Section 26:  Investments

Having settled down to bachelor life, I thought it would be the proper thing for me to do to buy a horse. So one fall I got me a snug, good-sized bay horse and the first use I made of him was to ride him over the mountains home. He was a good traveler and I made about forty-five miles a day. On returning home I found no place to keep him but at the hotel which cost me about two dollars a week, and I could not use him every day. It soon began to appear an expensive luxury, and I thought if I had a stable on my lot I could take care of him myself -- so I had a stable built where it stands now, but I found it would require a well on the lot to make everything handy and convenient, so I got old John Ridley to dig me a well over by the leaning apple tree near the Love's fence. But before I had gotten all this done, old Jamy Grey got in concept of my horse and bought him for a hundred dollars. I had paid only sixty-six for him. I then soon had a stable and a well but no horse.

The neighbors got water out of that well for a number of years, but one dry summer the water failed and I dug it deeper -- down to the rocks, and all the water ran away in a crevice and I never received any value or use of the water, and some years afterwards I filled it up and there are now few people in town know that ever a well was there.

A young apple tree came up on the margin and before I filled the well got the stand that the old tree now has. The stable stood empty for years, but sometimes I put hay of my oat lot in it and in the winter or spring sold the hay.

About 1846 I bought the corner lot next the alley and I made up my mind that those lots should be my home while I lived in Clarion, and I think at no time since would I have parted with them unless I had removed from the town -- and I never had serious thoughts of making my home elsewhere.

I did not own another horse till after I was married. I bought one to go east but sold him soon after I returned. Some years after, I bought a strong, active, young brown horse and kept him in my own stable. One evening I received a letter enclosing a note of $600.00 on a man away down by the Red Bank Creek with instructions to get a judgment immediately and collect. The next morning I got on my new horse. He had been standing in the stable and needed exercise, and by sunup he was making the sparks fly out of the stones out through the woods south of the town. I discovered he needed watching and I put him over the road at a good pace. I rode him 18 miles down there, got a judgment note and came back to Polk furnace for dinner, about 27 miles, and he still seemed fresh -- scared at a sheep lying in a fence corner and tried to throw me off. By the aid of a rawhide I persuaded him to go past. I came home after dinner, entered my note and saved the money for my client. By that time I had made up my mind he was an excellent horse but required more work and exercise than I could give him. He was a well built, muscular animal and worked well in harness, and Sam Green hauled in my hay crop with him that year in a one horse wagon. But I sold him to the man who raised him. Some years after the man's son was hauling a load of wood with him and the horse ran off and threw the boy from the top of the load and killed him. The horse was not hurt but I don't know what became of him.

I afterwards bought a horse one fall to attend political meetings and rode him nearly all over the county making speeches, and when the campaign was over I traded him for a boat in the Clarion River and then sold the boat and made money in the trade.

By this time I came to the conclusion that the fewer horses a lawyer kept the better he was off; that half the price of keeping a horse would pay livery bills and save all expense of saddle, harness, buggy and shoeing besides the trouble of looking after him. And I never had another horse till the boys grew up.

Some time along in 1843 or 1844 I got the 4 acre lot out along the Greenville road. It was then all woods. I cleared the upper end and got it in grass. The whole lot was heavily timbered, but I got it cut off and rails made and a good strong rail fence made around it. In the evening I enjoyed working and help clearing up the lot. I recollect Mr. T. George and I built the first division fence along his line. It was made of oak rails and carefully built and staked and ridered. It took about all one man could do to put on some of the riders. After using it for pasture a year or two, I got Samuel Kennedy to put it all in wheat and gave him three-fourths of the crop to farm it carefully and dig around the stumps. He raised a half bushel over a hundred bushels of clear wheat. I then put it in clover and timothy again but it did not produce what grass I thought it ought to, and I got old Joseph Cochran to put four hundred bushels of fresh lime on it and got old Mr. Kennedy to again farm it in wheat. That winter the frost pulled it up by the roots and there was no wheat on it -- only along where the snow drifts had protected it, but the grass caught nicely and I got a succession of good crops of hay off it.

