[Day 21] Economy

[Day 21] Economy

These will be good ventures.

To oversee all the details yourself in person; to be at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the accounts;

to read every letter received, and write or read every letter sent; to superintend the discharge of imports night and day;

to be upon many parts of the coast almost at the same time;— often the richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore;—

to be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise;

to keep up a steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant and exorbitant market;

to keep yourself informed of the state of the markets, prospects of war and peace every where, and anticipate the tendencies of trade and civilization,

—taking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and all improvements in navigation;

—charts to be studied, the position of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever,

the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have reached a friendly pier,—there is the untold fate of La Perouse;

—universal science to be kept pace with, studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great adventurers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phoenicians down to our day;

in fine, account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand.

It is a labor to task the faculties of a man,— such problems of profit and loss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it, as demand a universal knowledge.