THE HOD-CARRIER.
Your name is George, eh? well that is a good name: I will tell you a story about a little boy of that name. He was the son of a farmer, in the town of Jackson, Washington county, State of New York, who was called “Butter John,” on account of his keeping a large dairy in that place. Little George, the son of “Butter John,” was about six years old when war was declared between England and the United States. He was lying one evening in his little bed, when his Uncle Robert came in and told his father the news. Little George did not say any thing, but he lay very still and listened, and thought a great deal about the coming war with the British. Not long after this, one afternoon, his mother took him with her to gather some fruit in the orchard. It was a beautiful day; the sun shone very brightly, when suddenly little George heard something which sounded like distant thunder, and yet it could not be thunder, because there was not a singlecloud in the blue sky. Hark! there it is again! what can it be? thought George. At last George put his ear to the ground and heard—what do you think? the low booming of artillery. George jumped up with his face all aglow and his eyes sparkling, and said, “Mother, our folks are certainly whipping the British, on the lake.” “Sure enough,” said his mother, “I shouldn’t wonder if you were right, George.” And the very next day they heard of Commodore McDonough’s victory over the British, on Lake Champlain. Little George was all excitement about the battle; he could think and talk of nothing else. A few days afterward, the British prisoners were to be brought along the road, and to pass within a mile of George’s father’s house. George ran to his father and mother and said, “Oh, do let me go and see them, won’t you, father? won’t you, mother?” They both said no, thinking it best for such a little fellow to stay at home. This was a dreadful disappointment to George, who had the greatest desire to look at those British prisoners; he sat down on the door-step of his father’s farm-house and thought over it, and thought over it, and wondered why hecouldn’tgo, just to take one peep and see what those British fellows looked like, and, for the first time in his life, he made up his mind not to obey his father and mother, whom he loved somuch, but to go. So he looked all about to see if any body was watching him; no, the coast was clear, off he started across the fields, as fast as his little legs could carry him, to see the British, never stopping to get his hat, to cover his little bare head: hats might be had any day, but the British were a rarity.
By-and-by he reached the road, where he had heard people say they were to pass, and seating himself by the side of it, he waited with great round eyes of wonder to see them come along; and as they came, he counted three hundred prisoners and sixty guards to take care of them, lest they should run away. By-and-by they all halted in the pleasant green fields to eat their dinner. George wanted dreadfully to go close up to them, but he was a little afraid; he did not know but they might want to dine off of him; but his curiosity got the better of his fears, and after watching them for a while, he climbed over the fence. The soldiers spied him, and beckoned to him to come see them. He was in for it then, Master George! however, he went boldly up to them, and they began talking and laughing with him very pleasantly, and by-and-by they liked him so well, that they coaxed him to eat dinner with them; so George who had never eaten with the British, thought he would try that too, and so down hesat with them to dinner. One of the soldiers said to him, “You will make a capital soldier when you get bigger.” This pleased Master George hugely, and made him feel as grand as a corporal; he held up his head, when—lo and behold, who should he see but his father, who had come to catch the little bare-headed runaway.ThenGeorge was afraid in good earnest, for he expected a tremendous spanking; but luckily for him, his father, old “Butter John,” became so interested hearing the soldiers tell about the battle, that he forgot all about spanking George, and did not even scold him.
I told you George’s father was a farmer, and farmers in those days had very few books; but as soon as George learned to read, he got hold of those few, and every evening he would read so long as his candle would burn, and before he was twelve years old, he had read all those books, “Life of Washington,” “Cook’s Voyages,” “Carver’s Travels,” “Plutarch’s Lives,” “Josephus’s Works,” and “Hume and Smollett’s History of England.” Pretty well that, for a little farmer boy only twelve years old. Sunday he was not allowed to read these books, but on that day he read the Bible with his mother, and what Mr. Scott, a minister, had written about the Bible. George used to get up very early in the morning, just as all boys have who ever became any thing in the world; your lie-a-beds are always drones in the hive. I dare say he used to do some of his reading then; I know he did not get time during the day, because he had to do “chores,” as they call it, on the farm of his father “Butter John,” and as this farm had five hundred acres in it, and plenty of cattle on it to be taken care of, you may be sure Master George had no extra time for reading; but somehow he managed to read a book called “Life of William Ray,” which told all about a boy who left his father’s farm, and went off to seek his fortune in the world. This book bewitched George who was tired of farm-work, and was quite as anxious now when he was a big boy, to see what the world was made of, as he was when six years old, to see what the British were made of. He spoke to his father about it, when he was seventeen, but the sturdy old farmer shook his head and said no. He wanted George at home to do farm-work.
