Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/299

 for something of larger consequence. I then chose Henry S. Dotterer, of a German family along the Perkiomen, who had been chief bookkeeper for Peter Wright & Sons, an author of some note, and who had a certain canny wisdom of his own. He was a hale, hearty, strong man, but only a few days before we had arranged to go to Harrisburg he caught cold which inflamed the prostate gland. He wanted to get well immediately, and went to the Medico-Chirurgical College. The physicians looked him over, told him he ran no risk, and performed an operation. In a day or two he was dead. Then they said he had had Bright's disease.

With some uneasiness, at the suggestion of Leach, I then selected Bromley Wharton, a brother of Anne Hollingsworth Wharton, the authoress, whom I had long known, a member of an old family, and he did very well indeed, being ever quick, active and attentive, having quite a faculty for being obeisant to the important and for dismissing the bores affably.

A day or two after the inauguration an ostensible lady drove up in a carriage to the mansion and sent up her card to Mrs. Pennypacker, who was an entire stranger in the city and did not know its people. In the reception room the woman began to talk, presently mentioned public affairs and began to ask questions. This awakened suspicion and she was dismissed. A few days later a full-page portrait of Mrs. Pennypacker, secured by making a sketch in pencil while she was on a railroad train, appeared in the North American, accompanied by what purported to be portraits of my daughters, which had been probably taken from the stock of actresses on the shelves, and a long rigmarole was printed under the lie in huge head lines: “The First Lady of Pennsylvania writes for the Sunday North American on Live Current Problems.” What could be more despicable? The woman ought to have been trounced and Van Valkenberg, the editor of the sheet, ought to have been given severer punishment. Rh