Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/98

82 anew. What a place these classes have in our history! Put aside one steady-going man out of a hundred, and you will find the ninety-and-nine are quite worthy to be called gamblers. We all play at the game of chance. The Puritans played it,—selling one newly settled farm, and striking out into a newer country to better themselves. The Californian miner played it,—prospecting in wild solitudes for the sake of hope. The store-keeper plays it when he starts his business on credit. The physician and lawyer play it as they choose debt and trusting to the "pay-as-you-go" modus. We all play it. If the game succeeds,—and in some measure or other it generally does succeed,—the player is not selfish. Your American man of business is not a selfish man. Quickly his money changes hands; he makes the trade of his fellows brisk by his mites or his millions; he backs all of his acquaintances with ready dollars. But he is provident. While he makes free with his capital, he has a good life, and a "pile" of some size or other laid by for keeping. This idea was got from the old-time New-York burgher, whose rule of "putting by a dollar for every dollar spent" is amended a good deal by present usage. The inheritance of fun in business, of making business a pleasure, came from the old-time Boston tradesman. Even as Caleb Grosvenor of Milk Street found trade "more amusing than a game of quoits," so our modern business-man enjoys his trade to such an extent, that, even though he is unfortunate, he prides himself on the pleasure it afforded him, and commences again with the idea of having a new game of amusement. Then comes the satisfaction of the reflection, that, whatever one's change of fortune may be, the country has such magnificent resources that the phoenix of prosperity will rise even from the ashes of panics.

Trade in Colonial times was sensational. There was first of all the fur trade, and nothing more thrilling than the adventures of the trappers of the last century has ever been written. Though powder and fire-water bought the furs of the white or Indian trapper, there was fine business in collecting the furs, and there was excitement as well. Perhaps an itinerant fur-buyer paid occasionally for an otter skin with his scalp; yet the game was fascinating, and the chances of death had few terrors. There were also privations, long journeys, and the battle with the extremes of cold; but then at last came the journey's end, and money payment. There was rivalry of merchants, too, in the wilds,—the American Fur Company and the Hudson Bay Company, each bidding rum prices for furs. There were savage fights in this rivalry, and the staining of many a fur robe with crimson. There was cheating too,—the cheating of Indians by the agents, who had passed out the whiskey until the red men did not know what they were doing. There were losses too,—moths, and robbery, and the burden of the power of storm.

In other branches of industry the like prevailed, until we who have come after have pride in saying that our history has been that of a trading people. Every colonist, and every colonist's son, had a mercantile aptitude. From the first, there were grand openings in agriculture and commerce; and with fertile soil and magnificent harbors, the promise first made has never been broken. New blood provoked feverish action. As the country grew, its people worked with the force of a high-pressure engine,