The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1872-07-12
MI i IS ceIIaneous
How n Boy Bought a Farm.

Several years ago, a youth of sixteen
years, of good sense, and fair English ed
ucation, not having profitable employment
at his fathers home in Kentucky, sought
for employment among his enterprising
neighbors few miles Distant and al
though wages were low in those days of
gold and silver currency, he saved from
his first years wages eighty dollars.
He was then seventeen years old, healthy,
lively looking, aspiring and ambitious to
become useful, noble and perhaps great.
He had always learned that money loaned
at high rates of interest was oppressive to
the borrower and reacted on the loaner, in
The falling of prices of nearly all articles in
the commercial world that men sought
justification for their bankruptcy and de-
linquency in the fact that they had paid
large rates of interest.
Feeling, therefore, that liberality as we'll
as justice was necessary to every mans
dealing with his felow-men, he loaned his
eighty dollars to an exemplary, enterpris-
ing and prosperous trading man in his
neighborhood, at the lowest rate of inter-
est known in business in that State, viz
six per cent. per anpum. He worked an
other year, clothed himself in neat Ken
lucky jeans and other cheap, but neat ar
ticles of apparel, and went to a 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 a prosperous and
liberal farmer, evening and morning, to
pay his board; and at the end of the Sec
ond year, or when he was eighteen years of
age, he had saved ninety-six dollars more.
His character for integrity and industry
began to be better known in the neighbor-
hood, and his services were sought for
He worked on farm and rode as col
lector for trading men and the sheriff of
his county, and at the end of his nine
teenth year he had saved one hundred and
ten dollars more. With the interest accu-
mulated on his other two years. wages, he
had now three hundred dollars, was com
fortably clothed, and had good business
education, which he improved from one
winter to another, till he became scholar,
both literally and scientifically. His in
fiuence and usefulness increasing, he had,
at the age of twenty, four hundred and
eighty dollars. AT twenty-one he had five
hundred and fifty dollars, and was we'll
known for his activity of life, as young
man IF intelligence, virtue and usefulness.
as well as of very attractive manners and
ways.
He moved to a Western State, where
| land was cheap, and entered one hun
dred and sixty acres, by land warrant,
which he purchased for one hundred and
and fifty dollars of his money. He made
a good selection of land in a good region
of country; he used portion of the bal
ance of his money in improving his land,
buying little stock, and few implements
for farming, and the second year he raised
small crop. Having gone to his new
neighborhood with some six hundred and
fifty dollars in money, and used it cautious
ly, he by degrees gained the name of re-
sponsible citizen and good paymaster, and
his influence rose gradually from his APP
pearance among his new and scattered
neighbors. Year after year he raised u
crop, continued to read the best newspa-
pers, periodicals and books, which still
further improved his mind, till sheep, cat
tie and other stock grew up in fiocks
around him, more land adjoining him be.
ing purchased from time to time, until now
he finds himself, when scarcely at the mid
die of life, a gentleman farmer of wealth,
surrounded by comfort and many luxuries,
esteemed 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, so firm is their confidence in both
his ability and integrity.