has a predominating force.  No man was more unlikely to be a traveler than myself.  I always thought myself to be domestic in my feelings, habits, and inclinations, and even in very early youth, proposed to live a life of domestic felicity.  I thought such a life inseparable from the married state, and resolved, therefore, to get married, as soon as prudence and inclination would permit.  Notwithstanding this way of thinking my life has been a series of active employment and arduous journeyings.  I may say my travels began even in childhood, for when only six or seven years old, I recollect to have wandered off a long distance into the pine plains of my native town, to view Honicroisa Hill, a noted object in that part of the country, to the great alarm of all the family, who sent out to search for me.  My next journey was in my eleventh year, when I accompanied my father, in his chaise, he dressed out in his regimentals, to attend a general court-martial at Saratoga.  I had not then read any history of our Revolution, but had heard its battles and hardships, told over by my father, which created a deep interest, and among the events was Burgoyne’s surrender.  My mind was filled with the subject as we proceeded on our way, and I expected to see a field covered with skulls, and guns, and broken swords.

In my fifteenth year I accompanied my father, in his chaise, up the Valley of the Mohawk to Utica.  This gave me some idea of the western country, and the rapid improvements going on there.  I returned with some more knowledge of the world, and with my mind filled with enthusiastic notions of new settlements and fortunes made in the woods.  I was highly pleased with the frank and hospitable manners of the west.  The next spring I was sent by a manufacturing company to Philadelphia, as an agent to procure and select on the banks of the Delaware, between Bristol and Bordentown, a cargo of crucible clay.  This journey and its incidents opened a new field to me, and greatly increased my knowledge of the world; of the vastness of commerce; and of the multifarious occupations of men.  I acquitted myself well of my agency, having made a good selection of my cargo.  I was a judge of the mineralogical properties of the article, but a novice in almost everything else.  I supposed the world honest, and every man disposed to act properly and to do right.  I now first witnessed a theatre.  It was at New York.  When the tragedy was over, seeing many go out, I also took a check and went home, to be laughed at by the captain of the sloop, with whom I was a passenger.  At Philadelphia I fell into the hands of a professed sharper; He was a gentleman in dress, manners, and conversation.  He showed me the city, and was very useful in directing my inquiries.  But he borrowed of me thirty dollars one day, to pay an unexpected demand, as he said, and that was the last I ever saw of my money.  The lesson was not, however, lost upon me.  I have never since lent a stranger or casual acquaintance money.