Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/267

 was given to him at the Bellevue. At that time Henry J. McCarthy, one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas No. 3, had a method of after-dinner speaking which was very taking and altogether his own. He familiarized himself with the events in the careers of the classic heroes—Agamemnon, Alexander, Cæsar and the rest—and fitted them upon the men of everyday life in Philadelphia. Colonel Alexander P. Colesberry, a slightly made man, who gave no impression of strength, at that time United States Marshal, was at the dinner. McCarthy made a speech in which he drew a picture of Colesberry with the language and in the habiliments of Cæsar stopping the riot raised by the recent railway strikers on Chestnut Street. Albert listened with amazement if not with interest.

About this time, by a dispensation of the Most Worshipful Grand Master of the Masons of Pennsylvania, I was made a Mason at sight; that is, the three degrees of a Master Mason were conferred at one time, which is regarded as a great Masonic honor and has been accorded to but eight or ten men in the state. Among them were included John Wanamaker, James Gay Gordon and Charles Emory Smith.

In 1897 Philadelphia sought to issue a loan of $11,200,000. Some citizens, represented by Alexander Simpson, Jr., filed a bill in equity in No. 2 Court to prevent the transaction. I wrote an opinion dismissing the bill and on appeal to the Supreme Court the judgment was affirmed.

On the 3d of March, 1899, my mother died in her eighty-fourth year, one of a series of events occurring about that period which changed the whole tenor of my life. Since the time of my birth we had been together almost continuously. The early death of my father led to a relation between us never interrupted which was more than that of mother and son. The same year, June 17th, the Sons of the Revolution made a pilgrimage to Pennypacker's Mills on the Perkiomen, where I made an address to them. Peter Pennypacker bought 515 acres at this place in 1747 and 253