He felt as grand as a lord; and as soon as the forty-nine
dollars had become fifty, he waited upon Mr. Hardhand, a little crusty
old man, who owned the little black house, and proposed to purchase
it.
The landlord was a hard man. Everybody in Riverdale said he was mean
and stingy. Any generous-hearted man would have been willing to make
an easy bargain with an honest, industrious, poor man, like John
Bright, who wished to own the house in which he lived; but
Mr. Hardhand, although he was rich, only thought how he could make
more money. He asked the poor man four hundred dollars for the old
house and the little lot of land on which it stood.
It was a matter of great concern to John Bright. Four hundred dollars
was a "mint of money," and he could not see how he should ever be able
to save so much from his daily earnings. So he talked with Squire Lee
about it, who told him that three hundred was all it was worth. John
offered this for it, and after a month's hesitation Mr. Hardhand
accepted the offer, agreeing to take fifty dollars down, and the rest
in semi-annual payments of twenty-five dollars each until the whole
was paid.
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