# The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian/08 Judge

CHAPTER VIII
Judge
THROUGHOUT my professional career I had a vague sense that some time or other, after I had acquired sufficient legal information, I should like to go upon the bench. I yielded to the inclination, however, with great timidity. It impressed me as being a very exalted station and that to him who held it were due respect and reverence. Therefore, no man ought to be willing to accept such advancement unless well assured of his own learning, character and fitness. No other cause has done so much to lower the tone of public service in the United States as the bad habit of regarding those who hold public office with suspicion and treating them with abuse. We began with the magistrates and aldermen, and after destroying their usefulness, the same destructive methods were slowly extended until they reached the presidency. Better sense and a truer philosophy would teach that if the greatest efficiency is ever to be secured it must be by the proper recognition of that which is done well rather than by the condemnation of that which is done ill. Every constable ought to be regarded with the respect due to one who wields to some extent the authority of the state. Display of disrespect is, after all, the outcome of a weak vanity and the evidence of imperfect intelligence. Down to this time the courts remained the one institution in the land which had not been assailed and were treated with a consideration helpful to them in the performance of their duties.
One time, when a vacancy had occurred in one of the courts of common pleas, I met Mayer Sulzberger, who ​was handling a large practice with great ability and rapidly coming to the front at the bar, and he said to me:
“Why do you not make an effort for that vacancy? The bench would suit your tastes and you are just the man fitted for it.”
I made no effort then, but the suggestion bore fruit. A. Wilson Norris, with whom I had become acquainted in the Grand Army, who had become State Reporter and Auditor General, who had been instrumental in securing the appointment of Fell to the bench and who had come to me professionally in an important matter concerning the interests of his brother, a physician, had an office in association with Samuel Gustine Thompson. I broached the subject to him. Said he:
“I will talk to Quay and see what he thinks.”
Some time later he reported that Quay said, “It suits me.”
Up to this time I had only met Mr. Quay once or twice in my life, and then in the most casual way. But there were these ties between us—Major Patrick Anderson, of the Revolutionary Army, had three wives. By the second he had a son, Isaac, who was my great-grandfather. By the third he had a daughter, who was Quay's grandmother. Joseph Quay was unthrifty and died, leaving his wife penniless and with a family of small children. In those days the dependent were not sent to homes and hospitals, and the obligations which come with relationship were recognized as duties to be performed, and one of the orphans was taken into the home of my Grandfather Pennypacker to be raised. I have always felt assured that the interest Quay took in my welfare and the warmth of feeling he displayed toward me was due, not to the relationship, which was too remote to affect conduct, but to the act of kindness on the part of my grandfather. It is creditable to him that he did not forget and that he should endeavor to repay. All of my public conduct had ​been in opposition to what he had been trying to accomplish until Cameron gave him notice of the substitution of Christopher Magee, and Quay, accepting the situation, ran for the office of State Treasurer, depending upon his own strength and popularity, and succeeded. Regarding this effort as a manifestation of just what was needed in the state, I did what I could to help him. The death of Judge William S. Peirce created a vacancy in No. 1 Court. F. Amedee Bregy, an assistant district attorney, with George S. Graham, had, with the assistance of this gentleman, been a candidate two or three times and an agreement had been reached that his ambition should be gratified upon the next occasion. With each day his appointment was expected. Then something occurred. Quay went to Harrisburg and saw Governor James A. Beaver. A week or two went by and then it began to be whispered about that the appointment would come to me. April 19, 1887, I received a telegram from Norris asking me to see Quay at the Continental Hotel at eight o'clock that evening. I was there at the time, curious and expectant. Quay said to me:
“The Governor has concluded to appoint Bregy.”
I replied: “Some friends of mine had arranged to go to Harrisburg tonight by the eleven o'clock train to wrestle with him. I will stop them at once.”
“Let them go, if you think it better.”
“No, you have done all that can be done.”
He had expected a protest or an expression of disappointment. There was a twinkle in his eye and I was sure that he was pleased with my way of meeting the situation.
A year later occurred a vacancy in the Supreme Court. At this time James Tyndale Mitchell sat in Court of Common Pleas No. 2. This court had been the successor of the old district court, had inherited the traditions of Sharswood and has ever maintained a high rank among the ​courts of Philadelphia. Mitchell was an able lawyer and an excellent judge, being well grounded in the principles of the law and having the intellectual capacity which enabled him to make the application of them. At the same time he had earnest convictions and strong predilections which sometimes amounted to prejudices, and I have felt that he had too little human sympathy to make him altogether safe in the handling of cases where men were charged with crime, especially murder. His most intimate friends were David Sellers, counsel for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and Simon Gratz. Fate interwove our careers, but never brought the men themselves very close together. I was in the convention which first gave him the nomination. Ten years later, when another election approached, he once, to my surprise, appointed me a master in divorce. I attended to the duties, but the parties were too poor to pay me a fee. We were partners in the ownership of the Weekly Notes of Cases. He was president of the council of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania when I was president of the society. We were both vice-provosts of the Law Academy. He was Chief Justice while I was Governor of the Commonwealth.
