Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/133

 and when the sheriff went to hang him he was found dead in his cell from poison which no one knew how he had secured.

During the first year of my practice I received in fees $800, and the annual returns slowly increased. When I married Virginia Earl Broomall, October 20, 1870, I was making from $1,800 to $2,000 a year. At that time I had moved my office to 209 South Sixth Street, where I had a room to myself. When I went out I tacked a card on the door. For years I carried my lunch down to the office in my green bag and I walked from my home at 2002 North Marvine Street and later 1540 North Fifteenth Street. I settled up the affairs of my uncle, Dr. Samuel A. Whitaker, who owned one-twenty-first part of the Phœnix Iron Company, and became his administrator. I was the administrator of the estate of my aunt, Sarah Ann Whitaker, who left about $70,000, and my grandfather, leaving an estate of $520,000, made me one of his executors. Among my clients were Focht, Whitaker & Co. and William H. Whitaker & Co., coal merchants; Jacob S. Neafie, the ship builder; George H. Sellers, a brother of William Sellers; Wharton Barker, the banker, and William L. Wilson, in his day the leading tile merchant of the city. Wilson employed me by the year and paid me an annual salary of $100. For him I fought almost everybody of any consequence in the city, including the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, Adams Express Company and the Drexels. He combined most methodical ways with abnormal combativeness. He took exception once to my payment of twenty-five cents for a subpœna without direct authority, and the matter had to be left to arbitration. He kept a book in which he recorded the details of conversations in preparation for lawsuits. Once in a trial he sent me this book and, much to my surprise, I found renderings of what I had said to him, with the dates. The information made me thenceforth careful. A. Sydney Biddle brought a bill in equity against him in behalf of Colonel William S. Moorehead and the testimony Rh