The tin shop was profitable but slow, and with an outcropping of the avidity which he afterward showed, he sought for something more lucrative. In 1852 he transferred his interest to his father and arranged to take charge of a surveying party at twenty dollars a month. Gould had heard of a man in Ulster county who was looking for an assistant. He was making a map of that county and Gould wrote to him. When he left home to take the position, his father offered him money, but he left all his capital in the store, burned his ships behind him, and took only money enough to pay his fare to the place where the new position was to begin. His new employer started him out to make the surveys, to see where the roads were and to locate the residences. He also instructed young Gould to get trusted for his living expenses along the way, and that he would pay them following after him. Two or three days later, Gould ran against the first objection to this arrangement from one of his entertainers, who knew that the employer had already failed three times. He agreed to trust young Gould but would not trust the employer. The boy wandered on after this rebuff until three o’clock, before making an effort to get his dinner. His wretchedness and its relief are interestingly told in a letter that Mr. Gould wrote to a friend some years later. “I was out of money--that is to say, every cent I had at my command was a ten-cent piece, with which I had determined not to part. Fall was approaching, and, unless our surveys were completed before winter set in, the final completion of our enterprise would be necessarily delayed until another season, subjecting us to additional expense, which I feared would prove hazardous to the enterprise. I was among entire strangers and consequently without credit. I could not spare time to go to Delaware county after funds, and I had not money to reach there. If tears had been coin my empty coffers would soon have been amply replenished. In this emergency a welcome expedient accidentally presented itself. I was prosecuting my surveys at this time in the town of Shawangunk, and, while the tears were even trickling down my cheek, a farmer came running after me and asked me if I would not return with him to dinner and make a ‘noon mark,’ which is a north and south line, to indicate, by the shadow caused by the rays falling against an upright object and striking the line, the hour of midday. I accepted the invitation with pleasure, as a couple of crackers was all I had eaten since the preceding night, and I had been working since daylight and was consequently hungry and faint. After dinner I made the noon mark, and, turning to leave, the farmer asked me my bill. I replied that he ‘was welcome.’ He insisted, however, on paying me a half dollar, which he assured me a neighbor had paid for one, which I accepted, and started on my way, and had I that moment discovered a continent it would have afforded me less joy. I saw that I could turn