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LES TROIS ROIS,

BY
EOBEET P. NEVIN,
AUTHOR OF " BLACK-ROBES," "TRACKS OF A TRAVELER," AO.

PITTSBURG:
JOS. EICHBAUM & CO.
1888.

Copyright 1888 BY
Robert P. Nevin.

PEEFAOE.

The writing of Les Trois Rois was undertaken with a
view to its appearance as a Magazine article. The subject,
however, grew so in the sketching, in face of the desire to
keep it within compass, that, completed, it was found to be
quite out of size for the setting for which it was intended.
It was then decided to present it in its present shape.
Books treating of the industries of Pittsburg have already
been written, but they consist, all, so exclusively of 'Facts,
sir ; nothing but Facts,' that only they, the figuring few like
Gradgrind, ' witlTa rule and a pair of scales, and the multi
plication table always in their pocket,' are willing to under
take their reading. The unciphering many have no relish
for that sort of entertainment. They do not object exactly
to Facts, but prefer that they should be presented in some
form other, and less uninviting, than in the naked — with
something of fair flesh about them, rather than in the bare
skeleton. To meet that preference— to show in such a light
as to invite the popular eye, and so inform the popular
mind of what with its forces and resources Pittsburg is— is
what has been here attempted.
The idea of adapting the legend of the Three Kings of
Cologne to the purpose in hand, was taken up, not to give pre-

iv PREFACE.
ferred prominence to persons, but because it afforded a con
venient device for grouping naturally and consistently in a
one picture the three leading, but diverse, subjects treated
of ; and, besides, as calculated to excite that livelier interest
always felt when the individual figures in a narrative.
The companion pieces to 'Les Trois Rois,' 'Tom the
Tinker' and 'Stephen C. Foster and Negro Minstrelsy,' ap
peared originally, the latter in the Atlantic Monthly, and the
former in Lippincotl'a Magazine, by kind permission of whose
publishers they are here reproduced.
Vine-acre, February, 1888.

LES TROIS ROIS.

TN the arms of the goodly City of Cologne one
may see emblazoned the heraldic device, in
right stately display, of Three Crowns. How
the fair old town came to appropriate that loftily-
regal bearing, the stranger within its gates, curious
concerning the mystery, need not seek far to be
informed, since the legend that reveals it hangs
on the tongue, tickling to tell it, of whomsoever
among its denizens he may happen to encounter,
on the streets or at their corners. Thus : —
When our Lord was born, certain Magi, as
saith the Gospel, saw his Star in the East and
came \to worship him. They were Kings, as it
had been prophesied they should be, these Magi ;
" Kings of Tarshish and of the Isles ; Kings of
Sheba and of Seba," and worthy therefore of
honorable respect — a respect second only to that
to which they were entitled by reason of the still
nobler distinction declared of them, that they
2

6 LES TROIS ROIS.
were ' Wise Men.' Coming down, these Wise
Men, to Bethlehem to worship, they in turn — so
is it that reverence begets reverence — themselves
were worshiped. Before them, living, people
bowed the knee in honoring homage ; and when
in time they died, as Kings, even though Magi,
must, they sainted them and held them sacred.
Years later, when good Christians began to
learn the value of that sort of property, their
bones, disinterred, were carefully conveyed to
Milan. A long repose awaited them there, but it
was broken at length when Barbarossa came down
and laid siege to the city. Then, that harm
should by no chance befall them there, they were
taken up and carried to Cologne. Here in the
old Cathedral built by Charlemagne, were they
finally planted, and here, happily for the city,
have they remained undisturbed ever since.
Happily for the city, for marvelous truly, and
manifold, have been the fruits that have grown
out of that planting. Was the old Cathedral
caught on an unlucky day, once, and consumed
by fire ? The bodies of its Saints lay where they
lay, amid the heat and the blaze of the burning,
but, like as with the Three Children of Judea put
through a like trial, ' the flames did not kindle

LES TROIS ROIS. 7
upon them,' and out they came whole and sound,
their wonder-working virtues quickened, not
quenched, by the ordeal. As was presently to be
made appear; for while the town's people were
sorrowing still, and sighing, over their great mis
fortune, lo ! a miracle! Up from out the ruins
of the old Cathedral began to rise the walls,
planted wide, and deep, and strong, of a new ! It
was of massive, magnificent design, the new, and
took long time in finishing into shape — so long
time that but for the saving presence of its Saints,
the foundations of it would have crumbled into
ruins ere yet the top-stones of its towers were
laid. But — blessings on their bones ! — Magi may
build slow, but they build surpassing sure ; and
there, in its place perfect now, at last, it stands, a
wonder to gaze at and admire ; of its kind and in
its order, in all the wide world without an equal.
Alone, this signal proof of favor, so generously
bestowed, might have established for the Saints a
full title to popular gratitude, but having begun,
it was with no purpose to let cease to their work.
Long as the City cared for their bones the Saints
would care for the City. As they did ; not spar
ingly, but bountifully, and with a liberal concern
— which was duly appreciated — for its secular, as

8 LES TROIS ROIS.
well as it's spiritual advantage. Thus, while
hallowed, and hallowing, relics — of Theophania,
say, and of St. Gereon, and of the Eleven Thou
sand Virgins — with sanctuaries befitting in which
to enshrine them, multiplied, at even pace grew
and increased the resources of traffic; so that soon,
commensurate with the fame of its altars became
the fame of its wares — its snuff and its wax, its
soap and its sugar, and — precious above all — its
water. And so it came to pass that the hearts of
the people leaned with a warm affection towards
the Wise Men, their patrons and protectors ; that
pilgrims and merchants from far and near flocked
in to do them duty — to buy and to pray, and that
grace and gain, thus joining hands, have gone on
since, prospering and to prosper together. And
so it came to pass that the renown of the Magi —
Gaspar, Melchior, Belthazar — was established;
their names rendered illustrious, and themselves
destined to live on always, in proud and imposing
distinction, as Les Trois Eois — the Three
Kings of Cologne.

As from my window I look out upon our city,
amazed at the picture I see presented of it there,

LES TROIS ROIS. 9
as contrasted with its aspect, still remembered, of
fifty years ago, I am reminded of this olden legend
of the venerable town on the Rhine, and I wonder,
is there not more of fact, after all, than of fancy
in tlie story, and may not that which has been
told of Cologne, be over again told, with a just, if
not a juster, propriety, of Pittsburg? Have we
not, too, our Bones of Wise Men — bones, more
over, not dry, nor bare, nor dead, like the bones
of the Magi in the old Cathedral, but living,
fresh in flesh, and with nerves and sinews to
match? And miracles? — Why what are they,
the marvelous most, the most amazing, that the
canonized of Cologne, or for that matter, of any
where else in all Christendom, ever wrought,
compared to the wonders worked, and working,
in the mill of mills for such grist, down on our
rivers here ? See the smoke, the flames, the
vapor, rise, and roll, and swell, and mingling,
risen, in colossal mass pile up against the clouds!
Hear, sounding out from the palled area below,
the roar, the shrieks, the groans as of big she-
Gorgons or Chimeras many, in the agonies of
labor ; and up and down the rivers, and up and
down their valleys, hear and see, the keels in fleets
afloat, toil, groaning and striving, heavy-laden,

10 LES TROIS ROIS.
through the water; and steaming engines with
their long serpentine lengths of burdened trains
behind, rush hither-ward and hence-ward along
the shores !. Miracles, aye ; — of which these sights
and sounds are but the signs — the shadows and
the echoes : shadows and echoes ; and yet, as in
witness of superhuman endeavor at supernatural
undertakings, and of successful, substantial
achievement, the all-sufficient proofs. For they
tell how Earth has been compelled, out of her
secretest and strongest holds, to yield up her
hoards of precious ores, and how the forces of
Nature have been seized, subdued, its elements
mastered, and both harnessed into service — to
reduce them, refine them and forge them into
shape for use.
Would you know from what beginnings — be
ginnings so unpromising, so commonplace —
results so extraordinary have followed? — what
the advances, the progresses, culminating in these
wonders? and who the Gaspar, Melchior, Belt-
hazar — the Wise Men — the Three Kings — the
workers of these wonders ? Attend to what in
days to come shall be told as the legend of our
time, and learn. *

LES TROIS ROIS. 11
When, a mere jumble of few, cheap huts,
Pittsburg first found for itself a name and
a place in the map of the land, it was pretty
much like one of the brats newly-born on its
premises — scrubby, squalid, and generally of
most unpromising appearance. Bantling of the
old Fort, whose name by right of parentage
•t bears, the nursing it received was nothing to
speak of; for the Fort, on its last legs, had quite
as much of a contract on hand as it could manage,
to take care of itself. But for all that — perhaps
the better for all that — the bantling grew, up
through the stages of crawling, cutting of teeth,
weaning, until, its period of youngster-hood well
entered, and left an orphan, — the old Fort done
for and gone to rot, — it was forced to fall back on
its own resources for a living.
Casting round for an occupation, the little town
hit upon one, perhaps to its choice, perhaps not ;
but v which, since it wore a favorable aspect,
and particularly as it seemed to be about the
only available in offering, it made haste to
adopt. Settlements had been started at different neigh
boring points in Western Pennsylvania, as well
as in Kentucky and Tennessee, the last-mentioned

12 LES TROIS ROIS.
\
somewhat remote but approachable by means of
the floating facilities afforded by the Ohio River.
Their fertile lands contributed plentifully to the
support and comfort of these communities. They
had their corn and their meat in abundance to
eat; their home-woven flax and wool to wear;
and their wine, or a liquor still more generous in
lieu thereof, wherewithal, like unto the wine of
Lebanon of old, to solace the elders and to make
the young men cheerful.
But the best of good things in having never
sates the desire, always craving, after good things
still better. Their tables and wardrobes furnished
to fulness with the necessaries of life, a longing
sprang up for its luxuries. Out of the sparings,
over enough for home consumption, of what they
grew and what the wilds around them afforded,
might not a trade be opened and exchanges made
for the coveted goods in the markets ofthe East?
The little town caught at the suggestion, and pro
ceeded to put it in execution. It had found a
calling and would make the most of it. The
business, with its, at first, limited possibilities of
patronage, had of course to be conducted accord
ingly — on as. cheap a plan, and with as close an
eye to economy, as might be. Camels had been

LES TROIS ROIS. 13
tried and approved as carriers in another East.
True, these "Ships of the Desert" were not at
command here, but Schooners of the Wilderness
— hacks of back-woods breed, " hollow pampered "
but hardy, — were, and the Pack-horse, as meeting
the conditions needed, became the chosen vessel
of transportation.
Outward bound, the lading, in this commercial
enterprise, consisted of skins, furs, whisky, bees
wax, herbs medicinal, such as ginseng, snake-root;
and petroleum, held in high esteem as a specific
for head-ache, tooth-ache, rheumatism, small-pox,
and " in demand among white people," as says
Loskiel, "at four guineas a quart." The bales
for return trips were made up of bar-iron for
horse-shoes, gun-powder, lead, salt, knives, pots,
calicoes, dimities and such-like sundries — some
times, rarely, in precious parcels for bridal wear
at marryings — silks. The route, from start to
terminus, was a long, difficult and somewhat
perilous one. Mountains were to be climbed;
dark gorges threaded; floods forded; morasses,
tough and deep with mire, gone through ; storms
encountered; with, along, across and through
them all, a narrow, ill-defined trail only, to offer
footing and point out the way. There were no

14 LES TROIS ROIS.
inns to lend accommodation to man or beast.
Under tents of chestnut or pine-trees, pitched
and standing in great camps all along the line,
shelter as needed was found, with, for rest and for
sleep, ready laid, couches of leaves and pillows of
mosses. The pack-horseman carried with him his own
needed supplies of provender — corn, ground for
himself, and in the grain for his cattle. When he
would add meat to his fare, he had but to look,
out of the horned herd that ran wild in the
woods, to select a victim, and with his rifle bring
him down. The rifle was an item of furniture
iudispensable not only for such use, but as a means
of defence against robbers, by whom he was not
infrequently waylaid ; robbers bold in daring,
desperate in action, (or ballads lie that tell of
them) and whom none, however defiant, cared,
except upon compulsion, to encounter. Twenty-
five miles to the day was the average rate of
travel, so that two weeks, exactly, were required
to cover the three hundred and fifty between
Pittsburg and Philadelphia — counting Sundays
in, that is; and it has sorrowingly to be confessed
th:it, passed beyond sound of the church-going
bell, our fathers were not as precise to remember

LES TROIS ROIS. 15
the Sabbath day to keep it holy, as Presbyterians,
true to their catechism, should have been. *
These, and many other such as these, difficulties
and drawbacks in the pack-horse enterprise had
to be met, but it was carried on in spite of them
It was found to be a paying business; moderately
so at first, but growing in profit faster and faster
with every fresh season's prosecution of it. Old
settlements widened as the years went on ; new
ones were planted ; homes increased numerously
— more numerously the families that inhabited
them; clearings multiplied; like as grain ready
for the harvest before the scythe of the reaper, so
at edge of the steel of the axe-man, swath by
swath, in steady mowing, fell the statelier crop in
the vaster field of the forest. The barns of the
farmers were filled with the produce of their
lands, their folds with sheep, and the stalls of
their stables with cattle. They waxed fat, and,
as against their hitherto close limitings of self-
* And yet caution had to be observed in such desecrations
of the day. George Nixon and Philip Bradley having too
boldly ventured, once, to pass through Hannas Town, were
arrested "for Breaking Sunday by following their ordinary
employment of driving pack-horses," and for the offense
were fined six pounds.

16 LES TROIS ROIS.
indulgence, like Jeshurun of old, they kicked.
Pittsburg — it was in the line of its trade — saw
what were the growing wants of its customers,
and was neither slothful nor negligent to supply
them. Highways, broad and evenly graded, to
take the place of scant and scraggy 'trails,' were
opened. For the grand main thoroughfares,
turnpikes were laid. Pack-saddles as contriv
ances, weak and insufficient, for the carrying of
merchandize, were laid aside, and the Wagon was
employed in their stead. * *
Huge affairs, and stout as hickory and oak,
well banded and bolted in place with iron,
could make them, were these Wagons. And great
need was there that they should be, to bear the
heavy burdens with which they were freighted.
Their beds, except in very rare slack seasons, were
always packed to the brim — often, when ladings
were light of weight comparatively, up above
that level in a round heap, to the very ribs of the
bowed frame supporting the canvas by which
from end to end they were covered and, with its
fastenings, corded in. The teams that did the
hauling consisted of four, sometimes six, horses;

LES TROIS ROIS. 17
all of first-family blood, and meriting well the
generous care and keeping they received. From
his saddle on the stallion at the 'left wheel,' the
driver, with a single line attached to the bridle-
rein of the animal in the lead, directed their
course. He carried a pliable leathern whip
('black-snake' he called it), a good handful in
size at the butt, tapering gradually to a point, and
terminating in a short, twisted silken lash, which
it was his pleasure to flourish and make go off,
with a crack like the shot of a pistol, about the
flanks and the ears of his cattle. A dog, to serve
on watch at night, was usually, while on the route,
to be seen walking either at rear of the wagon or
under its tongue, between the wheel-horses, in
front. Bells of different diminutive sizes, at
tached in sets, like chimes, to bands of brass that
reached, bending in graceful curves, from hame
to hame over the horses' shoulders, once in a while
were to be' heard, ringing out their merry jingle
on the air. Glad to the ears of dwellers by the way
side were these ringings of the bells — gladder still
to their owner's, for they came to be his by fair
winning at general competition, and every separate
sound sent out was as a voice to proclaim that his

18 LES TROIS ROIS.
was the banner wagon, his the team of teams, and
he the champion driver of the road.
The wagons had a carrying capacity, each, of
from four to five tons. A day's journey was
about equal to that of the pack-horse, some
twenty-five miles. The teams had fatiguing
labor to undergo and toiled at it slowly ; never
advancing their pace beyond a walk, and a lazy,
loitering one at that. The drivers were not severe
upon their 'beasts'; did not incline to overtax
them ; let them jog along pretty much as they
pleased ; locked the wheels not to have them urged
too fast coming down the hills; and stopped, not
seldom, for long rests between short pulls, going
up. Time was not money in those days, or if it
was, men on the road were not miserly in the
spending of it. At sunset, if a tavern were at
hand, — as one generally was, since they were
planted a proper day's journey, as nearly as
possible, apart, — the team arriving turned into its
yard : if, however, kept back by accidental delays,
none such accommodation offered, no matter ; the
nearest walnut tree, or willow, growing on the
wayside, with the pump or spring under it,
afforded all the shelter, and the only other unpro
vided want — water — that was needed. Thus

LES TROIS ROIS. 19
suited, the driver unhitched his horses; stripped
them of their gears; posted them, haltered, in
pairs on opposite sides of the tongue — to which
had been fastened previously a trough or feeding-
box, unhooked for such use from its carrying-
place at the rear end of the wagon-bed — supplied
in full measure, and left them, satisfied, to the
enjoyment of their rations — their corn or their
oats. A hamper (private) was then brought
mysteriously to view, out of the miscellaneous
contents of which — a brown paper parcel savorily,
not to say greasily, suggestive of gammon sand
wiches, a green-glass bottle with a corn-cob
stopper, a twist of tobacco and a pipe — were ex
tracted meats and accompaniments, enough for a
feast, for himself and his dog. Night fairly
fallen, his hunger satisfied and his pipe smoked
out, he climbed into his wagon, out of the softest
bales arranged a bed ; then, with above and about
him, the twinkle of stars, the chirp of crickets,
the moan of doves, the far-off bark of cur or
mastiff, with their lulling influences, to invite,
and a final pull at the green-glass bottle to com
plete, the yielding, he resigned him to sleep.
The scene, with such an air of tiresomeness and
languor about it in the evening, wore a livelier

20 LES TROIS ROIS.
aspect in the morning. Then was there pawing
of feet and rattling of halter-chains, and a throw
ing back of ears, and shrill screeches, and ill-
tempered bitings at each other among the horses,
restive from rest, and cross from hungering and
a too long unrewarded waiting over an empty
trough. Then, on the part of the teamster, was
there handling of feed-bags, and carrying of
water, and currying of cattle, and examining of
hoofs to assure against loose shoes and chance
bruises ; then, one by one, the taking off, and one
by one again the putting on, of wheels to lubricate
the axles, filling thick the air around with the
odor of tar, in the operation. Then the harnessing
and hitching in of horses; the helping up into
the wagon, for relief after his night-long watch,
the dog — who found his rest there, all he seemed to
need, in sitting at front on his hind legs, and
looking out from under the canvas in contempla
tive survey of the scenery along the road ; the
mounting into saddle ; the flourish of the whip ;
the crack of the lash, whose bark waS worse than
its bite; and then at last, with a long pull, a
strong pull, and a pull altogether, the strained
start and painful going of the wain, in its move
on another new day's journey.

LES TROIS ROIS. 21
Push did not seem to be understood, in the
days herein written of, as a concomitant essential
to progress. It was taken for granted that as in
its old-fashioned, soberly-regulated way the earth
moved, so should move all lesser matters, in which
power of motion lodged, on its surface. Once
started a-going, they should be let go, in their own
order and in their own way. It would be wrong
to prevent progress, and yet not right to lag
behind: the proper thing was to link arms, as it
were, and side by side trudge along, keeping same
step to same slow music with it. Long as the Pack-
horse could be, he was depended upon and stood
by. When in the steady course of events, it was
found that the burden of business was too much
for his back, the inevitable was accepted ; he was
dropped to make room for a fitter vessel, and so
came in the Wagon. But the crisis was reached
at length, when the Wagon likewise had crowding
on it more than it could carry, and then gone was
its occupation — gone to give way to a new and
still move largely accommodating rival — the
Canal- boat.

22 LES TROIS ROIS.
Glad, though staidly so, were the good folk of
Pittsburg, when the Canal, finished complete and
flooded to the full, was declared open at last for
navigation ! Glad the dealers in the town's markets
— the buyers of rare stuffs in the marts of the
East, and the sellers of the same ! Jubilant the
traders in corn and in rye; in pork, in wool, in
whisky; to find a channel offer, reliable for
prompt and safe delivery to other traders over by
the sea, of their barrels and their bales ! Trans
ported the transporter as from his dock he watched
to see the keels, weighed belly-deep down with
freight, pull out in first venture upon their distant
voyage! The very mules (two, in tandem,) that
were the motive-power to the new-fangled craft,
touched by the prevailing enthusiasm, grew
frolicsome like their betters — cocked their ears,
switched their tails, kicked up their heels, and
with a start and a  —Well, well; if they behaved
with unbeseeming, perhaps indelicate, levity, the
occasion was remembered and they were forgiven.
There was not much — in fact nothing — to boast
of either way, when one came to compare rates of
speed attained, or attainable, as between wagon
and canal-boat. Both were' slow coaches at
smartest. If the end of an hour found the latter

LES TROIS ROIS. 23
advanced two miles beyond where the beginning
took it up, reasonable progress had been made; if
three miles, then the mules achieving the work
had done nobly, and were entitled to rank, on the
tow-path, with the horses that carried the bells on
the turnpike. But the differences, other than this,
were great, and all in favor of the Canal-boat.
It required from four to six horses to haul a load
of five tons by wagon. Two mules could tow,
with no more toil, a boat weighted with five times
five tons, aye, and a fifth of as much more, in its
hold. For teams on the turnpike eight or ten
hours at pulling were considered a fair day's
portioning for a fair day's work. On the tow-path
it was tramp, tramp, tramp, from daylight to
dark, from dark to daylight, all the time —
making, thus, a gain of actual going ahead of
some sixteen out of twenty-four hours' count,
equal to well-nigh forty miles, over the wagon.
Nor were the mules at all over-tasked at their
work. If they had their 'on's' at toil they had
their ' off's ' for rest as well ; for each boat had
its force of four, so that, turn about, while one
pair tugged at the rope, on shore, the other rode
at elegant ease, as passengers, in a private state
room on board.

24 LES TROIS ROIS.
The crew of a boat consisted of a captain, a
steersman, two drivers and an elderly woman
cook. The duty of the steersman was to stand at
his helm — or sit on it if he liked; to steer shy
of lee-shores; to smoke the pipe of peace, and
between puffs, when so disposed, to drop driblets
of dallying discourse down through a hatchway,
close in front of him, for the delectation of the
cook in the kitchen. The captain's responsible
business was, to walk the deck ; to scan at times,
with side-long glance, distant horizons, as though
suspicious of storms brewing there-away some
where ; when he came to a lock, to trumpet
'Slack!' to the driver through his hands, com-
mandingly; un-pin the tow-line with a touch of
his foot on an iron spring, and let the craft free
from its cable, float in through the gates ; then, in
presence ofthe lock-keeper, as afterwards, meeting
other boats with other captains on their decks,
gruffly to hail his pilot with, 'Hard a-helm there,
damn your eyes!' not wickedly nor maliciously,
but — professionally, say, as significant of his
office, and so that land -lubbers loafing about
should learn that he was master of that, his craft
— knew what discipline was, and how, according
to approved naval usage, to exercise and maintain
it; nothing more.

