take it from me, but not meeting any, I arrived safely home, feeling greatly encouraged and happy.  I told my wife that I would make another payment on our house, which I did with a great deal of satisfaction.  After this I was so anxious to get along with my work that I did not so much as go out into the street for a week at a time.  I would not go out of the gate from the time I returned from church one Sunday till the next.  I loved to work as well as I did to eat.  I remember once, when at school, of chopping a whole load of wood, for a great lazy boy, for one penny, and I used to chop all the wood I could get from the families in the neighborhood, moonlight nights, for very small sums.  The winter after I made this large sale, I took about one dozen of the Pillar Scroll Top Clocks, and went to the town of Wethersfield to sell them.  I hired a man to carry me over there with a lumber wagon, who returned home.  I would take one of these clocks under each arm and go from house to house and offer them for sale.  The people seemed to be well pleased with them, and I sold them for eighteen dollars apiece.  This was good luck for me.  I sold my last one on Saturday afternoon.  There had been a fall of snow the night before of about eight or ten inches which ended in a rain, and made very bad walking.  Here I was, twenty-five miles from home, my wife was expecting me, and I felt that I could not stay over Sunday.  I was anxious to tell my family of my good luck that we might rejoice together.  I started to walk the whole distance, but it proved to be the hardest physical undertaking that I ever experienced.  It was bedtime when I reached Farmington, only one-third the distance, wallowing in snow porridge all the way.  I did not reach home till near Sunday morning, more dead than alive.  I did not go to church that day, which made many wonder what had become of me, for I was always expected to be in the singers’ seat on Sunday.  I did not recover from the effects of that night-journey for a long time.  Soon after this occurrence, I began to increase my little business, and and employed my old joiner “boss” and one of his apprentices; bought my mahogany in the plank and sawed my own vaneers [sic] with a hand-saw.  I engaged a man with a one horse wagon to go to New York after a load of mahogany, and went with him to select it.  The roads were very muddy, and we were obliged to walk the whole distance home by the side of the wagon.  I worked along in this small way until the year 1821, when I sold my house and lot, which I had almost worshipped, to Mr. Terry; it was worth six hundred dollars.  He paid me one hundred wood clock movements, with the dials, tablets, glass and weights.  I went over to Bristol to see a man by the name of George Mitchell, who owned a large two story house, with a barn and seventeen acres of good land in the southern part of the town, which he said he would sell and take his pay in clocks.  I asked him how many of the Terry Patent Clocks he would sell it for; he said two hundred and fourteen.  I told him I would give it, and closed the bargain at once.  I finished up the hundred parts which I had got from Mr. Terry, exchanged cases with him for more, obtained some credit, and in this way made out the quantity for Mitchell.