He was kind, but just, toward his clerks.
He established a free reading-room in Bellemore, saw that every employee had his regular vacation each summer or whenever he preferred it, encouraged them to be frugal and moral, gave them good advice, forbade coarseness of language or profanity, and hired a pew in each of the two leading churches, which were always at the disposal of his young men without any expense to them.
Occasionally he gave entertainments at his own handsome residence for their benefit.

Now and then he would invite some of them to dinner.

His wife was in delicate health, but a most excellent woman, who did much to make such evenings highly enjoyable.

Their only son had died in his infancy, and their daughter Jennie was attending a boarding-school.

Little was seen of her, though when at home she often drove to the store with her mother, to take her father out with them.