Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen | Page 2

he climbed steeples, dug wells, and did all kinds of disagreeable jobs that needed to be done, and from which sober and cautious men shrank like unwashed wool.
One such man--a German, too--lives in East Aurora. I joined him, accidentally, in walking along a country road the other day. He carried a big basket on his arm, and was peacefully smoking a big Dutch pipe. We talked of music and he was regretting the decline of a taste for Bach, when he shifted the basket to the other arm.
``What have you in the basket?'' I asked.
And here is the answer, ``Noddings--but dynamite. I vas going up on der hill, already, to blow me oud some stumps oud.'' And I suddenly bethought me of an engagement I had at the village.

John Jacob Astor was the youngest of four sons, and as many daughters. The brothers ran away early in life, and went to sea or joined the army. One of these boys came to America, and followed his father's trade of butcher.
Jacob Astor, the happy father of John Jacob, used to take the boy with him on his pig-killing expeditions. This for two reasons--one, so the lad would learn a trade, and the other to make sure that the boy did not run away.
Parents who hold their children by force have a very slender claim upon them. The pastor of the local Lutheran Church took pity on this boy, who had such disgust for his father's trade and hired him to work in his garden and run errands.
The intelligence and alertness of the lad made him look like good timber for a minister.
He learned to read and was duly confirmed as a member of the church.
Under the kindly care of the village parson John Jacob grew in mind and body--his estate was to come later. When he was seventeen, his father came and made a formal demand for his services. The young man must take up his father's work of butchering.
That night John Jacob walked out of Waldorf by the wan light of the moon, headed for Antwerp. He carried a big red handkerchief in which his worldly goods were knotted, and in his heart he had the blessings of the Lutheran clergyman, who walked with him for half a mile, and said a prayer at parting.
To have youth, high hope, right intent, health and a big red handkerchief is to be greatly blessed.
John Jacob got a job next day as oarsman on a lumber raft.
He reached Antwerp in a week. There he got a job on the docks as a laborer. The next day he was promoted to checker- off. The captain of a ship asked him to go to London and figure up the manifests on the way. He went.
The captain of the ship recommended him to the company in London, and the boy was soon piling up wealth at the rate of a guinea a month.
In September, Seventeen Hundred and Eighty-three, came the news to London that George Washington had surrendered. In any event, peace had been declared-- Cornwallis had forced the issue, so the Americans had stopped fighting.
A little later it was given out that England had given up her American Colonies, and they were free.
Intuitively John Jacob Astor felt that the ``New World'' was the place for him. He bought passage on a sailing ship bound for Baltimore, at a cost of five pounds. He then fastened five pounds in a belt around his waist, and with the rest of his money--after sending two pounds home to his father, with a letter of love--bought a dozen German flutes.
He had learned to play on this instrument with proficiency, and in America he thought there would be an opening for musicians and musical instruments.
John Jacob was then nearly twenty years of age.
The ship sailed in November, but did not reach Baltimore until the middle of March, having to put back to sea on account of storms when within sight of the Chesapeake. Then a month was spent later hunting for the Chesapeake. There was plenty of time for flute-playing and making of plans.
On board ship he met a German, twenty years older than himself, who was a fur trader and had been home on a visit.
John Jacob played the flute and the German friend told stories of fur trading among the Indians.
Young Astor's curiosity was excited. The Waldorf-Astoria plan of flute-playing was forgotten. He fed on fur trading.
The habits of the animals, the value of their pelts, the curing of the furs, their final market, was all gone over again and again. The two extra months at sea gave him an insight into a great business and he had the time to fletcherize his ideas. He thought about it--wrote about it in his diary, for he was at the