Mitchell was anxious to go to the Supreme Court, but he had little political support in the city and none whatever in the state. Quay said to me: “I care nothing whatever for Mitchell, but I want to make a place for you on the bench,” and when the State Convention met, Mitchell received the nomination. After his election it grated upon him a little to feel that his high office had come to him rather in the way of a benefit conferred than as a recognition of superior attainments. Two men were suggested for the vacancy in Court No. 2—P. F. Rothermel, Jr., son of the artist who painted the “Battle of Gettysburg,” a lawyer in every way capable, and myself. Among those who wrote to the Governor urging my appointment were: William Henry Rawle, ​Richard C. McMurtrie, John G. Johnson, former Governor Henry M. Hoyt, George L. Crawford, Morton P. Henry, George Tucker Bispham, James W. Paul, W. Brooke Rawle, Joseph C. Fraley, Richard M. Cadwalader, Hampton L. Carson, Charles Chauncey Binney, E. Hunn Hanson, Henry Flanders, John B. Gest and substantially all of the strongest men at the Bar. In the court itself, Fell wanted me. Mitchell would have been pleased to see Rothermel take his place and Hare had no preference. The Governor asked them confidentially for their views, and Mitchell was deputed to give it expression. In a long letter, now in my possession, this is what he wrote:
“Mr. Rothermel has the greater strength, both with the city leaders and with the bar, especially with the active practicing bar. Mr. Pennypacker, however, has some strong friends among the bar and, as you already know, has the backing of Senator Quay.”
Those who gave their support to Mr. Rothermel were George S. Graham, A. S. L. Shields, M. Hampton Todd, William B. Mann, James H. Shakespeare, Dimner Beeber and Alexander Simpson, Jr.
The Adjutant General, Daniel H. Hastings, telegraphed to me January 8, 1889, that I would be appointed the next day. His prophesy was based upon information.
I came to the work with many misgivings. Though as a student I had read widely, and though I had labored through the English Common Law Reports in the preparation of my digest, through forty-five volumes of the Weekly Notes of Cases and the four volumes of my own reports and had so received, perhaps, the most useful training, I feared that every once in a while some question would suddenly arise about which I knew nothing and that I should sit there undecided, not knowing which way to go. In fourteen years that situation never arose and no problem ever came before me, no matter how important, intricate or involved, about which, whether rightly or wrongly, ​I did not have a positive opinion as to how it ought to be decided. I had heard that Joseph T. Pratt, an unprepared judge, who died early, before sitting in jury trials sent for the papers and studied the cases. This course occurred to me, but upon the advice of Fell, I never resorted to it and very seldom saw the pleadings. Nor was it my method in the trial of causes to attempt to recall to memory earlier decisions. The judge who remembers that the case before him was decided at such a time and in such a report is mentally traveling by rote and is sure to be lost in the mazes. No two cases are ever exactly alike and his task is, depending upon principles with which he is familiar, to apply them accurately to the facts which come up before him. As in all reasoning, the most important part of the process is properly to analyze the facts. Then the classification naturally follows.
John I. Clark Hare presided over the court. It was a privilege to sit on the bench with him and it was my good fortune to have been thrown into a court where the associations were the most desirable and the most likely to prove stimulating. He was a gentleman. Then, nearing the decline of life, he had an experience which began in young manhood. His works upon contracts and upon the constitution had given him national and international reputation, and no jurist in the country was more widely and favorably known. He was spare in frame, ready in tongue and lovable in disposition. His methods were disorderly. He would grow interested in the arguments, pile up the paper books to the right and left of him, suddenly leave the court on some impulse, and never think of them again unless his attention was called to them. On one occasion he threw his quarterly warrant for $1,750 into the waste paper basket, where it was later found by one of the tipstaves. This want of orderly arrangement extended to his mental processes. In stating a proposition, all of the qualifications occurred to him and no man was ​more familiar with them than he. His voice was weak. When he charged a jury their effort to hear and to untwist his involved sentences left them in a state of utter despair. As a nisi prius judge, he cannot, therefore, be regarded as an entire success. Fell has at times said that if we could have kept him on tap in a back room ready to be called upon in special emergencies and have done the work ourselves, it would have produced better results. Along with him sat Fell. He was a Quaker who, before going on to the bench by appointment of Governor Hartranft, had been in the war and had built up a large practice. He was the incarnation of good common sense. Nobody could be more helpful. He had a knack of getting the things of life, not for himself alone but for those in whom he was interested. Nobody knew better the effect upon an earnest advocate of the Socratian statement, “Perhaps I was wrong.” He has been deservedly successful in all directions, living a smooth and even life, gathering friends, money and repute and is now the chief justice. He came from Bucks County, prolific in the production of judges.
When I entered the court, the run of business was such as to give me the term in the quarter sessions. I hesitated to begin in that way. In my practice I had made the common mistake of civil lawyers of not going into that court, not so much because of the feeling that it was unworthy practice as because of the fear that through some lack of skill on my part an innocent man might be deprived of life or liberty. The fear was for the most part unnecessary. Only in those cases affected by public clamor is there much danger of the punishment of innocence. As a general thing, when men begin a career of crime their first offenses are overlooked and forgiven. It is only when they have been repeated often enough to wear out the patience of those injured that accusations are apt to be made and arrests to follow. Magistrates, grand juries, petit juries ​and judges are all more or less sympathetic and after all of the sifting process the residuum is unlikely to include much innocence.
Fell kindly exchanged courts with me. I began in the common pleas, and one of my earliest cases was an involved land damage suit against the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company for land taken for track purposes in Manayunk, in which so good a lawyer as William White Wiltbank was counsel. In one of my early cases I rather astonished the lawyers present by entering a non-suit in a case represented by such eminent counsel as John C. Bullitt, who himself seldom came into court.
I was qualified as a judge January 12, 1889, and, therefore, the people had ten months in which to grow accustomed to seeing me on the bench before the election in November. At that time Edwin H. Fitler was mayor of the city, and under the Bullitt bill had great power.
“You had better call on him,” said Quay to me. “Do you know him?”
“I never met him in my life.”
