GEORGE SEWALL BOUTWELL. 5 



V. 



Groton in 1835. 



In the month of February, 1835, ^ ^^^^ ^^ advertisement 

 in the Lowell "Journal, asking for a clerk in a store, appHca- 

 tion to be made at the office. I at once wrote to Joseph S. 

 Hubbard,^ a former schoolmate, asking him to call at the of- 

 fice and get the name of the advertiser. This he did, and 

 gave me the name of Benj. P. Dix of Groton. I wrote to 

 Mr. Dix, and upon the receipt of an answer, I went with my 

 father to see him. The result was an agreement to work for 

 him for three years. Terms, board and one hundred dollars 

 for the first year, one hundred and twelve dollars for the sec- 

 ond year, one hundred and twenty-five dollars for the third 

 year. I commenced my clerkship with Mr. Dix the fifth day 

 of March, and in the month of September my contract was 

 ended by his failure. His business was small, his manners 

 were abrupt, his capital had been limited, and his family ex- 

 penses, not extravagant, had exceeded his income, and bank- 

 ruptcy in the end was inevitable. His sales were chiefly of 

 boots, shoes, leather, and medicines, of which he kept the 

 only stock in the village. 



Mr, Dix was a man of exact ways of life. The sales made 

 were entered each day at the close of business, the cash was 

 carefully counted, and the cash-book was balanced. But 

 these careful and businesslike ways did not save him, and in 

 September he made an assignment of his property to his 

 father Benj. Dix, and to Caleb Butler, for the benefit of his 

 creditors according to the preferences specified in the assign- 

 ment. Mr. Butler was not a creditor, but Mr. Dix, senior, 

 was much the largest creditor. In fact he had furnished his 

 son with the chief part of the means of doing business. He 

 was a tanner by trade, and he had gradually enlarged his 



1 When I became Secretary of the Treasury, in 1S69, I appointed Hubbard 

 to a minor office in the revenue service in tlie State of Kentucky, where he then 

 lived. 



