Father Johann Rudolf Meyer, Citizen of Aarau: A Memorial

One day, when he was in Basel on business and wanted to buy a new suit for himself from a then-popular gray fabric, he took—at the urging of the merchant—a few dozen pieces of this cloth to sell them in Aarau with some profit. The experiment succeeded so brilliantly that within eight days he had sold everything at a gain and made new purchases of this and several other fabrics in Basel. At that time, there was only one poorly supplied cloth shop in Aarau. Favored by this, he expanded his plans for the future. When he visited the fairs of Zurzach on business for the Schafisheim house, he bought the necessary cloth goods for himself, as far as his means or the trust of strangers reached, and had these sold by his sister, who ran a small grocery trade at the Ziegelrain in his hometown. Cheerful and pondering many a plan, he usually wandered to her in the city on Sundays to see to the progress of his own business after having worked for the foreign one throughout the week. Soon the little cloth shop became so