Quay waited an instant, smiled and turned to me with only these words:
“His head is quite large.”
This is a characteristic illustration of the ways of the Senator. He did not read to me a dissertation upon the effect of flattery upon some classes of minds. He simply gave me a hint. An illustration of another sort is contained in a letter about a president written to William Linn, May 7, 1892:
“In reply to your inquiry as to whether or not the Republican State League should endorse Harrison, I would say ‘No’.”
At the time of the Bregy appointment McManes had been decided in his opposition to me because of my participation in independent movements and my course in the board of education. But he was a warm friend of Simon ​Gratz, who was close to Mitchell, and he became much enlisted in the effort to advance Mitchell. This was the leverage with which Quay brought him around to my support. I have been told that once when McManes asked Quay to suggest that I do something which he thought would be helpful to his political plans, Quay replied:
“McManes, Pennypacker is one of those literary fellows and you know they cannot be depended upon for anything of that sort.”
In other words. Quay was using his influence to protect me from any attempt at a pressure which he knew would be harmful. Late in the year before, a struggle arose in the board of education over the election of president in which I had taken a decided part in favor of Samuel B. Huey. The candidate of Gratz was Isaac A. Sheppard, who was finally successful. Quay wrote to me that I had better resign from the board and thus get out of the controversy. I presume that this suggestion came from McManes. I replied that I was so far committed that I could not retreat without a display of weakness, and that, besides, it would present the appearance of announcing my appointment to the bench and I was disposed to assume all of the risks which might be involved. I heard no more of it, remained on the board and voted for Huey.
It was reported over the town that Disston and some of the other leaders would make a contest in the Republican Convention, but this purpose, if it ever existed, was soon dissipated and I was nominated by unanimous consent. At this time William F. Harrity, who had read law with Cassidy and afterward managed a presidential campaign, became a financier and acquired a fortune, always a friend of mine, was the strongest among the Democratic leaders. I received the Democratic endorsement and almost all of the votes that were cast in the city.
The course of my life for the next ten years was now determined. The vicissitudes of existence, however, are ​very many and an event which happened September 3d nearly interrupted the current. In 1883 I bought for my mother, who had about a hundred thousand dollars, inherited from her father, Moore Hall, a property of 105 acres in Chester County, near Phœnixville. It is one of the famous colonial places of the state, having been owned by William Moore, a colonel in the French and Indian War and President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Chester County for forty years. He is buried under the front step of St. David's Church, at Radnor. I managed the property for my mother and each summer we spent three months there. After dark on the evening mentioned, I was driving toward home in an open wagon with two seats, on the rear of which sat James Sommers, a faithful and ugly old Irishman with a hare lip. From Nutt's road, another road runs at right angles, to the house. As we approached this sharp corner a wagon came rapidly up behind us, my horse made a sudden plunge around the corner and threw both James and myself out in the road. I lay with my feet caught and my head on the ground between the wheels of the wagon, but holding fast to the lines succeeded in stopping the horse with the hind wheel against my neck, while James, in distress, was crying out, “The Judge is kilt.”
The Press said, editorially, April 15, 1889, that an eminent criminal lawyer announced “that he had heard at least twenty members of the bar declare that the quickness with which Judge Pennypacker grasped the points of a case and the clearness of his charges had not been excelled in the Philadelphia Courts.”
Quay, pleased with his venture, wrote to me October 25th: “If I told you all the good things I heard said of you by Democrats and Republicans this week in Philadelphia you would blush to the point of apoplexy.”
George Tucker Bispham, whose book upon Equity is everywhere accepted as a text, said, in the nominating ​convention: “He is learned. He is patient. He is firm when firmness is required. He is lenient when justice can properly be tempered by mercy. He is always a gentleman.”
During the month before the election the Clover Club gave a dinner at which I was one of the invited guests. As it happened, a French fleet under the command of Admiral de Coulston was lying in the Delaware River, and the officers, including the Admiral, were present at the dinner. In the midst of the festivities Moses P. Handy, a newspaper editor, who was presiding, arose and said: “We have a member of the judiciary present who will now address you in his native vernacular, the Pennsylvania Dutch,” and he called upon me. I could not have uttered ten words in Pennsylvania Dutch, with which I had not the slightest familiarity, but in French I presented greetings to the Admiral and told how Lafayette had come to us in the Revolutionary War, and how we had won our independence through the assistance of France. It was not much of a speech, but these roysterers were unable to guy it and it furnished a text for the campaign orators who were able to say “So there!”
About the same time Mary Pennypacker Colket made me, together with John R. Read, who, under Cleveland, was the United States District Attorney, her executor. She was the widow of Coffin Colket, who had been president of the Philadelphia and Norristown Railroad and had left an estate of about two million of dollars. He was swarthy, homely to ugliness, plain in all of his ways and very much of a man. In his youth he and John O. Stearns were employed in some minor capacity in the construction of the Chester Valley Railroad and for a time boarded with William Walker—“Uncle Billy” as we called him—whose wife was a sister of my Grandfather Pennypacker. Each of them married a daughter of the household. My grandfather, with the stability and associations of a prosperous Chester County farmer, commented: “I do not ​understand why William Walker permits his daughters to marry those wandering railroad men.” They both became wealthy and Stearns reached the presidency of the New Jersey Central Railroad. Colket once told me this tale of Franklin B. Gowen, the wonderfully able lawyer who prosecuted the “Molly Maguires” to conviction, who devised the policy as president of the corporation which has since made the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company so prosperous, and who afterward shot himself in Washington:
“He was the quickest man to make a bargain ever I knew; one day I went to see him at the office of the company about some business. After it had been transacted he accompanied me to my carriage, which stood at the curb, and as I opened the door, he said: ‘By the bye, Colket, what will you take for the ——— tract?’ naming a tract of coal lands I owned. ‘I want for it a million one hundred and fifty thousand dollars,’ was my reply. ‘All right,’ said Gowen, ‘I will take it.’ The quickest man to make a bargain ever I met,” he concluded with an air which suggested that perhaps after all he might have secured more for the tract.
