Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIV. THE FOUNDER'S STORY. The Founder--My father was a frugal, hard-working fanner, who finally underwent the fate so common to that class, and lost his land after a succession of mortgages. He had overworked for a long time to avert the calamity, and died soon after it came. I was then fifteen years old. A relative obtained a position for me in a city store. My mother could not see me go away alone at that age, breaking up the family, and as her own home was gone she accompanied me with the three younger children. She had expected some rich town friends of her earlier years to help make the way easier, but they forgot her. We lived, as we had to, in poor quarters; my mother sewed; our joint wages barely kept us. Within three years two of the younger children died. I had then learned book-keeping and secured my present position. We lived better upon my five hundred dollars a year. My remaining brother entered a factory, but never was strong enough to make the best wages, his constitution having been impaired by the privations of our first years in the city. Tenement house and factory life continued to bear unfavorably upon him, and at the age of twenty-seven he died, leaving a brokendown wife and two children, whom I sent to a country town and mainly supported until the children grew up. On account of these demands on my income I never married. I naturally asked myself if it was necessary for people to be crushed and suffering--burdened through life as I and those near to me had been. My employers counted their wealth in millions; each owned several sumptuous houses and lived in the tropics of luxury. I knew of a great number of business and idle men with similar possessions and similar habits of life. Pondering these disturbing...
