potatoes, John
) ny-cakes, and salt pork making up 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 house that had neither taste without
nor comfort within, he died. the owner o
! | mona that, fxualua hnnbraH anrng of land