LES TROIS ROIS. 25
At his post of service, the driver, away by
himself and cut off entirely from communication
with his friends— except through speaking-trum
pets — might be supposed to have had a lonely time
of it. And so he had. But he did not cavil at
it; in fact he rather liked it. His hours may
have been tedious, but they were not tasteless.
To while them away, if in his lighter mood,
passing by where scattering habitations were, he
would exchange jolly greetings with the good-man
leaning idly against his door-post; wave cheery
salutes to the wife, from behind looking over her
spouse's shoulder; tip sly winks to the cherry-
cheeked daughter peeping out at the window, and,
if afoot, and fairly tempted to it, throw a flip-flap
on the tow-path, to the wonder unutterable — and
how to the rapture ! — of the small boy staring
out through the bars of the garden-gate. Medi
tatively disposed, he could find solace for himself
in silent communion with nature ; lending an ear
to her sermons in the stones ; or, less seriously
inclined, borrowing entertainment from her books
— old-fashioned scrolls — in the running brooks,
unfolding to him roll after roll of romance and
of poem — read by the light of the lamp of the
moon, how bewitching !

26 LES TROIS ROIS.
If high were the hopes which Pittsburg
cherished, at the opening of this new channel for
her commerce, they were fully realized. From
the date of her day of small things, — the
pack-saddle period — when the people within her
gates were but as a handful, she had kept on
growing; slowly, but steadily, healthily growing.
From year to year, span by span did she lengthen
her cords and stretch forth the curtains of her
habitations. The scant scores of her population
multiplied into hundreds, these, during her Wagon
age, into tens of hundreds, until at the finishing
of her canal (1832), they had reached a total of
seventeen thousand souls. Nor had the country,
meanwhile, proved less progressive than the to.vn.
The time that was, when lands in whole sections
were ownerless, and could be had any day for the
taking, had long gone. Acres were havings and
holdings worth money. Farms lay, not scattered
sparsely here and there, in far-apart patches with
wide breadths between of waste wilds, but every
where; close, compact, as settings in a mosaic
— just what they looked to be.
Multitudes coming in to occupy the land, the
Border was continually crowded back and back.
Of various blood and breed the new possessors of

LES TROIS ROIS. 27
the new properties, their very differences worked
to advantage; for while the Yankees — the later
importation — were staking out their townships on
the plateaus under Lake Erie, and peopling them
prolifically, the Scotch-Irish natives, with a praise
worthy spirit of emulation, were extending their
settlements down along the Ohio River. Tons upon
tous increasing with every year, of the reapingsof
the vast fields thus brought under cultivation, were
hauled or floated up and down the highways and
water-courses centering there, to seek a selling-
place through Pittsburg. The ware-houses at the
docks — great sheds with spacious floors — had
freights crowded into them more than they could
shelter; and the canal-boats— the time had come,
which it had been fondly imagined never could
come, when even they were taxed to the extreme
to do expected service; and only that, and then,
by close bestowing, and after delays vexatious to
the carrier, and disappointing to his customers.
This state of affairs could not last long. The
demands of traffic, enlarging all the time, had to
be met, actively, not negligently, or the town's
mainstay to its prosperity would be lost. There
was a needful place — that was evident — to be
filled; and the 'Wanted' for it — an operator,

28 LES TROIS ROIS.
earnest, energetic, aggressive; a One, inspired —
a Wise Man — to know what, toward keeping
ways clear and making things move, was to be
done, and to see it done — that needed, too, to be
supplied. And it was.

William Thaw was quite a young man —
only seventeen years of age — when, in 1835,
he was offered, and accepted, a position as
clerk in the forwarding and commission house of
McKee, Clarke & Co. In this subordinate capacity
he served for five years; a term long enough, put
industriously to use, to qualify him thoroughly
for the higher place he was called to, at its expir
ation in 1840, as junior partner in the firm of
Clarke & Thaw. That, stepping into this new
enterprise, he was putting foot on ground slippery
and uncertain, he knew. The venture was attended
by no having, or commanding, of circumstantial
advantage. The ground was quite fully occupied,
as it was. Old stagers, such as Lloyd, and Graff,
and Taaffe, and McFaden, and — last on the list, but
foremost of all" in fame and in fortune — David
Leech, were in the field; nor did they drive slow

LES TROIS ROIS. 29
coaches, any among them, either. Money, not a
little, was required to set a new establishment
afloat — more, considerably, to keep it from sinking
afterwards. The canal, owned by the State, was
a free highway, open, like a turnpike, to all who
chose to take to it, and pay the tolls; but the
transporters had to attend to their own outfitting
— build their own boats, and buy their own
mules. For their forwarding, westward, the River was
there at command, but they had to furnish their
own steamers. Competition, as to charges, ran
high among the houses ; too high for compensation
to keep up with it, and that was about the costliest
feature of the business. These, and such as these,
were the hills of difficulty that had to be sur
mounted ; these, and such as these, the Giants in
the way to be wrestled with and overcome. The
young partner, the man of action in the new
house, was not intimidated, and did not shrink at
view of them. He had faith in his enterprise,
faith in himself, and — fail ? There could be no
failure; in his lexicon there was no such word.
So, before-hand, advised, and so, presently, as
sured, he entered the arena.
Thus far advances, considerable and important
4

30 LES TROIS ROIS.
certainly, in the carrying trade had been made.
The turnpike had brought with it a gain great
over the 'trail'; compared to the wagon the
pack-saddle was a toy. Still greater was the gain
of the tow-path over the turnpike ; the wagon of
the one was a puny, tubby affair ; but a cock-boat,
on wheels, contrasted with the carack of the other.
But, gone thus far, improvement went no farther.
The same old dilatoriness in locomotion prevailed ;
the same undervaluing, and consequent putting to
loose profit, of time; The horse had gone at a
walk on the road; the mule went at a walk on the
canal. In fact, everybody, everything, went at a
walk. ' Festina lente' — 'take it easy' — was the
motto men served under : the rule they worked
by. They did not see the preciousness of the
property they were trifling with — how it might
be utilized, and how put to account. But now
there was an eye of keener perception about — the
new, and more enlightened, Adventurer's — that
did ; and straightway turned was there a new leaf,
and begun a new chapter, in the annals of the
business. Action — lively, stirring action — became
the order of the day. Success was a reward that
to be won had to be raced for, and the contestants
set at it accordingly. The easy-going ways of

LES TROIS ROIS. 31
the boatmen were corrected. Captains, cautioned,
buckled more tightly to duty; drivers brisked up,
and mules, tickled to it, stepped out for all that
was in them. Boats walked the water like things
of life, and grass was a gone growth on the tow-
path. The Portage road (of rails) across mount
ains, connecting broken ends of the canal at
Johnstown and Hollidaysburg, had been the
occasion of much cost both in time and in money,
necessitating, as it did, an unloading and a loading
over again of all cargoes while on their passage
to or from Pittsburg. This was a hinderance not
to be endured. To overcome it, boats were built
in sections so that they could be taken apart on
one side, placed on trucks, rail-roaded over?
and, re-united, set afloat again on the other, with
scarce a pause to their progress.
The revival they started on the canal was of a
type mild compared to the out-break of it on the
River. The wharf along the Monongahela was
the scene of liveliest activity. Steam-boats lined
the shore from one graded end of it to the other.
On board, men, thick and busy as ants, moved
serving about — groups in the light on deck,
sharing labors at lifting, or lowering of freights
with groups in the dark, down in the holds below,

32 LES TROIS ROIS.
and giving work to* other groups receiving what
was to be received, or discharging what was to be
discharged over the planks of the gang-ways.
'Rats' swarmed the shore heaving at hogsheads,
and casks, and crates, and bales, and tumbling
them home to heaps high out of water-reach on
the wharf. Drays, carts, wagons, rolled thumping
up and down over the cobble-stones in steady,
continuous round, bringing back burdens in full
return for what they came to bear away.
But the object inviting notice most, and chief
to be noticed in the scene, was the steamer, the
casting loose of whose cable from its fastening ou
shore, the drawing-in of whose gangway-planks,
and a last quickly-struck warning of whose bell
— the large swinging one on the hurricane deck
— gave signal of departure. For as the River
was its great channel of commerce to the city —
that upon which this, its then leading pursuit,
depended most for continued prosperity — so, ac
cordingly, great was the popular interest that
centered in it, and in all that pertained to it.
They had a passion for a boat, the people, ardent
as that of a lover for his mistress. So had the
Captain. It was a joy to him to manoeuvre her
at starting so as to show off to advantage her

LES TROIS ROIS. 33
points; her symmetries of form, her graces of
motion ; but more than a joy — a perfect blessed
ness — to give proof of her speed, when fairly out
and free to go on the water ! That, after all, like
charity among its sisters, was to her the virtue of
virtues; without it she was nothing.
Rivalry ran high among the Captains. As in
the turnpike days the wagon that out-sped the
rest won the high right to wear the bells, so the
steam-boat making the fastest run enjoyed the
proud distinction of carrring the 'horns' — the
branching antlers of a buck. The honor could
go to but one boat, of course, but all might con
tend for it; and not without prospect of advantage,
since even though defeated, it was fame worth
struggling for to be counted as second, or even
next best under second, on the list. The 'Buckeye
State' gained the coveted prize at her first attempt,
holding on to it afterwards to the end of her
brilliant career.* The 'Brilliant' did not care to
enter the lists as against her, but that was no
reason why she should not try a course with the
'Telegraph,' or ring out rejoicings from her bell
when she won. Sights worth the seeing were
these races — sights to stir the blood and make
* The 'Alleghany' (Capt. Chas. W. Bntchelor) won the horns in 1852, bat
not as in competition with the ' Buckeye State' (Capt. Saml. Deani. The
coarse ot the former lay between Cincinnati and Louisville, that of the
latter between Pittsburg and Cincinnati.

34 LES TROIS ROIS.
the hearts beat high, of those engaged in them !
If there ever was a time when all hands were
alive on board, it was then ; if there ever was a
time when stokers stood willingly up to their task,
stripped bare to the belt so as at coolest and freest
to front the flames and do their hot work well, it
was then ! If ever there was a time that coal was
found too cold a fuel, and rosin, and tar, and bacon,
as of fierier force, were fed the furnaces to make
them blaze as they should, it was then ! Then,
the contagion of excitement quick to communicate,
would passengers line the guards, and gather in
groups on deck, to w atch how held the heat ; if
promisingly, to flatter, if doubtfully, to warn, the
Captain — who needed no warning, but who, at
his forward post on the hurricane deck, when
the time to prove him came, winked quietly a
message to the pilot, who piped its meaning to
the engineer below, who told it to the firemen.
Then busy moving of feet about the boilers would
follow, and banging open and shut of iron doors,
and fresh roaring of flames, and a thickening of
pitchy, and flitchy, odors in the air ; when the
strained timbers of the vessel would tremble, and
its whole frame shake under pain of its labor — a
labor tremendous to endure, but which was to find

LES TROIS ROIS. 35
no cease nor ease, until its crisis of deliverance
came, and cheers exultant on the one side, and
sullen silence on the other, told of a victory won,
and lost! Severe as was the test to which
steamers, on these occasions, were put, they stood
it well ; and it is still the boast of the one or two
yet surviving of their commanders, that never
did an explosion occur (among packets of the
line, that is), nor ever befall an accident to result
either in damage to a vessel, or in the loss of life
to any of its passengers.
The improvement in the construction, finish
and equipment of these boats, from the date of
their first introduction to the time when — when
they, too, found their occupation gone, and fol
lowed in the wake of the wagon off after the
pack-horse, was great. The 'Arabian,' ' Pioneer,'
' Wacousta,' of the first line started (1835), were
respectable, indeed, and not unpretty, though plain
as compared to the ' Monongahela,' the 'Hibernia,'
the 'Messenger' and other like higher-toned fair
ones of the class of '46, but were cast into the
shade utterly on the later appearing, one by one
in successive seasons along until '56, of such
dashing beauties as the 'Allegheny,' the 'Brilliant'
and the 'Crystal Palace.'

86 LES TROIS ROIS.
Wheeling, having her separate avenue of com
munication with the East through Cumberland
to Baltimore, had begun to dispute the right of
Pittsburg to a monopoly of the River trade.
While the commerce of the latter had now a wide
spread reach, extending to towns on the Mississippi
and along the navigable waters tributary to that
river, the port of paramount importance to her —
that which contributed most largely to her profit
— was Cincinnati. To wrest, if possible, this prize
from her rival, was the object of first desire with
Wheeling; to hold on to it, at any cost, the
resolve of Pittsburg. In this temper both set to
work ; each doing her extravagant and most
costly best to outdo the other. — At the very time,
had they but known, when of all times it would
have been better for both, far better, to have
folded their arms and done nothing. For a new
course for commerce to follow had opened, aiid a
new conveyer — a conveyer ' whose chariots were
as a whirlwind, and whose horses swifter than
the eagles,' — had come ; to deliver to canal and
river their death-blow, and to leave tow-boats and
steamers corpses on the hands of their owners —
dead properties to be broken up and bartered off

LES TROIS ROIS. 37
for scrap-iron and kindling-wood, fit as they were
to them for no more profitable use.
The Pennsylvania Railroad, when it was finished
and got into working-condition (1852) entered
upon a career which — so it had been destined —
was to bring about an entire change in the affairs
of Pittsburg. The city's trade, that to which in
its infantile days, under administration of the
Pack-horse, it had been apprenticed: to which,
under ' boss' -ism of the Wagon, it had done
journeyman service, and to the independent
prosecution of which as Master-workman, under
auspices of the Canal and the River, it had devoted
itself, was lost and gone. The places that knew
the Forwarding and Commission houses on Water
Street were to know them no more. The Dray
as an institution, mighty in its day, was to drop,
with its driver, into desuetude. So with other
classes in other callings — and there were armies
of them — holding place or employment in one
form of dependence or another, under the old
working system; as it went down, they going
down with it. But the prime sufferers were the
transportation companies. Fortunes had been

38 LES TROIS ROIS.
expended in the erection of warehouses, the build
ing of boats, the purchase of stock, live and still,
for the transfer of freight, and the procurement
of properties innumerable besides, necessary to a
complete outfit for the establishments; and now,
all, at a one stroke — all, with a one common fate,
into a one common wreck, were to pass and to
perish together! It was a cruel blow. Under
shock of it the stricken, helpless and hopeless,
— with no heart left to even try at recovery —
retired from the field. — All, save one.
Mr. Thaw had not miscalculated in his reckon
ing of the risks and resistances he would have to
encounter in taking up his business, nor had he
relied with a confidence unwarranted, as events
proved, on his ability to meet them. Once en
tered upon his calling, with all his might he
followed it up. Gains were to be won — so gains
worth the having always are — only by hot pur
suing and hard striving for; but he had the wind
in him, the will and the wear, for that — won from
the start, and went on winning and winning.
Steadily and strengtheningly his trade grew. Boat
after boat was added to the canal. On the River,
as old ports—Cincinnati, Louisville, Nashville,
St. Louis — from increasing traffic demanded, and

LES TROIS ROIS. 39
as new ones opening from time to time, on the
Upper Mississippi, the Illinois and the Missouri,
invited, steamer after steamer was built, until they
were numbered by fleets. From first to last Mr.
Thaw was proprietor ily interested in over one hun
dred and fifty. These were costly possessions. To
have them go, and, what was worse, to have go with
them that which the best years of his life had
been spent to make great and profitable — his
occupation — was more than he would consent to ;
more than he would submit to — if he could help
it. They who have looked upon the man, and seen
his eye — every diamond -pointed arrowy glance
of which, shot from the bent bow of its lid, strikes
and pierces through and through what. it aims at; .
seen his nose (that expressive feature, up to more
than snuff, decidedly), so bold in projection, so
clean-cut in outline, with nostrils thin and distent,
like those of the war-horse when he smells the
battle afar ; seen his mouth, tight shut, lip against
lip, as though his teeth had seized some stag of a
purpose and were holding on to it with the bite
of a bull-dog ; seen the hairs on his head and in
his beard, each short-cropped particular of which,
electrically charged with energy, stands stiff on

40 LES TROIS ROIS.
end ; seen the granite-built, pyramidal physique
under all ; can settledly understand the manner of
mortal he is of — can understand that when he
wills he wills, and that what he tries he does, or,
come to it, in the trying dies. With one such as
a disputant in the case, the result can be antici
pated. A war between the two powers — mule
and locomotive — had to follow, of course ; and it
followed. Such a contest might seem an unequal one, but
the advantages were not so wholly one-sided then
as they are now. The rails of which the road
was built, were made of iron, the cheapest in cost
— and in quality — that could be bought in the
market (for the Company, pinched for money, had
to drive close bargains), and were consequently
very liable to break, to the wrecking of trains and
the running-up of fearful bills for damages. The
canal was safe against all such accidents. It could
not be hit to be hurt anywhere or anyhow — unless
by a " low bridge," to the knocking overboard of
a captain, or a cook come up on deck to air her
self, perhaps — a dip that might drench but could
not drown, and that therefore could be made of
no charge as against the carrier. Trains, with
but one track to come and go on, would run into

LES TROIS ROIS. 41
each other; and so, indeed, might canal-boats, —
and so, indeed, might a pair of ducks met on a
mill-pond; but the woe only possible in any case
to ensue would all fall on the cars. The trans
porter took the benefit of all favoring chances
that offered ; made the most out of his advantages,
and turned to best account the weaknesses of his
enemy. ' War, war was still the cry, war even to
the knife !' The battle was long and valiantly
fought, but it was a losing game from first to last
on both sides. Freights were dropped to rates
that, perhaps, kept in oats the mules on the canal,
and in coal the locomotives on the railroad, but
not much more.
For three years did this ruinous rivalry keep
up. Money by the million went to waste. Boys
that angled in the locks for cat-fish made more
profit out of the canal than the transporters. The
same contest with the same result attended the
working of the ways running West.
Upon the completion of the Pennsylvania it had
been considered all-important that other roads
should be had reaching out in different directions
so as to command the traffic of the West. Per
suaded to that effect, the cities Pittsburg and
Allegheny and the county Allegheny lent their
5

42 LES TROIS ROIS.
credit largely towards their construction, reckon
ing hopefully on rich returns from the invest
ment; only, however, to be disappointed. The
Pennsylvania and Ohio (afterwards the Pittsburg,
Fort Wayne and Chicago), the Pittsburg and
Cleveland, and the Pittsburg, Columbus and
Cincinnati were built, indeed, which was so much
gained, but they did not turn out according to
expectation. Returns waited anxiously for, failed
to come. Confidence languished ; sickening with
it, shares weakened and weakened, until, sunk in
hopeless collapse, they lay for dead on the market.
The gospel of repudiation then began to be
preached, Thomas Williams, a lawyer of reputa
tion — and the owner of no little taxable property
in the cities besides — acting as its chief proclaimer.
His stormy eloquence wrought with telling effect.
Other owners of other town lots gathered in
crowds to hear him, and, glad to have drowned
down by the loud-tongued eloquence of so respon
sible an advocate, the still small voice, protestant,
of a secret but surer counsellor, owned and
honored his speech with cheers of approval. In
his flock of followers were men, many, prominent
and of prime moral standing among the people,
who would blush to see it so, pointedly, published

LES TROIS ROIS. 43
of them now. Happily there were honest ones left
enough in the community, to save the reputation of
the whole. The cities and the county were a little
late coming to it, but they came at last; honored
their bonds and sustained their credit. The
movement was as unwise as it was unworthy. Its
natural result was to utterly destroy what little
confidence was left in the rail- roads; to make the
already bad condition of their stocks desperately
worse ; to start a ' scare ' and on the impulse of it
to drive the corporations to a sale of their shares,
just at the juncture when down at their lowest
notch of depreciation.
Mr. Thaw saw, then, his opportunity and im
proved it. While others, demoralized by the
failures attending their first workings, lost faith
in their enterprises, he, relying upon what he knew
to be in them, rather than what had been feebly
and imperfectly, thus far, brought out of them,
believed, and as they let go, took hold — in his
accustomed active, unhesitating way, took hold.
He stopped his lines on the waters; sold his
steamers, his canal-boats and his mules for what
they would bring; closed the doors of his ware
houses: and the places on the docks and the
quays that had known him for so long, thence-

44 LES TROIS ROIS.
forth knew him no more. Dog-cheap were the
prices his old properties went at ; but dog-cheap,
too, was the cost of the new — the railway shares
into which they were turned. It was a deal of
truck for truck, when, as there was no limit to
offerings of stock at old-clothes rates, there need
be no end to buying on the' same terms. He
bought : bought freely again and again, and kept
on buying. Then — to make sure his cure for
past hurts — not content with a hair only, he
struck in for the hide in whole of the dog that
had bit him — joined with a select coterie of others,
formed an organization, and as the ' Pennsylvania
Company/ obtained possession and secured exclu
sive control of all the Western roads. His
peculiar fitness for the place recognized, his com
pany appointed him its prime executive officer,
throwing the chief management of its affairs into
his hands.
The position was a responsible one. When,
sixteen years before, he first put hand to his
business, the West, trading through Pittsburg,
had a population all told of about 5,000,000. To
carry one way and the other, what this people
bought and what they sold in their traffic with the
East, kept six richly-equipped transportation com-

LES TROIS ROIS. 45
panies (not to mention other several smaller and
weaker operators) actively employed from the open
ing of each season to its' close. The year 1856 found
the West peopled with 11,000,000 inhabitants-
mouths to feed and bodies to clothe having more
than doubled between the two dates. Now that
the canal was a ' dead duck,' this service — the
demand upon it grown so large already as that
the whole force of forwarders, ere they retired,
could hardly meet it — fell to the rail-road ; fell
to the direction of the single brain of the agent
placed at its head. The obstacles he had to en
counter were many and formidable. The roads,
even in their as yet incomplete condition, were in
a rickety, half-ruined state. Their rolling stock
was no better; and to make still more desperate
the case, they stood in such low credit that no one
from among the able anywhere outside was found
willing to come to their help. This darkly un
promising state of affairs did not dishearten Mr.
Thaw. It worked, in fact, exactly the other way
— put him on his pluck; caused those resolved
teeth of his to shut with a tighter bite, and that
upper lip to fasten down and back the teeth for
all there was in them.
The road-beds needed to be leveled and bal-

46 LES TROIS ROIS.
lasted; they were ballasted and leveled. The
rails needed to be replaced with an iron of quality
better than pot-metal ; they were replaced. Cars
were sadly wanted to move freight; he advanced
the cash, had built and set rolling a hundred of
them. The locomotives in use were wizened,
wheezy, weak-kneed affairs that along levels and
down hills would move cleverly enough, but
meeting an up-grade would ' take the studs,' stop,
and rather burst than budge. He retired them
from the track, packed them off after his other
discarded properties, and got new ones built to go,
and that did not know what to balk was. Single
tracks (all his roads had,) offered open invitation
all the time for collisions, — an invitation which
trains too often were not tardy to accept. Soon
as could be side-tracks at meeting-places along
routes were lengthened, more and more lengthened,
until, before the public were fairly aware of it,
double pairs of rails were laid pretty nearly all
the way through from end to end of the several
lines. The roads having different termini at
Pittsburg, goods in transit had to be hauled by
wagon from one station to another, occasioning
much delay, cost and trouble. They were ex
tended, bridged across the Allegheny and Monon-

LES TROIS ROIS. 47
gahela Rivers, and all brought together at a
common depot; the one that risen up from the
ashes of its predecessor, burned down in the riot
of '77, now stands on Liberty Street. Thus the
transfer business was brought to a close ; a close
not ever to know opening again. Old employes,
too long habituated to old fogy, slow-going ways
to be trained to smarter, were set aside, and new,
live ones, that carried Fraudsheim watches and
went by them, were put in their places. The
' Star line ' was started, a fast freight, the first of
its kind, by which goods shipped at Philadelphia
and destined for Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati,
or anywhere else intermediately, could be shipped
straight through without a change of cars. Things
were reduced to system and put into ship-shape
order all the way along. Business boomed.
Shares in the several companies rushed up — up.
They ran to par — over par — in the market. Their
worth came to be invaluable. Everybody wanted
them. Holders of trust fuuds ; guardians of
orphans; missionary societies; old retired Pres
byterian preachers — who, once, afterwards had to
umpire a duel between the devil and their con
sciences before Synods, because of traius running
on Sundays, conscience getting the good-bye and

48 LES TROIS ROIS.
the devil coming in for the award, of course; —
all money-handlers, except County Republican
Committees and State Treasurers, who preferred
to place their cash where — the question of safety
not over-carefully considered — it would do the
most good ; all put what they had for safe invest
ment into them. Good people everywhere seemed
to have caught the . notion that Providence had
taken the roads in hand, and that it was the next
thing to laying up treasure in heaven to plant it
there. If, looking bluely back at it afterwards,
the repudiating cities and county saw how they
had fooled away their opportunity: how they had
saddled them with a debt at pitiful parting with
what would have made them rich had they held
on to it, they could take to themselves no better
consolation than that they got what they deserved.
Placed on firm footing and fairly started thus,
the transportation trade of Pittsburg has since
been one of continually growing prosperity.
When back in the nineties of the last century John
Wright ran his pack-horses, capable each of
carrying his two hundred and fifty pounds, he
thought, and had the right to think, that he was
driving a big trade when he could accommo
date with his single stable-full of cattle, if

LES TROIS ROIS. 49
not the whole, a mighty share at least, of the
traffic of the West. Now, not quite a hundred
years since gone, William Thaw, his latest pro
fessional successor, as official head of the Penn
sylvania Company, sees rush through his various
lines into and out of the city as high as fifty
thousand tons of freight daily. Early got ready
of a morning, and early gone, eight, say, of John
Wright's horses, with two thousand pounds of
lading- on their backs, might by night-fall reach
Greensburg, some twenty-eight miles — a long
day's journey — out on their way. With a single
iron steed William Thaw, making even start as to
time, could take his three hundred and fifty tons,
or more, and, ere John's horses could have eaten
their oats next morning, find the same with more
than half the whole distance traversed on its way to
Chicago. An astonishing run in the race of pro
gress ! — and yet not making the measure in full
of it either; for other roads, invited by the
success attending the Pennsylvania Company's,
have been constructed, through whose operation
full a fifth of as much more must be added to the
sum of daily shippings and receivings at the city's
depots, swelling the whole to over sixty thousand
tons.

