HOW HE BECAME A MERCHANT--AND THE RESULT.
"----Now I play a merchant's part,
And venture madly on a desperate mart."--_Shakspeare._
"A man whom Fortune hath cruelly scratched."--_Idem._
Having thus "thrown physic to the dogs," the next important subject of
consideration was the choice of some new occupation or pursuit, not of
a professional character. His mother's project of making him a
clergyman had been previously rejected, as stated in a former chapter.
The decision might have been otherwise had the lot of our hero been
cast in England, where the minor clergy of the establishment purchase
their sermons already written to their hands, if they are able, or copy
them from the moral essays of Doctor Johnson, or the more devotional
writings of Hannah More, according to their tastes and feelings, if
they are not. But such easy methods of pulpit preparation are not
tolerated in this country, unless in respect of the youngest
ecclesiastics; and even they are compelled to be exceedingly chary in
the use even of the printed skeletons to be found in most Episcopal
libraries--not venturing to let their people know of the existence of
such "helps," much less that they are in the habit of cutting out their
sermons by such patterns. Moreover, as for the preaching of other men's
sermons outright, the Americans are such a reading people, that the
detection of borrowed "thunder," is almost certain to follow its use.
An instance in point was then fresh in the public mind, in which one of
the most eloquent and popular pulpit orators in the land, had been
arraigned before an ecclesiastical tribunal, on the charge of
appropriating _ad libitum_ to his own use and the behoof of his
congregation the works of Barrow and Jeremy Taylor, Flavel and
Massillon, Toplady and Tillotson. True, the depredator was endowed with
powers of eloquence worthy of the great masters whose sermons he had
the good taste to prefer to his own--delivering their breathing
thoughts and burning words, with a deep-toned solemnity, and a splendor
of elocution, which thrilled the bosoms, and alternately charmed the
minds, and melted the hearts, of his devotional hearers. But the
disguise of manner was not sufficient. There were those of his
congregation who had read and remembered the works with which he was
making so free; and although they were by no means the losers by the
substitution of the kindling periods of the sound old divines for his
own, yet the late Rev. Mr. Hooper soon found himself under the
discipline of his clerical superiors. Shut out, therefore, from the
pulpit, my friend Wheelwright had turned his attention to medicine, as
being in his apprehension the next easiest of the learned professions;
and now that he had relinquished the healing art, because he possessed
neither the industry nor the capacity for acquiring it, some other
method of earning a subsistence seemed to be necessary. Should it be
the law? His resolution would have deserted him at the thought of
mastering even the elementary treatises of Blackstone, and the sight of
an ordinary law library would have appalled him. But employment he must
have. He had cultivated a taste for style, and ease, and luxury, which
it would require no inconsiderable means to indulge. He desired to cut
a figure in the world, and to make money that he might do so; and he
was anxious withal to select that occupation with which he might
personally be the least occupied--in which he might indulge his
inactive propensities with the least corporeal exertion--and by which
he might realize the greatest profit. After duly weighing matters,
therefore, and balancing the various considerations that occurred, with
all appropriate gravity, he determined to engage in merchandise--a
branch of business for which of all men he possessed the least possible
fitness. His worthy parents, moreover, were thereunto consenting. Fond
and unhappy people! They had never read the splendid philippic of Burke
against the mercantile character, in which the indignant senator
denounced the members of that enterprising occupation as having no
altar but their counter, no Bible but their leger, and no God but their
gold! Nor, (being neither prophets nor descendants of prophets,) could
they foresee that another Burke was soon to illuminate this occidental
hemisphere, by the blaze of his genius,--embodying in his own person
half the wisdom of the whole nation of Rhode Island,--who should revive
and indorse the dictum of the florid British rhetorician, and fix upon
the name of the American merchant as fact, the fancy sketch first drawn
by a brilliant but libellous imagination! Had it been otherwise, I am
sure my friend would have been spared the toils and perplexities
incident alike to the mercantile calling, whether dealing in foreign
commerce by millions, or vending tape and buckram by the yard in
Chatham-street or Albany.
