d and George had talked it over together, and a partnership was in
mind. In the meantime George was only fifteen years old, and David
thirty. "I am twice as old as you," once said David to George, with
intent to make the lad know his proper place. "Yes, I know; but you will
not be twice as old as I very long," replied George, who was up in
mathematics.

The brothers did not mix very well. They were tuned to a different
vibration. One had speed: the other was built for the plow.

And when the store caught fire and burned, and almost all of Newburyport
was burned up, too, it was a good time for George to strike for pastures
new. He walked down to Boston, and spent all his money for a passage on
a coaster that was about to sail for Washington, in the District of
Columbia. This was in the latter part of the year Eighteen Hundred
Eleven.

Washington was the capital of the country, and there was an idea then
that it was also going to be the commercial metropolis--hence the desire
to get in on the ground floor. Especially was the South to look to
Washington for her supplies. George Peabody, aged sixteen, looked the
ground over, and thought he saw opportunity nodding in his direction.

He sat down and wrote to a wholesale drygoods-dealer by the name of Todd
in Newburyport, ordering draperies to the amount of two thousand
dollars. Blessed is that man who knows what he wants, and asks for it.

Todd remembered the boy who had given him orders in Proctor's, and at
once filled the order. In three months Todd got his money and an order
for double the amount. In those days the plan of calling on the
well-to-do planters, and showing them the wares of Autolycus, was in
vogue. English dress-goods were a lure to the ladies. George Peabody
made a pack as big as he could carry, tramped, smiled and sold the
stuff. When he had emptied his pack, he came back to his room where his
stock was stored and loaded up again. If there were remnants he sold
them out to some crossroads store.

The fact that the Jews know a few things in a worldly way, I trust will
not be denied. George Peabody, the Yankee, adopted the methods of the
Chosen People. And at that early date, it comes to us as a bit of a
miracle that George Peabody said, "You can't afford to sell anybody
anything which he does not need, nor can you afford to sell it at a
price beyond what it is worth." Also this, "When I sell a woman
draperies, I try to leave the transaction so I can go