Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/88

 pains nor expence to give him the best education the country afforded. He grew up a most promising youth, and bid fair to reward them for their parental cares, by smoothing their decline of life, with a return of those attentions which they had lavished on him from his helpless childhood. The lad was a good accomptant, and was placed with a store-*keeper in Carlisle, until he was supposed by his benefactors sufficiently versed in business, to manage for himself. Tyler then expended the savings of many years industry to furnish for him a respectable country store. The young {65} man commenced business with the fairest prospects, but he had unfortunately contracted habits of drinking and gambling. His business was neglected, one loss followed another, but he had the art of still imposing on the unsuspecting simplicity of his blindly partial and generous patron, until he prevailed on him to be his security for larger sums than his remaining stock of goods would pay. He then absconded, his creditors sued the old man, who to save himself from prison was obliged to dispose of his farm, and after paying the debts of the ungrateful prodigal, with the very small sum which remained to him, he and his wife last year at upwards of sixty years of age each, crossed the mountains, at an inclement season, and purchased a small tract of land about seven miles from Pittsburgh, on which he has since erected a cottage, and where he has cleared and cultivated a few acres, and to enable himself to make his payments, he has taught sacred vocal musick in this town and the surrounding country these two successive winters. His enthusiasm for vocal harmony, and his innocent unsuspecting simplicity, untainted during a long life, by worldly craft, and still believing the mass of mankind as honest and virtuous as himself, notwithstanding the trying proof he had experienced of its baseness, rendered him a singular and original character; I say original, for I much question,