DREAMS OP WEALTH 147 



sixteen weeks, the second hatching in fourteen days 

 after the first, and then in ten days, and then once in 

 eight days, until there is ten hatchings, which at that 

 rate will make two thousand and eighty pounds of 

 cocoons, and two hundred and sixty pounds of reeled 

 silk, which, at the lowest price that Mr. Cobb has sold 

 his for, $4.50 per pound, amounts to $1,170, or selling 

 the cocoons at 40 cents the price at Philadelphia, they 

 would amount to $832 ; or say 25 cents, the lowest 

 price offered anywhere, they amount to $520. Then, 

 allowing the mistress $20 per month, and the board of 

 the twenty four scholars for sixteen weeks, each at $1 

 per week, it amounts to $464, which, deducted from 

 $520, there remains $56 ; which allowing three acres of 

 land and the trees to cost $600, the $56 will pay the 

 interest of the money and $20 left to pay interest for 

 two sheds which will be wanted if the silk is reeled ; 

 thus you have the children schooled and boarded 

 without any expense to their parents or the town, and 

 interest on the capital in the bargain. What more do 

 you want, but faith and resolution." 



The author recurs to his estimates of profits again 

 and again. "Now, let a young man of 21 years 

 of age, of steady habits," he advices, "purchase such 

 an establishment, and mortgage it for security of 

 the payment, and get it insured against fire and other 

 casualities, and put the leaves out on shares, and work 

 himself at some mechanical or agricultural employment, 

 he would at the expiration of twenty years, if a tem- 

 perate man, undoubtedly acquire double the property 

 which the greater number of professional men attain 

 to, who must have a large sum expended upon them 

 previous to commencing business." 