About this time there was a great talk in the neighborhood about the Erie Canal, and George began thinking about that; for you must know that, when he was a little fellow, he used to be very fond of building all sorts of things; he would get boys together and build miniature bridges and dams, and every chance he could get, he would go among mechanics and watch them attheir work. The truth was, nature did not cut him out for a farmer, but his father, good old man, did not see it, perhaps because he was so busy with his dairy and his cattle, perhaps because, like almost all fathers, he wished him to follow the same profession which he followed, and this is natural enough; but if a boy will make a better architect or builder than he will a farmer, I think it is a pity he should not be one; mothers see quicker than fathers generally, what their boys are cut out for, and George’s mother, as she watched him build the little bridges with the boys, said, “You never will be a farmer, George!” and she said right.
At last George said to his father, “Father, I have made up my mind to go away from home to see what I can do.” The cautious old farmer shook his head again, told George that he would regret it, that he did not know what it was to be away from home. But George was a young man now, and he felt restless and unhappy on the farm, where his old father was so contented to stay year after year, and dig, and plant, and plow, and reap, and make butter and cheese. I suppose he thought George was so safe there, and comfortable, that it was a pity for him to trudge off like a peddler with his pack on his back to seek his fortune. He knew the world was a tough place to make fortunes, and he had an idea thatGeorge, his boy George, was not the fellow to find one, at any rate away from the farm; but George’s heart was set upon going, and go he did, though he had no money to start with, and nothing in the world but the clothes on his back. He went straight to an uncle of his and worked for him till he had earned forty dollars, and then started for Troy, New York, where he hired himself out as a day laborer, at one dollar a day, to wait on some stone masons, who were engaged in building. George knew that to learn a trade thoroughly it is necessary to begin at the beginning, and not to be above doing the smallest job; he wanted to learn every thing from brick-laying to stone cutting, and so he went afterward to a man who was going to build a house, and worked for him all that season, laying brick, cutting stone, and learning every thing he could learn at the mason’s trade, as diligently as he knew how. Poor industrious George: after working so hard all summer, the man he worked for could not pay his workmen in the fall, what he owed them; was not that too bad? I expect when “Butter John” heard of that he said, “I told him so; I told George he would regret going away from the farm.” But George was not discouraged; he went in a straight-forward manly way to the man with whom he had boarded while he was at work, and said:“Mr. Noel, my master, Mr. Galt, has not paid me the money he owed me, and so I can not pay my board bill as I expected to do, but I am going to get some more work to do, and just as soon as I get paid for it, you shall have your money.” Did Mr. Noel bluster and scold, and put him in jail? No, he had sense enough to know that if a man has no money to pay his debts, he surely can not earn any, when he is shut up in jail; beside he trusted in George, and saw he was a good fellow, who meant to be honest, so he said pleasantly, “Time enough George,” and then George walked twenty-two miles, to hire himself out to lay brick until cold weather, and this time he got his pay for it. Now did he forget his promise to Mr. Noel, who was twenty-two miles off? Did he run farther off with what he had earned, and say that good Mr. Noel might whistle for his pay, as many a dishonest man has done, who wears a finer coat than honest George did then? No—that’s what he didn’t. He started for Hoosack Four Corners at very short notice, where he paid every single cent he owed Mr. Noel. What do you think of that? forty-four miles to walk in one day to pay an old debt, twenty-two miles there, and twenty-two back. I call that an honest deed, and the young man who did it, a young man to be honored and believed in.