50 LES TROIS ROIS.
These its iron highways, however, are not the
only courses through which the town finds carriage
for its commerce, nor is its extent indicated to the
full by what they do. The abandonment of the
canal brought to au abrupt end the connecting
steamer lines on the Ohio, but trade on the river
did not perish — not by any means — with its 'pack
ets.' True, the proud argosies — the 'Alleghenys,'
the ' Messengers,' the 'Circassians,' of its plumy
days, with the Batchelors, the Graces, the Beltz-
hoovers, their courtly commanders, — are known
no more on the water, but other keels have taken
their place; keels of a less grand order indeed,
though for their work none the worse of that ;
looking, as they do, not to emporiums of the
East or granaries in the West, but to the treasure-
yielding crypts in the hills about home, for the
precious wherewithal to make up their cargoes.
The coal-field, of which Pittsburg is the center,
covers a broad area, embracing, with occasional
barren or poorly-bearing patches, all the territory
within boundaries of old, original Westmoreland
County, or, in other words, the State entire of
Pennsylvania west of the Allegheny mountains.
The richest veins' are found in the hills that
border the Monongahela and Youghiogheny

LES TROIS ROIS. 51
Rivers, with the creeks and smaller streams
tributary to them. The fronts of the steeps
bordering these waters for a hundred miles are
orificed all along with dark, deep-throated mouths,
open, not to devour, but to disgorge the diet
digested of what in aeons past they fed and
fattened upon. Between pits are to be seen fires
burning, by day and by night, of long lines of
ovens, in which the crude fuel as burrowed from
the mines is cou verted into coke. Production of
the raw commodity alone, employs the toil of over
twenty-seven thousand men. The coal dug is
packed at the pits in barges. To convey these to
down-the-river markets, to which, since the in
troduction of natural gas into Pittsburg, the trade
is mainly confined, requires the service of over
one hundred and twenty boats — each capable of
towing from six to ten loaded barges, equal, the
whole fleet, to one million bushels, or ten acres of
coal ; each single acre's yield enough to furnish
full loading- for a 3000 ton ocean steamer. All
this, too, over and above what is carried by the
rail-roads, amounting to just about as much more.
Coke is delivered to consumers in, by measurement
although not, of course, by weight, very nearly
the same quantity.

52 LES TROIS. ROIS.
To such size, out of the puny, peddling affair
it was at the beginning, has grown the carrying
trade of Pittsburg. And yet the business, even
now, scarcely, if at all, surpassed at any other
commercial center in the nation, is really but in
its incipiency. To what length to reach its ne
plus ultra of progress it is destined to advance, the
generations that are may live to more and more,
year by year, wonder and wonder — but never to
see. He, our Gaspar — Carrier King of the
tutelary Three, whose directing providence
through well nigh fifty years has trained it to
what it is — may pass away, as indeed in the course
of nature he must, but his virtue, like that of his
prototype of the Royal Trinity of Cologne, shall
still lodge in his bones, and the work of his be
ginning go on. For long as from their inex
haustible holds, the hills around and about, and
the bowels of the earth under them yield their
riches ; long as the boundless, bare fields of half
a hemisphere invite to occupation, and plains and
mountains multiply their people ; long as there
are human wants, always increasing and in
creasing, to supply, so long must the great enter
prise, increasing and increasing always too,
continue.

LES TROIS ROIS. 53

II.

fT^HE want of wants in the early days of Pitts
burg, that which it felt the need, and mourned
the lack of most, was iron. For the manifold minor
purposes for which the metal is now deemed indis
pensable, its use was never applied. In the one
hundred cabins that one hundred years ago
clustered about Fort Pitt, perhaps not so much
as a nail was to be found. Planks were laid, when
laid at all, unfastened on the ground for floors;
roofs, of clap-boards, were held in place by logs
laid transversely across them ; doors were hung
upon oaken hinges, and held shut by oaken
latches ; while tables, bedsteads, stools and other
like household furniture, were supported on
wooden legs fitted into auger-holes in the slabs
out of which they were made. Philadelphia and
Baltimore were the nearest points at which metal
could be obtained, whence worked into bars it
had to be carried on pack-horses — the bars bent
bow-wise so as to ride securely on the saddles —
6

54 LES TROIS ROIS.
at such charges (from twelve to fifteen cents per
pound), as, added to the original cost, made its
purchase an extravagance too costly to indulge in
except as absolute necessity compelled. A singular
state of affairs surely, this carrying of coals to
New Castle, as one would take it; for ore, rich in
the raw material — and more than plentiful, could
be had close at hand almost anywhere for the
digging. The mountains were bosom-full, the
lesser hills below thick-ribbed through and through
with it. Nor were the settlers ignorant of the
fact, as how could they be, with proofs palpable
before them in the washings along shores of
running waters, and in the stray nuggets of ' blue
lump ' turned up again and again by plowmen in
the furrowing of their fields ? But, like as to the
Ancient Mariner famishing a-thirst, with
"Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink,"
what to the distressed borderer was all this pro
fusion of crude substance when he was without
the chance to purge it of the dross which^defiled
and unfitted it for use? The art by which this
was to be done was no mystery to him
but the cost of preparation and, after, the

LES TROIS ROIS. 55
outlay necessary for the practical prosecution of
it, meant an expenditure, with — in view of the
lean and limited market to supply — so doubtful a
promise of return, that men with nerve enough
to try the venture had long to be waited for. But
they came at last.
In 1790 two merchants of Philadelphia, Messrs.
Halker and Turner, dealers in metal and hollow
ware, having their attention called by the yearly
improving demand for their pots and kettles to
the growing importance of the place, undertook
a visit to Pittsburg. They had been told of the
rich mineral region of which the town was the
center, and sharply alive to business, thought
that the time had perhaps arrived when it was
worth while to come on and take a look at it.'
They came, they saw, and, satisfied, resolved
forthwith to run the risk and build a furnace.
Associating with them M. Marmie, a young
Frenchman, formerly private secretary to Lafay
ette, they started out to explore; selected a site on
Jacob's Creek — a stream that empties into the
Youghiogheny — four miles from its mouth, and
thereon erected their plant. They named it the
" Alliance." Providence seemed at first to smile
kindly on their enterprise, for, besides the quite

56 les trois;rois.
lively demand that sprang up through the country
for their stoves, sugar-kettles, Dutch ovens, pots,
skillets, and other such wares (for molding went
with melting from the ore in those days), they had
not long been in operation before an order was
received from Major Craig, in command of the
garrison at Pittsburg, for four hundred six-pound
shot! A princely contract — and from Government
too ! It came a glad surprise — as why shouldn't
it? — to the proprietors, and put them in high
feather. Halker and Turner, level-headed old
tradesmen, were happy over the purchase, most
happy, of course; but serenely, not insanely so.
Marmie, born to the inheritance of a different
temper ; inclined to the light pursuits rather than
the grave employments of life, and impatiently
waiting while he worked for the means to gratify
that inclination, was, on the other hand, in a wild
ecstasy over it. Four hundred six-pound
shot — all in a one-job lot, and each shot in the
lot worth a dollar ! There was wealth untold —
there was independence in it! The sportingly-
disposed ex-secretary determined to make the
most of the chance the gods had given him. Now
that he could, he would take his ease; eat, drink
and be merry. And he ate and he drank, of the

LES TROIS ROIS. 57
choicest and the best, and to the top of his bent
was merry. He had his horses and his hounds;
deer were to be found for the hunting in the
mountains; for livelier chasing foxes abounded
and seldom was it when
"A southerly wind and a cloudy sky,
Proclaimed it a hunting morning,"
that hill and hollow did not echo to his horn, and
ring responsive to the baying of his hounds.
It could not be otherwise than that Marmie
should soon find these pursuits more pleasant to
him as a sportsman than profitable as a manager.
Business felt the evil that followed from neglect;
uncared for, cared not for itself — drooped, weak
ened, declined, sinking sufferingly ; until at last
came the collapse, the fatal collapse, for which
there was no remedy, from which there could be
no recovery. The furnace failed. The unhappy
calamity fell upon Marmie with distressing effect.
It left him helpless, despairing, distracted. He
could not bring himself down to the level of the
common toiler, where only he could find place
now, and with a long prospect of labor and
privation ahead, begin life over again; his pride
revolted at the thought of it. There remained an
alternative, only one, and to that, frightful as it

58 LES TROIS ROIS.
was, he resolved to resort. Calling his hounds he
assembled them on the ' bridge ' that led to the
mouth of the furnace. With whip and halloo he
urged and scourged, driving them towards it.
The pack, trembling in dismay, with wildly-
glaring eyes looked, now at the fire blazing from
the pit, now at the face of their master; then,
seized, as seemed, by the infection of his madness,
started, and bounding forward, straight in the
face of the flame, straight through the scorching
heat, plunged headlong into the open throat of the
hell before them. Their tyrant tarried not behind,
but with a cry — the cry in wild repeat of that
with which he used to cheer them in the chase —
followed on their track and rushing to its brink
flung him after them into the burning hole ! The
fires of the furnace died out, and were never
kindled again. Its stack — the tumbled ruins of
it are still to be seen, the rugged heap feathered
over with ferns and twined about with vines ; but
the scene around, so animated once, is one of
desolation now. No call of hunter nor answering
bark of hound is heard to awaken the echoes
among the hills, and the fox seeks its hole and
hides secure under the very hearthstone of the
home of its old pursuer.

LES TROIS ROIS. 59
Satisfied by the success which attended the first
irking of the ' Alliance,' that furnaces could be
un to advantage, John Probst, two years later,
ecided to build another. He selected for its
sat a spot on Laurel Run, a branch of the Loyal
lanna, to be nigh to the ' public road ' that led
0 Philadelphia, soon, by recent act of Assembly,
0 be converted into a turnpike, out of the growing
ommerce along which he hopefully expected to
oramand a profitable custom. Several years later
Jen. Arthur St. Clair, at the close of his term as
Jovernor of the North- Western Territory, erected
third plant — the ' Hermitage,' near Ligonier.
?hese were unsuccessful ventures, both of them,
nd after a brief and barren career, were aban
doned. But the new industry once started was not
0 be stayed by the stifling of the first adventurers
a it. If these, trying, had failed, so much the
forse for them indeed, but that was no reason
rhy others should not try again and prosper.
)thers did try — kept on trying. Down one
light go, — as, in fact, earlier or later he was
retty sure to— but no sooner dropped he than
wo were up to take his place. So went the
osses, so came the gains.

60 LES TROIS ROIS.
Two considerations ruled in determining upon
the site for a furnace ; it was not only important
to have it near as possible to its source of ore-
supply, but it was all-essential that it should be
within convenient reach of the water-power to run
it. Grounds were selected always, therefore, that
lay close to natural falls, or rapids that, already
half-choked with rock, could easily be dammed, in
shallow rivers, such as the Youghiogheny and
the Cheat ; or, when other choice had to be made,
on the banks of creeks or runs — any stream with
flow enough in it, even though but for three
months in the year, to turn a wheel. Ore was
obtained by the process known as 'benching';
that is, by digging deep down through the soil
and shoveling bare the bed in which it lay. The
grounds thus handled, left ridged and pitted all
over by the clayey and slaty up-castings, were
unfitted for cultivation, and, overgrown in time by
hawthorns, black-berry bushes, wild indigo and
morning-glories, became spots select for rabbits to
look to for refuge, quails for cover and snakes for
hiding-places, but fit for nothing else. Wood for
charcoal and stone for lime the region abounded
in, and convenience only was consulted as to
where kilns for the one and pits for the other

LES TROIS ROIS. 61
should be placed. The latter were shifted from
post to post, following at measured distances the
chopper, as leaving behind, one after another, low
mounds of black ashes to mark where they had
stood, he cut his way deeper and deeper into the
forest. Work on all hands, from the manager down to
the cart-mule driver was attended to in the easy,
indolent, careless way common to the time. The
store-keeper would suspend his proper business at
any moment to swap jack-knives, match 'coppers'
or play at checkers with a customer. The black
smith would drop hammer and tongs, and out
forthwith on call, come when it might, to pitch
horse-shoes with the cobbler, or any other
challenger, on the green by the road -side. The
manager was one of a kind with his men. Had
he a visitor— and singularly happy was he when
he had— his all of time and attention were at the
comer's command. Did he take of choice to
horse-back exercise, and would it please him, an
hour's, two hours', ten hours' ride to-any where;
Dumonville's Grave, Delaney's Cave, Ohio Pyle
Falls, the White Rocks where Polly Williams
was betrayed and murdered?-the leaders from a
team would be unhitched any moment, and the

62 LES TROIS ROIS.
driver given a holiday, to provide canterers for
the excursion. Inclined he to a quieter and less
wearisome diversion? — it was a sacrifice of no
moment to blow out the furnace and drain off the
dam — stop the whole establishment — so that he
might enjoy a fore-noon (if he did not tire of it
sooner), wading in the mud to fish for eels— -and
to catch water-snakes. These were privileges of
pleasure which business was bound to respect.
The furnaces, had they been diligently worked,
might have done better, but as it was they could
not well have done worse. A ton and a half of
metal was considered a fair day's yield ; two tons
was wealth to the proprietor ; three tons embar-
rassed him with riches. Arid yet the product in
total was enough, quite enough to meet all the
call there was for it. The market to be supplied
was not extensive, and the uses to which iron was
applied, though various, were small and insig
nificant. The remainder over the larger part
delivered in its raw state to the molder, was
passed under the tilt-hammer and rolled into bars
and rods. In other forms than these it was seldom
inquired for. The blacksmith was the buyer-in-
chief — in only, in fact, it might be said, since
both rods and bars underwent their last handling

LES TROIS ROIS.

63

to fit them for -their uses, on his anvil. His
shops, except the far-between few set up for the
accommodation of farmers in off-the-road and
out-of-the-way neighborhoods, were planted along
the turnpikes ; for, since his main occupation was
to shoe horses, and mend broken, or re-place worn
out, tires, or other gear pertaining to wagons,
here, on these inviting highways, the grand
journey-courses of trade and of travel, were to be
found the stands to catch him custom and bring
him profit.
The first rolling-mill erected in the West — in
the United States in fact — was built in 1817, at
Plumsock, Fayette County, a few miles back in
the woods from Brownsville, on the Monongahela
River; located there so as to be within convenient
capturing-reach of the blacksmith shops along the
line of the National road leading to Cumberland.
Two years later (1819), the second in order, but
the first of Pittsburg proper's own, was planted ;
exactly where, or by whom, who knows? The
pair lived their day — a short, unsunny one — then
' passed away ; and so hath ' the iniquity of oblivion
blindly scattered her poppy,' that recollection is
lost, almost, of the fact of either ever having
been — even in Plumsock. In 1820 a third es-

64 LES TROIS ROIS.
tablishraent, where scythes and sickles were made,
was started. Scythes and sickles paid as far as
they went, and they went as far as they could go ;
but meadows and fields, to reap and to mow, were
not over many, and harvesters not caring to carry
more than one tool at a time, the demand was
soon supplied, and ceased. H. S. Spang, a young
man of the town, sagacious, skillful, enterprising,
believing that there was a might-be of promise
in the working of iron that never in fact as yet
had been, and eager to prove it, saw here his
opportunity. He bought (1828) at a bargain
from the disappointed scythe and sickle-maker his
mill ; cleaned out its interior ; re-furnished it with
the new, necessary machinery ; began to roll bar
iron from blooms, and so established a business
which was to last on and on ; not always flourish
ing indeed — for hard times came, again and again,
that were sorely trying — but never failing; and
which, under ownership and control of Spang,
Chalfant & Co., his successors, still lives to hold
place prominent among the leading in its line of
industry in the city.
The iron trade, through whole decades of its
earlier history, had to pass through such sieges of
tribulation that the wonder is it should have

' LES TROIS ROIS. 65
survived the ordeal at all. Disaster followed
disaster, failure failure, ruin ruin, in fast and
frightful succession. Furnaces were built, run,
and kept running, long as out of purses and
promises to pay could be squeezed the means ;
but both had their bottom, and that reached
— sooner or later it was reached, always
— down went the furnace, and down went the
master. Mills cost less to build and to man, and
yet they fared no better. Of the six first erected
(down to 1824), save one — Dr. Peter Shoen-
berger's, the ' Juniata,' — all, overtaken by a like
fate with the furnaces, are gone; clean gone, with
not even a ruin left to mark where they stood.
Indeed it could not well have been otherwise.
The business had been gone into prematurely
and on much too wide a scale. The temptation,
to be sure, was great, iron in its finished forms
commanding prices that seemed to offer safest
assurance of success. But half of what was
made in the crude was more than enough to cast all
the pots and kettles that house-wives wanted, and
shoe all the horses, and rim the wheels of all the
wagons on the roads. By so much, then, the
trade was overdone, and having to carry unre
lieved, year in and year out, on their shoulders
7

66 LES TROIS ROIS.
the other half, no wonder that the backs of the
bearers before long were broken.
Pittsburg, then, did not look to derive either a
present or a future benefit of extraordinary account
to herself from her iron. It was a good thing to
have, undoubtedly ; and so was whisky ; and so
was salt. But goodness is not greatness ; that, her
high ambition, the city expected to achieve through
her commerce — her canal-boats and her steamers ;
not to have it thrust upon her by her manufac
tures. Not at all ; and small reason had she to.
The growth of the industry — that, the chief of
all, which was to prove her making, though she
did not know it, — was slow ; so slow. The seven
mills she had in 1825 (the seventh, the 'Sligo,'
erected in that year), had, in 1829, increased by
two. Still other two were added during the next
eleven years, but two were lost, leaving no gain.
The fourteen years following enlarged the list by
four; thus constituting a total, in 1850, of but
thirteen. A beggarly baker's dozen, these, in the
estimate of to-day ; able, at most, to employ the
services of but twenty five hundred hands, and to
show for their work at the end of a year, their
lean sixty thousand tons of bars and nails ; no
more, and nothing else — bars and nails! But,

LES TROIS ROIS. 67
like as happened to certain thirteen other distressed
plants of different order and older date, taxed
long and tried by obstructions and embarrassments
as they had been, a Revolution was to be ; a day,
glorious, of deliverance to come — and its dawn
was at hand.
The fact had got, at length, to be realized that
iron could be applied to other uses than for hoop
ing wheels and shoeing horses — than for casting
pots and molding kettles. Bridges, it was found,
could be built with it ; houses could be framed of
it, and of it, wonderful ! mighty ships, to float
the water — throwing the miraculous achievement
of the prophet of old in the shade, who caused
the axe to swim, — could be constructed. Then —
In 1812 claim had been writ by one Oliver Evans,
a Keely crook-stick of the day, that "a steam-
engine could be made (he would wager $3,000 on
it), that on a good level railway would run fifteen
miles an hour." It took years to bring the in
credulous to stop laughing and start to thinking,
that possibly, after all, there might be a something
of method in Oliver's madness, and to put it to
trial. At last they did. It stood the test; sur
passing far what had been predicted of it, to the
triumphant vindication of the old visionary, and

68 LES TROIS ROIS.
the confusion of his revilers. Rail, — to the
superseding of all other, it was a fixed certainty
now — were to be the roads of the country. To lay
and equip them would call for enormous supplies
of material. The rush upon the trade to meet
the new demand, told upon the markets. Iron
jumped at once into brisk request. Tons of it
were wanted where pounds had been a drug
before. The little 'smelting pots' stuck scatter-
ingly in away-off woods, to meet the exigency
were too insignificant, too remote. Stacks of
larger hold had to be ; and in the city, at home
with the factories they were to feed. And so they
presently were. The first erected (1859), was the
'Clinton' (Graff, Bennett & Co.); the twin
'Elizas' (Laughlin & Co.), and the two 'Shoen-
bergers' (Shoenberger, Blair & Co.) following
next; the former in 1861, the latter in 1865.
The daily out-put of the ' Clinton' was something
over 40 tons; of the 'Eliza's,' each, twice, and
of the ' Shoenberger's' together, a little over three
times, as much more. The total yield (daily) of
the five amounted to 337 tons. This looked
promising, very; so do blossoms in the May-days ;
but blossoms are blossoms — and so are promises.
For several years, thence on, no farther progress

LES TROIS ROIS. 69
was made. The outside limit of wanted supply
seemed to have been reached. Not that produc
tion was neck-and-neck up with the necessities of
the time — far from it ; but dregs of the dull
leaven of the old lump of slow-goingness were
still left ; business was not urged ; masters of
furnaces and mills were content with what they
were doing, and the concerned all around, satisfied
with the good they had, did not care to strive for
better. Then there were competitors now other
where in the field : wide-awakes, who, not having
chances in equal, at all, still met the lack and
more than made up the difference by what they
owned, arid ; exerted in skill and enterprise. It
wasatfine of ticklish moment to Pittsburg. The
outlook was hot encouraging. Failing for so long
to raise herself above where the 'Elizas' and
the ' Shoenbergers ' had placed her, it seemed as
though she had reached her height — a height with
no higher beyond it — and that on the dead level
there she was destined to stick. But heaven had
appointed for her a loftier fortune, and the
Melchior, the Iron King, elected to lift her to
it, his due time arrived, appeared.

