and thy own convenience.''

Astor had made friends with the Indians up the Hudson clear
to Albany, and they were acting as recruiting agents for him.
He was a bit boastful of the fact that he had taught an
Indian to play the flute, and anyway he had sold the savage
the instrument for a bale of beaver pelts, with a bearskin
thrown in for good measure. It was a musical achievement
as well as a commercial one.

Having collected several thousand dollars' worth of furs he
shipped them to London and embarked as a passenger in the
steerage. 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. He took
orders, on sample, from the nobility and sundry of the gentry,
and thereby cut the middleman. All of the money he received
for his skins, he invested in ``Indian Goods''--colored cloth,
beads, blankets, knives, axes, and musical instruments.

His was the first store in New York that carried a stock of
musical instruments. These he sold to savages, and also he
supplied the stolid Dutch the best of everything in this
particular line from a bazoo to a Stradivarius violin.