what the prospect was for the brother-in-law he was so proud of,
persuaded him to abandon the law at once, and forever, and go into the
jobbing and retail dry-goods business with him, on the corner of Court
and Marlborough, now Washington Street. He had no capital, to be sure,
but then he wrote a beautiful hand, was very methodical, and had made
himself acquainted with bookkeeping, after the Italian method, from
Rees's Cyclopædia. I took the chamber which Mr. Pierpont left, and went
into the jobbing business also, with a capital of between two and three
hundred--dollars, and a credit amounting to perhaps five hundred more,
which enterprise terminated after a few months, not in my failure, but
in my taking a trip to New York with a large quantity of smuggled goods,
belonging to Messrs. Pierpont and Lord, where I disposed of them to such
advantage, that, on my return, I was persuaded to go into the retail
haberdashery line, at 103 Court Street, next door to Pierpont and Lord,
and just underneath the chamber, not chambers, which I had occupied at
first with my wholesale establishment. I had for a partner, at first,
Erastus, a brother of "Joe's," whom I had known as a bookbinder in
Portland two or three years before. He was now manufacturing
pocket-books, and appeared to be doing, not only a large and profitable,
but safe business,--selling for cash, running a horse and gig, and
paying the bills of all the "dear five hundred friends" who rode with
him.

Our copartnership did not last long. His brother "Joe," being a shrewd
man of business, of uncommon foresight and comprehensiveness, though
rather adventurous, gave me a hint, and soon provided me with another
partner, a graduate of Cambridge, named Fisher, with whom I was
associated a few months longer. Then came the peace of 1815, which threw
the whole country into a paroxysm of joy, unsettling business
everywhere, at home and abroad, and setting people together by the ears