Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/414

 On the 28th, as chairman of a commission consisting of Colonel John P. Nicholson, Daniel Eberly and myself, I presented the statue in bronze, of a private cavalryman on his horse, to the care of the borough of Hanover, erected by the state to commemorate the cavalry battle there anterior to Gettysburg. The statue is a good figure and a success. When I began to speak the cannon began to boom a salute and every six words were punctuated with a shot.

Harrisburg had a home week during the first week in October and was given up to festivities and celebrations. On Tuesday, from a stand in the park, General Horace Porter, Governor William A. Stone, General Thomas J. Stewart and I made addresses. Porter, a rugged-looking man, a brigadier close to Grant, and later Minister to France, belongs to a family which has contributed more men of distinction to public life in America than any other in Pennsylvania. Olmsted, always efficient, had general charge of the demonstration.

The legislature, upon my insistence, had made an appropriation of $375,000 to the City of Philadelphia to assist in deepening the channel of the Delaware, upon condition that the city devote a similar sum to the purpose. Neither Mayor Weaver nor any one else in Philadelphia gave the matter the slightest attention and the councils were about to adjourn. I then wrote to the mayor telling him it was a subject of the utmost importance. The letter was made public, councils made the additional appropriations, and I saw that the check was sent by the state treasurer. It was the first direct aid given by the state to that city in modern times.

There was a Republican meeting in the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, on the 18th of October. It was a gloomy time. Everybody had the sense that defeat was coming. Fairbanks, Taft, Foraker, Knox and Carson all declined to be present, and the newspapers said I would not go. Those around me at Harrisburg advised me not to 396