Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/69



N the month of February, 1835, I read an advertisement in the Lowell Journal, asking for a clerk in a store, application to be made at the office. I at once wrote to Joseph S. Hubbard, a former schoolmate, asking him to call at the office and get the name of the advertiser. This he did, and gave me the name of Benj. P. Dix of Groton. I wrote to Mr. Dix, and upon the receipt of an answer, I went with my father to see him. The result was an agreement to work for him for three years. Terms, board and one hundred dollars for the first year, one hundred and twelve dollars for the second year, one hundred and twenty-five dollars for the third year. I commenced my clerkship with Mr. Dix the fifth day of March, and in the month of September my contract was ended by his failure. His business was small, his manners were abrupt, his capital had been limited, and his family expenses, not extravagant, had exceeded his income, and bankruptcy in the end was inevitable. His sales were chiefly of boots, shoes, leather, and medicines, of which he kept the only stock in the village.

Mr. Dix was a man of exact ways of life. The sales made were entered each day at the close of business, the cash was carefully counted, and the cash-book was balanced. But these careful and businesslike ways did not save him, and in Sep-