“I wish you would make for me, as soon as convenient, a black broadcloth coat with skirts, and covered buttons, and as I wish it for a dress-coat the cloth must be very fine and made extremely nice. You cannot be too particular about it.”
In his letter written from New York on July 15, 1837, he says:
“David arrived on Monday, July 10th, in the packet ship Oxford, from Liverpool. He had a passage of thirty-seven days. He is in very good health. The Ladies’ Greek Association of Stockbridge held their fair the 4th of July on Little Hill, and raised one hundred and twenty-seven dollars ($127). Well done for old Stockbridge.”
The Mercantile Library in Clinton Hall, at the southwest corner of Nassau and Beekman streets, proved an attractive place to him, and whenever it was possible he went there in the evening to read; and he also joined an “Eclectic Fraternity,” to which Mr. Jackson S. Schultz belonged. The Fraternity met for debate every Saturday evening in a fourth-story room over a leather store in the Swamp.
Mr. Stewart’s rules were strict. One of them was that every clerk must enter in a book the minute that he came in the morning, left for dinner, returned from dinner, went to supper and came back; and if he was late in the morning, at dinner over an hour, or required more than three-quarters of an hour for supper, he must pay twenty-five cents for each offence. The fines thus collected, Mr. Stewart told his clerks, would be kept and given to any charity that they should select. This went on until September 30, 1837, and then this paper was drawn up:
“New York, September 30, 1837.
“We, the undersigned, hereby nominate and appoint Cyrus W. Field treasurer to receive the fines of the young men paid during the month of September to Messrs. A. T. Stewart & Co.:
| Edward K. Shed, | Geo. Haywood, |
| J. R. McElroy, | D. R. Park, |
| James Shond, | M. Goodrich, |
| H. T. Selden, | John Wm. Byron, |
| Charles St. John, | A. Matthew, |
| Webster Thompson, | T. Jones, |
| C. Zabriskie, Jr., | S. H. Maynard, |
| Jno. K. Walker, | C. Austin, |
| E. B. Williams, | Paul Burdock, |
| Henry Rutgers Prall, | P. Fellows, |
| Thomas H. Selby, | Edmund S. Mills, |
| James Beck, | James Macfarlan, |
| J. B. Smith, | A. Sahtler, |
| R. Whyte.” | |
The clerks were paid at the beginning of each month, and on the 1st of October the paper was presented, and the cashier was asked for the money, which he declined to give. An appeal was taken to Mr. Stewart, who ordered it to be given to the young men.