Judge F. Carroll Brewster gave a dinner to George S. Graham and myself, attended mainly by lawyers. The Penn Club, in whose organization I had participated, gave me a reception, and the students from the office of Peter McCall, then at the bar, gave me a dinner of recognition which was much appreciated.
After the lapse of a year John G. Johnson wrote in a published article: “The opinions he has delivered have been what those who knew him expected—learned, scholarly and logical…As a nisi prius judge, he has surprised his friends, by a display of unusually quick comprehension, sound judgment and practical common sense.”
The court held its sessions in Congress Hall, at the southeast corner of Sixth and Chestnut streets, and the judges sat upon the same platform on which Washington ​stood when inaugurated President of the United States. The old blue ornamentation of the ceiling, studded with stars, had recently, with the worst of judgment, been ruined by the insertion of glass knobs for lights. Ere long, I was called upon to preside over the court of quarter sessions which sat in the west room on the first floor, which for nearly ten years had been the meeting place of the House of Representatives of the United States. There Lyon and Griswold, two New England congressmen, in 1798, had spat in each other's faces and beaten each other with clubs and pokers, and later Probst had been tried for murder. After the court had been opened upon my first day, the case of a man charged with larceny was called and he was convicted. I imposed an imprisonment of eight months in the county prison and a fine of ten dollars. Then one of the court officers came up to me and quietly whispered:
“Judge, the other older judges never impose fines in these cases.”
“Do they not?” I said, “then they fail in their duty.”
I had remembered that the statute made the sentence obligatory and gave no discretion to the judges. All through my service as a judge these fines were imposed for such crimes, although it very seldom happened that they could be collected and the practice caused considerable trouble to the prison authorities. The plunge had been taken, the court officers never again ventured critical suggestions, and no serious trouble ever arose in the determination of the causes. The life of a judge is a reversal of the Canterbury pilgrimages. He sits still while the world, with its burden of interests and hopes, woes and emotions, passes in review before him, and he sees the strifes of the mart, the scandals of the alleys and the skeletons of the closets in all of their phases. It is not, however, as broad a field as it otherwise would be because both bench and bar, together with the growth of legal learning, have followed the bent of certain narrow developments of ​modern life. Its most complicated and involved processes of ratiocination and its most elaborately established principles concern the acquisition, ownership and transfer of property, and they are, therefore, of comparatively minor importance. In the long run it is of little moment which of two men secures the moneys in dispute. He who wins may be the worse off because he has won and he who loses has suffered no irreparable harm. The treasures of the earth are still within his reach. A man may exert as high an intellectuality and as much mental acumen in playing a game of chess as Napoleon did in planning the battle of Austerlitz, but when it is over he has only played a game. The Knights Templar are well dressed, carry short swords, and march with accuracy, but the swords never cut and the steps lead nowhere. Decisions of questions involving the rights of property require much learning and skill and have their uses, but their effect upon humanity is neither very deep nor very permanent. I have known judges who, sitting in the quarter sessions and regarding the work as of little consequence, would tell the district attorney to proceed with the trials and they themselves retire into their chambers. I have known others who looked upon the betrayal of a woman as a mere peccadillo, and the stealing of money as the most heinous of offenses. All of these judges were mistaken. The most important questions which arise in the courts are those which concern personal liberty. The worst of crimes are those which involve brutality to man and beast, and the abuse of women and children.
It is a satisfaction to me to remember that during the fourteen years I sat on the bench no man was ever tried for a crime before me, even the least serious, without my having analyzed the evidence on both sides, and no man was ever convicted and punished unless that evidence convinced me that he had committed the offense. The most difficult matters to determine with any assurance ​of accuracy were those which arose in the desertion court over the quarrels between husbands and wives, and the maintenance of wives and children. The facts occurring in the privacy of home were always more or less obscure and difficult of proof. The history of the trials, impositions and failures which lead up to the catastrophe is often remote and seldom disclosed. In civil causes concerning the ownership of goods, the problems are carefully presented by counsel, and the court has the benefit of learning what other judges have thought in like matters. But the desertion cases were hurried through on Friday afternoons upon a list of perhaps a hundred, by Samuel E. Cavin, then counsel for the Guardians of The Poor, a man entirely capable and with a desire to do right, but deaf as a post and, therefore, unable to grasp the tale told by the witnesses.
I reached certain conclusions with regard to the administration of justice. Some of them may appear to be radical, but, being the outcome of experience, it may be that their presentation here may lead to thought resulting at some future time in useful modification of present methods.
1. There are entirely too many technical crimes and too much creation of crime by legislation. Every man who has some ends to serve and has sufficient influence goes to the assembly and gets the failure to do what he wants to have done enacted into a crime. To spit in a street car is an act of nastiness, to put catsup in a branded bottle is perhaps an infringement of right, to assist an ignorant man at the polls to perfect his ballot may affect the result of the election, the failure to pay customs duties to the Government may cause it inconvenience, but none of these constitutes a crime. To call them so only leads to confusion of thought and remissness of conduct. These examples represent a long category so extended that no citizen can ever be sure that in what he does he is not offending against some criminal statute.
