by Cornelius Vanderbilt.  On his birthday he claimed the fulfilment of his mother’s promise.  Reluctantly she gave him the money, considering his project only less wild than that of running away to sea.  He hurried off to a neighboring village, bought his boat, hoisted sail, and started for home one of the happiest youths in the world.  His first adventure seemed to justify his mother’s fears, for he struck a sunken wreck on his way, and just managed to run his boat ashore before she filled and sunk.

Undismayed at this mishap, he began his new career.  His success, as we have intimated, was speedy and great.  He made a thousand dollars during each of the next three summers.  Often he worked all night, but he was never absent from his post by day, and he soon had the cream of the boating business of the port.

At that day parents claimed the services and the earnings of their children till they were twenty-one.  In other words, families made common cause against the common enemy, Want.  The arrangement between this young boatman and his parents was that he should give them all his day earnings and half his night earnings.  He fulfilled his engagement faithfully until his parents released him from it, and with his own half of his earnings by night he bought all his clothes.  He had forty competitors in the business, who, being all grown men, could dispose of their gains as they chose; but of all the forty, he alone has emerged to prosperity and distinction.  Why was this?  There were several reasons.  He soon came to be the best boatman in the port.  He attended to his business more regularly and strictly than any other.  He had no vices.  His comrades spent at night much of what they earned by day, and when the winter suspended their business, instead of living on the last summer’s savings, they were obliged to lay up debts for the next summer’s gains to discharge.  In those three years of willing servitude to his parents, Cornelius Vanderbilt added to the family’s common stock of wealth, and gained for himself three things,—­a perfect knowledge of his business, habits of industry and self-control, and the best boat in the harbor.

The war of 1812 suspended the commerce of the port, but gave a great impulse to boating.  There were men-of-war in the harbor and garrisons in the forts, which gave to the boatmen of Whitehall and Staten Island plenty of business, of which Cornelius Vanderbilt had his usual share.  In September, 1813, during a tremendous gale, a British fleet attempted to run past Fort Richmond.  After the repulse, the commander of the fort, expecting a renewal of the attempt, was anxious to get the news to the city, so as to secure a reinforcement early the next day.  Every one agreed that, if the thing could be done, there was but one man who could do it; and, accordingly, young Vanderbilt was sent for.

“Can you take a party up to the city in this gale?”

“Yes,” was the reply; “but I shall have to carry them part of the way under water.”