It is an ancient and a true saying, that wealth makes wit waver. From the time of the fire, as the sagacious reader must have discerned in what has been related, I grew overly well pleased with myself. It was, therefore, needful I should receive a chastisement, but I never thought I had deserved it till it was inflicted.

Falling into the folly of thinking every thing was ordained to go prosperously with me, I thought, when I had withdrawn myself from accidental speculating, that every thing in my own business must thrive. To sell seeds, and to raise seeds to be sold, I thought two parts of one thing; and accordingly, about the time the non-intercourse acts took place, I began to consider of this seriously, and that I might make myself independent of importations from England. The design, however, was not carried into effect without all seeming due consideration. No one could be more circumspect than I fancied myself to be. I was long before I could find a lot of land convenient to my purpose; and when I did at last warily make a purchase, I read and considered the title-deeds as if I had the eyes of three lawyers, and certainly, as it was said, no deeds could be made better. This land was to be cultivated under my own directions,—the directions of one who did not know clay from gravel: of course, it soon came to a bearing; I do not mean the ground, for that never bore any thing to the purpose, but the speculation. The soil, naturally poor, was exhausted; it produced not enough to pay the labour, while it greedily swallowed, as with a hungry appetite, all the profits and savings of my business; yea, even the capital likewise—stock, lock, and barrel, all went.

I yet often marvel how I was so hoodwinked about that farm which I bought in Jersey; every thing concerning it was delusion. My wife, having learnt the craft and mystery of the farm-yard at her uncle's in Vermont, was, if possible, more lifted out of the body about it than even I was, and gave such flattering accounts of what she would do with cows, pigs, and poultry, that I was almost persuaded the seed business would become but a secondary affair.