Excerpt from A Little Journey to the Home of John B. Stetson This is the life-story of John B. Stetson, told in "tabloid." Stetson was an American businessman. He is one of the moderns. I use the word "is," because the influence of a great personality never dies. The influence of the man is with us, and his soul goes marching on. Stetson was a workingman. He became master of a trade at a time when this trade was a synonym for the shiftless, the unreliable, the erratic. "Mad as a hatter," was a saying that passed as legal tender in the current coin of language. Lewis Carroll, in that very wise and foolish book entitled, "Alice in Wonderland," paid his respects to the mad hatter. Various other writers have done the same. The old-time hatter, like the old-time printer, worked when he felt like it - and a good deal of the time he did not feel like it. He was filled with the wanderlust, and to take off his apron and walk out without excuse or reason was, for him, a very natural thing to do. When the merry hatter received his pay and left the shop Saturday night, it was quite likely the shop did not see him until along about Tuesday or Wednesday, and then it took him the better part of a day to get his hand in. It is probable that the particular trade of hatter has been maligned, for the fact is that one hundred years ago all the trades were very much on the same basis. A Similar Case John WESLEY in his "Journal" describes the condition of the potters in England, during his time. Half their earnings were spent for strong drink. None of them owned their homes. They lived in long lines of hovels, from which they were evicted when they lost their inclination or their capacity for work. 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.