But it was written that Daniel was to be a merchant; and an opportunity
was soon presented for purchasing the odds and ends of a fashionable
fancy and jobbing concern in Albany. His father, moreover, who had by
this time accumulated a snug property by his own honest calling--who
knew little of the perils of the mercantile business, and still less of
the skill and attention necessary for its successful prosecution,
consented in an evil hour to become his indorser. The chief clerk of
the concern, a young man by the name of John Smith, was continued in
the establishment; new goods were bought in New-York in most
enterprising quantities; and although both old and new were purchased
at no small disadvantage, yet a plausible exterior, and a fair credit,
enabled Mr. Wheelwright to drive a brisk, and, as he no doubt honestly
thought, a thriving business. It was indeed true that the return of
every six months found him somewhat deeper in debt. He was obliged to
fill up the blanks in the notes which his kind parent had indorsed in
advance, and by the quantity, for larger and yet larger sums, and
occasionally to ask the name of some other friend, "just for form's
sake," under that of his father. But his faithful clerk assured him
that his capital was increasing, as the books would show, and that
every thing was going on swimmingly. He took lodgings at the Tontine,
like a gentleman of means; was free and liberal in his expenditures;
invited his friends often to suppers of game and oysters, which
invitations were but too often accepted;--and as he knew nothing of his
own business, but continued to repose all confidence in his chief
clerk--taking his assurances that all was well,--he supposed it was so,
and began to fancy that he was actually becoming rich. It had ever been
a common saying in his mouth, that "the world owed him a living," and
he now verily believed that he had taken the wave of fortune at its
flood, and was floating along triumphantly upon the spring-tide of
wealth. Nor was he undeceived until the disclosure was too late for the
salvation of his credit. His notes began to come round too fast to be
promptly "lifted;" and just at the moment when a portion of his
increased capital would have been exceedingly convenient, greatly to
his surprise he was unable to find even that with which he had
commenced. The consequence was frequent visits from the notary; and his
indorsers began occasionally to receive an unceremonious call from
those officious legal gentlemen, Messrs. John Doe and Richard Roe.
At this stage of his unpromising mercantile career, the approaching
catastrophe was hastened by a very grievous and untoward event. After
having despatched a duck and a dozen of oysters at Bement's, he had
scarcely composed himself to sleep before he was aroused by an alarm of
fire, and astounded by the vociferations of a watchman under the
window, who thundered in his ears that it was his own store that was
now illuminating the venerable Dutch capital! Not an article escaped
the ravages of "the devouring element," to quote the newspaper account
of the following morning; and what was more melancholy still, his
faithful clerk, who always slept in the store, was for the moment
supposed to have perished in the flames! Morning came, however, and lo!
Mr. John Smith, junior, was seen to emerge from the portal of a house,
the fame whereof was no better than it should have been--it being none
other than one of those places of which the wise man would have said,
"the dead are there," and "the guests in the depths of hell."
The residue of this section of Mr. Wheelwright's biography is soon
told. With the flames of his store, were his fortunes for the time
being extinguished; and his father soon afterward found himself to be
as destitute of property as when he first entered the valley of the
Mohawk, with only an adz, a pod-auger, and an axe upon his shoulder.
The trusty clerk soon afterward sickened, even unto death, and in his
last moments disclosed various delinquencies which had hastened his
employer's ruin;--for all of which he was readily forgiven by the
really kind-hearted man whom he had so deeply wronged, and from his
penitence it is to be hoped he was also forgiven by Him against whom he
had yet more grievously sinned.
The merchants of New-York are proverbially liberal to unfortunate
debtors; the tale of Mr. Wheelwright's misfortunes excited their lively
sympathies; and they generously released him from all those obligations
which neither he nor his indorsers could pay. And thus amid the frowns
of adversity ended the mercantile career of the subject of this memoir.