“When I left home I had $8, $7 50 of which is expended, leaving in my hands 50 cents. I do not know of anything that I want, but I think you had better send to me $4 more.”
In all his letters of this period he calls his eldest brother by his first name, David, and it was not until many years later that his second name, Dudley, is added.
At first Mr. Field was obliged to be at his work between six and seven in the morning, and after he was promoted from errand-boy to clerk the hours for attendance at the store were from a quarter-past eight in the morning until into the evening. “I always made it a point to be there before the partners came and never to leave before the partners left. Mr. Stewart was the leading dry-goods merchant at that time. My ambition was to make myself a thoroughly good merchant. I tried to learn in every department all I possibly could, knowing I had to depend entirely on myself.”
In his simple country home a theatre had always been thought of and spoken of as an entrance to hell, but being of an inquiring mind he determined, as so many country lads have done before and since, upon giving one of his first evenings in the city to finding out for himself what hell was like. The kindred desire to see a large fire was also soon gratified, and the ardor of his curiosity on this subject was at once cooled, for, as he stood watching the blaze, the hose was turned for a moment in the wrong direction, and he was drenched.
The subject of the next letter is the “great fire of 1835,” which took place on December 16th, and destroyed 600 warehouses and $20,000,000 of property.
“New York, December 25, 1835.
“Dear Father,—Last week, on Wednesday night, a fire broke out in a store in Merchant Street which proved to be the largest that was ever known in this country. It burned about 674 buildings, most of which were wholesale stores, and laid waste all of thirty acres of the richest part of this city.
“I was up all night to the fire, and last Sunday was on duty with David as a guard to prevent people from going to the ruins to steal property that was saved from the fire and laying in heaps in the streets.
“The awful state that the city was in can be better imagined than described.