Well, George trudged back again, as I told you, with a light heart, and a light pocket too, for not a cent had he left in it; but what of that? he was young, healthy and hopeful. What could Misfortune do to him? She knew it was no use, so she left George for some poor whining wretch, who sniveled at the first discouragement he met with and spent his breath, not in working, but in saying “I can’t.”
Well, George kept on working and studying too; every chance he got he bought a few books and read them thoroughly and well, and when he had mastered them, he would look about for more, for he was anxious to lay up something better than money, a good education, which is in fact, always a fortune to its possessor; better than bank stock, because nobody can swindle or cheat you out of it. By the time he was twenty George had saved one hundred and fifty dollars; perhaps you may think that was not a great deal of money. Ah, you don’t know what it is to be poor, and earn every cent by hard labor, or you would not think so. You don’t know how delicious it is, after a tough struggle, to become independent and eat bread of your own earning. Part of the money George had earned he spent in books again and with the remainder of it, and the little library he had collected, he started for Pennsylvania. Georgenow understood thoroughly the building of locks, bridges and all sorts of mason work. All this time he had hired himself out to do work for other people.
It occurred to George now, that he was fit to become a master-workman himself;i.e.agree to build a bridge or some such thing, and hire men to work under him; he was certain that he knew quite as much as a great many other men who did this; in fact, a master-workman who employed George, told him one day, that he was a great fool to be working for him, when he (George) knew more than he did. But just then he was taken with fever and ague, and had to lie by a while; he thought he would then to go home to his native place, and perhaps that might help him, but he did not go to his father’s and live on the old man, not he; he was too proud, now that he was a grown man, to live on his parents, and hear the neighbors say that he “had come to sponge them out of their money;” no, he paid his own board at a tavern near, till he got better; then he worked again perseveringly—worked—worked—though still troubled with an ague chill every day; and now he had earned $2,350—hurrah for George! Then he thought it was about time to treat himself to a gold watch. George always thought it the cheapest in the end to buy athoroughly good article, even should itcost more at first; and there’s where he was right; so he went to Marquand, a jeweler in Broadway, and purchased a watch worth $300—what do you think of that? Well—after he had treated himself to a watch, what does the fellow do but treat himself to a wife. I don’t know what she cost him; a few blushes I dare say, a gold ring I know; to say nothing of the fee for the minister who married them; but I rather think it paid. After his marriage, as he had plenty of money, he thought he would live a while without working; but he was too good a fellow to relish an idle life; he did not believe we were made only to enjoy ourselves. So, like a sensible man he engaged to make part of the famous “Croton-water Works,” which all New York boys have heard of. His part of the work was in “Sleepy Hollow,” which Washington Irving has made so famous. Well, there he lived peaceably and happily with his wife; there he had two dear little children, named Josephine and Mary Alice, and there little Mary closed her bright eyes, and went away with “The Good Shepherd,” who loveth the little lambs. I could tell you a great deal more about George, how he, after a while went to Europe, and visited all the great foreign cities; how, when he came back, he found that his old father had got into debt, and how George, like the good fellowhe was, paid all the old man’s debts, with his own earnings; How happy he must have been to do that for Butter John! How he built “the High Bridge;” how he built a great thumping steamer, called theOregon; how he launched her (that was a splendid sight, I know); and how he bought another steamer, called theNeptune, for I tell you this, George couldn’t be idle to save him—it was not in him; how, afterward he built steamers to carry the United States Mail to California viâ New Orleans and Chagres; and that was a great benefit to his country, greater than I can tell you; how he purchased the Staten Island ferry; how he purchased property in Fifth Avenue, one of the finest streets in New York, and how he went there to live; how there is every thing elegant and comfortable in his house, but what he most values, a splendid library; how he preserves and shows to this day in that library, the old thumbed, dog’s-eared arithmetic, and other books, which he used to pore over when he was a poor boy; and how he can look around his beautiful home and think that it was all honestly and hardly earned, “beginning at the foot of the ladder” (sure enough), as a hod-carrier. Can you wonder that such a man, of such honesty, and energy, and intelligence,should be put up for the highest office our country has to give? Can you wonder that thousands of his fellow-citizens said, in September, 1855, “Give us George—George Law—for President of the United States!”