equired skill and address on the part of the
trader, both in selecting the articles likely to tempt the vanity or
the cupidity of the red man, and in conducting the tedious negotiation
which usually preceded an exchange of commodities. It was in this kind
of traffic, doubtless, that our young German acquired that
unconquerable propensity for making hard bargains, which was so marked
a feature in his character as a merchant. He could never rise superior
to this early-acquired habit. He never knew what it was to exchange
places with the opposite party, and survey a transaction from _his_
point of view. He exulted not in compensating liberal service
liberally. In all transactions he kept in view the simple object of
giving the least and getting the most.

Meanwhile his brother Henry was flourishing. He married the beautiful
daughter of a brother butcher, and the young wife, according to the
fashion of the time, disdained not to assist her husband even in the
slaughter-house as well as in the market-place. Colonel Devoe, in his
well-known Market Book, informs us that Henry Astor was exceedingly
proud of his pretty wife, often bringing her home presents of gay
dresses and ribbons, and speaking of her as "de pink of de Bowery."
The butchers of that day complained bitterly of him, because he used
to ride out of town fifteen or twenty miles, and buy up the droves of
cattle coming to the city, which he would drive in and sell at an
advanced price to the less enterprising butchers. He gained a fortune
by his business, which would have been thought immense, if the
colossal wealth of his brother had not reduced all other estates to
comparative insignificance. It was he who bought, for eight hundred
dollars, the acre of ground on part of which the old Bowery Theatre
now stands.

John Jacob Astor remained not long in the employment of Robert Bowne.
It was a peculiarity of the business of a furrier at that day, that,
while it admitted of unlimited extension, it could be begun on the
smallest scale, with a very insignificant capital. Every farmer's boy
in the vicinity of New York had occasionally a skin to sell, and bears
abounded in the Catskill Mountains. Indeed the time had not long gone
by when beaver skins formed part of the currency of the-city. All
Northern and Western New York was still a fur-yielding country. Even
Long Island furnished its quota. So that, while the fur business was
one that rewarded the enterprise of great a