Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/88



N the year 1858 a comet of vast proportions swept across the sky and its tail, spread out like a curved fan, extended over perhaps one-third of the visible heavens. Such appearances in ages past always portended war, and while the superstitions, which were once realities in their effect upon the conduct of men, had waned, the mental impressions made by them are yet uneffaced. In the inland villages people looked at the heavens and, with smiles of assumed incredulity, shook their heads and said trouble was coming for the country.

In 1860 another great comet appeared, and to those inclined to view the apparition as a foreboding, the recurrence had much more than duplicated significance. There were other warnings of coming events more tangible and some of them nearer at home.

The boys of the Grovemont Seminary were one day playing ball in the road in front of the house when the startling news came that a man named John Brown had invaded the South in an effort to free the slaves and had captured the arsenal at Harper's Ferry. In the main the sentiment in the school was Republican and opposed to slavery. Roger B. Taney, who, as Chief Justice, had rendered the Dred Scott decision, they flouted. A mile away, at the Corner Stores, Elijah F. Pennypacker, a Quaker, six feet four inches in height and straight as an arrow, at one time president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, had a station on the Underground Railroad and when, as occasionally happened, an unknown negro was met wending his way northward, he was bidden “Godspeed.” While, 80