The first nineteen years of my life were spent with my father and brother in the cultivation of the soil. During this period I had gone through the course of a common English education, had something of a taste for reading, and was acquainted with some of the best English authors. This period I consider the holiday of my existence. Blessed with parents who had watched over me from my infancy with unceasing kindness, surrounded with equals who had grown up with me from the cradle, divested of cares and anxieties which cling to us in maturer life, I scarcely had a wish unsatisfied.
At this period one of my brothers had engaged in mercantile pursuits, and I united my fortune with his. I spent one year in the Southern states and then returned to the metropolis of New England, and for thirteen years continued my commercial operations. We were not engaged in foreign trade, but our transactions in the productions of the Southern states and in the manufactories of our own were extensive.
