"All that can be met by a small but reasonably applied capital. When one is in a position to procure the most necessary things, there is no fear afterwards; the circumstances of the farmer improve, although slowly perhaps, yet surely, from year to year, and he may constantly look forward, for himself and his family, to a future free from care. But, to expend the little capital in a really reasonable manner, that is the stumbling-block over which most emigrants, or rather immigrants, fall. They frequently come over to America with not inconsiderable property, but then generally suppose--especially if they have much money--that they can buy the whole world, and allow themselves to be drawn into heedless speculations, of which, as they are ignorant of the country and the language, they understand nothing, and into which they are, for the most part, enticed by designing knaves, who are on the look out for such prey. They afterwards, when it is too late, find out how the swindler, who now laughs at them for their stupidity, was merely intent on appropriating to himself their good money, whilst he was making seductive representations of quickly-to-be-acquired riches; and the more difficult for them does it subsequently become, when they are thrown back upon their personal resources, to begin what, to a certain extent, is a new course of life, and a very unaccustomed and hard course, too. "Those who come over with small sums have the advantage, at least in this, that from the time of their leaving home, forward, they have not been in a position to form such great pretensions, and therefore, when they have lost that little, they are more easily reconciled to the idea of beginning afresh." "You seem to assume indisputably, and as a matter of course," said Werner, laughing, "that emigrants must really first lose all that they have brought with them!" "Certainly," Schwarz replied, drily; "for it happens at least ninety-three times out of a hundred, and the remaining seven you will surely allow me to class as exceptions. But experience will show you the truth of what I am telling you, when you shall have been a little longer in the country. Nearly all the Germans, who have got on here, have come over poor; and if you should see two persons arrive, the one with a thousand dollars, the other without a thousand pfennings,[27] I will wager anything that the poor man shall be the first of the two to become wealthy, or at all events independent." "According to that doctrine, money would be of no advantage, then," said Werner, shaking his head.