Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/64

 thousand acres of land, being the most extensive landholders in the state. He was rich, intensely proud, with a will of iron hidden beneath a bearing of soft courtliness. It was a delight to me as a child and young man to visit at Principio, as I frequently did. The boating, fishing and gunning about the head of the Chesapeake Bay and the streams flowing into it and the warm hospitality of the home with its plentiful larder, were attractive, and Aunt Eliza, a good-hearted motherly woman, always found something in the store associated with the iron works to give to me. In their lives his family presented sharp contrasts and many vicissitudes. The successful career of his son, Nelson, has been mentioned. His daughter, Caroline, a beautiful girl who sang sweetly “A little boy went out to shoot one day,” married Joseph Coudon, a wealthy representative of the Cecil County aristocracy and a grandson of one of the early rectors of the Episcopal Church who bore the same name. One son, Henry, while driving at night fell out of a buggy and his neck was broken. Cecil, the youngest son, started one day to cross the Chesapeake with some companions in a boat, in the face of a fierce storm. That they had a desperate experience of some character was proved by the fact that the bodies of all of them were found, one here and one there, as the boat had been driven on in its course.

The life on Wood Street was very monotonous and almost painful to a boy accustomed to the country. However, the volunteer fire department was then at the height of its development. The Fairmount Engine Company and the Shiffler Hose Company, representing up-town and the Protestant faith with a touch of Whig politics, and the Moyamensing Hose Company with the redoubtable “Billy” McMullen, whom I afterwards came to know, representing down-town, the Roman Catholic Church and the Democratic party, often met for a fierce street fight. If a fire was needed in order to give them a chance, willing hands were 56