as he did not like the climate nor were there financial inducements for his doing so. He was now his own master and decided to go north and try his fortune in the then small and remote French trading post known as St. Louis. He accordingly embarked upon the Maid of New Orleans, and after a long and tedious voyage landed at St. Louis on May 3, 1819.
Fig. 16. Henry Shaw; from a watercolor painting at the Missouri Botanical Garden, by permission of the Director.
He began business on the second floor of a building which he found for rent, and for a time lived, cooked and sold his small stock of cutlery in this one room. The capital with which he bought his first stock of goods was furnished by his uncle. While Mr. Shaw's main object at this time was to make money, and while he denied himself many youthful enjoyments, he still did not thus deny himself beyond reasonable limits.
He had been succeeding in business, and when the balance sheet for 1839 was struck it showed to his own great surprise a net gain for the year of $35,000. His figures were gone over again and again until there could be no doubt of the fact. It seemed to him that "this was more money than any man in my circumstances ought to make in a single year." Accordingly, the following year, when opportunity offered, he closed out his business. At this time he was forty years of age, physically and mentally unimpaired, and vigorous, a free man, and the possessor of $250,000, equivalent to more than $1,000,000 at the present time.