70 LES TROIS ROIS.
* *
*
Among the immigrants brought by ships from
across the sea in 1847, was one, a worthy Scotch
man, a damask-weaver, of the name of Carnegie,
who, wandering Westward in search of a home,
found one to his choice at length, on a low-lying
street in the 'Bottom' down by the river, in
Allegheny. Mr. Carnegie brought with him a
son, called Andrew; a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed
boy, not yet quite entered upon his teens. His
parents saw in Andrew a lad of more than common
wit, and to improve it, as far as means and
opportunity permitted, had him placed in
charge of a school- master while yet in Scotland,
who taught him in the rudiments of arithmetic
and Latin; the only training, under the birch,
he ever received. For riper education thereafter,
the world was to be his school and experience his
instructor. In the one, under stern discipline of
the other, he tasked and toiled ; toiled and tasked
— and waited to be rewarded. Reward, of the
wanted sort, was slow to come; so slow that his
mother — a woman of sterling worth, from whom
he inherited the virtues, those, the bright par
ticular, that shine conspicuous most in his character
— despaired at last of its coming at all.

LES TROIS ROIS. 71
" Andy," then one day said she, ' better gie
ither ganging the gae-by ; tak' to loom and go ca'
the shuttle content, e'en like the faither afore ye.
It's a slow trade but a ser'ing ; and biding for
a chancier ye may come by a waur."
"Never you fret about that, mother," replied
Andy gaily. " Cheer up, for where there's a will
there's a way, and — don't forget it — you'll have
your coach and your four-in-hand for a fly through
old Scotland yet, before you die."
A time came when the Western Union Telegraph
Company wanted a messenger boy. Andy applied
for the situation, and got it. The position was one
a little lower than he had been hoping for, but it
was a beginning; an opening with a prospect
before it, and that was enough. The short rests
he had in the office between turns at message-
carrying — rests such as the bee finds, between
flights, in the flowers where the hidden sweets
are: — he improved; attentive to the click of the
operator's key, to seize the secret of its signaling
and to catch the trick of the touch that did it.
Soon mastered, these mysteries, he became an
operator himself. Thos. A. Scott, Superintendent
of the Western division of the Pennsylvania
Railroad, wanting a clerk, saw in Andy, who as a

72 LES TROIS ROIS.
messenger boy had first attracted his notice, the
person for the place, took him up and put him in
it. Promotion was quick to follow. Scott's
advancement, which presently came about, to a
higher post in his company's service, left his
place open, and the new secretary, not long after
lie had been well-settled in his chair, was ap
pointed to supply the vacancy. The vision,
shadowy and vague erewliile, of the coach and
the four-in-hand, in the far-off prospect began to
take shape and look like real. Having reached
about the ultimate of what he could hope to reach
— his rope's end — in this field of adventure, his
unresting ambition longed for some range of
broader scope, where his energies might find full
space for exercise, and he be whole free to use
them ; as, though silken the chain and golden the
collar that held him, he was not now. What he
wanted, looking around for it, he saw — in iron.
To melt it from the ore, to labor it, then to finish
it into shape for use, was the work to take hold
of. True he was without experience in the art;
knew practically nothing about it; but what of
that? The lack could be supplied; not, perhaps,
to satisfy entirely, but to do — until he learned.
The move dnly considered, was resolved upon.

LES TROIS ROIS. 73
He resigned his position on the rail-road ; took
to him three young men of spirit akin to his
own ; with them formed a company — the 'Union
Iron Mills' — and started upon his new career.
Business of the new company began with the
building of two rolling mills. These, while of
fair capacity, were not above even with others of
their class, but answered serviceably as training-
places, or preparatory schools, wherein to educate
and qualify for operations on the grander scale
contemplated at first conceiving of the enterprise.
Graduating day for that in time came around.
Novices at the trade were finished master-work
men at length — fit to grapple with the herculean
project ; and at it they went.
Furnaces as a first essential to the scheme,
were to be provided. Accordingly (1872) ground
was broken, builders were set to work, and the
'Lucy No. 1,' a stack of unprecedented dimen
sions, and affording a yield never before equaled,
was erected. But Lucy No. 1, with all her bear
ing ability could not deliver — had not the womb
to hold — more than half the supply of pigs
needed to feed the mills. Then, a little later
on (1876), a companion to her, 'Lucy No. 2,'
her like in height and size, was built. Tbe pair

74 LES TROIS ROIS.
turned out their nearly, if not altogether, four
hundred tons of metal between sun-rise and
sun-rise. The 'Elizas' were outdone two to
one. Stripped of their laurels and shorn of
their glory, the queens — they — that had been,
retired before the sovereigns that were, to take
place down among commoners of their class, as
they might find it. Alas, for the Elizas! — With
its factories and its furnaces great grew to be the
'Union;' so great that in it the Work which its
projector had in plan might have been esteemed
as perfected, and that there it was to end. It was
only fairly started. Finishing was yet to follow;
but the time for it was now on — close on — and,
in the erection of the ' Edgar Thomson Steel
Works' (1879) it came.
Iron for the laying of tracks on railroads, thus
far, while to the greater extent furnished by mills
at Johnstown, Harrisburg and Scranton, was ob
tained in liberal supply from England. The best
— the home-made, worked from common native
ores — was for its purpose bad enough ; the im
ported still worse. Rails rolled from it, too weak
to resist, would flatten, fray at the edges, and not
rarely, especially in frosty weather, snap short off
under friction of the car-wheels. Accidents.

LES TROIS ROIS. 75
more or less damaging always, usually disastrous,
were, in consequence of these wearings and break
ings, of frequent, almost every-day occurrence.
There was one way by which this unsatisfactory
condition of affairs could be corrected, and only
one. Tougher material must be used in the mak
ing of rails : steel must take the place of iron.
Mr. Carnegie was not long in catching hold of
that fact. But steel was steel, and how to get
it at a price the roads could afford to pay, was the
question. The problem was a puzzling one, but
fortunately, through Bessemer's ingenuity, it was
solved at last. That fact settled, Mr. Carnegie
saw that the opportunity he had been waiting for
was come ; seized it, improved it, and soon was
ready to test the new process, and to practically
initiate an industry which was to prove to Pitts
burg an acquisition of priceless value, and to its
founder a god-send of fortune and of fame.
The plant of the Edgar Thomson Steel Works
(Carnegie, Bros. & Co.), consisted at first of three
blast furnaces— the 'A,' 'B,' and 'C— and a mill
for working up their metal, much the greater part
of which was rolled into rails. The roads tried
the rails, found that they were good and became
customers crying in their demand for them. The

76 LES TROIS ROIS.
three furnaces did their best but were not able to
supply the want. Two others in 1881 — the 'D' and
' E ' — were added, and shortly after, still other two
— the'F' and 'G.' Feeding these furnaces —
they had ravenous appetites, which to satisfy and
not impair digestion, required to be judiciously
catered to — caution had to be observed in the
ordering of their fare. Ores could be had for the
digging at home in any wanted quantity, but they
were not of untainted purity, and to qualify them
for use had to be worked in combination with
certain foreign others. These were sought for far
and near, and brought in from wherever they
could be found; from mines in Michigan, in
Missouri, in Arkansas, in Georgia, in Virginia,
and — across the Atlantic — in Sweden, in Spain,
in Greece, in Elba, and from the shores of the
Nile in Egypt. As multiplied the furnaces so
proportionally widened and enlarged the industry
to which they were contributory. Department-
after department was added to the mill. Opera
tions no longer confined to the rolling of rails
were extended to the making of bars, beams, bolts,
plates, sheets — furnishings complete, in fine, of
whatever form or size, from the massive most to
the minutest, used in the construction of bridges,

LES TROIS ROIS. 77
boats, buildings. Wherever a want was, or where
not being, was invented to be, which steel or iron
could supply, the machinery and the men were
placed to supply it. Thus enterprise succeeded
enterprise, each new labor completed followed
close behind by a newer begun. The Edgar
Thomson's one hundred and thirty-three acres of
ground, expected when purchased to afford ample
space for a. lifetime to come at least, was soon,
after every foot of it had been put to use, found
to be too small to accommodate its business. A
new field, the ' Homestead,' already planted, but
with large room left for still wider occupation,
was secured ; and so the point of progress was
gained at which — only full fairly under headway
at that — the Works stands to-day. As to the de
gree of that let us see.
The premises of the company cover collect
ively an area of two hundred and fifty-three
acres. On these there are nine blast-furnaces —
the Lucys and Alpha-Betas — which consume
daily three thousand tons of ore, two thousand
seven hundred tons of coke, and nine hundred
tons of lime; rendering a return of one thou
sand eight hundred tons of metal. To receive
in the raw and deliver in the wrought these,
8

78 LES TROIS ROIS.
involves, with other accessories, the handling
of some nine thousand tons of matter. For the
conveying of the same to and from the docks
(private) on the rivers, and the depots on the
several railways, thirty-three locomotives, five
hundred cars, and twenty-six miles, all told, of
track to run them on, are used. To do the work
on the company's properties, in the mills and at
the offices, holds in constant employment, a force
of thirteen thousand men. The world of fact has
its works and its workers in iron, the world of
fable its ; but out of all the real of the one, or the
mythical of the other, can there be found a mate
to compare with this? It was a labor, the
thought of old time was, possible but to a god, to
forge his leven-bolts for Jove. Our Hephaestus,
mortal born, would turn them out, of size to suit,
fast as the Thunderer could brew the storms to
play them in, nor think it a marvel of achieve
ment either.
With the building of the first Lucy (1872),
started a new epoch in the history of the iron
trade in Pittsburg. During that single year the
number of furnaces increased by four. After
these, at intervals, one and another followed until
now the list consists of twenty-one. In '72 the

LES TROIS ROIS. 79
yearly out-put of metal amounted to one hundred
and twenty-three thousand tons; the year just
ended, when its results are figured out, will show
a product of over one million tons. Add to this
the metal imported, old rails, scraps, &c, and a
total will appear of quite as much more.
For the conversion of this mass of material
into merchantable wares, the town is stacked all
over with mills ; mills that work, and article,
annually : two thousand four hundred tons into
tacks ; twenty-five thousand tons into nails ;
thirty-three thousand tons into spikes ; two thou
sand tons into chains ; fifteen thousand tons into
wire for fences ; one hundred and fifty thousand
tons into pipes ; eighteen thousand tons into steel
springs; twenty-two thousand tons into agricul
tural implements ; one hundred and fifty thousand
tons into castings ; and — who can tell how many
tons? — "into locomotives, steam engines, structural
supplies, rails for railroads, and such-like exten
sively-employed and ponderously-wrought pro
ducts. The market for these, in the general,
extends the land over from Maine to Mexico,
from Florida to farthest North on the shore of its
opposite ocean : in the particular, from Canada,
contineutally wide, to Chili— to Japan. Waters,

80 LES TROIS ROIS.
like as of the Connecticut, the Susquehanna, the
Ohio, the Missouri, the Mississippi, and, away
on down, of the rivers of Brazil are arched by
our bridges; farms checkering the broad plains of
the West, are fenced by our wires; railways that
connect the marts and conduct the commerce of
both Americas, are run by our engines. So —
with all besides of whatever in its various
branches demand invites and the hands of forty
thousand workers can do to supply it — so moves
the trade.
It was a fanciful, improbable imagination, that
of the boy Andy, with which he used to flatter
himself, and comfort the heart of his fond, if
sometimes doubting, old mother, of a time on in
the times to be, when in a coach and with a four-
in-hand they should have their fly through old
Scotland together, and yet it came : trifling
enough in itself to look at when it came, but as a
fore-tokening in the boy of what was, following,
to come in the bolder schemes and grander pro
gresses of the man, of significant account. The
boy had looked but to the improving of his own
lowly fortune, and — as was natural, since, then, it
was all his world to him — that of his humble

LES TROIS ROIS. 81
household : the man, with a broader and more
liberal thought, to the building up of a city, and
the benefiting of its people — towards which, from
the standing, visible proofs of what has been,
judge, as may be judged, of what is in reservation
to be done.

82 LES TROIS ROIS.

III.
A S in the treatment of iron fire is an always in
dispensable agent, each new handling of the
substance in its altering passage from furnace to
finishing-shop necessitating a new heating, it is of
first importance to workers in it that fuel, good,
cheap and plenty of it, should be conveniently
procurable. Pittsburg, in that particular, has
been peculiarly favored. Wood for charcoal, in
the charcoal days, could be had from wild lands
lying all around where furnaces were — too rugged
and thin of soil to be of value for any other use
— at a cost of little more than was paid for
the cutting. When, in time, the accessible por
tions of these forest ranges were chopped bare, the
consumers had for other recourse to turn to, their
coal. The change was not one that, left to choice,
they would, indeed, have chosen ; they preferred
their carbon as they did their beef, in the fresh,
freshly roasted, rather than in the stale, hard dry ;
but it was carbon all the same — food good enough
for the furnaces, when they got used to it, and

LES TROIS ROIS. 83
they did not complain. They did not complain,
because there was the comforting feature about it
that famine from failure was not to be feared.
There was no chance of that. The supply was
more than abundant, and not to be exhausted.
Bettering of advantage could not be asked — could
not be expected; unless the impossible should be
proved feasible, and it were found that fires might
be kept up without fuel at all. And that was to
be ; without the asking, against the expecting —
Providence had so, wonderfully, ordered — that
was to be. * *
That down in the Earth's bosom, where its
lungs are, there dwells an air, of kin but not of
kind to that we breathe ; that it rests there as it
has rested for ages, sealed up tight and fast ; that
it is highly inflammable, and that it burns with
a heat hotly suggestive of the hell it seems
to start from, are facts not newly come to light
only now. Guyasutha, the Mingo, could have
told of it a hundred and fifty years ago. It was
not so hermetically sealed in, but that here and
there, through chance crannies, it could find
escape, not noticeable, because signless, on dry
surfaces, but easily to be detected in still pools

84 LES TROIS ROIS.
along the courses of streams. So, after he had
sunk the warrior in the tradesman, Cornplanter,
the Senecan, dipping blankets to gather petro
leum from his vats in Oil Creek, used to see it
spring from the sand and rise bubbling up through
the water. When, later, the licks along shore of
the Allegheny, indicated that salt might be found
down under ground, and explorers began to bore
for it, farther, stronger, and rather startling evi
dence of it appeared. The outer shell of its stony
casing pierced through, a freer vent than the
cramped one of a crack in the rocks, was afforded,
and out it came, not in bubbles, such as a boy
might blow of suds from the bowl of a pipe, but
in a continuous, gushing flow.
Now and then when a livelier vein was tapped,
it rushed so as to lift high the water with it
out of the hole. Lewis Peterson struck such a
well on his grounds near Tarentum ; and when
innocents from abroad came in, as with the touch
of a match he lit the jet and up it flashed, a
mingled fountain of fire and water, imagine
their astonishment at sight of the wonder ! That
was forty years ago, and still the well flows, and
still it will burn, put the lucifer to it, as freely as
ever.

LES TROIS ROIS. 85
Later again, when petroleum began to be
sought for, and wells were drilled below salt
water level, deep down through the underlying
rocks, a discovery followed that far out-
wondered the wonder at Tarentum. The steel
bit of the driller, driven on, hit straight at
last the 'Sand,' the secret hold of the mysterious
air, when, a door of escape thus opened, like the
wind let loose from the bag of iEolus, out it flew.
Not silently and temperately, like as from the
' Peterson,' but with a roar as of thunder, and a
rush as of a cyclone, out it flew — flew, lifting on
its wing as it rose, through fifteen hundred feet
of hole, the drill, lightly, as though its three
thousand pound's of solid iron were but of feather
weight; and like a feather flung it up and tossed
it out at top. Fired, as it flashed high overhead,
it was a sight to see — the narrow, faint-blue jet,
scarcely visible at bottom, deepening into a broad
red blaze as it mounted; the stalk of the shoot
throwing out its branches, the branches their
leaves — snapped from their stems, at times, ere
more than formed, and whirled curling off in air
to burn for an instant, instantly then to vanish ;
the 'plant,' its full height reached, opening out
a,t top into flower — a gigautic, flagrant, flaming

86 LES TROIS ROIS.
flower, such as Proserpine might grow in her
hot- bed to pluck, when of a mind to, for a lover
— Pluto, if you please — to sport in his button
hole ; — a famous sight to see ! And that was
about all that was made of it — a spectacular
oddity; a something curious to look at ; some
thing la!-ful to admire; like a comet, or an
Aurora-boreal is, or a Star of Bethlehem ; that,
and only that. But if all that was, it was not all
that could be, not all that was destined to be,
made of it; although somewhat long might be
the waiting ere the making came about.
Among others, not few, of the burning springs
long known about, is one in Tupper Creek, a
small stream running near by Westfield, a thriving
town in Chautauqua County, New York, and
emptying half a mile further on into Lake Erie.
In 1828 Thomas B. Campbell, a citizen of West-
field, received authority from Washington to erect
a light-house at the entrance of Barcelona Harbor,
close upon which the town stands. Mr. Campbell
was a man, one of your considering, calculating
kind, who could indeed enjoy a thing of beauty
for its beauty, but who, having an eye to that,
had a pair of them on the look-out always for
the discovery of some secret property or other,

LES TROIS ROIS. 87
good for use, he might suspect to lie under it.
His job of the light-house completed, passing one
night by the Burning Spring, he paused to look at
it, and looking, began to think : here was that,
running to waste, which the light-house wanted ;
which it must have, and which it would pay
money to get. Was it possible to  ? And he
kept on thinking, and with his pair of eyes kept
on looking, until he thought and saw it out. It
was possible.
Presently, then, he forwarded a letter to Gov
ernment containing a proposal for supplying
the light-house with light. The proposal was
accepted, and the Judge (Mr. Campbell was
an Associate Judge in the court of his county)
set to work to carry out his part of the contract.
He purchased an empty fish-barrel from his
grocer, sawed it in two, and placing one of the
halves, like a hat, over the head of the fountain,
made of it a receiver to gather in and hold the
vapor. Pump-logs, jointed end to end together,
a mile's length of them, were laid, a channel of
conveyance between fountain and light-house
opened, and the work was done. The Court knew
itself; its judgment was sustained, confirmed.
The vanity of the Burning Spring was proved to

88 LES TROIS ROIS.
be not all a vanity; there was gold in its glitter.
Tupper Creek, indeed, lost its attraction — its light,
alas ! hid under a bushel — but Barcelona had its
beacon. For thirty years, with a blaze 'not quenched
day nor night,' and that never abated, the
beacon burned; for thirty years longer it would
have gone on burning, only that then, the
Lake Shore Railroad coming in to steal away
trade from the ships, there was nothing to harbor,
and the port was abandoned. But the light, put
out at the light-house, was not so to be put down.
Dismissed the civil service, it was taken into the
social; where it still holds, doing duty in the
public schools and in the churches ; in houses and
on the streets, and only not, where Government
that paid for it liberally enough to the father,
erewhile keeper of the light-house, neglects un
graciously now to furnish it to his son — its only
representative the town has — in the Post-pffice.
One would suppose that after having thus been
tried and proved, the new illuminant would have
sprung into favor, and been generally adopted, at
once. So perhaps it might, only that the other
springs known of were away too far from the
Lake, down inland, on creeks and rivers where

LESITROIS ROIS. 89
there were no harbors, consequently no light
houses to beacon, and where the half-red white
men, and the half-white red men inhabiting, lit
their cabins with pine-knots, when lighted at all,
and neither looked nor longed for anything better.
This state of affairs, however, could not last
always. Light, perhaps, might not soon be in
request, among the thinly-scattered settlements
there, but its co-existent element — heat — would,
and the time was surely to be, when so generous
a contributor to it must come into demand.
When the discovery of petroleum in the Upper
Allegheny region came about, in 1859, borers after
it were much annoyed by the forcible entry into
their wells of this villainous vapor, interfering as
it did, often quite seriously, with their operations.
To catch and convey it off, out of their way, as
by contrivance they at length managed to do, was
all they cared about. Once in a while an operator
would introduce and use it in his engine-room;
once in a while convey' it through a pipe into his
shanty, to heat the pot and the pan he boiled his
coffee, and fried his eggs and bacon in ; once in a
while, when the well was near the tavern, the
blacksmith-shop, and the two or three saloons
they called a town, tube it to the front of one or

90 LES TROIS ROIS.
the other, so that in the night customers from the
neighboring oil-fields, or chance travelers belated
on the road, might see where the town was, and
be guided to it. With these its use began — for
fifteen years to find no improvement, to make no
advance. It happened, then, that John W. Chalfant went
forth a-journeying one day into a land, in Butler
County, where these flaming geysers were, and
where he saw them play. Like the Chautauqua
judge — he did not know the judge; had never.
heard tell of the Burning Spring at Westfield,
nor of the light-house at Barcelona Harbor, nor
of the pump-logs; but, of a same shrewdly-
observant habit — like the judge he looked, and
thought; thought, now of those great fountains
of fire, wasting their flagrance on the desert air of
Butler shire ; now of Spang, Chalfant & Co.'s
iron mills, where what was worthless here, would
come into such fine service there. Then he too,
like the judge, began to wonder : Was it possible
to  ? at end, like the judge, to resolve : it was
possible. To make up his mind about it, was to
put his hand to it. There was a well there, at
Lardentown, where he was, that would suit for
what he wanted, and could be had. It was

LES TROIS -ROIS. 91
secured. Rights of way across farms and cran
berry fields were obtained ; trenches were dug,
and a duct of solid iron laid — from its pylorus at
Lardentown reaching over a stretch of seventeen
miles to its vent under the boilers of the ' Etna
Mills' at Pittsburg. The experiment succeeded
perfectly; the vapor, in spite of the rubs and
resistances met from the twists and turns in the
conductor, darting through at the rate of a mile
to the minute, and with no appreciable diminution
to its volume. This was in the Autumn of 1875
— twelve years and more ago ; but the fires first
lighted then are burning still, and the throat
that lent the breath to kindle them into life,
still blows to keep them living, with a force
as vigorous as ever.
No clearer proof of the fitness for use of
Natural Gas — so, now, after this first real taming
and training of it to service, the strange air got
to be called — could be offered ; and yet the force
of it was not felt. — Nor, until the appointed time
should bring the appointed man — him, the Belt-
hazar — Fire King— last of the Royal Three—
for the work, was it to be ; but that was at hand.

