t with a deal finer clothing
than he had ever before worn, and sent him to the Latin School and
afterward over to Cambridge, with silver jingling in his pocket.

Prosperity is a severe handicap to youth; not very many grown men can
stand it; but beyond a needless display of velvet coats and frilled
shirts, the young man stood the test, and got through Harvard. In point of
scholarship he did not stand so high as John Adams; and between the lads
there grew a small but well-defined gulf, as is but natural between
homespun and broadcloth. Still the gulf was not impassable, for over it
friendly favors were occasionally passed.

John Hancock's mother wanted him to be a preacher, but Uncle Thomas would
not listen to it--the youth must be taught to be a merchant, so he could
be the ready helper and then the successor of his foster-father.

Graduating at the early age of seventeen, John Hancock at once went to
work in his uncle's counting-house in Boston. He was a fine, tall fellow
with dash and spirit, and seemed to show considerable aptitude for the
work. The business prospered, and Uncle Thomas was very proud of his
handsome ward, who was quite in demand at parties and balls and in a
general social way, while the uncle could not dance a minuet to save him.

Not needing the young man very badly around the store, the uncle sent him
to Europe to complete his education by travel. He went with the retiring
Governor Pownal, whose taste for social enjoyment was very much in accord
with his own. In England, he attended the funeral of George the Second,
and saw the coronation of George the Third, little thinking the while that
he would some day make violent efforts to snatch from that crown its
brightest jewel.

When young Hancock was twenty-seven, the uncle died, and left to him his
entire fortune of three hundred fifty thousand dollars. It made him one of
the very richest men in the Colony--for at that time there was not a man
in Massachusetts worth half a million dollars.

The jingling silver in his pocket when sent to Harvard had severely tested
his moral fiber, but this great fortune came near smothering all his
native commonsense. If a man makes his money himself, he stands a certain
chance of growing as the pile grows.

There is little doubt as to the soundness of Emerson's epigram, that what
you put into his chest you take out of the man. More than this, when a man
gradually accumulates wealth, it attracts little attenti