Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/259

 On the evening of November 1, 1894, Henry Watterson of Kentucky, one of the most famous journalists of the day, lectured in the Academy of Music. The Union League, of which I was then a member, gave him a dinner and several of us made speeches at him. He was rather a fierce looking little man wearing a big mustache, but as we got nearer to him we found him genial and companionable.

On September 16, 1895, the courts of common pleas formally abandoned their former place of meeting at Sixth and Chestnut streets and moved to their rooms in the City Hall at Broad and Market streets. On invitation I made an address to the bench and the bar, after having thoroughly studied the associations connected with Congress Hall. This address was printed by a committee of the bar consisting of Edward Shippen, George Tucker Bispham, and Samuel Dickson. Up to that time, little attention had been given to the history of Congress Hall, but it then came into vogue. At one time the city offered it for sale, but the Colonial Dames took hold of the matter and with effort persuaded the city authorities to undertake its restoration. They and the architects depended upon my paper for their information and its effect was therefore helpful not only to the city but to the nation. When the building was re-opened in 1913, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, and Champ Clark, Speaker of the House of Representatives, were present on the invitation of Mayor Blankenburg, but they knew little about the subject and perhaps cared less, and the architect then told me that he had made his reconstruction, and the agent of the Associated Press told me he had prepared his report for the country, based upon the facts I had given them. The address was not only an historical investigation, but could be included among what the cataloguers of books call Facetiæ because of a reference it contains to General Henry Knox, unearthed from a contemporary description of him. Upon going to the City Rh