Oliver offered the man eighteen dollars for the mansion, cash down. The offer was accepted, the money paid and the receipt was duly shown to Joseph Doty, Esquire.
And so James and Susan were married, on May Thirtieth, Eighteen Hundred Forty-four, and all Mishawaka gave them a "shower." To say that they lived happily ever afterward would be trite, but also it would be true.
James Oliver was thirty-two years old before he really struck his pace. He had worked at the cooper's trade, at molding and at farming.
His eighteen-dollar house at Mishawaka had transformed itself into one worth a thousand, fully paid for. The God's half-acre had become a quarter-section.
His wife had beauty and competence—two things which do not always go together. She was industrious, economical, intelligent and ambitious. She was a helpmeet in all that the word implies. The man whose heart is at rest is the only one who can win. Jealousy gnaws. Doubt disrupts. But love and faith mean sanity, strength, usefulness and length of days. The man who succeeds is the one who is helped by a good woman.
Two children had come to them. These were Joseph D. and Josephine. Napoleon was always a hero to James Oliver—his courage, initiative and welling sense of power, more than his actual deeds, were the attraction. The Empress Josephine was a better woman than Napoleon was a man, contended Susan. Susan was right and James acknowledged it, so the girl baby was named Josephine. The boy was named Joseph, in honor of his grandfather Doty, who had passed away, but who, before his passing, had come to see that Nature was nearer right than he had been.
Children should exercise great care in the selection of their parents. Very, very few children are ever dowered with a love that makes for strength of head, hand and heart, as were these.
In Eighteen Hundred Fifty-five, James Oliver was over at South Bend, a town that had started up a few miles down the river from Mishawaka, and accidentally met a man who wanted to sell his one-fourth interest in a foundry. He would sell at absolutely inventory value. They made an inventory and the one-fourth came to just eighty-eight dollars and ninety-six cents. Oliver had a hundred dollars in his pocket, and paid the man at once.
Cast-iron plows formed one item of this little foundry's work. Oliver, being a farmer, knew plows—and he knew that there was not a good plow in the world. Where others saw and accepted, he rebelled. He insisted that an approximately perfect plow could be made. He realized that a good plow should stay in the ground without wearing out the man at the handles.