Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/39

 CHAPTER III.

GOULD AS SURVEYOR AND HISTORIAN.

The tin shop was profitable but slow, and with an outcropping of the avidity which he afterward showed, he sought for something more lucrative. In 1852 he transferred his interest to his father and arranged to take charge of a surveying party at twenty dollars a month. Gould had heard of a man in Ulster county who was looking for an assistant. He was making a map of that county and Gould wrote to him. When he left home to take the position, his father offered him money, but he left all his capital in the store, burned his ships behind him, and took only money enough to pay his fare to the place where the new position was to begin. His new employer started him out to make the surveys, to see where the roads were and to locate the residences. He also instructed young Gould to get trusted for his living expenses along the way, and that he would pay them following after him. Two or three days later, Gould ran against the first objection to this arrangement from one of his entertainers, who knew that the employer had already failed three times. He agreed to trust young Gould but would not trust the employer. The boy wandered on after this rebuff until three o'clock,