llowing morning at ten
o'clock, and not before. Before the appointed hour every jeweller in the
town would be at his door; but as it was a point of honor to give them
all an equal chance, no one was admitted till the clock struck, when all
pushed in in a body. The jewelry was spread out on the bed, around which
all the jewellers of Boston, in 1820, could gather without crowding.
Each man began by placing his hat in some convenient place, and it was
in his hat that he deposited the articles selected by him for purchase.
When the whole stock had been transferred from the bed to the several
hats, Mr. Gorham took a list of the contents of each; whereupon the
jewellers packed their purchases, and carried them home. In the course
of the day, the bills were made out; and the next morning Mr. Gorham
went his rounds and collected the money. The business being thus happily
concluded, he returned to Providence, to work uninterruptedly for
another six months. In this manner, Jabez Gorham conducted business for
sixteen years, before he ever thought of attempting silver-ware. Such
was his reputation for scrupulous honesty, that, for many years before
he left the business, none of his customers ever subjected his work to
any test whatever, not even to that of a pair of scales. It is his
boast, that, during the whole of his business career of more than half
a century, he never sold an article of a lower standard of purity than
the one established by law or by the nature of the precious metals.

About the year 1825, some Boston people discovered that a tolerable
silver spoon could be made much thinner than the custom of the trade had
previously permitted, and that these thin spoons could be sold by
pedlers very advantageously. The consequence of this discovery was, that
silver spoons became an article of manufacture in Boston, whence pedlers
conveyed them to the remotest nooks of New England. One day, in 1830,
the question occurred to Jabez Gorham, Why not make spoons in
Providence, and sell them to the pedlers who buy our jewelry? The next
time he took his trunk of trinkets to Boston, he looked about him for a
man who knew something of the art of spoon-making. One such he found, a
young man just "out of his time," whom he took back with him to
Providence, where he established him in an odd corner of his jewelry
shop. In this small way, thirty-seven years ago, the business began
which has grown to be the largest and most complete manufac