Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: "' Never mind, my boy,' said Edmund, ' we have only to cross this little creek, and ye'll be upon your own valuable property." " We were on the margin of a stream, the banks of which were thickly covered with alders. I now discovered the use of Edmund's axe, for he felled a small oak to form a temporary bridge to my 'Island' property. Crossing over, I proceeded to the centre of my domain. I saw nothing but a few stunted ivies and straggling trees. The truth flashed upon me. I had been the laughing-stock of the family and neighborhood for years. My valuable ' Ivy Island' was an almost inaccessible, worthless bit of barren land, and while I stood deploring my sudden downfall, a huge black snake (one of my tenants) approached me with upraised head. I gave one shriek and rushed for the bridge. " This was my first and last visit to ' Ivy Island.' My father asked me ' how I liked my property ? ' and I responded that I would sell it pretty cheap." The year 1822 was a memorable one in his,childhood's history. He was then about twelve years old. One evening, late in January, Daniel Brown, a cattle-drover, of Southbury, Connecticut, arrived at Bethel and stopped for the night at Philo Barnum's tavern. He had with him some fat cattle, which he was driving to the New York markets; and he wanted both to add to his drove of cattle and to get a boy to help him drive them. Our juvenile hero heard him say this, and forthwith made application UNFORTUNATE INVESTMENTS. 2J for the job. His father and mother gave their consent, and a bargain was quickly closed with the drover. "At daylight next morning," Barnum himself has related, " I started on foot in the midst of a heavy snow-storm to help drive the cattle. Before reaching Ridgefield I was sent on horseback after a stray ox, and, ...