Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/67

 class of the fourth division. Being ambitious to excel, I arose in the early mornings before daylight to work at my lessons. At the first regular examination, along with two other boys, I skipped a class and entered the second class of the third division. At the next examination one boy went with me over the first class into the second class of the second division. Three months later I went alone into the first division. In nine months I had gone almost from one end of the school to the other and my heart was gleeful when called to march across the front of the school room to my new place and Aaron said aloud: “Boys, you remember when he was away down there, don't you?”

About this time Professor E. D. Saunders had established his West Philadelphia Institute, on what was then almost a farm, on Thirty-ninth Street a short distance above Market Street. He wanted to make it distinctively a school for education in French, and that language he required to be spoken in the school and on the playground. A native of Switzerland, Monsieur Subit, taught the boys. Professor Saunders, anxious to try the experiment to ascertain what length of time would be required under his methods to acquire a familiarity with the language—it may be for the purpose of advertising the school—went to Aaron in the search for a boy with some capabilities. Aaron recommended me. He then went to my father and offered to educate me free of charge. My father consented and so it happened that my course toward the high school came abruptly to an end. In the fall of 1855, at the age of twelve, I began my studies at the West Philadelphia Institute. Among the boys were Courtland Saunders, son of the Professor, who afterward, as captain in the Corn Exchange Regiment, was killed at Shepherdstown; Gregory B. Keen, who, while a rector of the Protestant Episcopal Church, went over to the Catholics, became Librarian of the University of Pennsylvania, and of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Alfred Driver, now a lawyer in Philadelphia; John E. Rh