*
* *

92 LES TROIS ROIS.
When, in 1856, George Westing house, Jr., a
lad ten years old, was taken over from Central
Bridge, Schoharie County, his birth-place, to
Schenectady, N. Y., and put under training at the
high-school there, he was, like other well-behaved
boys, regular in his attendance, mindful of his
lessons, and as ready to intelligently respond when
put to question in the task-room as were any, the
promptest, besides among his class-mates. But
the regulation hours at the high-school were not
his exclusive ones out of the day's dozen devoted
to learning. In fact it might be said of him that
his off-hours were the hours when he was chiefly
on, and that he really was most at school when
not at school at all. His father had been the
builder, and was master of the 'Schenectady
Agricultural Works,' an establishment of wide
repute, and that lent largely towards furnishing
its fame for enterprise to the city. Thither when
out from under his tutor's charge, and at liberty
to dispose of his time as pleased him, it was his
custom to resort; not that he had no heart, nor
hand, for sports such as were the delight of his
fellows, — for he could handle a bat and pull an
oar to fair sharing of honors at both with the

LES TROIS ROIS. 93
best of them — but that there, prying into the
mysteries of machines, and accustoming him to
the art of making them, or improving them when
made — working for pastime with the workers for
profit — he found entertainment more to his
choice. Old hands, graduates in experience at
the trade, as they witnessed the readiness with
which he took to his tools, and the skill with
which he manipulated them, wondered ; and still
their wonder grew, when, ere long, they saw him
put the finishing touches to a steam-engine — a
work, in piece and in whole, all of his own
modeling and building, and he a boy not yet in
his teens. He continued on under training at
these his two schools, the preceptive and the
practical, thus, until he felt himself old enough,
at sixteen, to take part in the war. After two
years — the last two of the Rebellion — spent in
1 active service in the army, he returned to resume
his forsaken place in the Works; to take up his
tools, and start in afresh to scheme, and plan, and
experiment as before.
Among his contrivances was one particularly
promising — a ' reversible steel frog,' (' frog ' cor
rupted from ' frush' ; an iron piece thus named
from its resemblance to the horny growth, so

94 LES TROIS ROIS.
called, in the sole of a horse's hoof, and used
in the angles at crossings of rail-roads, to
prevent wheels from jumping the track), to
arrange to best advantage for the manufac
ture and sale of which was the consideration
that, in 1868, brought him to Pittsburg. This
was his first successful stroke at invention. A
next, and more important one, followed. Read
ing his newspaper one morning, a letter from a
traveler in Italy fell under his eye, containing
reference to the Mont Cenis tunnel, then in pro
cess of excavation, with a mention of ' compressed
air ' as the power used in the prosecution of the
work. The thought flashed on him — Could not
the same force be brought as well to work the
brakes on a train of cars ? the necessity of an
appliance for that purpose, other and better than
the primitive and imperfectly-operative one in
use, having long been felt. His one or two
friends consulted did not favorably consider, in
fact were disposed to make light of, the idea. To
think of controlling the movements, the startiugs
and the stoppings, of a train by means of an
India-rubber tube, hung and strung, like a
Bologna sausage, along the cars' bottoms ! It was
absurd. But he tried it nevertheless ; tried it—

LES TROIS ROIS. 95
and the ' Westinghouse Air-brake ' was what
came of it.
His next important adventure was one that
turned up, as things, especially rare things, usu
ally do turn up, by accident.
When petroleum was discovered in the new
fields near Pittsburg, some three years ago, Mr.
Westinghouse, interested like the rest of our local
mankind in the finding, was led to believe that,
possibly, the fluid might be had at home as well
as in adjoining Washington County, if one were
only to light on the right place and bore for it.
He decided to test the matter; had the timbers
prepared, and proceeded to plant a derrick at a
chosen spot on his own private grounds in an
upper ward of the city. The drill was started
(December, 1883), and at a depth of 1560 feet a
vein was struck, not of oil as was anticipated, but
— what had not been counted upon as among
contingencies — of gas. Gas was not what he was
after, not what he wanted ; but there it was, and
now that he had it, not inclining to let it run to
waste, he began to consider what could be made
of it. To resolve that question to his mind, time
for reflection was necessary.
Meanwhile borers, busy as beetles, were else-

96 LES TROIS ROIS.
where abroad and at work. Derrick after derrick
started up ; well after well started down. Hill
sides and bottoms lying along rivers and creeks,
wherever creeks and rivers ran, were perforated
all over with the one, while, thick-planted,
whole-seen in fields, half-hid in woods, tall and
ghostly, like obelisks in skeleton, towered on every
hand the bare-ribbed shafts of the other. In the
Washington County district success could be de
pended upon. A main artery of the fluid seemed
to be seated there, which was sure to flow with
every probe of the driller's lance. Outside of
that favored spot was outside of what enriched it.
The oleo-marginal line appeared to be reached,
with no beyond to it, at the line of the county.
But searches spent in this outer territory were not
to be without their findings — if not of oil, of
that which was to prove its no less precious sister-
substitute — gas. If the earth, there, had no
womb for the one, it had a stomach charged,
ready to burst, with the other. As hole after
hole was chiseled down, gush after gush of it
sprang up. Strike where one would, he was sure
to hit it. Taking fire, as all were quite certain
to, the flames would shoot up twenty, thirty, forty
feet in air; their light, broad-cast, at night, out-

LES TROIS ROIS. 97
shining the moon's, and paling that of the dawn
at morning. To its field, and to its yield, there
was no limit.
These new discoveries happened just in time
for Mr. Westinghouse's purpose. Meditating
over his ' strike,' a scheme had occurred to him
so fair of promise as to almost persuade him to,
at once, adopt and put it through. But two
questions arose that caused him to hesitate : Could
a supply of gas, enough for the purpose projected
— calling for more than he had — be found, and,
found, would it hold out ? The result of ex
periments at Canonsburg (not within the oil belt)
in Washington County, Murrysville in West
moreland, Baden in Beaver, and Sewickley in
Allegheny (all around and within a radius of
thirty miles of Pittsburg), settled the one point,
and the broad extent of the bearing-area thus
indicated, gave sufficient assurance of the other.
Spang, Chalfant & Co. had been content to provide
for themselves alone. Mr. Westinghouse proposed
the more comprehensive work of concentrating
the out-put of a sufficient number of wells and
supplying all the factories, and all the families
besides, in the two cities. Could the factories,
and the families, be induced to use it? Not if

98 LES TROIS ROIS.
they had to act for themselves and be their own
carriers — for men used to old ways, like dogs, are
lazy to learn new— but let it be delivered at their
doors — offered to them without the going after —
and they would. His project ripe for execution,
decisive action followed. The capital stock of
the "Philadelphia Company," to secure the only
thing of value left to it — its charter — was bought
up, the old office at Philadelphia closed, and a
new one " for the purpose of conducting a
Natural Gas business," opened at Pittsburg. The
necessary authority from Councils was obtained,
and before the good people of the city well knew
why, the work of trenching the streets for the
laying of pipes, was begun.
It required no forcing to bring the gas into
use. The good people were not only willing,
they were eager to have it. Mains for its delivery
could not be set fast enough to meet the urgency
of dwellers along their lines, waiting to tap them.
Mills, crowded, toiled night and day to supply
tubes; plumbers, from earliest early to latest late
of hours, to place them. A novelty first, to
attract, tried, it became a necessity. House
keepers cried for it ; without it would not be
comforted. Owners of works that had held

LES TROIS ROIS. 99
dilatorily back, waiting to be served, now that
they were served saw the pricelessly precious
thing it was, and took to it greedily. The Phila
delphia Company, anticipating a large patronage,
had made liberal provision to meet it, but to be
fully prepared for all possible contingencies, kept
on adding to their lands, their mains and their
fountains of supply. The work, entered upon
with so much spirit, was continued with unabated
activity, until now, after three years, they have
to show for it, the owning, on lease and by pur
chase, of fifty-six thousand acres of ground, one
hundred producing wells, and a plant of four
hundred and fifty miles of pipe. The grounds,
it will be noticed, are very moderately taxed,
there being an average of but one well to five
hundred and sixty acres — an area broad enough
to, alone, afford more than room for the one
hundred distributed over the whole. Other com
panies — the ' Allegheny Heating,' the ' Baden,'
the ' Chartiers Valley,' the ' Peoples,' the ' Peo
ple's Pipage' — following the lead of the Phila
delphia, have since entered the field, and now
contribute their share, amounting all together, to
about half that of the Philadelphia, to the general
service. Abundantly thus provided for, the use

100 LES TROIS ROIS.
of other fuel has ceased. Coal will still, indeed,
hold place as heretofore in other markets, but at
home its grasp is lost. The last of fires of its
supplying have burned out — are whole extin
guished, never to be lighted more.
The stroke of enterprise which brought to
pass this result has proved to Pittsburg one of
incalculable value. It has given to her that
which, as rarest of the rare good things reserved
of Providence for special bestowing, had the
choice been hers, she would have chosen — a fire
that could be trusted to do the various service
required of it; to do it well, and, still more to
purpose, at a low cost — as near a no-cost as
possible. In all these particulars her desire has
been more than met. The old fire worked to fair
benefit, but at a round price to its employers. It
was a_ ravenous consumer ; ate with a greed that
never was satisfied ; demanded the best of food,
and would 'strike' any instant when attempted to
be run on short rations. The new needs no
catering to, nor caring for; it feeds on air and
helps itself; it seeks no rest, wants none, because
it finds best its ease when busiest in action. Under
instant and absolute control, it can be adjusted at
a touch to any degree of burning — fierce, if you

LES TROIS ROIS. 101
will, as that of a furnace, or faint, if you like, as
a taper's, lit of a night to dot the dark in
a lady's chamber.
With this, the one thing only wanted for
her perfect equipment, now that she has it,
Pittsburg can rest content. It arms her with
a power which assures to her foremost place
in her domain of enterprise — a place to occupy
without a rival ; to hold in exclusive undivided
possession, unchallengeably her own.
* *
Such, in the light of its fires, looking forth
from my window, is what I see in that I see of
the city reaching out before me. Pictures re
flective of what in the hard times of its early
experience it was; of its toilsome progresses ; its
gains in growth, in enterprise, in wealth, steadily
all the time, if sometimes haltingly made. Pic
tures of what it is; its grounds penned in by no
contracted corporate lines, but extending far, far
ther than eye can see.along the bottoms by the rivers,
up the bordering steeps, and back at their tops away
and away; its factories, furnaces, mills, thick-
planted over all, and, packed in between, the
dwellings of the now four hundred thousand souls
10

102 LES TROIS ROIS.
that furnish their quotas to man them. Pictures
prophetic of what it is to be ; with the elements,
Earth with its resources, Air, Fire, Water, with
their forces, held all in bond to wait upon its
bidding, and with its ministering, all-mighty
Magi — its Gaspar, Melchior, Belthazar — Les
Trois Rois — who tamed and trained them to it,
alive to appoint their work and regulate their
service — pictures, not to be copied, of what it is
to be!

Tom the Tinker,

TOM THE TINKER.

H"X)M the Tinker has achieved for him
self a mention in history. Although the
commotion on the waves of which he was lifted
into notice was a local one, of transient duration,
and in itself not specially characterized by extra
ordinary incident, yet the circumstances of the
time imparted, and still secure to it, a deeply-felt
and general interest. The country was but iu the
infancy of its independence; the experiment of a
popular government remained to be tested; and
the citizens naturally looked with eagerness to
ward the result of this first issue raised between
Law and 'Liberty' under the new regime. Tom
the Tinker had battled manfully, without doubt,
against the king. Now that, by right of conquest,
Tom was a sovereign, could he be brought, when
he had no relish for it, to realize the fact that he
was also a subject ? That was a problem which
the Whisky Insurrection was to solve.

106 TOM THE TINKER.
To appreciate adequately the points involved
in this seditionary movement, a sketch of its pro
gress should be anticipated by a picture of the
scene of its event, of the people active in it, and
of their social and domestic ways of life, as
gathered from the lips of the few living witnesses
left ofthe time.*
Pittsburg, shortly after the close of the Revo
lutionary War, sustained a metropolitan relation
to the greatly scattered settlements of the Western
frontier. At that time it was a mere village,
with a population of perhaps one thousand souls.
The houses composing it were built of logs, with
the exception of two — Kirkpatrick's and Neville's,
which were constructed, aristocratically, of clap
boards — and clustered chiefly along the Monon-
gahela River and toward its point of junction with
the Allegheny. Overgrowing the low ground in
the rear of the town, and reaching along the lat
ter-mentioned river, was the King's Orchard, con
sisting of about a hundred apple trees, seedlings
of Norman parentage, and planted by the French
during their occupancy of Fort Du Quesne.
* At the date of the first appearance of this sketch, 'liv
ing,' these witnesses, but all, long since, dead.

TOM THE TINKER. 107
Spreading from the orchard eastwardly, was a
broad, vacant space, used as a race-course. Horse-
racing was the favorite amusement of the people.
There were those who favored bear-baiting, and
others of a more gentle temper who were content
with wrestling, boxing (without gloves), playing at
cudgels, and the like; but horses were the ruling
fancy, and this was the arena upon which their
mettle was tried. Back of the race-course, at the
base of Grant's Hill, and under shadow of the
oaks that crowned its brow, stood the log store
room, famous among traders, of Le Bat. Hither,
of wont, assembled the yeomanry with their bur
dens of corn and rye from the scattered clearings
along the valleys and uplands of the Mononga-
hela; hither resorted the trapper with his skins
of beaver and muskrat ; the hunter with his hides
of bear and fox and deer from the far-off regions
of the upper Al-lo-ga-nee (the 'Beautiful,' for the
title, now limited to the Ohio, applied then to the
main water course that supplies it as well); and
higher the Indian floated down in his canoe from
Wenango (French) and Oil Creek, with his moc
casins, maple sugar, beeswax and his petroleum,
all to bargain off in barter for powder, tobacco,
whisky and such like needful commodities; and

108 TOM THE TINKER.
Le Bat grew prosperous and purse-proud by the
commerce. The town lacked not in taverns for the accom
modation of patrons. First, in point of time, was
that of Black Charley, on Water Street, whose
white wife (the 'Institution' existing then in
Pennsylvania, too!) was famous for her table, and
whose self was a model among landlords. Proud
was Charley of his place and of his profession,
and right good reason ruled there that he should
be. Was not his house, humble as it was, the
distinguished resort of the royal of the land?
Had not King Shingiss patronized his premises,
and swapped wampum for what it would fetch at
his bar ? Had not Queen Aliquippa, whose name
is perpetuated on steamboats, restaurants and-
cigar boxes to the present day, got drunk on his
liquor, sworn majestic oaths in broken English
under his roof, and slept herself into soberness on
the bench at his door? Had not the Demosthenes
of his tribe imbibed from his pewter — perhaps
from his hospitality caught inspiration, for " I
appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered
Logan's cabin hungry ? " and so on ; the effort
which, under reconstruction of Jefferson's pen,
more ably attempted than honestly, has crowned

TOM THE TINKER. 109
him with an immortality ? And Guyasutha, chief
of the Senecas and compeer of Pontiac, too —
weak, wasted old ruin of a once magnificent man,
who, as well as King and Queen, had hobnobbed
with Washington, drunk rum with him out of
the same canteen, and by him been honored with
historic mention — had he not daily, through whole
seasons, crossed his threshold and quaffed of his
Monongahela, wasting the time between drinks
out in the sun, making bows and arrows for the
town-boys, and teaching them the proper method
of their use? Ay, and whether or not to the
relish of Davy Duncan, a later and neighboring
competitor, Charlie was not slow to plume him
self upon the distinction implied by the patronage.
Then there was the inn kept by John Mc-
Master, sign of the Black Bear, on the north-east
corner of the Diamond and Market Street, where
were wont to congregate the soldiers of the
garrison and the tradesmen from their shops, to
enjoy at his benches and over his bowls their times
of stolen leisure— the oft-recurring opportunities
beino- made none the less attractive by the presence
of blind Dennis Loughey and Crowder the fiddler,
who, the one with his hornpipes, and the other
with his ballads about highwaymen and horse

110 TOM THE TINKER.
thieves, tickled the ears of the listeners, or stirred
their feet into responsive action, vastly to the
common rapture, as well as to the substantial ad
vantage of the house.
But first and foremost of all was what was
called the Butler House while under the manage
ment of Patrick — familiarly Pat — on the corner
of Market and Fourth Streets, near by a brick
redoubt built by the British, but which, conse
quent upon his demise, and when conducted by
his admirable relict, was better known as Molly
Murphy's. The military disaster following the
attack of the Miami Indians in 1791 so wrought
upon her enthusiasm that she employed the
services of a native artist, and had presently
swinging before her premises, immensely to her
satisfaction as well as to the popular admiration,
a great sign illuminated with a picture, done in
dashing colors, of Saint Clair's defeat— or defate,
as the text of the original copy had it. Molly
was a woman of parts, and knew how to ' keep
a hotel.' Rough of manner, and perhaps more
emphatic than choice in speech — the confirmed
habit, at length, of a deportment assumed at first
to hold the rude guests she had to deal with
under proper discipline — she was, nevertheless,

TOM THE TINKER. Hi
generous of heart and of pure reputation. Her
house was the main depot of commerce between
the frontier at large and the East. Thither con
centrated, principally, the traders from all along
range of sunset. Thence were the goods for ex
port forwarded to their destination, and thence
the slender supplies of return freight delivered
to Le Bat, Captain Wilson and the few other
operators and retailers in town, or carried piece
meal away by individual country purchasers to
their several homes in the wilderness. A hint as
to the quality of the frequenters of its various tav
erns affords the readiest and most comprehensive
suggestion of the general character of the inhabit
ants of the town.
The style of life in the country was simple in
the extreme. The population was composed,
almost exclusively, of Scotch-Irish — a stout and
stubborn race, of plain manners, frugal habits,
devoted in their clannish attachments, fantastically
formalistic in their very repudiations of form,
rigidly righteous in their renunciations of the
world, the flesh and the devil ; energetic, indus
trious and fearless — the character of all others
befitting the pioneer, who had, literally, to hew
out his farm and his home from primeval forests,

112 TOM THE TINKER.
and to protect them afterward, at peril of life,
from the murderous assaults of savages. The
first step of the newly arrived immigrant was to
fix upon a congenial neighborhood somewhere,
by common preference in the valley or on the
adjacent uplands of the Monongahela ; the next,
armed with rifle, balls, powder and tomahawk,
and accompanied by a settler, to steer for such
tracts in the wilds as were unclaimed, when,
having stumbled upon an inviting locality, he
would proceed to mark the boundaries of his
self-appropriated farm. Corner trees were selected
and blazed on two sides, the north and east, say,
or similarly toward any other points of the com
pass, as the case might be, and so on, until all the
angles of the property were in like manner
defined. These were known as 'tomahawk im
provements,' and constituted a title as valid as
any deed could give. Much of the choicest
property of the region is held to-day upon no
better warranty. Government received no re
compense for the lands thus claimed and taken.
The third movement was to build a house.
This was generally accomplished in about two
days. The neighbors — that is to say, the settlers
within a circuit of perhaps ten or fifteen miles —

TOM THE TINKER. H3
collecting together, divided themselves into gangs;
one to cut logs in the forest, a second to haul
them to the site selected for the proposed struc
ture, and a third, composed of such as were
skillful in the handling of an axe, to notch them,
or, selecting the straightest grained, to split them
into slabs or clapboards. The materials having
been gathered and prepared, the logs were lifted
to their places in the walls. At the proper
height, some eight or ten feet from the ground,
the end walls were narrowed in with every suc
cessive layer bringing the logs at the sides nearer
together until the order of contraction culminated
at length in a single one on the top. Over these
convergent inclinations the clapboards, cut in
four-feet lengths, were laid, each range over
lapping the one below it, and all held in their
places by ' weight-poles' laid across at proper dis
tances, and firmly secured by wooden pins to the
underlying timbers. This composed the roof. A
place for a door was then cut out of one side, the
logs severed for this purpose being sustained in
their places by pins driven through the upright
slabs which formed the door-frame. The door
itself was made of split timber, and was hung
and fastened with wooden hinges and a latch.
11

114 TOM THE TINKER.
Not a nail or scrap of iron was used in all the
building. At an end of the cabin another open
ing was made for the chimney. This was also
built of logs on the outside, but close against the
wall, 'chunked' and daubed with billets of wood
and mortar, and lined with a few stones to protect
the back and jambs from fire. When there was
any other than an earthen floor, it was laid some
times of trees split, with the bark side uppermost,
and again of whole logs planted side by side, and
chipped with an adze as nearly to a level as the
implement and the skill with which it was wielded
would admit of. A slab table, a three-legged
stool or two and a bench made up the inventory
of furniture. Wooden pins, varied for certain
uses by bucks' horns, inserted in the wall,
answered the several purposes of supports for
shelves, rests for rifles, pegs for the suspension of
shot-pouches, shirts, gowns, etc., and slantingly
ranged at convenient distances, as a means of
passage up to the hatchway opening into the loft.
For this latter purpose ladders were spmetimes
used, the parties ascending drawing them up after
them as a measure of protection. Pins of a
greater length, inserted in like manner, and sup
ported at the other end, by forked sticks resting

TOM THE TINKER. 115
on the floor, the frame thus formed being overlaid
with slabs, constituted their bedsteads; and yet
there were cases when this approximation to
luxurious use was contemptuously declined. In
such instances, gumtree logs, cut the desired
length, hollowed out, and half enclosed with a
board at one end, were employed as a substitute.
Into these, rolled out and ranged with the open
end next the fire, would the members of the
household crawl, and comfortably repose through
the long cold nights of winter. In the morning
they would be gathered up and planted, endwise,
out of the way in a corner of the cabin. Many
of the families were without any culinary utensils
whatever, unless a pewter plate and a horn spoon
.should fall under that designation. They baked
their johnny-cakes on a board before the fire, and
their steaks of bear and venison, or their carcasses
of pheasant and wild turkey (domestic fowls of
any sort were unknown), on the coals. A gourd
containing salt was suspended by a string against
the wall, out of which the needed supplies of the
precious commodity were sparingly extracted ;
and that, too, with inexhaustible fountains of the
mineral, had they but known it, waiting to be
tapped right under their feet.