​2. I very much doubt the efficacy of the effort to prevent wrongdoing or to elevate the standards of life by punishment. I have scrutinized the faces of men in the dock, observed their conduct and listened to their stories, endeavoring to see whether I could find any line with which to separate them from those outside, and always in vain. Men are as they are born and as the hammering of life leaves them. Most of the misconduct comes from the incapacity to think accurately and properly to foresee consequences. I am satisfied that most men do the best that they are able to do with their characters and the circumstances which confront them. Since the beginning of the historic period, some eight thousand years ago, the annals of mankind have been filled with the records of attempts to prevent by the infliction of punishment certain lines of conduct considered at the time objectionable, but often recognized at later periods to have been conducive to the advancement of the race. Experience has shown these attempts ever to have been futile. All kinds of punishment have been tried—hanging, beheading, burning, mutilating, disemboweling, quartering, gouging out the eyes, cutting out the tongue, cropping the ears, branding, standing in the stocks, drowning, using the rack and the thumbscrew and many others which ingenuity in this direction could devise. Strange as it may seem, the effect always seems to be to increase the numbers of offenses. Violence begets violence. The burning of negroes in the South has immeasurably increased the cases of special crime it was intended to prevent. In Jamaica, where no such spectacles occur, this particular crime is almost unknown. In modern life old forms of punishment have been abandoned, except that of death for murder and incarceration for other offenses. The former is an anachronism and will soon have disappeared. It must be plain to any philosophical observer that the latter is slowly giving way. A prison is now conducted like a home. The ​food is plentiful and nutritious. The sentence is shortened for good behavior. I have frequently had convicts ask me to give them a longer term and transfer them from the county prison to the Eastern Penitentary because in the latter institution they could get tobacco. “Tickets of leave” are now granted which permit prisoners to be out on parole. All of which shows that the old idea of hammering men and putting walls around them to make them better is being gradually ameliorated. In our day the punishment of wives and the whipping of children at home and in schools have been abandoned, and I am quite sure that the day is not far distant when it will be recognized that the punishment of men serves no good purpose. This is of course a different proposition from the suggestion of the abandonment of the use of force to protect person or property or to prevent the commissions of crime. If I shoot a burglar who insists upon coming into my room in the night, I act upon an entirely different principle.
3. The general opinion appears to be that since the social evil has always heretofore existed it is likely to continue for all future time. The same kind of reasoning might once have been applied to royalty, slavery, priestcraft and other institutions which have lost their hold upon the world, after being long retained. Personally, I look aghast upon the complacency with which we permit the destruction of women for the mere wanton gratification of the passions of men and if we gave a tithe of the thought to the subject that we do to the acquisition of property, the evil would soon be eradicated. Its existence, of course, proves that there is some law of nature which society, as now constituted, violates habitually, just as surely as the corn on the foot, which is an abnormal growth of the processes of life, points to the pressure of the boot. If the cause can be found the results can be prevented. It is easily discovered. There is nothing inherently wrong ​in the sexual relation and, on the contrary, it ought to be encouraged. It is accompanied, however, with certain important duties which concern society as well as the individuals themselves. The woman ought to suckle and care for the young and the man ought to provide for her necessities and those of the children he begets. The cause of prostitution is the effort of the male to enjoy the intercourse and at the same time to escape the responsibilities which accompany the relation. The male is the stronger in will and muscle and it is he who persuades the female. Let him be made to understand that he may call the woman to him if he chooses, but that when he takes this step he accepts certain obligations from which he need not hope to escape. The thought of society and present legislation put the burden upon the female. It ought to be put upon the male. The sending of police to make raids upon what are designated as “haunts of vice” are spectacular absurdities which do much injustice and no good whatever. Let a law be passed to the effect that whenever an unmarried man and an unmarried woman by mutual consent have sexual intercourse they establish a permanent relation with mutual duties, one of which is the support thereafter of the woman and her offspring by the man. Let either of the parties have the right to enforce the continuance of the relation and the fulfilment of the duties by a decree of court as in other cases. It may be called marriage, morganatic marriage, legislative marriage or any other term regarded as appropriate. Under such legislation for a time many young men would be the prey of experienced women. They would be much more than offset, however, by the young women who are now made the prey of experienced men. The answer to such an objection is very simple. The man will, himself, have chosen such a woman as his companion. Let him exert his strength and his will upon himself and be more careful. He surely will be more careful. Ere long there will be no experienced ​women to prey upon him and the inmates of disorderly houses will be scattered more effectually than by raids of the police when the way has been opened to young women who have yielded to emotion nevertheless to lead respectable lives.
4. The most conspicuous and serious failures in the administration of justice in our courts occur not at all in the cases of defendants who possess wealth, as is often alleged, but through the irresponsible meddling of the press with those of a sensational character or those which concern people of prominence, and the publication of which, therefore, has a salable value. It is not to be expected that the members of a jury will weigh in even balance the evidence presented to them in the case of a man charged with murder, when his face, brutalized by some artist employed for the purpose, and the facts distorted to increase the horror, have been forced upon their attention for weeks before. In fact, the whole doctrine of the liberty of the press is a harmful anachronism. There ought to be no liberty of the press. There was a time when the interests of the people were served by it, a time when the liberties and even the lives of men were sacrificed by the arbitrary exercise of the authority of the state, but that time has long gone. The newspaper was then a means of supplying information upon which men could depend in the guidance of these affairs, but the conditions have entirely changed and it too has changed with them. In our day a newspaper, generally owned by a corporation, is organized for the purpose of making money for the stockholders by the sale of news. The motive is commercial. Its forces are directed, not toward the supply of information because it is true, but toward the securing of that which can be sold on the market. Like all vendors, its wares ought to be subject to supervision, and when, like bad meat and rotten eggs, they are found to be unhealthful they ought to be confiscated and suppressed. When the Government inspects foods, examines doctors and lawyers and ​supervises factories, mines and railroads, why permit filth, crime and falsehood to be published?
