ght behind the ears." He was then
a stout, strong lad of nearly seventeen, exceedingly well made, though
slightly undersized, and he had a clear, composed, intelligent look in
the eyes, which seemed to ratify the prediction of the schoolmaster.
He strode manfully out of town, with tears in his eyes and a sob in
his throat,--for he loved his father, his friends, and his native
village, though his lot there had been forlorn enough. While still in
sight of Waldorf, he sat down under a tree and thought of the future
before him and the friends he had left. He there, as he used to relate
in after-life, made three resolutions: to be honest, to be
industrious, and not to gamble,--excellent resolutions, as far as they
go. Having sat awhile under the tree, he took up his bundle and
resumed his journey with better heart.

It was by no means the intention of this sagacious youth to walk all
the way to the sea-coast. There was a much more convenient way at that
time of accomplishing the distance, even to a young man with only two
dollars in his pocket. The Black Forest is partly in Astor's native
Baden. The rafts of timber cut in the Black Forest, instead of
floating down the Rhine in the manner practised in America, used to be
rowed by sixty or eighty men each, who were paid high wages, as the
labor was severe.

Large numbers of stalwart emigrants availed themselves of this mode of
getting from the interior to the sea-coast, by which they earned their
subsistence on the way and about ten dollars in money. The tradition
in Waldorf is, that young Astor worked his passage down the Rhine, and
earned his passage-money to England as an oarsman on one of these
rafts. Hard as the labor was, the oarsmen had a merry time of it,
cheering their toil with jest and song by night and day. On the
fourteenth day after leaving home, our youth found himself at a Dutch
seaport, with a larger sum of money than he had ever before possessed.
He took passage for London, where he landed a few days after, in total
ignorance of the place and the language. His brother welcomed him with
German warmth, and assisted him to procure employment,--probably in
the flute and piano manufactory of Astor and Broadwood.

As the foregoing brief account of the early life of John Jacob Astor
differs essentially from any previously published in the United
States, it is proper that the reader should be informed of the sources
whence we have derived information so novel and