116 TOM THE TINKER.
For dress, the men wore hunting shirts of
linsey-woolsey, with or without capes as taste
inclined, and bordered among the more elegantly
disposed with a fringe of some boldly contrasted
color — generally red on a garment of blue, or
blue on a cloth of white. These shirts were
tucked in, and fastened around the loins with a
raw-hide rope belt. The bosom answered the
purpose of a huge pocket for storing away tow,
tobacco, a flask and what not, while the belt was
made to support a sheathed knife and a tomahawk.
Moccasins were exclusively worn on the feet. The
deer skins out of which they were wrought were
tanned from the brains of the creatures from
which they were stripped, it being the accepted
theory of the frontier that ' the brains of any
animal is the best material to tan its own hide
with.' Their caps were made of fox-skins.
Women dressed in petticoats and short gowns of
the same material worn by the men. The petti
coat was secured around the hips with drawing
strings, the skirt of the short gown reaching
below, somewhat like a sacque of the present
day, and concealing the tie. They wore their
hair combed up behind and massed into a sort of
waterfall in front. Their hats were made of

TOM THE TINKER. 117
plaited rye straw, low in the crown and broad in
the brim. The better-to-do class — those worth
a cow and a calf or their equivalent of a hundred
acres of land — indulged occasionally in the ex
travagance of a substitute of woolen fabric.
The settlers were very strict in their religious
observances. Services on Sunday were usually
held, summer and winter, in the open air, and
with no other shelter than that afforded by the
trees. ' Meeting-houses,' where there were any —
because of the crevices left in the loose construc
tion of their walls, through which the winds had
free passage, and the entire absence of fire, the
desire for that element on the Lord's day and in
the Lord's sanctuary being regarded as a carnal
weakness which it was a prime duty of the faithful
to crucify — afforded slight experience of better
comfort. The attendants gathered in for preach
ing from distances of fifteen or twenty miles,
riding on horseback, the women seated behind the
men on pillions; the men bearing with them
'dumpling-bags' packed with provisions for con
sumption between sermons, and their rifles to
guard against the always possible emergency of
surprise from the Indians. An inspiring sight
was it to witness these assemblies ; the men seem-

118 TOM THE TINKER.
ingly unconscious of heat or storm or cold, resting
in various attitudes upon their loaded arms, and
hearkening intently to such words of solid ex
hortation as the Old Testament texts in favor
among their sect would suggest; and no less
inspiring was it to hear such grand old hymns as
' Mear,' ' Old Hundred,' and ' Dundee,' sung to
the quaint rhymes of Rouse, and ringing in
majestic unison far along the tortuous aisles of
the vast, open temple in which they worshiped.
For the surer protection of the people and as
places of refuge during any hostile incursion of
the savages, block-houses were established at
different points throughout the ' Survey.' These
were log structures about eighteen feet square,
roofed with bark, carefully chunked to close the
spaces between the logs, and perforated with
funnel-shaped loopholes, through which to watch
the movements of the Indians, and visit death,
when opportunity offered, upon their barbarous
assailants. In this service many of the women,
whom long custom had qualified for the duty,
acted, rifle in hand, with the men, while the less
experienced— perhaps the less resolute — mean
while moulded the bullets. The upper story of
the block-houses — for they were usually composed

TOM THE TINKER. 119
of two, the better to command the ground beyond
the pickets— extended on all sides about two feet
beyond the lower. This was likewise provided
with loopholes, not only in the sides, but in that
portion of the floor which projected beyond the
apartment underneath, so that in case a storming
party reach the doors below, the besieged could
fire down upon their heads. The block-houses
were always planted close by springs of water,
and included within the trenches and pickets sur
rounding, space enough to fold the common stock
driven thither for protection.
Commerce between the West and the East was
carried on exclusively by pack-horses. The horses
employed (mares were seldom, if ever, used) were
of the Indian-pony breed, short and shaggy
animals, but vigorous of muscle and full of en
durance. The ' make-up ' of a caravan for the
grand tramp to Philadelphia consisted of from
two hundred to three hundred horses, subdivided
into companies of anywhere from ten to thirty,
each of these companies being.under the control
of two managers — one, the supercargo, astride of
the leading stallion, and the other, often a boy,
on the animal at the rear, whose duty it was,
armed with a whip consisting of a stout hickory

120 TOM THE TINKER.
stock and a raw-hide lash of immense reach, in
the use of which he became wonderfully expert,
to keep the file in orderly motion. The driving
of these caravans was an important and indepen
dent profession. The horses in charge of a
supercargo were not his own, but furnished pro
miscuously upon each trip, animal by animal, by
the farmers and traders as they had supplies to
forward or receive. Each horse had a bell sus
pended from his neck, ordinarily, under march,
stuffed with leaves to prevent its tinkling, but in
camp at night, so that the whereabouts of an
estray might be detected, or again to give pomp
to an entree into towns on the way — Chambers
burg, perhaps, or Carlisle — let free and made to
ring lustily. If any of the animals were not
trained to the march or disposed to be unruly,
they were tied by ropes to the pack-saddle of the
lead horse, and so forcibly inducted into orderly
behavior. Each horse had his separate bridle —
or halter with headstall, rather, because they used
no bits — which was made of ropes plaited from
the hair of their own tails and manes, not merely
as an economical arrangement, but as a safe one,
a horse being proof against capillary attraction,
and never disposed to cliaw a twist composed of

TOM THE TINKER. 121
fibres of his own growing. If a stallion was not
well broken to the business, or if he was inclined
to rove when turned loose, he was spanceled at
night — secured, that is, by tying his fore-legs
together below the knees, allowing length enough
of rope between to move haltingly about for
forage, but not to wander too far or make his re
taking difficult in the morning. The horses were
never shod. The routes over which they traveled
were merely paths winding along the valleys and
through the mountain passes, as originally en
gineered and traced out by the cunning instincts
of the wild deer.
Pack-saddles were sometimes made of the forks
of tree-branches cut in the shape of an inverted
V, but more commonly of hewn-sticks fastened
transversely together after the style of the letter
X, having the arms of the upper angle (put there
to prevent the load from slipping back or forward)
considerably shorter than those of the lower. Two
of these joined together by a strip of white-oak
wood about six inches wide, extending at both
ends— the ends being carefully rounded off— about
two. inches beyond the crosses, underlaid with
deer skin padded with moss to protect shoulders
and back from abrasion, the deer skins secured to

122 TOM THE TINKER.
the frame with thongs of raw-hide, and the whole
fastened in place by girths, cruppers and breast-
straps, all of hair, constituted the saddle complete.
Across these, bags were swung, in which kegs of
whisky, bundles of medicinal roots, skins, &c,
going east, were stowed, and, returning, salt
and other packages of lading. When the re
turn load was of iron, the bars were bent horse
shoe shape, to ride the more securely on the
saddle, and to allow of the unhindered passage of
the animals along the narrow, thicket-bordered
trails. The first wagon to cross the Allegheny
mountains was hauled by a team of four horses,
owned and driven, in private enterprise, by John
Hayden, of Uniontown, in Fayette county. He
followed the road cut out by Braddock, and took
with him on his first trip six barrels of whisky,
bringing back two thousand pounds of 'store
goods' for Jacob Bowman, of Brownsville, in the
same county, receiving freight for the service at
the rate of three dollars per hundred pounds.
The harness of the horses, traces and all, was
made of raw-hide ropes, and their collars of
'corn-shucks,' twisted as in old-fashioned bee
hives, and shaped to fit the neck. He camped
out every night. The meat and drink for sus-

TOM THE TINKER. 123
tenance on the way he carried in a ' dumpling
bag' — and in the barrels of his cargo.
While the country bartered to a considerable
extent in peltries, and also in petroleum, then
recognized under the different designations of
Seneca, Stone, Rock, Spike, British, American,
and heaven knows what other sorts of oil — each
and all esteemed as sovereign remedies for
burns, bruises, spavins, sore heels, and what-not
in the way of disease or infirmity in man
and beast — whisky was the staple commodity.
Every well-to-do farmer had his own simple
apparatus and did his own distilling. Of coin
the settlers knew little, and for currency cared
less. Whisky was their circulating medium.
They bought with whisky ; they sold for whisky.
Whisky was the standard of value. The price
of a pound of lead, or of powder, or of tobacco,
was so many quarts of it ; of a rifle, so many
gallons ; for an acre of ground within view of
the metropolis, a ten gallon keg, and a barrel for
a corner lot and the pasture privilege of the com
mon in the town — by survey — of Allegheny.
Whisky was the favorite and universal beverage
of the people, the substitute for coffee, tea and —
water. The farmer bore his flask of it with his

124 TOM THE TINKER.
axe to the clearing, with his plough to the field,
and with his rifle to the woods. He quaffed of
it when he arose in the morning and when he
retired at night ; he drank of it before meals to
sharpen his appetite, after them to aid digestion,
and between times — because he liked it. Store
keepers exposed it on their counters in vessels
flanked by bowls of maple sugar and tufts of
tansy and peppermint, and customers partook of
it, plain, sweet or in decoction, at their pleasure,
freely and without cost. The preacher, like
Herman Husbands, made medicine of it in his
pulpit to give tone to his voice and edge to his
wits for the more penetrating exposition of the
law and the prophets. Only next to a sprinkle
of water was its presence essential at christenings,
second to nothing at weddings, and first and alone
at the wakes held over the dead of their people.
At home and abroad, at coming and departing, on
all chances of social gathering, whether for mourn
ing or rejoicing, at house-raisings, at log-rollings,
at harvestings, at huskings, the generous liquor
was ever to be seen — the inevitable, indispensable
concomitant of the occasion.
The political creed of the people was simple,
but for them, practically as well as theoretically,

TOM THE TINKER 125
sufficient. Their favorite maxim, like that adopted
by sectional ists of a later date, was to let alone
and be let alone. They had for years following
upon the first settlement of the region been
literally without law. Justices during that time,
and constables, courts and prisons, were unknown,
or vaguely remembered as the officers and institu
tions of an unrighteous and proscriptive civiliza
tion, from which, like Lot from Sodom, they had
originally escaped as for their lives. As the
population multiplied, and the country was at a
later period districted off into counties, the forms
of law were indeed observed,but its judgments were
tenderly decreed and not over rigidly executed.
When a publican of Philadelphia was sent out to
collect taxes under the revised law of 1777, the
people amused themselves by singeing the wig
and putting coals of fire into the boots of the
- detested official, offering a reward for his scalp,
and finally shaving his head. The law afforded
him neither redress nor protection. Out of
seventy suits entered against delinquent distillers
in 1 790, all were set aside for irregularity. To be
bound by enactments or made liable to penalties
was distasteful to the settlers ; not that they were
prone to do evil, nor that their practices were
12

126 TOM THE TINKER.
impeachable beyond common, but because it had
the look of usurpation, and was inconsistent with
their views of perfect freedom. Accustomed to
the license of border life, free to come and go as
they listed, to till their lands, to sow, to reap and
to gather into barns, and be subject to no tithe of
mint or of cummin for the privilege, when the
checks and tolls of an organized system of gov
ernment were fairly introduced, it is not to be
wondered at if they chafed under the imposition,
especially when made to bear against an unhindered
traffic and indulgence in the prime element of
their dependence.
Such was the state of society on the frontier
when the Excise Law of 1791 was enacted, im
posing a tax of from nine to twenty-five cents
per gallon, according to strength, upon domestic
spirits. If the tax had been levied on the air
they breathed or the water they drank (from
which, by the way, very little revenue would
have been realized), it could not have excited the
popular indignation more fiercely. This action
of Congress had not been wholly unexpected. A
scheme to the same effect had been proposed by
Hamilton early in the session of the year
previous. The people had caught at it then as a

TOM THE TINKER. 127
menace of what might possibly happen in the
future. Its simple suggestion had excited their
alarm, and aroused in them the purpose to protect
the rights to which they were entitled. Why
should they contribute of the sweat of their brows
to sustain a system of laws they deprecated and a
government they preferred to repudiate anyhow,
as it was ?
They were determined to be free. 'Liberty'
became the chosen divinity of their worship.
Poles were erected in her name, vivas shouted,.
and libations poured out — but not wasted —
to her honor. Democratic societies were insti
tuted in close sympathy and in correspondence
with similar associations of revolutionary France,
and Robespierre and Collot d'Herbois were names
familiar and approved among the 'citizens' of the
frontier. Rather than suffer restriction of their
rights, they would cut loose from Federal au
thority — ay, and from State rule, too — altogether,
and establish a separate and independent com
munity of their own. Thus, through a twelve
months' tide of preparatory fretfulness, when the
decree came were they ripe for resistance. And
so, out of the whirl and tumult of upstarted dis
turbance, to ride upon its rush and follow it in its

128 TOM THE TINKER.
course reckless as to whithersoever it might lead,
arose Tom the Tinker.
Who Tom the Tinker was, whence he came,
and where exactly to place him since he had come,
where questions all involved in mystery. Rumors
prevailed that there were certain men who some
where had encountered him, and who described
him as an hard, revengeful fellow, ill-bred and
of coarse manners, low instincts and lawless habits ;
but upon closer inquiry the person so described
was found to be only a certain obscure neighbor
hood busybody of the name of John Holcroft.
Others thought that he had been identified in the
person of an individual of less ruffianly presence,
but a man of violence withal, and a dangerous
disturber of the peace; but he proved to be the
prosecuting officer of Washington county, known
as David Bradford. Some supposed him to be a
French gentleman in disguise, fresh from the
atmosphere of the secret club-rooms of Paris,
come to propagate the new gospel of reform
current in that capital; but Citizen Genet
had not yet crossed the seas. No one could pro
nounce positively upon him, however ; and among
the less sensational and imaginative he was finally
put down as a personage rather of myth, perhaps,

TOM THE TINKER. 129
than of fact. Nevertheless, fact or figment, he
exercised a sway over the populace that for the
time was absolute.
From the year 1777— the date when officers
were first commissioned to collect revenues west
ofthe mountains — down to 1791, the people were
satisfied to simply treat the law and its executors,
sent over always from the East, with contempt, or,
at wOfst, with such practical exhibitions of dis
approval as have been alluded to in the case of
Graham, the Philadelphia publican; but when,
under the more stringent statute of '91, General
Neville — one of their own most eminent and in
fluential citizens, and who had been presumed,
reasonably or not, to sympathize with them
hitherto in their prejudices against the obnoxious
enactment — consented to serve as inspector, the
matter assumed a grave importance in their eyes.
Singeing wigs and stuffing boots with live coals
might do for the foreign hireling, but hardly for
the popular neighbor, to whose generosities they
were accustomed, and with whom in friendly in
tercourse they were daily wont to meet. Yet none
the less, though in a more decided way, were they
determined to face the exigency. Public meet
ings were called. The first was held on the 27th

130 TOM THE TINKER.
of July, '91, at Redstone Old Fort, near Browns
ville, on the Monongahela River, at which
Ftndley, of Westmoreland, and Smiley, of Fayette
county, members of Congress, together with Al
bert Gallatin, were present. Other assemblages,
by resolution of this, were ordered in the four
western counties — Allegheny and Washington, to
gether with the two just mentioned — for the elec
tion of delegates to a general convention to be held
at Pittsburg on the 7th of September following.
The result of these meetings was a series of re
solutions protesting against the Excise Act as
deservedly obnoxious, attended with infringements
on liberty, insulting in the inquisitorial proceed
ings necessary to its execution, and as a precedent
tending to introduce the pernicious laws of foreign
countries, where liberty, property, and even the
morals of the people, were sported with, and
made to be subordinate to the ends of selfish am
bition. The people of the region may be said at this
juncture to have been divided into three classes :
First, the Submissionists, or those who were
willing to comply with the terms of the law — a
small party mainly limited to Pittsburg and
headed by Neville; second, the Conservatives (to

TOM THE TINKER. i31
use the favorite term), who disapproved of the
act, and would have it either corrected or rendered
inoperative by making it odious, and represented
by such men as Findley and Bradford and Gal
latin ; and third, the Revolutionists, or those who
repudiated the law outright, and would resist its
execution vi et armis — a faction if not decidedly
the strongest, certainly the most demonstrative,
and led by Tom the Tinker. Now, in a division
of this sort, as the middle party leans, one ex
treme or the other is pretty sure to claim to be
entitled to, and, in point of fact, quite as sure to
command, its sympathy. Would Findley declare
that ' the said law discouraged agriculture and a
manufacture highly beneficial to them, and that
it would fall most heavily on the new settlements
of the West, where the aggregate of the citizens
is of the laborious and poorer class, who have not
the means of procuring the wines, spirituous
liquors, etc., imported from foreign countries?'
Tom the Tinker, through thehundred throats ofthe
'aggregates,' could and would, with three times
three, vociferate concurrence in the sentiment, and
himself read a hint, besides which, at to-morrow's
harvesting or next day's log-rolling, he would
not be slow to put to account. Would Bradford

132 TOM THE TINKER.
counsel that ' they should consider any man who
was so far lost to every sense of virtue and feeling
for the distresses of his country as to accept the
office of collector, as unworthy of their friendship
— that they would have no intercourse or dealing
with him — that they would withdraw from him
. . every assistance, upon all occasions treat him with
that contempt he deserved, and earnestly recom
mend the people at large to follow the same line
of conduct ? ' It was orthodox text, which the
Revolutionist could accept, every word of it, and
plead afterward, as was done, in justification of
his own violence. Speculatively, there seemed to
be entire harmony between the two parties: the
difference — a material one, certainly, even though
the Third Estate might not see it — turning upon
the method practically of best choice for its cor
rection. Under Tom the Tinker's rendering of these
public utterances, whispered cunningly, at fitting
times, into the ears of such facile material as
John Robertson, John Hamilton and Thomas
McComb, what was the consequence? On the
6th of September, Robert Johnston, a collector,
was waylaid on Pigeon creek, in Washington
county, seized, tarred and feathered, relieved of

TOM THE TINKER. 133
his horse, and in that plight sent adrift to seek
shelter where he best might find it. Mr. Wells
collector of the district of Westmoreland and
Fayette, was subjected to similar experience at
the hands of the committees of the enrages, both
in Greensburg and Uniontown. A man of the
name of Wilson, a stranger of disordered intellect,
made his appearance some time during the month
of October, and wandered over the region, pro
claiming himself fantastically as a grand com
missioner appointed by President Washington to
inquire generally into, and to regulate all matters
pertaining to distilleries, assessments and collec
tions, and to report the result to Congress. The
distemper of his mind was clearly apparent. A
party in disguise started in pursuit of him.
Overtaking him in the night, they dragged him
from his bed, carried him several miles away to a
blacksmith shop, stripped him, burnt his clothing,
branded him with hot irons, tarred and feathered
him, and so, as daylight dawned, sore, scarred and
naked, let him loose. He bore the treatment
with the heroism of a martyr. The cases of
some of the parties engaged in these proceedings
were brought before the district court, out of
which processes were issued for their arrest. The

134 TOM THE TINKER.
deputy serving these processes was seized, whipped,
tarred and feathered, .robbed of his money and
horse, blindfolded and tied to a tree in the woods.
The marshal reported the failure of the attempt
to the district attorney, and the result was ' a
forbearance to urge coercive measures any further
for the present.'
By act of Congress of May 8th, 1792, the law
was materially and favorably modified. Generally^
elsewhere, the modifications were accepted in
satisfactory settlement of disagreements. But
the case was different in the West. Opposition
thus far had prospered so successfully, and with
impunity so complete, that Tom the Tinker felt
himself master of the situation, and would allow
of no concession. The tax, he continued to re
iterate through his conservative friend Bradford,
was unjust, oppressive and enslaving, and must
be 'obstructed in its operation.' That was the
platform. Under the law, as revised, officers of inspection
for the accommodation of distillers were appointed,
one for each county. Corrective treatment under
Tom the Tinker had thus far been limited to the
appointees under government. Now it was
threatened against any who would let places of

TOM THE TINKER. 135
accommodation for these officers, as well as
against the few among the distillers who evinced
a disposition to comply with the act. Captain
William Faulkner allowed the use of a house to
the inspector of Washington. He was met by a
party lying in wait, who drew knives on him,
threatened to scalp him and burn his house down
if he did not solemnly pledge himself to dis
possess his objectionable tenant. He did so,
giving public notice of the fact through a card in
the Pittsburg Gazette. William Richards, an
informer against the rioters, had his barn burnt.
Kiddoo and Cochran, complying distillers, had
their stills and mills broken into and generally
wrecked. Revolutionism was triumphantly in the
ascendant. Until midsummer of 1794 opposition was car
ried on by small gangs of not over, and often of
less than, half a dozen malcontents, banded
together for the emergency, and directed exclu
sively against the subordinate agents of the law.
"When the government at length began to exhibit
determination, and the Marshal started out to
serve his processes in person, counteraction on a
corresponding scale was pronounced to be indis
pensable. Tom the Tinker let it be known that

136 TOM THE TINKER.
' he was about with his bear skin budget,' and
published the boast abroad that ' his iron was hot,
his hammer was up, and he wouldnot travel the
country for nothing.' He posted his placards on
the trees in the woods, on the fences along the
highways, against the doors of shops and houses,
and compelled, by intimidation, their reproduction
in the columns of the Gazette. Citizens were
warned that their liberties were in peril. If they
would not be slaves, they must arm and to the
rescue. If they would be successful, they must
organize and meet force with force. If there
were traitors among them, high or low, rich or
poor, they must be treated all alike, according to
their deserts. They must not content themselves
with dealing out justice to the low subordinates of
officials, but must strike at the heads. His in
flammatory appeals were not wasted. Organiza
tions were formedi The men were divided off
into companies, with captains placed over them,
and a strict military discipline enforced. John
Brackenridge, of Bushy Run, sat up two succes-
sive nights with an axe in his hand, to defend
himself against an expected visit from his
commander — one Sharp — who had threatened his
life for not attending a house-burning according
to summons.

