this discovery to practical account, and I felt already half rich, and I prosecuted my labors with a lighter step than for many a day. The fame of my noon marks preceded me, and the applications from the farmers were numerous. By this means I paid all the expenses of the surveys and came out at the completion with six dollars in my pocket.” In the early part of this embarrassment he had no overcoat and sometimes traveled forty miles a day on foot. His employer failed completely and Gould continued the business for himself. Jay proposed to the two other young surveyors, who had also been engaged on the work, to complete it on their own account. The other two young fellows had money, and when the map was ready for the engraver, Jay, finding his colleagues anxious to put their names on it, sold his interest to them for $500. With that capital he undertook similar surveys of Albany and Delaware counties, and was successful in turning out satisfactory maps of those regions. He sold enough maps to bring his capital up to $5,000. The accuracy of his survey of Ulster county in the meantime, had attracted the attention of John Delafield, in Albany, who applied to the Legislature for aid in the completion of a topographical survey of the entire state by Mr. Gould. Mr. Delafield died before any material progress was made in this work. His application to the Legislature was not successful. Some particulars of interest in regard to the map-making business are related by Oliver J. Tillson, one of his partners in the map-making enterprise, after the failure of the man who had first employed him in the business. Mr. Tillson confirms Mr. Gould’s account and tells of the bargain in which the latter sold out to his partners. Here is a copy of a receipt given by Gould on that occasion: DECEMBER 27, 1852. Received of Oliver J. Tillson and Peter H. Brink ninety dollars and wheel in full of all debts and demands and dues against them and the Ulster county map. JASON GOULD, for JOHN B. GOULD. It will be observed that he signed his name “Jason,” not Jay. He was christened “Jason,” but about this time began to change it to Jay, by which he was ever after known. “There wasn’t any foolishness in Jason’s books,” says Mr. Tillson, referring to the books in which Gould had made his notes of the surveys. “He was all business in those days, as he is now. Why, even at meal times he was always talking map. He was a worker, and my father used to say: ‘Look at Gould; isn’t he a driver?’” [Illustration: CANVASSING FOR HIS BOOK “HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY.”] This, in fact, is the testimony of all his contemporaries. From his earlier years he was absorbed in schemes for making money, and his whole aim in life was to “get on.” With every passing year his ambition broadened, until it enveloped a continent.