Year: 1872

How a Boy Bought a Farm,


Several years ago, q youth of sixteen
years, of good sense, and fair English
education. not having profitable employ
ment at his fathers home in Kentucky,
sought for employment at his fathers
home in Kentucky, sought for employ
ment among his enterprising neighbors
a few miles distant and although wages
were low in those days of gold and sill
yer currency, he saved from his first
years wages $50, He was then seven
teen years old, healthy, liv ly-looking,
aspiring and ambitious to become use
full, 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 ar
ticles in the commercial world; that
men sought justification for their bank
ruptcy and delinquency in the fact that
they paid large rates of interest. Feel
ing, therefore, that iberality as well as
justice was necessary to every man S
dealing with his fellow men, he loaned
his eighty dollars to an exemplary, en-
terprising and prosperous trading man
in his neighborhood, at the lowest rate
of interest known in that State, viz, six
per cent. per annum. He worked an
other year. clothed himself in neat Ken
lucky jeans and other articles of cheap
but neat apparel, and went to country
school three months in the winter OF
that year, and learned the rudiments Of
Latin and some of the higher branches
of mathematics, working for prosper
GUS and liberal farmer, evening and
morning, to pay his board. and at the
end of the second year. or when he was
eighteen years of age. he had saved $96
more. His character for integrity and
industry began to be better known in
the neighborhood, and his services were
sought for.


He worked on a 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 $11O more
With the interest accumulated on his
other two years wages, he had now $500,
was comfortably clothed and had good
business education, which he improved
from one winter to another. till he be-
came a scholar, both literally and scieH-
tifically. His influence and usefulness
increasing, he had at the age of twenty,
$3.50. At twenty-one he had $3.50, and
was well known for his activity of life,
as young man of intelligence. virtue
and usefulness, as well as of very at
tractive manners and ways.


He moved to Western State, where
land was cheap, and entered 100 acres
by land-warrant, which he purchased
with $50 of his money. He made a
good selection of land in good region
of country ; he used portion of the
balance of his money in improving his
land, buying little stock and few i'm
plements for farming, and the second
year he raised o small crop. Having
gone to this new neighborhood with
some $3.50 in money, and used it eau
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
scattered neighbors. Year after year he
raised a crop, continued to read the best
Of newspapers, periodicals, and books,
which still further improved his mind,
till sheep, cattle and other stock grew
up in hocks around tim, more land ad.
joining him being purchased from time
to time, until now he finds himself, when
scarcely at the middle of life, gentle.
man farmer of wealth, surrounded by
comfort and many Injuries, esteemed
by neighbors both far and near, and
would receive the suffrage of those who
know him to any Office for which be
might be nominated, irrespective Of
party politics, SO firm is their confidence
in both HI, ability opd intaprifv