Mary Erskine, Jacob Abbott [booksvooks txt] 📗

including of course the new house, was five hundred dollars. The stock, farming utensils, &c, which he took with it, came to three hundred and sixty dollars. The purchaser was to pay, of this money, four hundred dollars in three months, and the balance in six months. Mary Erskine, therefore, had to make provision for investing the four hundred dollars first.

She determined, after a great deal of consideration and inquiry, to lay out this money in buying four shares in the Franconia bridge. These shares were originally one hundred dollars each, but the bridge had become so profitable on account of the number of persons that passed it, and the amount of money which was consequently collected for tolls, that the shares would sell for a hundred and ten dollars each. This ten dollars advance over the original price of the shares, is called premium . Upon the four shares which Mary Erskine was going to buy, the premium would be of course forty dollars. This money Mary Erskine concluded to borrow. Mr. Keep said that he would very gladly lend it to her. Her plan was to pay the borrowed money back out of the dividends which she would receive from her bridge shares. The dividend was usually five per centum, or, as they commonly called it, five per cent. , that is, five dollars on every share of a hundred dollars every six months.[A] The dividend on the four shares would, of course, be twenty dollars, so that it would take two dividends to pay off the forty dollar debt to Mr. Keep, besides a little interest. When this was done, Mary Erskine would have property in the bridge worth four hundred and forty dollars, without having used any more than four hundred dollars of her farm money, and she would continue to have forty dollars a year from it, as long as she kept it in her possession.

[Footnote A: Per is a Latin word meaning for , and centum another meaning a hundred .]

When the rest of the money for the farm was paid, Mary Erskine resolved on purchasing a certain small, but very pleasant house with it. This house was in the village, and she found on inquiry, that it could be let to a family for fifty dollars a year. It is true that a part of this fifty dollars would have to be expended every year in making repairs upon the house, so as to keep it in good order; such as painting it from time to time, and renewing the roof when the shingles began to decay, and other similar things. But, then, Mary Erskine found, on making a careful examination, that after expending as much of the money which she should receive for the rent of her house, as should be necessary for the repairs, she should still have rather more than she would receive from the money to be invested, if it was put out at interest by lending it to some person who wanted to borrow it. So she decided to buy the house in preference to adopting any other plan.

It happened that the house which Mary Erskine thus determined to buy, was the very one that Mr. Gordon lived in. The owner of the house wished to sell it, and offered it first to Mr. Gordon; but he said that he was not able to buy it. He had been doing very well in his business, but his expenses were so great, he said, that he had not any ready money at command. He was very sorry, he added, that the owner wished to sell the house, for whoever should buy it, would want to come and live in it, he supposed, and he should be obliged to move away. The owner said that he was sorry, but that he could not help it.

A few days after this, Mr. Gordon came home one evening, and told Anne Sophia, with a countenance expressive of great surprise and some little vexation, that her old friend, Mrs. Forester, had bought their house, and was going to move into it. Anne Sophia was amazed at this intelligence, and both she and her husband were thrown into a state of great perplexity and trouble. The next morning Anne Sophia went out to see Mary Erskine about it. Mary Erskine received her in a very kind and cordial manner.

"I am very glad to see you," said Mary Erskine. "I was coming to your house myself in a day or two, about some business, if you had not come here."

"Yes," said Anne Sophia. "I understand that you have been buying our house away from over our heads, and are going to turn us out of house and home."

"Oh, no," said Mary Erskine, smiling, "not at all. In the first place, I have not really bought the house yet, but am only talking about it; and in the second place, if I buy it, I shall not want it myself, but shall wish to have you live in it just as you have done."

"You will not want it yourself!" exclaimed Anne Sophia, astonished.

"No," said Mary Erskine, "I am only going to buy it as an investment."

