CHAPTER XIV. “Want you a man Experienced in the world and its affairs? IN the course of a few days after the election, Mr. Hoskins and his wife, with a great cargo of wares and other notions in their waggons, arrived from Vermont. They had been upwards of three weeks on the road, and the old lady had suffered greatly from the joltings of the crossways in the journey; nor had her husband endured less, but, being a man of few words, we heard less of it. I saw, however, that he moved with anguish, and was not for some days even disposed to enter into conversation, but went crippling about the door with his hand on his hip, uttering every now and then a sharp and peevish "Ah!" At last, he said one morning, "This will not serve, we must set to work ;" and then he told me what he had brought for the store, having sold his farm and betterments to good advantage. Accordingly, the first thing to be done, was to get the town lot, which we had previously chosen in the area allotted for the marketplace of the village, cleared, and to contract for the erection of a building suitable for a store-all this was soon done. In the course of less than a fortnight we were in possession, and furnishing ourselves with a goodly display of real articles, very different from the brickbats and knobs of wood with which my first store in New York was so creditably adorned; for Mr. Hoskins, as the reader already knows, was a man of true substance, and brought with him more than three thousand dollars' worth of excellent goods, selected with sagacity. From the beginning of time, there had not been such a store as our's opened for many a mile around in the country, of which Babelmandel was the centre; nor was it long till we felt the profitable effects of keeping back the merchandise, purchased at Olympus, for by so doing it caused the settlers to talk concerning us and our plans, and restrained many amongst them from sending for supplies elsewhere, and to hold off from buying until they should see what our general assortments were likely to be. In short, it was soon evident that a bright morning had opened on me and mine, and that the difficulties I had met with in New York on my return from the farm in Jersey, were among the means which Providence had appointed to repair my condition, and to double the prosperity of my latter days, like as was done to the patient Patriarch of old. But unless the reader is an amateur of buying and selling, it would afford him but small pleasure to speak of the details of our proceedings across the counter; let it then suffice, that he knows I was content with my prospects, and if we were not making money like slate-stones, as the auld Scotch wife said, we were turning the penny. It must have been observed, in the course of reading the foregoing pages, that I was what may be said, both in shifts and discernments, more of a town-man than a pastoral rustic. I was bred mechanical; my natural defects and infirmities gave me no capacity for superiority in controversies of strength. The arm of flesh` was not mine, nor the vigour of comeliness in my looks, like as in those of Samson; but I was favoured, as many thought, with a discerning spirit, and thereby possessed an urbane wisdom of great efficacy in managing men according to their own interests. Thus it came to pass, that as the business in the store continued to thrive, I took less and less heed of my farm of fifty acres: but I did not altogether neglect it; on the contrary, before the year was done, I began to look forward to it as a policy and pleasure, for the recreation of my leisure. In this acknowledgement, the intelligent reader has received a hint that I was likely to take a part in the municipal proceedings of Babelmandel--as we would have said in other days, in the society of the friends of the people— which was the plain fact. The store became the rendezvous of the inhabitants; and, if statesmen could have overheard how affairs of governments and nations were handled there, many of them would have had but pale opinions of their own wisdom. Being thus by accident, and without seeking of my own, placed in the centre, and made the oracle of the inhabitants, and moreover, having a sort of positive authority by my temporary magistracy, symptoms began to kithe that I was ordained for greater trusts :-at last I thought so myself, and considered it necessary to keep aloof from the cabals and factions of the place; for I need not say, that in America, as well as elsewhere, no place is so small a cabal cannot be bred in, nor a head so inexperienced as not to be able to give a great deal of trouble. One afternoon, during which there had been a contentious conversation in the store among some of the settlers, chiefly Americans, as to whether Great Britain or the United States was the most refined nation; I thought with myself, in walking home in the evening, what a wastrie of time was caused by the inconsiderate talk of uninformed men; and it was on that occasion I first had a glimpse of the real and pecuniary |