Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/41

 the Pickering creek at Moore Hall is as firm as ever. His house and grounds have been torn down and asunder by a railroad, but at “The Knoll,” now owned by Colonel Paul S. Reeves, he built for Judge Benjamin Morris, a counterpart of the house, save that he put the better work and material into his own house, a preference in those days not unusual. Built into the corner of the barn on the Robinson place in Upper Providence township, across the road from Phœnixville, is a block of iron conspicuous in contrast with the stone which encloses it. When Wernwag failed he owed the Robinson, then living, a considerable sum of money; all that the creditor could get was this block of iron which he permanently preserved, and he secured some satisfaction in frequently telling how much it had cost him.

As a baby, I had the colic and was more than ordinarily troublesome. My earliest recollection is of an event almost a tragedy. At a tenant house, belonging to my father, a short distance from the mansion, and still standing, masons were at work. John, my older brother, and I hung over the wall watching them. Presently John fell, struck upon the corner of a stone and was carried home unconscious with a deep gash in his forehead. I was then about three years old, and the mental impression made by seeing him supported in a chair with the blood running down his cheek is still distinct.

At four years of age I began school. Even earlier my mother had taught me to read. William S. Dare, a superintendent or boss at the iron works, lived in the Starr farm-house, and one of his relatives, a Mrs. Heilig, opened a school for boys and girls in the house. Lib Schroeder, a girl employed by my mother, who afterward married and named her oldest boy for me, took me by the hand and led me over the high foot-bridge, which then crossed the creek, to the school. My few memories of it are confined to three or four girls, to the stool in the center of 3