Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/34

 life in extreme poverty, as a charcoal burner and wood chopper about an iron furnace, and as a maker of nails by hand in a small shop at the corner of Fourth Street and Old York Road in Philadelphia, he reached the position of one of the principal iron proprietors of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, took care of a family of eleven children, and, dying in 1870, left an estate of $520,000. Generous to the extent of his perception of the needs of those dependent on him, he bought each of his children a ticket to hear Jenny Lind sing, but he never overcame the impressions made in his early life, and always had a dread lest some of his children or grandchildren might drop back into the situation from which he had emerged. Once when I as a child was at his house in Mont Clare, opposite Phœnixville, he called me to him as he lay on a sofa and said: “Sam, there was once a little boy alone at a hotel, and when he went to the dinner table he was timid and could get nothing to eat. Presently he turned to the man next to him and said: ‘Please, sir, won't you give me a little salt?’ The man in surprise inquired: ‘What do you want with salt?’ ‘I thought, sir, if I had some salt maybe somebody would give me an egg to put it on.’ With a quizzical expression he continued: ‘Now I see that you have no watch-fob in your jacket. When you go home tell your mother to make a fob in your jacket and maybe some time or other somebody may give you a watch.’ ” Even in childhood I always wanted to think out the problems for myself, and this suggestion impressed me as pure foolishness and I did not mention the matter to my mother. The reasoning was correct enough, but, unfortunately, as so often happens in more serious affairs, some of the facts were unascertained. However the watch came and later he advanced the moneys which enabled me to read law. He wore a woolen shawl. Probably he would have lived to the age of his Brother James, which was ninety-four, but late in life he fell from the third story of a house, down an 26