Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/330

 in a bottle (happy thought!) at the block-house where we saw them. We also visited the club house upon the shore, went out on the lake, went to the life-saving station of the national government and witnessed the excitement and intelligence of a dog which, when the rope was shot to a vessel supposed to be in distress on the lake, understood and took part in an imaginary rescue.

Just at this time Chief Justice McCollum died and left a vacancy to be filled in the Supreme Court. He had had a run of luck. When Mitchell was nominated by the Republicans, the hopeless Democratic nomination went begging. Judge Arnold of Philadelphia, and others of prominence, refused and there was given to McCollum what no one else wanted. McCollum's home friends desired for him the state nomination for the Supreme Bench by the Democratic party, merely as a graceful way for him to retire from the common pleas bench of Susquehanna County. His term was about to expire. He was a Democrat in a strongly Republican county and stood no chance of re-election. His brother-in-law, Daniel W. Searle, would be the Republican candidate for the seat in the county court, for which several reasons McCollum did not desire a re-nomination in Susquehanna and what seemed then the empty honor of the Democratic nomination for the Supreme Bench would open a door of escape from a local complication. But in the midst of the campaign one of the seven judges died, and under the constitutional provision both Mitchell and McCollum were elected. Then they drew lots to determine which should have the long term carrying with it the right to succeed eventually to the chief justiceship, and McCollum won.

On the 6th of October the Germans celebrated, in Philadelphia, the two hundred and twentieth anniversary of the settlement of Germantown. I read to them my translations into English verse of Corinna, a love song, and another local bit which had been written there in the early time, which were of great interest. This translation, as I have already 314