Читать книгу How They Succeeded: Life Stories of Successful Men Told by Themselves онлайн

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“Well enough, but not much more than any boy does. Boys are always more or less afraid of hard work.”

The truth is, I have heard, but not from Mr. Armour, that when he attended the district school, he was as full of pranks and capers as the best; and that he traded jack-knives in summer and bob-sleds in winter. Young Armour was often to be found, in the winter, coasting down the long hill near the schoolhouse. Later, he had a brief term of schooling at the Cazenovia Seminary.

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“When did you leave the farm for a mercantile life?” I asked.

“I was a clerk in a store in Stockbridge for two years, after I was seventeen, but was engaged with the farm more or less, and wanted to get out of that life. I was a little over seventeen years old when the California gold excitement of 1849 reached our town. Wonderful tales were told of gold already found, and the prospects for more on the Pacific coast. I brooded over the difference between tossing hay in the hot sun and digging up gold by handfuls, until one day I threw down my pitchfork and went over to the house and told mother that I had quit that kind of work.