Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/122

 Through one summer I boarded in a Pennsylvania Dutch hotel, on the east side of Third Street near Callowhill, patronized alone by the clerks of merchants and by farmers coming into town. It was an interesting experience. I had a little room in the third story with one small window, a bed, a bowl and basin on a rough stand, two Windsor chairs, a strip of rag carpet along the bed and no other furniture except a jordan. In the dining-room we sat on stools at a long table. There were not, however, stools enough for all the guests, and as a result there had to be two services, and those who did not find a stool at the first opportunity must wait until the more fortunate were fed and another outfit was made ready. When the gong sounded the doors were thrown open, there was a rush for the stools in which men were jammed and clothes torn and when the stools were filled the doors were again closed. I met some young men here who succeeded in life and whose paths again crossed mine. On Sundays I went to Franklin Square and, sitting on a bench there, read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Ashenfelter, who had graduated at Dickinson College, had come to the city to read law, and together we rented the front room at No. 520 Spruce Street from a Mrs. Wilson, the widow of a newspaper editor. It was modest enough, but kept bright and cleanly, and the impression even today is one of luxurious enjoyment. We ate our meals at the boarding house of a Mrs. Lydia Foster on Sixth Street below Locust. We called it the “Foster Home.” Into the boarding house had been swept by the tides of misfortune Ann Kittera, a daughter of the noted Congressman, John W. Kittera, and related to the family of Governor Simon Snyder. Her gentility of manner, her faded finery of clothing and the furrows on her withered cheeks all told the same tale, and unconsciously each one of the household showed to her respect and called her “Miss Ann.” Three young men from among those who gathered at that inexpensive table, two 112