The courts might have protected the administration of justice had it not been for an unfortunate decision by Chief Justice Sharswood in the case of ex parte Steinman and Hensel, 95 Penna. State Reports, p. 220, where he practically overruled the opinion of Chief Justice Gibson in Austen's Case, 5 Rawle, 191. Two lawyers, who were also newspaper editors, in their newspapers charged the court with making a corrupt judicial decision for political reasons. The Act of 1836 limits punishment for contempt of court “to such contempts as shall be committed in open court.” This offense was committed outside the courtroom. The limitation constitutes an absurd distinction, since an order by a court has no relation to doors and windows, and it was a legislative attempt to lessen the constitutional power of the courts. The court below disbarred the lawyers and Sharswood reinstated them. He probably failed to see to what extent he was enabling newspapers to interfere with the functions of the judiciary and was surrendering the prerogatives of himself and his successors on the bench. Substantially all of the injustice which I have known to occur in the course of trials in our courts has been the result of this kind of outside influence which some judges have not sufficient strength of character to resist. With its present tendencies the press is galloping along the road which leads inevitably to the overthrow in the near future of their constitutional privileges.
In the summer of 1890 Mrs. Pennypacker and I took a trip to Europe. Mr. Blaine sent me the following letter:
* Department of State,
* Washington, June 19, 1890.
To the Diplomatic and Consular Officers of the United States.
Gentlemen: It affords me pleasure to introduce to you the Honorable Samuel W. Pennypacker, Judge of the Court of ​Common Pleas of Philadelphia, Trustee of the University of Pennsylvania and Vice-President of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. I bespeak for Judge Pennypacker your official courtesies during his sojourn abroad.
             I am, gentlemen, your obedient servant,
                   James G. Blaine.
We left Philadelphia on the Red Star Steamer “Belgenland,” July 16th, and after crossing the ocean, going through the English Channel, and up the Scheldt, landed at Antwerp July 29th. The company on the boat, while not so numerous as on the great steamers, was in some respects unusual, and in the course of the long voyage they were pretty closely welded together. There were a concourse of physicians, including Dr. F. P. Henry and Dr. Philip Leidy, who were going over to attend a medical convention, and there were three school teachers who had been determined by ballot to be the most popular in the state, and were being given the outing by the Philadelphia Press. They were the Misses Elizabeth D. Grant, Annie M. Bishop and Jennie M. Davis. For an entertainment given on the way over I wrote a number of jeux d'esprit touching up some of the passengers and the lighter events which happened. They were written in pencil on the back of a paper novel, which, being thrown away, was found by the steward and sold to a newspaper. Much to my surprise, on my return, I found them making the newspaper rounds, and I now include three of them:
* Out at sea there's a lady named Davis;
* To her note book she but a slave is;
* She writes down within it
* What happens each minute,
* And when Godwin upset by the wave is.
* The minister went to sea,
* The minister soon got sick.
* It cared no more for him
* Than for any heretic.
* The captain is jolly and round,
* His stomach and lungs are both sound,
* With one foot on the bridge and one eye on the sun,
* He spreads out his sail
* To catch every gale,
* While the passengers watch him to see how it's done.
At Antwerp the party scattered and went their several ways. Godwin, a very agreeable gentleman, who had gone abroad for a rest and left his wife and family at home, oppressed with the loneliness of the situation, met Mrs. Pennypacker and myself again in the Zoological Garden. He hurried forward to present a bouquet, and after a separation of a day we came together like long-lost friends. Two things we soon learned to avoid—the beaten routes of travel where ignorant guides show you the new things you can better see at home, and the table d'hote dinners which injure your stomach and waste your time. Through the advice of E. V. Lansdale, a society man of experience, we put up in Antwerp, at the Hotel de la Paix, but did not like it. In the Temple of Cloaca I found this rather naïve notice: “On est prie de ne pas rester debout sur la siege.” We examined the cathedral with its treasured Rubens' Descent from the Cross, there meeting Bishop O. W. Whitaker and his wife, but found the most interest in the narrow old streets along the Scheldt, the carts pulled by dogs, the women gathering the garbage, but most of all in the old stone prison “La Steen” with its dungeons in which some of my people, in the sixteenth century, had been confined before being burned and beheaded. In Holland, at The Hague, we saw, of course, Paul Potter's Bull and Scheveningen, but The Hague itself had become a modern city and was disappointing. At Haarlem we saw the tulip garden, heard the great church organ played and at the town hall stood wonderingly before those old burgomasters whom Franz Hals has kept alive through the centuries since. Dutch art ​was influenced by no fads and is the real thing carried to perfection.
