Staples says he came to Concord some twenty-four years ago a poor boy with a dollar and three cents in his pocket, and he spent the three cents for drink at Bigelow’s tavern, and now he ’s worth “twenty hundred dollars clear.”
He remembers many who inherited wealth whom he can buy out to-day.
I told him that he had done better than I in a pecuniary respect, for I had only earned my living.
“Well,” said he, “that ’s all I’ve done, and I don’t know as I’ve got much better clothes than you.”I was particularly poorly clad then, in the woods; my hat, pants, boots, rubbers, and gloves would not have brought four pence, and I told the Irishman that it wasn’t everybody could afford to have a fringe round his legs, as I had, my corduroys not preserving a selvage.
Staples said there was one thing he liked.
“What is that?”
“An honest man.”If he lent a man money, and when it became due he came and asked for more time because he could not pay, he excused him, but if, after it had become due, he went to the man, and he then made the same excuse, he lost all confidence in him.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 8, 1857
My corduroys not preserving a selvage. See May 8, 1857 ("Within a week I have had made a pair of corduroy pants, which cost when done $1.60. . . .[B]eside being very strong, they will look about as well three months hence as now, — or as ill, some would say.")
Staples. See April 18, 1860 ("As I go by the site of Staples' new barn on the Kettle place, I see that they have just dug a well and are bricking it up.")
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