TOM THE TINKER. 137
On the 15th of July, while the Marshal, ac
companied by Inspector Neville, was traveling
in the discharge of his duty, he was beset, and a
gun fired on him in the assault, by a party of
thirty or forty men. Next morning, at early
dawn, a company, estimated variously and wildly
at from thirty-six to 'about' a hundred persons,
armed and led by the redoubtable John Holcroft,
made an attack on Neville's house at Bower Hill,
on the road to Washington, some eight miles from
Pittsburg. John kept up a system of manoeuvres
until sunset, but was effectually held at bay by
the inmates of the house. On the day following,
large reinforcements having arrived meanwhile,
the assault, under the leadership now of James
McFarland, a militia Major, was renewed. The
party besieged had likewise been strengthened
by the arrival, during the night, of Major Kirk
patrick with a detachment of eleven men from
the garrison of Fort Fayette. The unpromising
prospect of a successful defense against the great
odds with which he had to contend induced
Kirkpatrick to invite a truce. A parley was had
under cover of a flag, but the demands of the
insurgents were more than Kirkpatrick was
willing to concede, and the interview terminated
13

138 TOM THE TINKER.
fruitlessly. The besiegers resumed their attack.
The barn and adjoining out-houses were set on
fire, the flames speedily communicating with the
mansion, when the Major and his little guard
came out and surrendered, but not until sev
eral of the assailants were wounded, and their
leader, McFarland, a prominent and favorite
citizen, killed. The cellar of the Collector con
tained a full supply of choice liquors, which also
were entirely consumed — but not by the flames.
A meeting was held at Mingo meeting-house
six days after the assault at Bower Hill, composed
principally of the participants in that affair. The
officers and orators were of the Conservative
party and men of position in society. The last
week's excitement had subsided. With the calm
had come a feeling of 'gloom and distrust.' The
addresses delivered, far different from the fiery
harangues indulged in at former gatherings, were
of a comparatively moderate and conciliatory
character. Tom the Tinker, still defiant as ever,
was more than disgusted at the turn affairs were
taking. "You," said he, taking the floor, and aiming his
speech pointedly at Bradford, " You encouraged
us in this matter by your words; you counseled

TOM THE TINKER 139
with us when we took counsel ; you know what
has been done ; we wish to know whether what
has been done is right or wrong, and whether we
are to be supported or left to ourselves."
" I encourage ?" exclaimed Bradford. "Good
God ! I never thought of such a thing !"
"You did," Tom the Tinker rejoined ; " and if
you don't support us now, you shall be treated as
an excise officer yourself."
Bradford yielded, and from that time became a
chief leader of the movement. Others attempted
to stave off a committal in the matter — some from
fear, some because they could not pledge approval
of violence, and yet did not deem it expedient, on
the other hand, to risk a forfeiture of a wholesome
influence over the multitude by arraying them
selves declaredly in opposition. Conspicuous
among these latter were Brackenridge and Gal
latin. While the course of these gentlemen—
particularly the one first mentioned, then a
candidate for Congress — -was at the time, and has
been since, severely commented upon, there can
be little doubt but that they were eminently
instrumental in the prevention of very seriously
threatened disaster, and in the final happy settle
ment of the whole trouble. On the present occa-

140 TOM THE TINKER.
sion Mr. Brackenridge spoke, and with such ad
dress that the meeting dissolved without definite
action of any sort, except to invite a general
congress of delegates to p. future convention, to be
held at Parkinson's Ferry.
Tom the Tinker, to forestall any undesirable
action that might be taken at the proposed conven
tion, determined to commit the insurgents before
hand, to some such flagrant deed of lawlessness,
as would hold them, out of the reach of after -
relief, to his following. A first act decided upon
was to rob the mail. Two agents were appointed,
who intercepted the post-boy a short distance out
from Greensburg, and relieved him of his bag.
An examination of the contents of the abstracted
letters, discovered to Tom that he was made the
subject of comments, by those high in authority,
which foreboded a dealing with him presently,
not at all pleasant to anticipate. This spurred
him on promptly to his second act. A secret
conclave was called of half a dozen of his proved
agents at a country tavern near Canonsburg. A
circular letter was drawn up by this cabal, and
dispatched by messengers in every direction.
This missive embodied the declaration that,
'from letters by the post in our possession, cer-

TOM THE TINKER. 141
tain secrets are discovered hostile to our interests ;
therefore it has come to that crisis that every
citizen must express his sentiments, not by words,
but by actions ;' and ended by calling upon each
one 'to appear armed and supplied with four
days' provisions at Braddock's Field (the usual
place for holding the annual brigade muster) on
the first day of August, at two o'clock in the after
noon.' The expressed object of this gathering
was to march upon Pittsburg, to seize the maga
zines of the garrison, and to arrest the writers of
the offensive letters. The publication of the
circular provoked strong remonstrances from the
Middle party; and the personal risk to which he
would expose himself by the movement so oper
ated upon Bradford, its author, that he undertook
to countermand the order. The populace were
furiously enraged in consequence. A meeting was
called at the Washington courthouse, where the
excitement ran so high that Bradford felt himself
constrained to deny the authorship of the counter
mand, and to insist, in vehement terms, that the
appointment should be observed. A resolution to
this effect was offered and carried triumphantly.
The day was at hand which was to be decisive
of the fortunes of Tom the Tinker. The zeal

142 TOM THE TINKER.
worthy of a nobler cause, which, through the
feeble results that crowned it's first efforts, had
struggled persistently on, was now, if ever, to
realize the reward of that perseverance. No
longer the covert instigator merely to a midnight
assault upon a miserable, helpless deputy collector,
with a brace of knaves under disguise for his tools,
he was to appear the captain of an army reck
oned by battalions and prepared to march with
banners unfurled in the light of day, boldly, and
in the face of whatever might oppose. But the
emergency was a critical one. The Conservative
element, though silenced, was not subdued. The
mutterings of a power that could wield a scourge
began to be heard from beyond the mountains.
Of the Golden Circle of his own confederates,
moreover, were the initiated all, beyond a perad-
venture, good men and true? Complicated and
questionable as the case was, however, Tom the
Tinker had committed himself to the task of its
execution, and was determined to see it through.
Setting himself promptly to work, he traversed
the length and breadth of the settlements, com
forting the faithful, emboldening the timid, bully
ing the doubtful and threatening dire mischief to
the suspected — all who, upon whatever pretense,

TOM THE TINKER. 143
should fail to come up to the work in response to
the summons. His mission was apparently suc
cessful. At once began the hum and hurry of
preparation all through the Survey. Neighbors
hastened hither and thither, busy to aid and to
watch each other. Bullets were molded, flints
picked, deer skins stitched into pouches, cows'
horns carved into powder flasks, tomahawks
sharpened, knives ground ; while the blacksmith
shops, far and near, became resonant with the
toils spent upon repairs to old muskets, rifles and
shot-guns. The three days allotted for preparation passed
by, and the morning of August 1st found a force
of seven thousand men, about one-third mounted,
the rest on foot, assembled at the appointed place
of rendezvous. It was a motley assemblage. The
men were dressed in hunting shirts, with caps,
some, some with hats, others lacking both, with
handkerchiefs wrapped about their heads, — their
faces disguised under daubs of copper-colored
paint or smeared with black, in imitation ofthe
savage when on the war-path. They roamed
about camp at pleasure, amusing themselves by
shooting at marks or firing blank cartridges in
the air over each other's heads. Bradford as-

144 TOM THE TINKER.
sumed the position of Major-General. Mounted
on a magnificent charger decorated with gorgeous
trappings, himself habited in complete military
uniform, he galloped hither and thither about the
field, his drawn sword flashing in the sun and his
rich plumes streaming in the air. A proud man
was Bradford on that day ! The soldiers were
devoted to him. When he thirsted, it was a glad
service for a follower to wade into the river and
with his hat (when be had one) dip a supply of
water from the cool depths of the channel, and
bear it, dripping, to him that he might drink.
The plan of the campaign in hand was well un
derstood by the rank and file. They were to
march into Pittsburg — held in peculiar disrelish
because of its presumed disloyalty to Tom the
Tinker — dispatch in some short, sharp and de
cisive way the Submissionists, conquer possession
of Fort Pitt, ' burn down with fire from earth
this second Sodom (the town), as the old Sodom
had been burned by fire from heaven,' secede from
the Federal rule and establish an independent
commonwealth of their own. The people of Pitts
burg, aware of their plans, became alarmed,
called a meeting, passed a series of resolutions
in which they m/srepresented themselves — on the

TOM THE TINKER. 145
plea that it was the only expedient left to insure
their safety — as in sympathy with the insurgents,
and declared that they would not only 'compel
such as were unfriendly to the cause to instantly
depart the town,' but would themselves ' march
out and join the people at Braddock's Field as
brethren, to aid them in carrying into effect any
measure deemed advisable for the common cause.'
A committee of twenty-one, accompanied by a
militia force of two hundred and fifty men under
command of General Wilkins, started off to re
port their proceedings at camp and negotiate,
if possible, some peaceable settlement with the
rebels. Conferences were held. Earnest attempts were
made to dissuade the Revolutionists from the
destructive movement threatened. There was no
necessity for it, and it could terminate in no ad
vantage. The authors of the offensive letters, it
was urged, had already gone into voluntary ban
ishment. The few of their sympathizing friends
left behind were incapable of doing harm. The
fort might be captured, at the expense of, say,
a thousand lives, but would it pay at the sacrifice?
And in such an event was there not room to ap
prehend that the Federal chief at Philadelphia

146 TOM THE TINKER.
might undertake to venture out and vindicate his
supremacy at the head of a host sufficient for the
enterprise? "That would be coercion!" exclaimed the
democratic general.
" Undoubtedly," said Braekenridge, on behalf
of the committee.
" It would be unconstitutional."
" Unquestionably."
" It would involve an invasion of our territory,
and a gross defiance of the sovereign rights of the
intermediate counties."
" Precisely ; the courts might so decide in the
end, but men could be made to swing in the mean
time. Military judgments are proverbially sud
den of execution."
Now, Bradford, in his blue uniform, with the
plume in his hat, the sword on his thigh, the
spurs on his heels, and a steed at command. worthy
the princely proprietor of the only shingled house
in Washington county, felt himself to be every
inch a soldier; and so perhaps he was, but the
valor becoming the officer was tempered with the
discretion befitting the citizen.
Revolving in his mind the hints suggested,
symptoms of irresolution began to betray them
selves.

TOM THE TINKER. 147
"What am I to do ?" said he, hesitatingly, at
length. " The people are here for an avowed
purpose, and they are not to be thwarted."
"Oh," said Braekenridge, "a simple demon
stration will satisfy them. The plan of move
ment need not be changed. We will march into
town, intimidate the citizens with a show of what
we could do if we had a mind to, plead magna
nimity, take a drink, and then — march out
again." Upon this compromise the conference ended.
When the result was made known, murmurs of
dissatisfaction were heard here and there. Tom
the Tinker cursed his lieutenant in trenchant
style, but the rank and file generally accepted the
decision with entire content. Next day, what was
left of the army — about one- fourth having
quietly dispersed in the meantime — piloted by
Braekenridge, took up the route, entered Pitts
burg at four o'clock in the afternoon, paraded
its streets, and halted finally on the vacant plain
between Market street and Grant's Hill. Here,
according to the terms of the arrangement, whole
barrels of whisky were broached aud dealt out
to the men. Taking advantage of the opportune
moment, when the temper of their guests was

148 TOM THE TINKER.
stimulated to its most tractable pitch, the cavalry
were mounted and led by the ford, the low water
luckily allowing of the passage, while the infantry,
put afloat in skiffs, flat boats and on rafts, were
ferried across the river and tramped to the top of
Coal Hill, where they bivouacked for the night,
and whence they dispersed to their homes in the
morning. The campaign was ended. Standing on the
brow of the eminence overlooking it, Tom the
Tinker cast his eye down upon the town. There
it lay within the embrace of its waters, as whole
and harmless as though its streets had never felt
the tread of hostile feet. After the sworn resolve
of devastation and ruin, after the responsive
uprising of eager legions to see it executed, the
arming, the gathering, the organizing, seven
thousand strong, and the moving by column —
banners flying, plumes waving and shouts ring
ing — down against devoted Sodom, this was the
achievement and this the end — drinks all around
and a free transportation, for happy riddance,
across the river ! Nevertheless, abortive —
weakly, ridiculously abortive — as had proved
the enterprise, and disastrously as must work the
failure upon its future prospects, Tom the Tinker

TOM THE TINKER. 149
could not, would not, abandon all hope for the
revolution. The movement might have been
premature. He must recede a pace in its pro
gress, trace out fresh schemes of policy, temper
his measures to accommodate the scruples of the
Middle party, and on the basis thus contrived
establish his lines, trusting to the divinity that
shaped his ends for the better issue of the new
adventure. According to appointment of the meeting at
Mingo, the convention of delegates, numbering
two hundred and twenty-six, assembled on the
fourteenth of August at Parkinson's Ferry, now
Monongahela City, on the river of that name,
Edward Cook, a venerable pioneer, in the chair,
and Albert Gallatin, secretary. Tom the Tinker,
promptly on the ground, proposed toward the fur
therance of his plans, an endorsement of certain
declarations, which were presented by proxy of one
of his special favorites in a series of resolutions.
The. first was to the effect that the taking of
citizens from their respective neighborhoods to be
tried for real or supposed offenses was a violation
of their rights, a forced construction of the
Constitution, and ought not to be exercised by the
judicial authority; the second, that a Committee
14

150 TOM THE TINKER.
of Public Safety should be appointed, with
instructions 'to call forth the resources of the
Western country to repel any invasion that might
be made against their rights;' the third, 'that a
remonstrance to Congress should be prepared,
praying a repeal of the Excise Law;' the fourth,
that a manifesto should be issued, for the
President, the Governors of Pennsylvania and
Virginia, and for ' the world,' declarative of the
motives, liable to be misconstrued, leading to the
disturbance at Neville's house and 'the great and
general rendezvous of the people at Braddock's
Field.' The fifth was an expression of willingness
to abide by law and government, 'the Excise
Laws and taking away citizens for trial only
excepted.' The first resolution was adopted
without dispute. The others elicited controversy.
The Conservatives could not approve of an in
vestment of the power ' to call forth resources to
repel invasion' in the hands of a committee.
Neither, indeed, could the lukewarm among the
Extremists, who had faltered in the memorable
march on Pittsburg, and whose demoralized faith
had prompted the apologetic introduction of ' the
motives liable to be misconstrued' in the fourth
resolution.

TOM THE TINKER. 151
Tom the Tinker struggled zealously on behalf
of his text, but the tide was against him. Nor
was his case strengthened when, in the midst of
discussion, it was learned that a commission had
arrived from Philadelphia to represent the Gov
ernment in a final attempt at pacification. The
resolutions were at once erased of their revolution
ary features, the valorous tone of the second
especially being tamed down so as only to author
ize the committee on public safety, ' in case of any
sudden emergency, to take such temporary meas
ures as they may think necessary.' Thus amended,
under the prudent and persistent management,
and in accordance with the conservative policy of
Braekenridge and Gallatin, the resolutions were
adopted. The standing committee met, chose a delegation
of twelve to confer with the Federal commission
ers (Judge Yates, Senator Ross and William
Bradford, Attorney General) at Pittsburg, on the
20th of August, and appointed September 2d and
Brownsville as the time and place when and
where to take action on their report. Upon
assembly of the conferees at Pittsburg, excitement
ran high with Tom the Tinker and his men.
Before the house in which they were gathered a

152 TOM THE TINKER.
liberty pole was erected, and a flag with seven
stars, one for each of the confederate counties —
the four western and Bedford in Pennsylvania,
with two in Virginia— unfurled amid the roistering
cheers and malevolent menaces of the mob. The
consultation between the commissioners was long
and earnest, but resulted, at length, in a mutual
agreement upon terms of adjustment — an assent,
in fact, to the terms demanded by the Govern
ment — and the drawing up of a report accord
ingly. The last eventful day in the history of the
insurrection arrived when the assembly of the
standing committee, or 'Scrub Congress,' as it
was contemptuously styled, took place at Browns
ville. Tom the Tinker, alive to the vital neces
sity of a display of force sufficient to overawe the
delegates, had gathered in his followers from far
and near. Among the rest appeared a body of sev
enty stalwart fellows — Mingo men, all — armed
with rifle, tomahawk and knife, as at the rendezvous
at Braddock's Field. The report of the conferees
was read, and in gallant style, despite of dissatis
fied murmurs and derisive ejaculations of 'Good
Lord, deliver us!' defended in speeches of
eloquent force by Gallatin and Braekenridge. It

TOM THE TINKER. 153
was then decided to take a vote upon the report,
when, in order to secure an unintimidated and
unbiased expression of sentiment, a novel method
was adopted at the suggestion of a delegate.
Sixty scraps of paper, one for each member of the
committee, were provided by the secretary, upon
which, in different places and by his hand, yea
and nay were written. These were distributed
among the members, by them torn into two
pieces, and one of them, containing its affirmative
or negative, was secretly folded and deposited in
the secretary's hat, while the other was made way
with by chewing to a pulp in the mouth or in
some other equally effective manner. Quite to
their own surprise, and inexpressibly to the
astonishment of Tom the Tinker's men, the count
of the ballots disclosed a vote of thirty-four
against twenty-three, the proposition of the
commissioners prevailing by a majority of eleven.
This revelation of the true state of affairs be
tween the parties produced a wonderful effect.
The Conservatives, kept timidly in check hither
to by a feeling of inferiority, grew courageous at
the discovery of their strength, while the Revo
lutionists, on the other hand, shrank back
bewildered at the betrayal of their weakness.

154 TOM THE TINKER.
Insolence of speech abated, effrontery of action
subsided. One by one, stealthily and quietly,
with their rifles under their arms, began to creep
out the seventy — one by one the Mingo men,
down along the valley paths, up the slopes to the
highlands, and so along the devious trails, off to
their scattered lodges in the wilderness.
The insurrection was virtually ended. A
spasmodic attempt or two was made for its
resuscitation, but without noticeable results. All
concerned, to screen themselves from consequen
ces — for the Federal army was on its march —
were hurrying in to subscribe to the test oath
ordered, and thus secure advantage of the proffer
ed amnesty. Bradford was among the most
humble of the suitors for pardon, but his treason
did not admit of expiation, and he was forced to
abscond. Mounted on his famous steed, he made
for the Ohio river. There he abandoned the good
horse, lay all night, cold and hungry, in a canoe,
crawled next morning into a contractor's coal
boat, was overtaken and seized by a party sent in
pursuit, and would have been dragged unresist
ingly and ignominiously away, but for the
interference of a Washington county lad, himself
a fugitive, who, rifle in hand, rushed to his aid

TOM THE TINKER. 155
and brought him rescue. He then steered for the
Spanish dominions, ending his career in the quiet
pursuit of sugar-cane culture on a Louisiana
plantation. Deserted by his Lieutenant-General, Tom the
Tinker felt himself abandoned by his last hope,
and resigned himself to despair over the Lost
Cause. His presence was recognized no longer in
the Survey. Many supposed that to flee well-
merited retribution he had taken to horse, like
his chief officer, and, following hard upon his
heels, had flitted to foreign parts. Others
suspected that he still tarried, but under safe
concealment, within limit of the old familiar
sphere, and that he might be expected to reap
pear, ripe for riot as of yore, at any day, when
time and circumstances invited.

Stephen C, Foster,
AND NEGRO MINSTRELSY.

STEPHEN C. FOSTER,
And Negro Minstrelsy.

rPHIRTY-SIX years ago a young man, about
twenty-five years of age, of a commanding
height, — six feet full, the heels of his boots not in
cluded in the reckoning, — and dressed in scrupu
lous keeping with the fashion of the time, might
have been seen sauntering idly along one of the
principal streets of Cincinnati. To the few who
could claim acquaintance with him he was known
as an actor, playing at the time referred to a short
engagement as light comedian in a theater of that
city. He does not seem to have attained to any
noticeable degree of eminence in his profession,
but he had established for himself a reputation
among jolly fellows in a social way. He could
tell a story, sing a song, and dance a hornpipe,
after a style which, however unequal to complete

160 STEPHEN C. FOSTER,
success on the stage, proved, in private perform
ance to select circles rendered appreciative by
accessory refreshments, famously triumphant al
ways. If it must be confessed that he was defi
cient in the more profound qualities, it is not to
be inferred that he was destitute of all the distin
guishing, though shallower, virtues of character.
He had the merit, too, of a proper appreciation of
his own capacity; and his aims never rose above
that capacity. As a superficial man he dealt with
superficial things, and his dealings were marked
by tact and shrewdness. In his sphere he was
proficient, and he kept his wits upon the alert for
everythingthat might be turned to professional and
profitable use. Thus it was that, as he sauntered
along one of the. main thoroughfares of Cincin
nati, as has been written, his attention was sud
denly arrested by a voice ringing clear and full
above the noises of the street, and giving utter
ance, in an unmistakable dialect^ to the refrain of
a song to this effect : —
" Turn about an' wheel about an' do jis so,
An' ebery time I turn about I jump Jim Crow."
Struck by the peculiarities of the performance,
so unique in style, matter and "character" of de-

AND NEGRO MINSTRELSY. 161
livery, the player listened on. Were not these
elements — was the suggestion of the instant —
which might admit of higher than mere street or
stable-yard development? As a national or
"race" illustration behind the footlights, might
not "Jim Crow" and a black face tickle the fancy
of pit and circle, as well as the " Sprig of
Shillalah" and a red nose ? Out of the suggestion
leaped the determination ; and so it chanced that
the casual hearing of a song trolled by a negro
stage-driver, lolling lazily on the box of his ve
hicle, gave origin to a school of music destined
to excel in popularity all others, and to make the
name of the obscure actor, T. D. Rice, famous.
As his engagement at Cincinnati had nearly
expired, Rice deemed it expedient to postpone
a public venture in the newly projected line until
the opening of a fresh engagement should assure
him opportunity to share fairly the benefit
expected to grow out of the experiment. This
engagement had already been entered into ; and
accordingly, shortly after, in the autumn of 1830,
he left Cincinnati for Pittsburg.
The old theater of Pittsburg occupied the site
of the present one, on Fifth Street. It was an
unpretending structure, rudely built of boards,
15

162 STEPHEN C. FOSTER,
and of moderate proportions, but sufficient,
nevertheless, to satisfy the taste and secure
the comfort of the few who dared to face conse
quences and lend patronage to an establishment
under the ban of the Scotch-Irish Calvinists.
Entering upon duty at the "Old Drury" of the
"Birmingham of America," Rice prepared to
take advantage of his opportunity. There was
a negro in attendance at Griffith's Hotel, on Wood
Street, named Cuff, — an exquisite specimen of
his sort, — who won a precarious subsistence by
letting his open mouth as a mark for boys to
pitch pennies '"nto, at three paces, and by carry
ing the trunks of passengers from the steamboats
to the hotels. Cuff was precisely the subject for
Rice's purpose. Slight persuasion induced him
to accompany the actor to the theater, where
he was led through the private entrance, and
quietly ensconced behind the scenes. After the
play, Rice, having shaded his own countenance
to the "contraband" hue, ordered Cuff to disrobe,
and proceeded to invest himself in the cast-off
apparel. When the arrangements were complete,
the bell rang, and Rice, habited in an old coat
forlornly dilapidated, with a pair of shoes com
posed equally of patches and places for patches

AND NEGRO MINSTRELSY. 163
on his feet, and wearing a coarse straw hat in a
melancholy condition of rent and collapse over
a dense black wig of matted moss, waddled into
view. The extraordinary apparition produced an
instant effect. The crash of peanuts ceased in the
pit, and through the circles passed a murmur and
a bustle of liveliest expectation. The orchestra
opened with a short prelude, and to its accom
paniment Rice began to sing, delivering the first
line by way of introductory recitative: —
" 0, Jim Crow's come to town, as you all must know,
An' he wheel about, lie turn about, he do jis so.
An' ebery time he wheel about he jump Jim Crow."
The effect was electric. Such a thunder of ap
plause as followed was never heard before within
the shell of that old theater. With each suc
ceeding couplet and refrain the uproar was re
newed, until presently, when the performer,
gathering courage from the favorable temper of
his audience, ventured to improvise matter for
his distiches from familiarly known local inci
dents, the demonstrations were deafening.
Now it happened that Cuff, who meanwhile
was crouching in dishabille under concealment of
a projecting flat behind the performer, by some

164 STEPHEN C. FOSTER,
means received intelligence, at this point, of the
near approach of a steamer to the Monongahela
wharf. Between himself aud others of his color
in the same line of business, and especially as
regarded a certain formidable competitor called
Ginger, there existed an active rivalry in the
baggage-carrying business. For Cuff to allow
Ginger the advantage of an undisputed descent
upon the luggage of the approaching vessel would
be not only to forfeit all "considerations" from
the passengers, but, by proving him a laggard in
his calling, to cast a damagirig blemish upon his
reputation. Liberally as he might lend himself
to a friend, it could not be done at that sacrifice.
After a minute or two of fidgety waiting for the
song to end, Cuff's patience could endure no
longer, and, cautiously hazarding a glimpse of
his profile beyond the edge of the flat, he called
in a hurried whisper: "Massa Rice, Massa Rice,
must have my clo'se ! Massa Griffif wants me,
— steamboat 's comin' ! "
The appeal was fruitless. Maasa Rice did not
hear it, for a happy hit at an unpopular city
functionary had set the audience in a roar in
which all other sounds were lost. Waiting some
moments longer, the restless Cuff, thrusting his

AND NEGRO MINSTRELSY. 165
visage from under cover into full three-quarters
view this time, again charged upon the singer in
the same words, but with a more emphatic voice:
"Massa Rice, Massa Rice, must have my clo'se!
Massa Griffif wants me, — steamboat 's comin'!"
A still more successful couplet brought a still
more tempestuous response, and the invocation
of the baggage-carrier was unheard and unheeded.
Driven to desperation, and forgetful in the emer
gency of every sense of propriety, Cuff, in ludic
rous undress as he was, started from his place,
rushed upon the stage, and, laying his hand upon
the performer's shoulder, called out excitedly:
"Massa Rice, Massa Rice, gi' me nigga's hat, —
nigga's coat, — nigga's shoes, — gi' me nigga's
t'ings ! Massa Griffif wants 'im,— steamboat 's
comin' ! ! "
The incident was the touch, in the mirthful
experience of that night, that passed endurance.
Pit and circles were one scene of such convulsive
merriment, that it was impossible to proceed in
the performance, and the extinguishment of the
footlights, the fall of the curtain, and the throw
ing wide of the doors for exit, indicated that the
entertainment was ended.
Such were the circumstances — authentic in

166 STEPHEN C. FOSTER,
every particular — under which the first work of
the distinct art of Negro Minstrelsy was pre
sented. Next day found the song of Jim Crow, in one
style of delivery or another, on everybody's
tongue. Clerks hummed it serving customers at
shop counters, artisans thundered it at their toils
to the time-beat of sledge and of tilt-hammer,
boys whistled it on the streets, ladies warbled it
in parlors, and house-maids repeated it to the
clink of crockery in kitchens. Rice made up
his mind to profit further by its popularity ;
he determined to publish it. Mr. W. C.
Peters, afterwards of Cincinnati, and well
known as a composer and publisher, was at
that time a music-dealer on Market Street in
Pittsburg. Rice, ignorant himself of the sim
plest elements of musical science, waited upon
Mr. Peters, and solicited his co-operation in
the preparation of his song for the press. Some
difficulty was experienced before Rice could
be induced to consent to the correction of cer
tain trifling informalities, rhythmical mainly, in
his melody; but, yielding finally, the air as
it now stands, with a piano-forte accompani
ment by Mr. Peters, was put upon paper.

