The good lady had always opposed her son's wish to go to sea, and
regarded this new scheme as equally hair-brained. As a means of
discouraging him, she told him if he would plow, harrow, and plant with
corn a certain ten-acre lot belonging to the farm, by the twenty-seventh
of that month, on which day he would be seventeen years old, she would
lend him the money. The field was the worst in the whole farm; it was
rough, hard, and stony; but by the appointed time the work was done, and
well done, and the boy claimed and received his money. He hurried off to
a neighboring village, and bought his boat, in which he set out for
home. He had not gone far, however, when the boat struck a sunken wreck,
and filled so rapidly that the boy had barely time to get into shoal
water before it sank.
[Illustration: VANDERBILT EARNING HIS FIRST HUNDRED DOLLARS.]
"Undismayed at this mishap," says Mr. Parton, from whose graphic memoir
the leading incidents of this sketch are taken, "he began his new
career. His success, as we have intimated, was speedy and great. He made
a thousand dollars during each of the next three summers.
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