Barker paid James in silver, and after reaching home he piled the coins up on the table and gazed at them with a sort of stupid wonder. Never before had he at one time possessed more than two shillings, seldom that,—more frequently a few pennies for holding a horse, opening a gate, or doing some errand for the men in the glass-house, and he counted them over and over.
James now knew the value of a dollar in theory, how many cents there were in a dollar, and how many mills in a cent; and yet he had little more conception of its practical value than a red Indian, for he had not received any wages nor bought anything above the value of a penny loaf or a bit of cheese. At length, looking up wistfully in the face of Mr. Whitman, he asked,—
“How much would all these dollars buy?”
“According to what you might buy. They would buy a good deal of some articles and not much of others; they would buy about twenty-four bushels of wheat and thirty of corn, but they would not buy a great deal of coffee, or indigo, or broadcloth, or silk.”
“I’d buy a gun and lots of powder and shot,” said Bertie.
“Would it buy any land, Mr. Whitman?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“That would depend upon circumstances. In the western part of Ohio, of wild land, one hundred and eighty acres—more than half as much as I have got here.”
“O my! how much is an acre? I know what the arithmetic says, one hundred and sixty square poles. But how big a piece is it?”