ers or any
of the clerks were at their posts. One morning, the first thing he
saw, after opening the store, was a roll of bank bills, lying on the
floor. He took it up, and unrolled it. There were some ten or twelve
dollars in it. As soon as the book-keeper came to the store, Samuel
handed him the roll of bank bills, and went about his work. That was a
small matter, wasn't it? But small as it was, those flour merchants,
when they heard of it, noted it down in their memory.

Months passed. The book-keeper went into business for himself. A new
book-keeper was needed to take his place. Samuel was talked of. "But
can Samuel be depended upon?" it was asked. "Can we trust him? Is he
faithful, and honest, and capable?" I don't know what decision they
would have come to, if it had not been for the affair of the bank
bills. But his honesty in that particular was brought up. They thought
it would do to trust a young man who could resist such a temptation
as that. There was another thing they had heard about Samuel, which
they thought pretty good evidence that he was honest. It was this:
While Samuel was in the factory, he bought some articles at the
village store. After he had paid for them, and got away a little
distance, he found that the clerk had made a mistake in giving change,
and that he had in his pocket fifty cents more than belonged to him.
So he turned right around, went back to the store, and returned the
money to the clerk.

"He's the man," they all said, as soon as these facts were stated. So
Samuel became the book-keeper in that large house, with a salary four
times as large as he had received while he was the porter.

Some two or three years from the time he went to Boston to live,
Samuel Bissell was one of the partners in that wealthy firm. He is by
no means an old man now. Indeed, he is in the very prime of life. But
he has got to be a rich man, and now owns one of the most beautiful
country seats within a dozen miles of Boston, where he resides with
his family. A great many merchants are so much engaged in making
money, that they seem to care hardly anything about improving the
mind, and so they let that get all full of weeds. But Mr. Bissell did
very differently. He spent a great part of the time which he could
spare from his business, in gathering new sheaves of knowledge, and
cultivating the garden of the heart.

I hardly know of a man for miles around, in that charming district of
country, who is more