There were so many things to be astonished at in this statement, that Anne Sophia hardly knew where to begin with her wonder. First, she was surprised to learn that Mary Erskine had so much money. When she heard that she had bought the house, she supposed of course that she had bought it on credit, for the sake of having a house in the village to live in. Then she was amazed at the idea of any person continuing to live in a log house in the woods, when she had a pretty house of her own in the middle of the village. She could not for some time be satisfied that Mary Erskine was in earnest in what she said. But when she found that it was really so, she went away greatly relieved. Mary Erskine told her that she had postponed giving her final answer about buying the house, in order first to see Mr. Gordon, to know whether he had any objection to the change of ownership. She knew, of course, that Mr. Gordon would have no right to object, but she rightly supposed that he would be gratified at having her ask him the question.

Mary Erskine went on after this for two or three years very prosperously in all her affairs. Thomas continued to live with her, in her log-house, and to cultivate the land which she had retained. In the fall and winter, when there was nothing to be done in the fields or garden, he was accustomed to work in the shop, making improvements for the house, such as finishing off the stoop into another room, to be used for a kitchen, making new windows to the house, and a regular front door, and in preparing fences and gates to be put up around the house. He made an aqueduct, too, to conduct the water from a new spring which he discovered at a place higher than the house, and so brought a constant stream of water into the kitchen which he had made in the stoop. The stumps, too, in the fields around the house, gradually decayed, so that Thomas could root them out and smooth over the ground where they had stood. Mary Erskine's ten acres thus became very smooth and beautiful. It was divided by fences into very pleasant fields, with green lanes shaded by trees, leading from one place to another. The brook flowed through this land along a very beautiful valley, and there were groves and thickets here and there, both along the margin of the brook, and in the corners of the fields, which gave to the grounds a very sheltered, as well as a very picturesque expression. Mary Erskine also caused trees and shrubbery to be planted near the house, and trained honey-suckles and wild roses upon a trellis over the front door. All these improvements were made in a very plain and simple manner, and at very little expense, and yet there was so much taste exercised in the arrangement of them all, that the effect was very agreeable in the end. The house and all about it formed, in time, an enchanting picture of rural beauty.[A]

[Footnote A: See Frontispiece.]

It was, however, only a few occasional hours of recreation that Mary Erskine devoted to ornamenting her dwelling. The main portion of her time and attention was devoted to such industrial pursuits as were most available in bringing in the means of support for herself and her children, so as to leave untouched the income from her house and her bridge shares. This income, as fast as it was paid in, she deposited with Mr. Keep, to be lent out on interest, until a sufficient sum was thus accumulated to make a new investment of a permanent character. When the sum at length amounted to two hundred and twenty dollars, she bought two more bridge shares with it, and from that time forward she received dividends on six shares instead of four; that is, she received thirty dollars every six months, instead of twenty, as before.

One reason why Mary Erskine invested her money in a house and in a bridge, instead of lending it out at interest, was that by so doing, her property was before her in a visible form, and she could take a constant pleasure in seeing it. Whenever she went to the village she enjoyed seeing her house, which she kept in a complete state of repair, and which she had ornamented with shrubbery and trees, so that it was a very agreeable object to look upon of itself, independently of the pleasure of ownership. In the same manner she liked to see the bridge, and think when teams and people were passing over it, that a part of all the toll which they paid, would, in the end, come to her. She thus took the same kind of pleasure in having purchased a house, and shares in a bridge, that any lady in a city would take in an expensive new carpet, or a rosewood piano, which would cost about the same sum; and then she had all the profit, in the shape of the annual income, besides.

There was one great advantage too which Mary Erskine derived from owning this property, which, though she did not think of it at all when she commenced her prudent and economical course, at the time of her marriage, proved in the end to be of inestimable value to her. This advantage was the high degree of respectability which it gave her in the public estimation. The people of the village gradually found out how she managed, and how fast her property was increasing, and they entertained for her a great deal of that kind of respect which worldly prosperity always commands. The store-keepers were anxious to have her custom. Those who had money to lend were always very ready to let her have it, if at any time she wished to make up a sum for a new investment: and all the ladies of the village were willing that their daughters should go out to her little farm to visit Bella, and to have Bella visit them in return. Thus Mary Erskine found that she was becoming quite an important personage.

Her plan of teaching herself and her children succeeded perfectly. By the time that she had thoroughly learned to write her own name, she knew half of the letters of the alphabet, for her name contained nearly that number. She next learned to write