A good clock, with a case
seven feet high, could now be made for forty dollars, at which price it
yielded a fair profit to the maker. The three young men were tolerably
successful in their venture. Jerome worked fifteen hours a day at
case-making, and by living economically, managed to carry some money
with him when he went back to his master's shop in the spring. For the
remaining three years of his apprenticeship he employed his winters in
learning the various branches of clock-making, and not only earned
enough money to clothe himself, but laid by a modest sum besides.
In 1814, being twenty-one years of age and his own master, he set up a
carpenter shop of his own, being not yet sufficiently master of
clock-making to undertake that on his own account. In 1815, he married.
Times were hard. The war with England had just ended, and labor was
poorly compensated. He is said at this time to have "finished the whole
interior of a three-story house, including twenty-seven doors and an oak
floor, nothing being found for him but the timber," for the beggarly sum
of eighty-seven dollars--a task which no builder would undertake to-day
for less than a thousand dollars.
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