CHAP. XIV.[ToC]
THE FLOUR STORE.
The men with whom Samuel had found a place, were large flour dealers. Their new porter pleased them. He, too, was pleased with his business. Nothing could be more pleasant for me now, than to relate to you scores of little incidents connected with Samuel's history, while he was in that store. But if I do that, I fear I shall spin out my thread so long that you will get weary. I will tell you a few things, though.
It was Samuel's daily duty to sweep out the store. This task he performed early in the morning, before either of the partners or any of the clerks were at their posts. One morning, the first thing he saw, after opening the store, was a roll of bank bills, lying on the floor. He took it up, and unrolled it. There were some ten or twelve dollars in it. As soon as the book-keeper came to the store, Samuel handed him the roll of bank bills, and went about his work. That was a small matter, wasn't it? But small as it was, those flour merchants, when they heard of it, noted it down in their memory.
Months passed. The book-keeper went into business for himself. A new book-keeper was needed to take his place. Samuel was talked of. "But can Samuel be depended upon?" it was asked. "Can we trust him? Is he faithful, and honest, and capable?" I don't know what decision they would have come to, if it had not been for the affair of the bank bills. But his honesty in that particular was brought up. They thought it would do to trust a young man who could resist such a temptation as that. There was another thing they had heard about Samuel, which they thought pretty good evidence that he was honest. It was this: While Samuel was in the factory, he bought some articles at the village store. After he had paid for them, and got away a little distance, he found that the clerk had made a mistake in giving change, and that he had in his pocket fifty cents more than belonged to him. So he turned right around, went back to the store, and returned the money to the clerk.
"He's the man," they all said, as soon as these facts were stated. So Samuel became the book-keeper in that large house, with a salary four times as large as he had received while he was the porter.
Some two or three years from the time he went to Boston to live, Samuel Bissell was one of the partners in that wealthy firm. He is by no means an old man now. Indeed, he is in the very prime of life. But he has got to be a rich man, and now owns one of the most beautiful country seats within a dozen miles of Boston, where he resides with his family. A great many merchants are so much engaged in making money, that they seem to care hardly anything about improving the mind, and so they let that get all full of weeds. But Mr. Bissell did very differently. He spent a great part of the time which he could spare from his business, in gathering new sheaves of knowledge, and cultivating the garden of the heart.