Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/39



WAS born April 9, 1843, the second of six children, upon a Sunday and, therefore, gifted with the power to pow-wow and to see fairies as the opportunity arises. The room in which I was born had ten windows and was floored with walnut. The house stood upon a high bluff, upon the north bank of the French Creek, in the town of Phœnixville, and faced the creek which flows eastwardly to the Schuylkill, falling over the breast of a dam on its way. Connected with the house were about five acres of land. Perhaps the most famous bridge builder of his day was a German named Lewis Wernwag. He had thrown a bridge across the Schuylkill at the Upper Ferry, at Callowhill Street in Philadelphia, which had the longest span of all the bridges constructed down to that time. There is a fine engraving of it reproduced upon a set of blue china manufactured in England, now very scarce and therefore much in demand. He came to Phœnixville in the early part of the nineteenth century to conduct the iron works there, and built this house, intended for his own permanent residence, in a fashion then regarded as luxurious and extravagant. The visitor, entering from the front, trod upon a stone step and over a wrought iron lintel into a hallway. To the right were two rooms with folding doors between them used as parlor and sitting-room, each of which had an open fireplace with a hand-carved hard-wood mantel and mantelpiece around it. To the left was the dining-room with a kitchen in the rear. The dining-room had likewise a fireplace with stone hearth, and higher than the mantel to the right was a large Rh