A short time before my second marriage, which took place within the twelve months after the death of my sanctified Rebecca, the introduction of the cut nails began to cut me off from earning a living by my hammer, and the business of my hardware store being of itself insufficient for the maintenance of a family, I bethought me of invading the borders of the grocery line. I ought not, however, to say that I did so of my own conceit, for I was led into it by one of those wonderful providential suggestions, of which I have had such a large experience.

One day, as I was standing in the store, wiping and blowing the dust and stoor from the knives and shaving-boxes that made the brick-bats and wooden blocks shine on my shelves, a sailor from the West Indies came to the door with a bag of coffee-beans on his back. There might be the better part of two whole hundred weight, but though he offered them at a cheap rate, I had not money enough to make a bargain with him. After some confabulation, however, into which I threw a spice of my natural jocosity, we came to an understanding; and from less to more, I proposed that we might trade, if not for the whole, at least for a portion. This, as he was going back to New Providence, where he had bought the coffee from a wrecker, was not out of his way, especially when I showed him how he might sell the razors, and knives and forks, at a great profit in Nassau, the chief port and place of business in the Bahama Islands, whereof New Providence is the principal.

Accordingly he in the end consented to leave the bag of coffee with me, and to come back in the afternoon, when the part of the price that was to be paid in money would be ready for him, and the cargo of hardware with the invoice made up.