Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 74, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 March 1919 — Couldn't Be Discouraged. [ARTICLE]

Couldn't Be Discouraged.

There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. Such a one then lived in Philadelphia; a person of note, ah elderly man. with a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name was Samuel Mickle. The gentleman, a stranger to me r stopped one day at my door and asked me if I was the young man who had lately opened a new printing house. filing answered in the affirmative, he said he was sorry for me, because it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense would be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people already half bankrupt, or near being so; all appearances to the contrary, such as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge fallacious; for they were, in fact, among the things that would sopn ruin us. And he gave me such a detail of misfortunes now existing, or that were soon to exist, that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before I in this business, probably I never should have done it. This man continued- to 1 ive in this Jecaying-place, and to declaim in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all was going to destruction ; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him give five times as much forone as he might have bought it for when he first began his croaking. —Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.