Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/249

 Netherlands Society of Philadelphia, comprised of descendants of the Dutch who were in America prior to the Revolution, was formed at the suggestion of Dr. Peter Dirck Keyser. I was one of the first members and have since been its president. The spirit and the literature of this society have been excellent. Each year on the anniversary of the Convention of Utrecht, January 23, 1578, they drink a glass of schnapps, smoke a long pipe, listen to the rendering of “Wilhelmus van Nassauwe,” by members of the Orpheus Club, and sing the song of The Dutch on the Delaware, written by my brother, Isaac R. Pennypacker, and set to music by Doctor Arnold Gantvoort, Director of the College of Music of Cincinnati.

The first conviction of murder in the first degree in the City Hall at Broad and Market streets was that of a man tried before me. Job Haas, a coal dealer doing business in one of the suburbs of the city, belonged to a type which is now almost obsolete. He went to his place of business at the break of day. He had no faith in the security of banks and carried his cash upon his person. One morning before others were stirring he sat at his desk writing a bill for coal when a negro, named Henry Davis, crept up behind him with a club, crushed in his brain and stole his money. He fell over dead, his sleeve smearing the partly written bill, which I have preserved. The evidence was circumstantial but clear and left the jury and myself without doubt. The case interested me as a psychological study. Davis had been employed at the Midvale Steel Works, but had been discharged and was without a job and without money. The night before he went to see the woman to whom he was engaged to be married and told her his financial situation. Thereupon she promptly threw him overboard. The cause of this murder was the situation which has been outlined, the mood into which he, ignorant and undisciplined, was thrown by his surroundings, and the unusual opportunity given to him by a miserly old man. Another murder case Rh