a daughter disappears and may be found some miles off on a good farm, making butter and raising children, and has good luck at both. The old man is getting fat, has money lent out, loves to see his friends, house neat as a pin, glorious place to visit, etc., etc. But who can tell how many sorts more there are in the great heterogeneous West, and how amusing the mixture often is, and what strange customs grow out of the mingling of so many diverse materials. It is like a kaleidoscope, every turn gives a new sight. We will take our leisure, and give some sketches of men, and manners and scenery, as we have seen them in the West.
About eight years ago a raw Dutchman, whose only English was a good-natured yes to every possible question, got employment here as a stable-man. His wages were six dollars and board; that was $36 in six months, for not one cent did he spend. He washed his own shirt and stockings, mended and patched his own breeches, paid for his tobacco by some odd jobs, and laid by his wages. The next six months, being now able to talk “goot Inglish,” he obtained eight dollars a month, and at the end of six months more had $48, making in all for the year $84. The second year, by varying his employment—sawing wood in winter, working for the corporation in summer, making garden in spring, he laid by $100, and the third year $125, making in three years $309.
With this he bought 80 acres of land. It was as wild as when the deer fled over it, and the Indian pursued him. How should he get a living while clearing it? Thus he did it. He hires a man to clear and fence ten acres. He himself remains in town to earn the money to pay for the clearing. Behold him! already risen a degree, he is an employer! In two years’ time he has twenty acres well cleared, a log-house and stable, and money enough to buy stock and tools. He now rises another step in the world, for he gets married, and with his amply-built, broad-faced,
good-natured wife, he gives up the town and is a regular farmer.
In Germany he owned nothing and never could; his wages were nominal, his diet chiefly vegetable, and his prospect was, that he would be obliged to labor as a menial for life, barely earning a subsistence and not leaving enough to bury him. In five years, he has become the owner in fee simple of a good farm, with comfortable fixtures, a prospect of rural wealth, an independent life, and, by the blessing of heaven and his wife, of an endless posterity. Two words tell the whole story—Industry and Economy. These two words will make any man rich at the West.
We know of another case. While Gesenius, the world-wide famous Hebrew scholar, was as school, he had a bench-fellow named Eitlegeorge. I know nothing of his former life. But ten years ago I knew him in Cincinnati as a baker, and a first-rate one too; and while Gesenius issued books and got fame, Eitlegeorge issued bread and got money. At length he disappeared from the city. Travelling from Cincinnati to Indianapolis, a year or two since, I came upon a farm of such fine land that it attracted my attention, and induced me to ask for the owner. It belonged to our friend of the oven! There was a whole township belonging to him, and a good use he appeared to make of it. Courage then, ye bakers! In a short time you may raise wheat instead of molding dough.
A Hole in the Pocket.—If it were not for these holes in the pocket, we should all be rich. A pocket is like a cistern, a small leak at the bottom is worse than a large pump at the top. God sends rain enough every year, but it is not every man that will take pains to catch it; and it is not every man that catches it who knows how to keep it.