Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/86

 met H. W. Kratz, now president of the Schwenksville National Bank.

After all of these more or less desultory efforts to secure a foothold, at last the uncertainties disappeared and my course became fixed. My grandfather, somewhat influenced by my uncle, Joseph, concluded to advance me the money with which to read law. He was much aroused over the war and it is very likely that my recent participation in some of its events had finally convinced him that I had sufficient character to make the expenditure of the money a fair business risk. The counsel of Whitaker & Condon had been James Otterson, but not long before, Otterson had taken into an important matter for them, Peter McCall and he had made a very favorable impression. It was determined that I should enter the office of Mr. McCall. But I was then about twenty years and six months old. If I began the office study before the age of twenty-one, I was required to study for three years, and if after twenty-one, then but two years. We determined that these six months should be saved. At that time Enoch Taylor, the brother of the most intimate friend of my mother, more of a conveyancer than a lawyer, afterward sheriff of Philadelphia, had an office on Sixth Street on the east side not far from Race. He was a thin, nervous, childless, timid man, with so abundant a knowledge of real estate and its transactions that whenever a Republican was elected sheriff of the county he was selected as chief deputy, in order to see that the unknowing sheriff did not get into trouble. Finally at a time of political upheaval he was himself elected sheriff. He very kindly consented to let me read in his office temporarily and there I made my acquaintance with Blackstone. He had one assistant, Elias P. Smithers, who had come to the city from Delaware, then very much attached to the work of the Methodist Episcopal Church and almost a devotee. Later he broadened, came to the bar, entered politics, became 78