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He said he wouldn't fool his time away with a boy who had no taste for the business, and so informed my mother. I returned home with her, and that evening she and Mr. Keefer and myself had a long conference. We talked about the past, and my mother suggested all kinds of trades, professions and clerkships, all of which I objected to, because I would not work for some one else. Mr.
After borrowing money enough from an old school-mate, I paid my board bill and bought a ticket for home. I had been away less than four weeks. I first met Mr. Keefer at the barn and explained to him "just how it all happened," and how the soap dried up, and how I had become stranded at Toledo and borrowed money to get home with.
River and canal were still considered the great highways of through traffic. Only where there were gaps to be bridged between the more important waterways was the railway at first thought profitable. In the phrase of one of the most distinguished of Canadian engineers, Thomas C. Keefer, the early roads were portage roads.
They couldn't imagine that I had hired out as a teamster, and if I had, they couldn't see how I could work for some one else and sell polish too. She said when she read my letter Mr. Keefer declared that "that boy would keep hustling and die with his boots on before he would ever hire out as a teamster or any thing else." And he wanted her to find out at once what on earth it meant.
Keefer the wink, and he followed me to the barn, when I began negotiations for a small loan to take me to Springfield.
My mother said she thought I had made a splendid record for a boy with a family. Mr. Keefer said, "It did beat the devil." I remained at home but a day or two, during which time Mr. Keefer was called away on business, leaving my mother and myself to discuss the future together.
I buckled into him, and kick, bite, scratch, gouge, pull hair, twist noses, and strike from the shoulder were the order of the day. I felt all-confident and sailed in for all I was worth, and finished him in less than three minutes, to the evident satisfaction of Mr. Keefer, whom, when the fight was waxing hot, I espied standing on the dunghill with a broad smile taking in the combat.
Keefer on Monday morning. We moved the balance of the stock to another town, where our sales ran from one to three hundred dollars per day. I had a settlement every night, as soon as the receipts were counted, and on the following morning sent the money to Mr. Keefer, reserving only enough to pay my family expenses, which I practiced sending home every Friday.
Keefer traded his fine farm three miles from town for a house and lot in town, and a small fruit farm one mile out, and received some cash besides. They had moved in town about the time I was ready to start for Chicago. My mother said, that while I had so much money, it would be a good to pay back some I had borrowed of them, before I lost it all. Mr.
My mother said she thought I had done splendidly "for a married man." Mr. Keefer said "It did beat the d l!" Soon after my arrival home I received a letter from a horse-trainer then located at Springfield, Ohio, saying I had been recommended to him as a splendid horse-back rider, a general "hus'ler" in business, and possibly a good advertiser.
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