While I had this lot I did a good deal of work on it myself. When the grass was cut, I stirred and turned and dried it and generally helped to hand it into the stable, and I had sometimes, I thought, as much as two tons to the acre. I sold some out of the field -- once or twice presented some good neighbor a load. I recollect one spring I sold out of the stable on my present lot three tons of hay for forty-eight dollars and had enough for myself besides. One year I had oats in the north half of the lot. It was good and I went out and borrowed Mr. Kennedy's grain cradle and cut it myself, but having blistered my fingers I did not help to bind. I have pleasant associations with that lot, and many an hour I puttered and worked on it, first picking and burning brush and logs, and it paid me in many ways, and my cows generally pastured there from July till fall and till the boys got large enough to take my place, I drove the cows out and brought them home every evening. I was annoyed with the stumps and they would not rot and I could not burn them out. So one fall I got a man to go out and dig out every stump and there were several hundred of them -- some huge, big ones, principally oak and a few chestnut. My man, Mr. Reese, got a little machine that worked by leverage like an old-fashioned cider press. I helped him sometimes and we could take a pretty hard pull on a root, but he got them out mostly by digging around and under and cutting the roots. When out they lay very thick on the ground. We got a team and low sled and put them in three large piles, and towards fall I had a grand time burning them. As they burned with the aid of a handspike, I kept them well shoved together. This was a favorite work with me all my lifetime. When I wanted exercise in the fall or a good day in the winter, nothing seemed so delightful as to get out alone and burn brush or stumps or anything, and many an evening or afternoon I have spent on that lot or in the woods, and I recur to them as among the most delightful of my life.

It was foolish of me to sell that lot and I suppose I would not have done so had it not been that when I was traveling on the circuit and away from home half the time, the fences were thrown down and I could not use it as I had done, but I would not have sold it had I been at home all the time; and then I had the wood lot and a fence around it -- that was nearer home than the out lot. At the southeast corner of that out lot a spring came out of the field above. After it was cleared one day, I took a locust grub out there and planted it on the corner cut off by the channel and stuck a few stakes around it to keep the cows off. It grew rapidly and in a warm day my cow would cross and climb up under the shade and lie down. So many sprouts from the roots or seeds came up that it was cut down after I sold, but I notice that there are yet a few saplings from it growing up over the spring. It is now owned by G. W. Arnold and kept in fine order.

As early as 1844 when I began to have a little money, I got to investing it in anything that would pay me a good interest. I attended pine unseated land sales, bought sometimes for my clients, and as I became acquainted with the titles bought some lots for myself. If they were redeemed, I received the redemption money; if not, at the end of two years I sold them generally for twice as much as they cost me, and sometimes a good deal more. I also bought at private sale small lots of pine timberland and I frequently sold in a year or two at a hundred per cent over what they cost. I also bought a tract or two at sheriff's sale and did well on them. Sometimes I bought a judgment or a note at a pretty heavy discount. I did not advertise a shave shop or hunt this kind of business, but just took what came to me and frequently I told men to see if they could not do better before discounting their obligations; but I was very careful to know that the claim was got before I bought.

At one time I came very nearly being caught. I had bought a note of several hundred dollars on Henry Fulton who was then the owner of Monroe Furnace. Before my note became due, I. Painter and Co. and Hampton Smith and Co. entered up judgments against him and issued executions for more than all his property was worth. G. W. Arnold had engineered the matter for them and it was arranged that he was to buy in all the property at sheriff's sale and run up the stock and give Fulton the benefit of all after paying their debts. He tried to keep the matter very quiet, but I soon suspected what he was doing as Arnold was very busy looking after everything and giving directions to the sheriff. So on the day of the sheriff's sale, I got on a horse and rode out there. Arnold was very busy getting the sale started but I saw he had his eye on me. I was standing with a crowd who were attending sale and pretty soon Arnold called me into a little room and asked me what I was there for. I told him I was going to bid on property to try and save a little claim I had on Fulton. He asked me how much it was -- I told him about $400.00. "Well," said he, "If I say you will be paid will you agree not to bid on the property." I told him certainly I would and keep my mouth shut about the whole transaction. "Well," said he, "That is all right," so I went up to the store and talked an hour or so with some old neighbors and lit a cigar and got on my horse and came home, and afterwards I got every cent of my money.

In these little outside transactions I soon got to making a little money -- from $500.00 to $1,000.00 a year, and it did not seem to interfere with my law practice. Further on in life I dealt a good deal in real estate, generally making some money, and I believe in no instance failing to come out whole. In some larger transactions I made a good deal of money and in the course of my life have made at least three times as much outside of the office as I made in it.

The practice of even a good country lawyer is not going to make him rich. Three thousand dollars a year is a good country practice -- over the average. They are generally good livers and with a family will not live and school a family of children much under two thousand dollars a year. It takes five years to establish a practice and few lay up a thousand dollars a year for over thirty years. It will be found that most lawyers who retire on over forty thousand dollars have made it by speculation or outside transactions. The law gives them facilities for making money that other professions do not possess.