Willie and the mortage, showing how much may be accomplished b y a boy . slate, while hissister Bessie was engaged in the morning with her mother. Atsuch times visitors would occasionally come in, and Willie wouldreceive them in a very polite and gentlemanly manner, as is rep-resented in the opposite engraving, and, after asking them to takea seat, w^ould go and call his mother. In a word, Mr. Joyn was a very thrifty and prosperous, and alsoa very well-informed and intelligent man, and w^as rapidly rising inthe estimation of all who knew him. Things went on in this wayfor some time, until at l
Willie and the mortage, showing how much may be accomplished b y a boy . slate, while hissister Bessie was engaged in the morning with her mother. Atsuch times visitors would occasionally come in, and Willie wouldreceive them in a very polite and gentlemanly manner, as is rep-resented in the opposite engraving, and, after asking them to takea seat, w^ould go and call his mother. In a word, Mr. Joyn was a very thrifty and prosperous, and alsoa very well-informed and intelligent man, and w^as rapidly rising inthe estimation of all who knew him. Things went on in this wayfor some time, until at length a man by the name of Tomms open-ed a store in the village, and kept rum, brandy, and gin for sale inthe back part of it. The casks that contained these liquors wereset up in a row, on skids, in the back part of the store, near thefire-place, with the name of the contents of each barrel paintedupon it in bright letters. Tomms used to sell these hquors to BESSIE. 29 Picture of Willie receiving company. such young men as would buy them, at three cents a glass. They. did not cost him, upon an average, more than thirty or forty centsa gallon, for they were all made of the same kind of alcohol, col- 30 BESSIE. Calculations about Old Tomms business. His profits. ored and flavored with different dyes and drugs, so as to makethem seem as if they were really what they pretended to if we suppose that the cost of a gallon was thirty-two cents,that would make only half a cent a glass, for there are at least asmany as sixty-four glasses in a gallon. So that old Tomms, asthe people called him, for every glass that he sold for three cents,made two and a half cents profit. Sometimes there would betwenty or thirty men in his store in a single winter evening, andthey w*ould take two or three glasses apiece before they wenthome, so that he would gain five or six cents each out of them would make a dollar and a half or two dollars, which was alarge sum to be gained by doing no
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1850, bookidwilliemortag, bookyear1854
