It was while working in the tin store, shortly after this, that Gould took part in a transaction in which one cannot fail to recognize one of the distinctive traits of his future business career. If the king of Wall street never went hunting for snipes with a brass band, neither did the country lad. The merchant for whom he was working also did a real-estate business. His employer was negotiating for the purchase of some property belonging to an estate in chancery, and Jay carried on the correspondence for him. By virtue of his position he thus learned the particulars of a bargain which his employer desired to make on the piece of land. The executor demanded twenty-five hundred dollars, but the would-be purchaser offered only two thousand dollars. Jay undertook a little investigation on private account, and became convinced that the property was bound to appreciate in value. While the negotiations were in progress, Jay borrowed twenty-five hundred dollars of his father, and outbidding his employer, quietly scooped in the property. He had the deed made out in his father’s name, and within two weeks sold out for four thousand dollars. It is said that his employer looked at the transaction in the light of a breach of confidence. The result was that it caused a separation between the merchant and his clerk, and broke up a little romance which is said to have existed between the young speculator and a young female member of his employer’s family. This was practically the end of his life and associations with the little villages, Roxbury and Hobart, though his map work and surveying, in the following years, were largely done in the surrounding counties. As a matter of fact, he had exhausted the possibilities for him in those country villages. He had squeezed what knowledge and profits were to be obtained there, and was ready to seek new worlds to conquer. While the little towns furnished him no inducements for permanent residence, and but little of the start toward his colossal fortune, nevertheless, the influences that the towns and their people exerted on his early life must be credited with much of the better business qualities, of perseverance and method that gave much of his success in later years.