At the end of a few months, for several reasons, it was thought to be better to have Walter Aimwell come to Boston and learn the printer’s art.
CHAPTER III.
THE PRINTER’S APPRENTICE.
On the eleventh day of April, 1837, Walter Aimwell entered as apprentice the printing office of one of the leading printers of Boston. He boarded in the city, not far from the office. There is no record of his leisure hours, or of his experience at any time during the remainder of this year, excepting a passing allusion which we shall hereafter meet.
On the third of October, 1838, he began to keep a sort of journal or note-book, in which he seems to have recorded striking matters of fact which he met in his reading, and to have inserted occasionally a composition of his own.
At the commencement of the book, which contains one hundred and sixty-six carefully written pages, he does not show as good penmanship as in the letter he wrote to his mother, a year or two before. Very likely he had written nothing worth mentioning since. From remarks that he afterward makes, it is to be presumed that he was dissatisfied with himself in this respect, and was determined to see if he could not make some improvement, both manual and mental, by practising by himself.
After we have seen the successes of a person distinguished for anything, his first attempts become interesting. Here is transcribed, without any alteration whatever, Walter Aimwell’s first essay, dated October 5th, 1838, just twenty-five days before he was sixteen years old.
“WEALTH.
“How few in this world are contented! Man is forever grasping at something,—either wealth or fame or honor. One man spends his whole life in hoarding up riches; his days and his nights are all employed in laborious exertions to procure that which, when he dies, he leaves behind him. He cannot be happy; the more he gets, the more he wants. Perhaps he starts in life penniless. He eagerly looks forward to the time when he can have money enough to live easily; he aims no higher than this. By his exertions he obtains the desired object. But when he gets it, he is no more satisfied than before; he sees men, who, he thinks, were made for the most menial offices, rolling in their carriages; his imagination is filled with splendid houses and lands and servants and carriages; and he makes it the whole object of his life to gain these. He engages in all manner of speculations, and at length, perhaps, becomes rich. But is he happy? No; he has cares now that he never had before, and which he would gladly get rid of; he watches his property with a jealous eye; it engrosses all his time now to take care of what he has got, till at last death steps in for a share. And now of what use is his money to him? All he can now claim is a little spot of earth large enough to contain his dead body. And if he have children, it is too often the case they revel in the riches which has cost him a life of hard labor, and soon spend it in profligacy; and they, in turn, are left penniless.
“This is, generally speaking, all the satisfaction a man that pursues wealth gets. But the true Christian, the philanthropist, has higher and nobler ends to live for than this. He does not confine his attention exclusively to wealth nor honor nor fame; but he aims in some degree to benefit his fellow-men. His pleasure does not consist in counting his money, but in doing good with it. He spends his time, or a part of it at least, in visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, or perhaps carrying the heralds of the cross to the destitute. And when death visits him, he can look back upon his past life with some satisfaction; he knows that he has made good use of the talent which his Maker has given him. He lives like a man and dies comparatively happy. For my part, give me neither poverty nor riches.”