Excerpt from Sketches of Mr.& Mrs. Stephen Ridgley In 1816, Stephen Ridgley came with his father to the United States. He was then a boy of ten. At this tender age, he was thrown entirely upon his own resources and compelled ever after to take care of himself. He first served as an errand boy with William Law rence, the cousin of Abbot Lawrence. For seven years he worked in Boston and the adjoining towns with no pay but his food and clothes. Numerous changes of place brought a variety of business experience. The house, the store, and the field were the shifting scenes of his youthful toil. In 1823, the lad for the first time received wages. He was then an errand boy for a Mrs. Paine in Boston. But his pay was only half a dollar a week. His next service was a little better rewarded. For six months' work on a farm in Dedham, his wages were twenty four dollars. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.