History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, and Life of Chauncey Jerome Barnum's Connection with the Yankee Clock Business
Jerome, Chauncey, 1793-1868
, who was a very cautious man, ruined three rich farmers of Dutchess county, and came very near ruining me. It was a sad history and mortifying to a great many. I was advised by my counsel, Seth P. Staples of New York, to contest the whole thing in law. I had five or six suits on my hands at one time, and it was nine years before I was clear from them. What he owed me for clocks, and what I had to pay on notes and acceptances and the expenses of law, amounted to more than _Forty Thousand Dollars_. Nine years of wakeful nights of trouble, grief and mortification, for this profligate young man! There never was a man more honest than I was in my intentions to help him in his troubles, and I am quite sure no man got so badly swindled. Every clock maker in the state would have been glad to have sold to him as I did. This young man was well brought up, but bad company ruined him and others with him. This life seems to be full of trials. In latter years I have remembered what an old man often told me when a boy. "Chauncey," he says, "don't you know there are a thousand troubles and difficulties?" I told him I did not know there were; "well," he says, "you will find out if you live long enough." I have lived long enough to see ten thousand troubles, and have found out that the saying of the old man is true. I have narrated but