In Amsterdam I called on Dr. J. G. DeHoop Scheffer, the author of the History of the Reformation in the Netherlands, with whom I had been corresponding for years and spent a very pleasant evening with him talking about Mennonite literature. We attended services in the Oude Kerk where so many noted Dutchmen are buried, including the famous old Admiral Michel de Ruyter, who fought thirty-two naval battles. An invitation to his funeral is among my papers at Pennypacker's Mills. In the Rijks Museum we stayed long before Rembrandt's Night Watch and the head of the Old Woman. In going from a lower to a higher stretch of canal the boat stopped while the water rushed in to fill the enclosure. The hearty-looking Dutch skipper took advantage of the opportunity to collect the fares. I had no small change and handed him a ten florin gold piece worth about four dollars which he laid on the leaf of his open note book while he felt around in his pockets. Just then a blast of wind turned the leaves of his book and the gold piece went to the bottom of the canal. “Damn it to hell!” he exclaimed in as good English as any irritated and disappointed resident of New York could have uttered. At Broek we saw the cows with their tails tied up and the sawdust of their stalls worked into ornamental figures and at Zaandam the windmills and the house of Peter the Great. At Marken, which even then had been much spoiled by the current of visitors, we engaged Klaas De Witt to take us in his fishing boat across the Zuyder Zee to Monnikendam, from which town had come the first man to sail up the Delaware River, and where we climbed the tower, saw the church and were followed through the streets by an amazed crowd of Dutch urchins and lasses in wooden shoes. After we started from Marken, Klaas kicked off his sabots and threw them into a corner of the boat. “Why did you do that?” I inquired. “I can swim better without them,” was the rather ​unsatisfactory answer. But the most attractive town we found in Holland was s'Hertogenbosch, or Bois le Duc, the old capital of Brabant. Travelers seldom went there. Enclosing the city are still the old wall and ditch. In the fine old cathedral the sacristan tells with bated breath how the Protestants knocked the heads and fingers off of the statuary. In the museum is shown the bag with its stains of blood into which the head rolled as the executioner cut it off. In the market sat the country women laughing and having a good time over their salad and cabbage. In the inn was a kitchen filled with brass and copper, so bright that it was a joy to behold, and in the dining-room was an omelet to be yet remembered with gusto, and cheeses of every kind.
In Crefeld, from which so many people came to Germantown, a city whose great silk manufactories are the outcome of the simple weaving of the early Mennonites, we slept with a feather bed for a cover and another feather bed for the support. Years before, Frederick Muller of Amsterdam had told me that in this city was a genealogy in manuscript of the Schenten family which contained much information concerning the Op den Graeffs. There were many Schenten names in the directory, and on a venture I selected Carl. His counting house was in the second story. In such German as I could muster I explained to him that I was connected with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and interested in genealogical research; that I had heard of the existence of the manuscript and was anxious to discover its whereabouts.
“Are you looking for an estate?” he inquired.
“Oh, no, my interest is purely historical.”
“Well," he said, “you are the first American I ever saw who was not looking for money.” Then he went to his safe and produced the book. I had come straight to its owner. It carried one of my ancestral lines back to about 1584. I visited the village of Aldekerk, a dirty little town ​filled with squat houses and a great church, where Herman Op den Graeff was born. He was a delegate to the Convention of Dordrecht in 1632 and the grandfather of the three brothers and sister who came to Germantown in 1683.
In Cologne we saw a remnant of the old Roman Wall, the great cathedral, the skulls of the eleven thousand virgins wrapped around with red velvet, the vase in which the water was turned into wine, and Dr. James Tyson, the noted Philadelphia physician. We are related in two ways, since he is a Pennypacker and I am a Tyson. We went up the Rhine by boat and every foot of the journey called up some early family association. At Worms we saw the stately mansion of Johann Pfannebecker, Geheimer Regierungs Rath, and Stadts Advokat, with its memorial tablet setting forth that there he had entertained the Emperor William. From there we drove across the Palatinate, whose well-tilled fields suggested Pennsylvania, though they were without barns and fences. At one place was posted a large advertisement informing the people that a negro was on exhibition and could be seen for ten cents. At the village of Oberflorsheim we stopped to water the horses and a healthy-looking, vigorous young fellow came across the road carrying a rake. I said to him:
“Was ist ihr nahm?”
“Mein nahme ist Pfannebecker,” was the rather surprising response.
“Und mein nahme ist Pannebecker auch.”
I continued: “Was ist ihr handel?”
“Ich bin ein Bauer,” he said.
“Ich bin ein Richter,” and we parted.
At Kriegsheim, the village from which came also many of the early settlers of Germantown, I endeavored to locate the place where Penn had preached and was referred to the wiseacre of the place, who was likewise the town-gauger. He could tell me nothing of Penn, but he was hospitable and he took me to the cellar where were kept the hogsheads of ​wine. He filled a glass from the first hogshead and tendered it and I drank the wine. He drew a glass full from the second hogshead and tendered it again. There were about thirty hogsheads in the cellar. Saying “danke sie” and “lebt wohl,” I withdrew. We are told in the Nibelungenlied that:
“Never were men so merry as these beside the Rhine.”
Then we came to Flomborn, perhaps fifteen miles across the Palatinate from Worms, a village of three or four hundred people, of whom about half bore the name of Pfannebecker. The bans of one of them, a girl about to be married, were nailed up against the church door. In the graveyard large flat stones covered the graves of those who were dead. The inn-keeper, who seemed a little surly when we took our horses into the yard to be fed, came running out after us on to the street, his face all smiles, to tell us that his wife was a Pfannebecker, and she, the good-hearted soul that she was, almost cried with joy to see a “Pfannebecker aus Amerika” as she tendered her cakes and wine. I was much impressed by seeing the children drive the flocks of geese up from the pastures, and I had them, together with everything else in the village photographed. Frederick P., the most important personage of the place, worth about $90,000, took us to his home to have us meet his wife, and son bearing the same name.
At Heidelberg, after looking over the University, which seemed to me dull and out of date, and the Tun, which was certainly large, and the Schloss, a most beautiful and impressive ruin, we climbed the mountain which rises from the Neckar in order that we might get a view of the Valley of the Rhine and the Neckar and the Taunus mountains. On the way up we overtook Catharine Grimm, a woman of about forty, who twice a week carried upon her head all of the supplies needed for the inn at the crest from the city below. She wanted us to take her home with us, poor woman, and little wonder. On the way down, after ​rejoicing over the beautiful and extended stretch of varied scenery, I saw an artist sitting under a tree making a sketch. I said to her:
“Konnen sie mir zeigen das weg zum Schloss?”