AND NEGRO MINSTRELSY. 167
The manuscript was placed in the hands of Mr.
John Newton, who reproduced it upon stone with
an elaborately embellished title-page, including
a portrait of the subject of the song, precisely as
it has been copied through succeeding editions to
the present time. It was the first specimen of
lithography ever executed in Pittsburg.
Jim Crow was repeated nightly throughout the
season at the theater ; and when that was ended,
Beale's Long Room, at the corner of Second and
Market Streets, was engaged for rehearsals ex
clusively in the Ethiopian line. "Clar de Kitchen"
soon appeared as a companion piece, speedily fol
lowed by "Lucy Long," " Sich a Gittin' up
Stairs," "Long-Tail Blue," and so on, until quite
a repertoire was at command from which to
choose for an evening's entertainment.
Rice remained in Pittsburg some two years.
He then visited Philadelphia, Boston, and New
York, whence he sailed for England, where he
met with high favor in his novel character, mar
ried, and remained for some time. He then
returned to New York, and shortly afterwards
died. With Rice's retirement his art seems to have
dropped into disuse as a feature of theatrical

168 STEPHEN C. FOSTER, . "
entertainment, and thenceforward, for many years,
to have survived only in the performances of
circuses and menageries. Between acts the ex-
travaganzaist in cork and wool would appear, and
to the song of "Coal-Black Rose," or "Jim
along Joe," or "Sittin' on a Rail," command,
with the clown and monkey, full share of ad
miration in the arena. At first he performed
solus, and to the accompaniment of the "show"
band; but the school was progressive; couples
presently appeared, and, dispensing with the aid
of foreign instruments, delivered their melodies
to the more appropriate music of the banjo. To
the banjo, in a short time, were added the bones.
The art had now outgrown its infancy, and, dis
daining a subordinate existence, boldly seceded
from the society of harlequin and the tumblers,
and met the world as an independent institution.
Singers organized themselves into quartet bands;
added a fiddle and a tambourine to their instru
ments — perhaps we should say implements — of
music; introduced the hoe-down and the conun
drum to fill up the intervals of performance ;
rented halls, and peregrinating from city to city
and from town to town went on and prospered.
One of the oldest companies of this sort was

AND NEGRO MINSTRELSY. 169
organized and sustained under the leadership of
Nelson Kneass, who, while skillful in his manip
ulations of the banjo, was quite an accomplished
pianist besides, as well as a favorite ballad-singer.
He had some pretensions as a composer, but has left
his name identified with no work of any interest.
His company met with such success in Pittsburg,
that its visits were repeated from season to season,
until about the year 1845, when Mr. Murphy,
the leading caricaturist, determined to resume the
business in private life which he had laid aside
on going upon the stage, and the company was
disbanded. Up to this period, if negro minstrelsy had made
some progress, it was not marked by much im
provement. Its charm lay essentially in its sim
plicity, and to give it full development, retaining
unimpaired meanwhile such original excellences
as Nature in Sambo shapes and inspires, was the
task of the time. But the task fell into bungling
hands. The true belongings of the art were mis
apprehended or perverted altogether. Its naive
misconceits were construed into coarse blunders;
its pleasing incongruities were resolved into
meaningless jargon. Gibberish became the staple
of its composition. Slang phrases and crude jests,

170 STEPHEN C. FOSTER,
all odds and ends of vulgar sentiment, without
regard to the idiosyncrasies of the negro, were
caught up, jumbled together into rhyme, and,
rendered into the lingo presumed to be genuine,
were ready for the stage. The wit of the per
formance was made to consist in quibble and
equivoke, and in the misuse of language, after the
fashion, but without the refinement, of Mrs. Part
ington. The character of the music underwent a
change. Original airs were composed from time
to time, but the songs were more generally adapta
tions of tunes in vogue among Hard-Shell Baptists
in Tennessee and at Methodist camp-meetings in
Kentucky, and of backwoods melodies, such as
had been invented for native ballads by "settle
ment" masters and brought into general circula- •
tion by stage-drivers, wagoners, cattle drovers and
other such itinerants of earlier days. Music of
the concert room was also drafted into the service,
and selections from the inferior operas, with the
necessary mutilations of the text, of course; so
that the whole school of negro minstrelsy threat
ened a lapse, when its course of decline was
suddenly and effectually arrested.
A certain Mr. Andrews, dealer in confections,
cakes, and ices, being stirred by a spirit of enter-

AND NEGRO MINSTRELSY. 171
•
prise, rented, in the year 1845, a second-floor hall
on Wood Street, Pittsburg, supplied it with seats
and small tables, advertised largely, employed
cheap attractions, — living statues, songs, dances,
&c. — erected a stage, hired a piano, and, upon
the dissolution of his band, engaged the services
of Nelson Kneass as musician and manager. Ad
mittance was free, the ten-cent ticket required at
the door being received at its first cost value within
towards the payment of whatever might be called
for at the tables. To keep alive the interest in
the enterprise, premiums were offered, from time
to time, of a bracelet for the best conundrum, a
ring with a ruby setting for the best comic song,
and a golden chain for the best sentimental song.
The most and perhaps only really valuable re
ward — a genuine and very pretty silver cup,
exhibited night after night beforehand — was
promised to the author of the best original negro
song, to be presented before a certain date, and to
be decided upon by a committee designated for
the purpose by the audience at that time.
Quite a large array of competitors entered the
lists ; but the contest would be hardly worthy of
mention, save as it was the occasion of the first
appearance of him who was to prove the reformer

172 STEPHEN 0. FOSTER, *
of his art, and to a sketch of whose career the"
foregoing pages are chiefly preliminary.
Stephen Collins Foster was born in Alle
gheny, Pennsylvania, on the 4th of July, 1826.
He was the youngest child of his father, William
B. Foster, — originally a merchant of Pittsburg,
and afterwards Mayor of his native city, mem
ber of the State Legislature, and a Federal officer
under President Buchanan, with whom he was
closely connected by marriage. The evidences
of a musical capacity of no common order were
apparent in Stephen at an early period. Going
into a shop, one day, when about seven years
old, he picked up a flageolet, the first he had
ever seen, and comprehending, after an experi
ment or two, the order of the scale on the instru
ment, was able in a few minutes, uninstructed,
to play any ofthe simple tunes within the octave
with which he was acquainted. A Thespian
society, composed of boys in their higher teens,
was organized in Allegheny, into which Stephen,
although but in his ninth year, was admitted,
and of which, from his agreeable rendering of
the favorite airs of the day, he soon became the
, leading attraction.
At thirteen years of age he made his first at-

AND NEGRO MINSTRELSY. 173
tempt at composition, producing for a public
occasion at the seminary in Athens, Ohio, where
he was a student at the time, the " Tioga Waltz "
which, although quite a pretty affair, he never
thought worthy of preservation. In the same
year, shortly afterwards, he composed music to a
song commencing, "Sadly to mine heart appeal
ing," now embraced in the list of his publications,
but not brought out until many years later.
Stephen was a boy of delicate constitution, not
addicted to the active sports or any of the more
vigorous habits of boys of his age. His only
companions were a few intimate friends, and,
thus secluded, his character naturally took a
sensitive, meditative cast, and his growing dis
relish for severer tasks was confirmed. As has
been intimated, he entered as a pupil at Athens;
but as tlie course of instruction in that institution
was not in harmony with his tastes, he soon with
drew, applying himself afterward to the study of
the French and German languages (a ready fluency
in both of which he finally acquired), and es
pecially to the art dearer than all other studies.
A recluse, owning and soliciting no guidance but
that of his text- book, in the quiet of the woods,
16

174 STEPHEN C. FOSTER,
or, if that were inaccessible, the retirement of his
chamber, he devoted himself to this art.
At the age of sixteen he composed and pub
lished the song, "Open thy Lattice, Love," which
was admired, but did not meet with extraordinary
success. In the year following he went to Cin
cinnati, entering the counting-room of his brother,
and discharging the duties of his place with faith
fulness and ability. His spare hours were still
devoted, however, to his favorite pursuit, al
though his productions were chiefly preserved in
manuscript, and kept for the private entertain
ment of his friends. He continued with his
brother nearly three years.
At the time Mr. Andrews of Pittsburg offered
a silver cup for the best original negro song, Mr.
Morrison Foster sent to his brother Stephen a
copy of the advertisement announcing the fact,
with a letter urging him to become a competitor
for the prize. These saloon entertainments occu
pied a neutral ground, upon which eschewers of
theatrical delights could meet with the abettors
of play-house amusements, — a consideration of
ruling importance in Pittsburg, where so many
ofthe sterling population carry with them to this
day, by legitimate inheritance, the staunch old

AND NEGRO MINSTRELSY. 175
Cameronian fidelity to Presbyterian creed and
practice. Morrison, believing that these concerts
would afford an excellent opportunity for the
genius of his brother to appeal to the public,
persisted in urging him to compete for the prize,
until Stephen, who at first expressed a dislike to
appear under such circumstances, finally yielded,
and in due time forwarded a melody entitled,
" 'Way down South whar de Corn grows." When
the eventful night came, the various pieces in
competition were rendered to the audience by
Nelson Kneass to his own accompaniment on the
piano. The audience expressed by their ap
plause a decided preference for Stephen's melody;
but the committee appointed to sit in judgment
decided in favor of some one else, himself and
his song never heard of afterwards, and the
author of " 'Way down South" forfeited the cup.
But Mr. Kneass appreciated the merit of the
composition, and promptly, next morning, made
application at the proper office for a copyright
in his own name as author, when Mr. Morrison
Foster, happening in at the moment, interposed,
and frustrated the discreditable intention.
This experiment of Foster's, if it fell short of
the expectations of his friends, served, notwith-

176 STEPHEN 0. FOSTER.
standing, a profitable purpose, for it led him to a
critical investigation of the school of music to
which it belonged. This school had been — was
yet — unquestionably popular. To what, then,
was it indebted for its captivating points? It
was to its truth to Nature in her simplest and
most childlike mood.
Settled as to theory, Foster applied himself to
the task of its exemplification. Two attempts
were made while he yet remained in Cincinnati,
the pencil-drafts of which, however, were laid
aside for the time being in his portfolio. His
shrinking nature held timidly back at the thought
of a venture before the public; and so the case
stood until he reappeared in Pittsburg.
The Presidential campaign of 1844 was distin
guished by political song-singing. Clubs for that
purpose were organized in all the cities and towns
and hamlets, — clubs for the platform, clubs for
the street, clubs for the parlor, Whig clubs, Dem
ocratic clubs. Ballads innumerable to airs in
definite, new and old, filled the land, — Irish
ballads, German ballads, Yankee ballads, and,
preferred over all, negro ballads. So enthusiastic
grew the popular feeling in this direction, that,
when the November crisis was come and gone,

AND NEGRO MINSTRELSY. 177
the peculiar institution would not succumb to the
limitation, but lived on. Partisan temper faded
out; the fires of strife died down, but clubs sat
perseveringly in their places, and in sounds, if not
in sentiment, attuned to the old melodies, kept up
the practices of the mad and merry time.
Among other organizations that lingered on was
one, composed of half a dozen young men, since
grown into graver habits, with Foster — home
again, and a link once more in the circle of his
intimates — at its head. The negro airs were still
the favorites ; but the collection, from frequent
repetition, at length began to grow stale. One
night, as a revival measure for the club, and as an
opportunity for himself, Foster hinted that, with
their permission, he would offer for trial an
effort of his own. Accordingly he set to work ;
and at their next meeting laid before them a
song entitled " Louisiana Belle." The piece
elicited unanimous applause. Its success in the
club-room opened to it a wider field, each mem
ber acting as an agent of dissemination outside,
so that in the course of a few nights the song
was sung in almost every parlor in Pittsburg.
Foster then brought to light his portfolio speci
mens, since universally known as "Uncle Ned,"

178 STEPHEN 0. FOSTER,
and "O Susanna !" The favor with which these
latter were received surpassed even that reward
ing the "Louisiana Belle." Although limited to
the one slow process of communication, — from
mouth to ear, — their fame spread far and wide,
until from the drawing rooms of Cincinnati
they were introduced into its concert-halls, and
there became known to Mr. W. C. Peters, who
at once addressed letters requesting copies for
publication. These were cheerfully furnished
by the author. He did not look for remunera
tion. For " Uncle Ned," which first appeared
(in 1847), he received none; "O Susanna!" soon
followed, and "imagine my delight," he writes,
"in receiving one hundred dollars in cash !
Though this song was not successful," he con
tinues, "yet the two fifty-dollar bills I received
for it had the effect of starting me on my present
vocation of song-writer." In pursuance of this
decision, he entered into arrangements with new
publishers, chiefly with Firth, Pond & Co. of
New York, set himself to work, and began to
pour out his productions with astonishing rap
idity. Out of the list, embracing about one hundred
and fifty of his songs, the most flatteringly re-

AND NEGRO MINSTRELSY. 179
ceived among his negro melodies were those
already enumerated, followed by "Nelly was a
Lady," in 1849; "My Old Kentucky Home,"
and "Camptown Races," in 1850; "Old Folks at
Home," in 1851 ; " Massa 's in the Cold Ground,"
in 1852; "O Boys, carry me 'long," in 1853;
" Hard Times come again no more," in 1854 ;
" 'Way down South," and "O Lemuel," in 1858 ;
" Old Black Joe," in 1860; and (noticeable only
as his last in that line) " Don't bet your Money
on the Shanghai," in 1861.
In all these compositions Foster adheres scrup
ulously to his theory adopted at the outset. His
verses are distinguished by a naivete character
istic and appropriate, but consistent at the same
time with common sense. Enough of the negro
dialect is retained to preserve distinction, but not
to offend. The sentiment is given in plain phrase
and under homely illustration; but it is a senti
ment nevertheless. The melodies are of twin
birth literally with the verses, for Foster thought
in tune as he traced in rhyme, and traced in
rhyme as he thought in tune. Of easy modula
tion, severely simple in their structure, his airs
have yet the graceful proportions, animated with
the fervor, unostentatious but all-subduing, of

180 STEPHEN C. FOSTER,
certain of the old hymns (not the chorals) derived
from our fathers of a hundred years ago.
That he had struck upon the true way to the
common heart, the successes attending his efforts
surely demonstrate. His songs had an unpar
alleled circulation. The commissions accruing
to the author on the sales of "Old Folks" alone
amounted to fifteen thousand dollars. For per
mission to have his name printed on its title-page,
as an advertising scheme, Mr. Christy paid five
hundred dollars. Applications were unceasing
from the various publishers of the country for
some share, at least, of his patronage, and upon
terms that might have seduced almost any one
else; but the publishers with whom he originally
engaged had won his esteem, and Foster adhered
to them faithfully. Artists of the highest dis
tinction favored him with their friendship ; and
Herz, Sivori, Ole Bull, Thalberg, were alike ready
to approve his genius, and to testify that approval
in the choice of his melodies as themes about
which to weave their witcheries of embellishment.
Complimentary letters from men of literary note
poured in upon him; among others, one full of
generous encouragement from Washington Irving,
dearly prized and carefully treasured to the day

AND NEGRO MINSTRELSY 181
of his death. Similar missives reached him
from across the seas,— from strangers and from
travelers in lands far remote; and he learned
that, while "O Susanna!" was the familiar song
of the cottager on the Clyde, "Uncle Ned" was
known to the dwellers in tents among the Pyra
mids. Of his sentimental songs, "Ah, may the Red
Rose live alway !" "Maggie by my side," "Jennie
with the Light-Brown Hair," "Willie, we have
missed you," "I see her still in my Dreams,"
"Wilt thou be gone, Love" (a duet, the words
'adapted from a well-known scene in Romeo and
Juliet), and "Come where my Love lies dream
ing" (quartet), are among the leading favorites.
"I see her still in my Dreams" appeared in
1861, shortly after the death of his mother, and
is a tribute to the memory of her to whom he was
devotedly attached. The verses to most of these
airs — -to all the successful ones — were of his own
composition. Indeed, he could seldom satisfy
himself in his "settings" of the stanzas of others.
If the metrical and symmetrical features of the
lines in hand chanced to disagree with his con
ception of the motion and proportion befitting in a
musical interpretation ; if the sentiment were one

182 STEPHEN C. FOSTER,
that failed, whether from lack of appreciation or
of sympathy on his part, to command absolute
approval ; or if the terms employed were not of
a precise thread and tension, — if they were want
ing, however minutely, in vibratory qualities, —
with his own, of commensurate extent would be
the failure attending the translation.
The last three years of his life Mr. Foster
passed in New York. During all that time, his
efforts, with perhaps one exception, were limited
to the production of songs of a pensive character.
The loss of his mother seems to have left an in
effaceable impression of melancholy upon his
mind, and inspired such songs as "I dream
of my Mother," "I'll be Home To-morrow,"
" Leave me with my Mother," and " Bury me
in the Morning." He died, after a brief illness,
on the 13th of January, 1864. His remains
reached Pittsburg on the 20th, and were con
veyed to Trinity Church, where on the day
following, in the presence of a large assembly,
appropriate and impressive ceremonies took place,
the choral services being sustained by a company
of his former friends and associates. His body
was then carried to the Allegheny Cemetery, and,
to the music of "Old Folks at Home," finally
committed to the grave.

AND NEGRO MINSTRELSY.

183

Mr. Foster was married, on the 22d of July,
1850, to Miss Jane D. McDowell of Pittsburg]
by whom he had one only child, a daughter
named Marian. He was of rather less than me
dium height, of slight frame, with parts well
proportioned, and showing to advantage in repose,
although not entirely so in action. His shoulders
were marked by a slight droop,— the result of a
habit of walking with his eyes fixed upon the
ground a pace or two in advance of his feet.
He nearly always when he ventured out, which
was not often, walked alone. Arrived at the
street-crossings, he would frequently pause, raise
himself, cast a glance at the surroundings,
and if he saw an acquaintance nod to him in
token of recognition, and then, relapsing into
the old posture, resume his way. At such times,
— indeed, at any time, — while he did not repel,
he took no pains to invite society. He was
entertaining in conversation, although a certain
hesitancy, from want of words and not from any
organic defect, gave a broken style to his speech.
For his study he selected the room in the topmost
story of his house, farthest removed from the street,
and was careful to have the floor of the apart
ment, and the avenues of approach to it, thickly

184 STEPHEN 0. FOSTER,
carpeted, to exclude as effectually as possible all
noises, inside as well as outside of his own prem
ises. The furniture of this room consisted of a
chair, a lounge, a table, a music-rack, and a piano.
From the sanctum so chosen, seldom opened to
others, and never allowed upon any pretense to
be disarranged, came his choicest compositions.
His disposition was naturally amiable, although,
from the tax imposed by close application to
study upon his nervous system, he was liable to
.fits of fretfulness and petulance that, only oc
casional and transient as they were, told neverthe
less with disturbing effect upon his temper. In
the same unfortunate direction tended the force of
a habit grown insidiously upon him, — a habit
against the damning control of which (as no one
better than the writer of this article knows) he
wrestled with an earnestness indescribable, re
sorting to all the remedial expedients which
professional skill or his own experience could
suggest, but never entirely delivering himself
from its inexorable mastery.
In the true estimate of genius, its achievements
only approximate the highest standard of excel
lence as they are representative, or illustrative, of
important truth. They are only great as they are

AND NEGRO MINSTRELSY. 185
good. If Mr. Foster's art embodied no higher
idea than the vulgar notion of the negro as a man-
monkey, — a thing of tricks and antics, — a funny
specimen of superior gorilla, — then it might have
proved a tolerable catch-penny affair, and com
manded an admiration among boys of various
growths until its novelty wore off. But the art
in his hands teemed with a nobler significance.
It dealt, in its simplicity, with universal sym
pathies, and taught us all to feel with the slaves
the lowly joys and sorrows it celebrated.
May the time be far in the future ere lips fail
to move to its music, or hearts to respond to its
influence, and may we who owe him so much
preserve gratefully the memory of the master,
Stephen Collins Foster.

17

YALE UNIVERSITY

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