and died in a few months after.  He ruined his father, who was a very cautious man, ruined three rich farmers of Dutchess county, and came very near ruining me.  It was a sad history and mortifying to a great many.  I was advised by my counsel, Seth P. Staples of New York, to contest the whole thing in law.  I had five or six suits on my hands at one time, and it was nine years before I was clear from them.  What he owed me for clocks, and what I had to pay on notes and acceptances and the expenses of law, amounted to more than Forty Thousand Dollars.  Nine years of wakeful nights of trouble, grief and mortification, for this profligate young man!  There never was a man more honest than I was in my intentions to help him in his troubles, and I am quite sure no man got so badly swindled.  Every clock maker in the state would have been glad to have sold to him as I did.  This young man was well brought up, but bad company ruined him and others with him.  This life seems to be full of trials.  In latter years I have remembered what an old man often told me when a boy.  “Chauncey,” he says, “don’t you know there are a thousand troubles and difficulties?” I told him I did not know there were; “well,” he says, “you will find out if you live long enough.”  I have lived long enough to see ten thousand troubles, and have found out that the saying of the old man is true.  I have narrated but a small part of my business troubless [sic] in this brief history.  One of the most trying things to me now, is to see how I am looked upon by the community since I lost my property.  I never was any better when I owned it than I am now, and never behaved any better.  But how different is the feeling towards you, when your neighbors can make nothing more out of you, politically or pecuniarily.  It makes no difference what, or how much you have done for them heretofore, you are passed by without notice now.  It is all money and business, business and money which make the man now-a-days; success is every thing, and it makes very little difference how, or what means he uses to obtain it.  How many we see every day that have ten times as much property as they will ever want, who will do any thing but steal to add to their estate, for somebody to fight about when they are dead.  I see men every day sixty and seventy years old, building up and pulling down, and preparing, as one might reasonably suppose, to live here forever.  Where will they be in a few years?  I often think of this.  My experience has been great,—­I have seen many a man go up and then go down, and many persons who, but a few years ago, were surrounded with honors and wealth, have passed away.  The saying of the wise man is true—­all is “vanity of vanities” here below.  It is now a time of great action in the world but not much reflection.