if he would plow, harrow, and plant with corn a certain ten-acre lot belonging to the farm, by the twenty-seventh of that month, on which day he would be seventeen years old, she would lend him the money. The field was the worst in the whole farm; it was rough, hard, and stony; but by the appointed time the work was done, and well done, and the boy claimed and received his money. He hurried off to a neighboring village, and bought his boat, in which he set out for home. He had not gone far, however, when the boat struck a sunken wreck, and filled so rapidly that the boy had barely time to get into shoal water before it sank.
"Undismayed at this mishap," says Mr. Parton, from whose graphic memoir the leading incidents of this sketch are taken, "he began his new career. His success, as we have intimated, was speedy and great. He made a thousand dollars during each of the next three summers. Often he worked all night; but he was never absent from his post by day, and he soon had the cream of the boating business of the port.