This was in the fall and winter of 1815, only a few months after the
Bramble arrived with the news from Ghent that our last negotiations had
been successful, and that the war was over most gloriously for _us_, the
United States. We were almost ready, in our thankfulness and joy, to
canonize the ship and crew, and cut her up into snuffboxes and
toothpicks.
And now--what next? "as the tadpole said, when he his tail dropped off."
Weary of the growing distrust they saw, after my remittances began to
fall off, and heartily sick of the Gerrymandering about them, of the
usurers and money-changers and Shylocks, who were bleeding them to
death, by lending them money upon pledges of merchandise, the two elder
partners, Pierpont and Lord, lost no time in following their junior. He
had opened on South Calvert Street; they took the whole of a large
building opposite, opened below their wholesale business, and after a
few months went to housekeeping overhead, both families living together.
Then, to get rid of our stock, Mr. Pierpont went off to Charleston,
S.C., where he had served his time as a tutor, and there set up a retail
establishment, under the charge of a former clerk in their service, and
of another man, a heartless vagabond, whom they had happened to get
acquainted with at a boarding-house on their first arrival, and took a
fancy to, nobody ever knew why.
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