At night you had only to feed the kettles and keep up the fires, the sap having been gathered and the wood cut before dark.

During the day we would always lay in a good stock of 'fat-pine' by the light of which, blazing bright before the sugar-house, in the posture the serpent was condemned to assume, as a penalty for tempting our first grandmother, I passed many a delightful night in reading.

I remember in this way to have read a history of the French Revolution, and to have obtained from it a better and more enduring knowledge of its events and horrors and of the actors in that great national tragedy, than I have received from all subsequent reading.

I remember also how happy I was in being able to borrow the books of a Mr.Keyes after a two-mile tramp through the snow, shoeless, my feet swaddled in remnants of rag carpet." "That fellow will beat us all some day," said a merchant, speaking of John Wanamaker and his close attention to his work.

What a prediction to make of a young man who started business with a little clothing in a hand cart in the streets of Philadelphia.