Chapter III
Reading edition
About a year after their conversations, Tom Cheney came home to visit his father. The ambitious youth, who had acquired half his education by reading the newspapers, had not written his father concerning his business prospects.
“Why, Tom, what have you been about all this time?” asked the old gentleman, as he surveyed Tom’s spruce appearance.
“Making money, father,” replied the hopeful son.
“Have you made any, Tom?”
“A little.”
“A little! Guess you’d better staid at home, and worked on the farm. You was doin’ well here.”
“Done pretty well as it is.”
“How much you made, Tom?”
“Five thousand.”
“Git out! You are jokin’, Tom.”
“True as preaching.”
“How did you do it?”
“Well, I went into that ‘chance for young men;’ but that wan’t much; so I looked into the newspapers for something better.”
“Newspapers again,” sneered Farmer Cheney.
“The first thing I saw was, that peaches were selling down south for ten cents a bushel, while they brought two dollars here. You see, the risk of transporting them makes the difference. Then I saw in the same paper that preserved peaches brought two shillings a pound north; so I put that and that together, and hatched out a speculation. I bought the sugar, and sent it down to Delaware, where the peaches were cheap, and went to making preserves there. In this way I made money.”
“You are a shrewd one, Tom.”
“All owing to the newspapers, father.”
“Git out!”
“I see by the papers that the Chinese empire has been divided, and the rebels are in a fair way of making China a Christian country. I have a great notion of going out there to establish a line of stages between Shanghae and Nankin. What do you think about it?”
“Don’t know what to think. I’m done thinkin’; but, Tom, when you go to Boston again, just drop in and tell ’em to send me the American Union and the Practical Farmer for one year. Here’s the three dollars.”
“Bravo! you are a brick, after all, pa!”