"When I look back, I can trace the small events which happened at your age as having an influence upon all the after things. My academy lessons, little academy balls, and eight-cent expenses for music and gingerbread, the agreeable partners in the hall, and pleasant companions in the stroll, all helped to make me feel that I had a character even then; and, after leaving school and going into the store, there was not a month passed before I became impressed with the opinion that restraint upon appetite was necessary to prevent the slavery I saw destroying numbers around me. Many and many of the farmers, mechanics, and apprentices, of that day, have filled drunkards' graves, and have left destitute families and friends.
"The knowledge of every-day affairs which I acquired in my business apprenticeship in Groton has been a source of pleasure and profit even in my last ten years' discipline."
The responsibility thrown upon the young clerk was very great; and he seems cheerfully to have accepted it, and to have given himself up entirely to the performance of his business duties. His time, from early dawn till evening, was fully taken up; and, although living in the family of his employer, and within a mile of his father's house, a whole week would sometimes pass without his having leisure to pay even a flying visit.
But few details of his apprenticeship can now be gathered either from his contemporaries or from any allusions in his own writings. He was disabled for a time by an accident which came near being fatal. In assisting an acquaintance to unload a gun, by some means the charge exploded, and passed directly through the middle of his hand, making a round hole like that of a bullet. Sixty-three shot were picked out of the floor after the accident, and it seemed almost a miracle that he ever again had the use of his hand.
[CHAPTER III.]
ARRIVAL IN BOSTON.—CLERKSHIP.—COMMENCES BUSINESS.—HABITS.—LETTERS.
On the 22d of April, 1807, Mr. Lawrence became of age; and his apprenticeship, which had lasted seven years, was terminated.
On the 29th of the same month, he took his father's horse and chaise, and engaged a neighbor to drive him to Boston, with, as he says, many years afterwards,—
"Twenty dollars in my pocket, but feeling richer than I had ever felt before, or have felt since; so rich that I gave the man who came with me two dollars to save him from any expense, and insure him against loss by his spending two days on the journey here and back (for which he was glad of an excuse)."