Childhood ends, maturity begins, when the child has tasted
for the first time the bread and wine of the Communion. Whether a boy
then becomes an apprentice or a servant depends upon whether his
parents have been provident enough to save a sum of money sufficient
to pay the usual premium required by a master as compensation for his
trouble in teaching his trade. This premium varied at that day from
fifty dollars to two hundred, according to the difficulty and
respectability of the vocation. A carpenter or a blacksmith might be
satisfied with a premium of sixty or seventy dollars, while a
cabinet-maker would demand a hundred, and a musical instrument maker
or a clock-maker two hundred.
On Palm Sunday, 1777, when he was about fourteen years of age, John
Jacob Astor was confirmed. He then consulted his father upon his
future. Money to apprentice him there was none in the paternal
coffers. The trade of butcher he knew and disliked. Nor was he
inclined to accept as his destiny for life the condition of servant or
laborer. The father, who thought the occupation of butcher one of the
best in the world, and who needed the help of his son, particularly in
the approaching season of harvest, paid no heed to the entreaties of
the lad, who saw himself condemned without hope to a business which he
loathed, and to labor at it without reward.
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