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Updated: July 17, 2025
The trip showed him that ability to sell was quite as necessary as the ability to buy a point which with all of his shrewdness Bowne had never guessed. In London furs were becoming a fad. Astor sorted and sifted his buyers, as he had his skins. He himself dressed in a suit of fur and thus proved his ability as an advertiser. He picked his men and charged all the traffic would bear.
As he approached an Indian settlement he played his flute. The aborigines showed no disposition to give him the hook. He hired Indians to paddle him up to the Canadian border. He reached Montreal. The fur-traders there knew Bowne as a very sharp buyer, and so had their quills out on his approach. But young Astor was seemingly indifferent. His manner was courteous and easy.
Mr. Bowne was delighted with the success of his clerk, who proved more than a match for the shrewd Indians in his bargains. It was doubtless here that Mr. Astor obtained that facility in "driving a hard bargain" for which he was afterwards noted. As soon as Mr. Astor felt himself master of his business, he left the employ of Mr. Bowne, and began life on his own account.
Bowne went to Montreal himself because he did not know of any one he could trust to carry the message to Garcia. Those who knew furs and had judgment were not honest, and those who were honest did not know furs. Honest fools are really no better than rogues, as far as practical purposes are concerned.
The Indians carried his goods by relays and then passed him on with guttural certificates as to character, to other red men, and at last he reached New York without the loss of a pelt or the dampening of his ardor. Bowne was delighted. To young Astor it was nothing. He had in his blood the success corpuscle.
Between the encroachments of the hegelians and other philosophers of the 'Absolute, on the one hand, and those of the scientific evolutionists and agnostics, on the other, the men that give us this kind of a philosophy, James Martineau, Professor Bowne, Professor Ladd and others, must feel themselves rather tightly squeezed.
'Fear not, said Lord Boteler, 'he shall be found, if this or the four adjacent counties hold him. And now Lord Fitzosborne will be pleased to doff the armour he has so kindly assumed for our sakes, and we will all bowne ourselves for the banquet. When the hour of dinner approached, the Lady Matilda and her cousin visited the chamber of the fair Darcy.
He gained a fortune by his business, which would have been thought immense, if the colossal wealth of his brother had not reduced all other estates to comparative insignificance. It was he who bought, for eight hundred dollars, the acre of ground on part of which the old Bowery Theatre now stands. John Jacob Astor remained not long in the employment of Robert Bowne.
He might have remained with Bowne and become a partner in the business, but Bowne had business limitations and Astor hadn't. So after a three years' apprenticeship, Astor knew all that Bowne did and all he himself could imagine besides. So he resigned. In Seventeen Hundred Eighty-six, John Jacob Astor began business on his own account in a little store on Water Street, New York.
He thought about it wrote about it in his diary, for he was at the journal age. Wolves, bears, badgers, minks and muskrats filled his dreams. Arriving in Baltimore he was disappointed to learn that there were no fur-traders there. He started for New York. Here he found work with a certain Robert Bowne, a Quaker, who bought and sold furs.
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