6. CHAPTER VI.
Sheppard Lee experiences his share of the respect that is accorded
to “honest poverty.”—His ingenious and highly original devices
to amend his fortune.
It may be asked, why I made no efforts to retrieve
my fortunes? I answer to that, that I made
many, but was so infatuated that I never once
thought of resorting to the most obvious, rational,
and only means; that is to say, of cultivating with
industry my forty acres, as my father had done before
me. This idea, so sluggish was my mind, or so
confused by its distresses, never once occurred to
me; or if it did, it presented so many dreary images,
and so long a prospect of dull and disagreeable labour,
that I had not the spirit to pursue it. The
little toil I was forced to endure—for my necessities
now compelled me at times to work with my own
hands—appeared to me intolerably irksome; and
I was glad to attempt any thing else that seemed
to promise me good luck, and did not require positive
labour.
The first plan of bettering my fortune that I conceived,
was to buy some chances in a lottery,
which I thought an easy way of making money;
as indeed it is, when a man can make any. I had
my trouble for my pains, with just as many blanks
as I had bought tickets; upon which I began to
see clearly that adventuring in a lottery was nothing
short of gambling, as it really is; and so I quitted
it.
I then resolved to imitate the example of a
neighbour, who had made a great sum of money
by buying and selling to advantage stock in a southern
gold-mining company; and being very sanguine
of success, I devoted all the money I could scrape
together to the purpose, and that so wisely, that a
second instalment being suddenly demanded, I had
nothing left to discharge it with, and no means of
raising any; the consequence of which was, that I
was forced to sell at the worst time in the world,
and retired from the concern with just one fifth the
sum I had invested in it. I saw then that I had
no talent for speculating, and I began to have my
doubts whether stock-jobbing was not just as clear
gambling as horse-racing and lottery speculation.
I tried some ten or a dozen other projects with
a view to better my condition; but, as I came off
with the same luck from all, I do not think it necessary
to mention them. I will, however, state,
as a proof how much my difficulties had changed
my mind on that subject, that one of them was of
a matrimonial character. My horror of squabbling
children and scolding wives melted away before
the prospect of sheriffs and executions; and there
being a rich widow in the neighbourhood, I bought
me a new coat, and made her a declaration. But it
was too late in the day for me, as I soon discovered;
for besides giving me a flat refusal, she made a
point of revealing the matter to all her acquaintance,
who did nothing but hold me up to ridicule.
I found that my affairs were falling into a desperate
condition; and not knowing what else to do,
I resolved to turn politician, with the hope of getting
some office or other that might afford me a
comfortable subsistence.
This was the maddest project that ever possessed
my brain; but it was some time before I came
to that conclusion. But, in truth, from having
been the easiest and calmest tempered man in the
world, I was now become the most restless and
discontented, and incapable of judging what was
wise and what foolish. I reflected one day, that
of my old school and college mates who were still
alive, there was not one who had not made some
advance in the world, while I had done nothing but
slip backwards. It was the same thing with dozens
of people whom I remembered as poor farmers'
boys, with none of the advantages I had possessed,
but who had outstripped me in the road to fortune,
some being now rich cultivators, some wealthy
manufacturers and merchants, while two or three
had got into the legislature, and were made much
of in the newspapers. One of my old companions
had emigrated to the Mississippi, where he was
now a cotton-planter, with a yearly revenue of
twenty or thirty thousand dollars; another had become
a great lawyer in an adjacent state; and a
third, whom I always thought a very shallow, ignorant
fellow, and who was as poor as a rat to boot,
had turned doctor, settled down in the village, and,
besides getting a great practice, had married the
richest and finest girl in all the county. There
was no end to the number of my old acquaintances
who had grown wealthy and distinguished;
and the more I thought of them, the more discontented
I became.
My dissatisfaction was increased by discovering
with what little respect I was held among these
happy people. The doctor used to treat me with
a jocular sort of familiarity, which I felt to be insulting;
the lawyer, who had eaten many a dinner
at my table, when I was able to invite him, began
to make me low bows, instead of shaking hands
with me; and the cotton-planter, who had been my
intimate friend at college, coming to the village on
a visit to his relations, stared me fiercely in the
face when I approached him, and with a lordly
“hum—ha!” asked me “Who the devil I might
be?” As for the others, they treated me with as
little consideration; and I began to perceive very
plainly that I had got into the criminal stage of
poverty, for all men were resolved to punish me.
It is no wonder that poverty is the father of crime,
since the poor man sees himself treated on all hands
as a culprit.
I had never before envied a man for enjoying
more consideration in the world than myself: but
the discovery that I was looked upon with contempt
filled me with a new subject for discontent. I envied
my richer neighbours not only for being rich,
but for being what they considered themselves, my
superiors in standing. I may truly say, I scarce
ever saw, in those days, a man with a good coat on
his back, without having a great desire to beat him.
But as I was a peaceable man, my anger never
betrayed me into violence.
