the remaining three years of his apprenticeship he employed his winters in learning the various branches of clock-making, and not only earned enough money to clothe himself, but laid by a modest sum besides.
In 1814, being twenty-one years of age and his own master, he set up a carpenter shop of his own, being not yet sufficiently master of clock-making to undertake that on his own account. In 1815, he married. Times were hard. The war with England had just ended, and labor was poorly compensated. He is said at this time to have "finished the whole interior of a three-story house, including twenty-seven doors and an oak floor, nothing being found for him but the timber," for the beggarly sum of eighty-seven dollars—a task which no builder would undertake to-day for less than a thousand dollars. Still, he declared that, in spite of this poor rate of compensation, he was enabled to save enough to make a partial payment on a small dwelling for himself. It required a constant struggle, however, to live at this rate, and in the winter of 1816, being out