“Oh, can't you talk English?” she replied.
I had to acknowledge that I could, and she pointed out the path.
A curious sight to an American in Germany at that time were the two little houses side by side at the railroad stations marked “Herren” and “Frauen.” When the cars stopped and the doors were unlocked the men and women, who have been shut in without accommodations, rushed in hurried lines to these places.
Another curious sight was to see a woman and a cow strapped together plowing a field. It is not, however, nearly so barbaric a performance as the mere telling would indicate, since the cow supplies the motive force and the woman is there to direct it.
At Basle I had a fright. The train stopped among a number of others, and leaving Mrs. Pennypacker, I got off and went for a few minutes to a “Restaurations Keller.” When I returned, depending on location, the train had been shifted, and I could not find the car. She could talk neither French nor German and had no money. However, the deliberateness of the railroad service stood me in good stead. I had plenty of time to hunt, was finally successful and had learned a lesson.
The Alps, glistening in the sunlight for fifty miles, to us who had never before seen snow in the summer time, were wonderful. We had an uncomfortable hotel at Geneva. I could find no one in the town who could tell me where Michael Servetus was burned, the most interesting event to me in connnection with it, or who had ever even heard of Servetus, but I watched the Rhine and thought of Cæsar. We went fifty miles by stage to Chamounix at the foot of Mont Blanc. The crush of the glaciers in their slow march ​and the roar when a mass of ice falls from the end, the streams of melted water galloping in a mad rush down the mountain sides and the horses standing knee-deep in the ice-cold torrent, because the natives regard it as good for their feet (they don't stand there themselves), other streams pouring over precipices and disappearing in mist before they reach the ground, the vast masses of rock, stretching toward the skies with the whitened vales between, all held our attention and fixed themselves in our memories. We had solemnly and resolutely determined we would do no Alpine climbing. The next morning, early, we bought alpenstocks and followed on foot the zigzag path which leads up the Mont Aubert. It is a narrow path. The mules coming down insisted upon having the inside next the mountain. But about noon we reached the hotel which overhangs the Mer de Glace. From the outer court we could see, far below, men and an occasional woman crossing the glacier. The temptation was too great and good resolutions were consigned to the pavement. We secured a French guide. He supplied us with alpenstocks and woolen socks to pull over our shoes, and he led the way, with a hatchet cutting steps in the hillocks of ice and helping us to avoid the dangerous crevasses. We looked down into some of these splits in the ice. The man who falls into one comes out in about thirty years at the foot of the mountain. I do not know the width of the Mer de Glace, but it seemed to be like crossing about two seven-acre fields. On the far side was a moraine which we climbed. Then the guide asked whether we wanted to go around “le Mauvais Pas.” I said to him:
“Je n'aime pas les Mauvaises Pas. Qu'est que c'est?”
He replied that it would be no worse than to go back over the Mer de Glace, and that after getting to the other end we would have a good road back to Chamounix. We knew the difficulties behind, we did not know those in the front, and we went ahead, trusting to Providence and a French guide. What the Swiss have named a “Bad Path” ​was, as may well be imagined, not a very enticing or comfortable route. It was a narrow and irregular ledge running across the face of an almost perpendicular mountain. It hung over the Mer de Glace, far below and was perhaps three hundred yards in length. It would have been impassible but for the fact that an iron rod had been fastened in the face of the rock about shoulder high which could be grasped with the hand, but, sad to relate, there was a gap in the middle where the rod had been broken away. There were places where the water trickled across the path and made it slippery. At such places Asbury E. Irwin, who was with us, got down on his hands and knees, regardless of trousers. I told the Frenchman he would have to help me and to take Mrs. Pennypacker to the other end and come back. Presently he returned, but on getting around an edge of the rock there I found her clinging to the rod and looking down upon the sea of ice. I had had a wrong conception of the length of the Mauvais Pas. Since that arrangement would not work, I sent him ahead to her and took care of myself. We presently reached safely Le Chapeau, a hut at the other end of this path, and with no further adventure save that a cow came sliding down the mountain and nearly fell on us, we got to the hotel after dark and tired enough. From Chamounix we crossed the Tete Noir to Martigny in a barouche. The road zigzags over the great mountain and is just about wide enough for a single team. In fact, the carriage was at times so near the edge that I preferred walking behind it to riding in it. At a hotel on the top a yard had been made large enough for the teams meeting there to pass each other and the drivers had to time their movements accordingly. By some mischance on this particular day there was a misfit and they met on the road. The teamsters swore at each other for an hour, but that failed to solve the difficulty. Finally they joined together and held some of the wagons up on the mountain side until the others passed.
​At Villeneuve we saw the Castle Chillon with its dancing halls above and its dungeons below and the little island of Childe Harold in the lake, and getting on a boat, crossed Lake Geneva lengthwise to Geneva. From there we went by rail across France to Paris. Irwin took us to a modest hotel, the Bergere, where our bill for five days, including some wine, was only one hundred and eighteen francs for both of us, or twenty-three dollars and sixty cents.
At the Louvre from the fifteen miles of paintings La Gioconda smiled upon us, and we then went to Versailles, where, apart from the palace with its historic interest and the gardens with their beauty, were two paintings which impressed me. One represented the Battle of Sedan. On a crest stood in life size an officer. Off in the distance was a little smoke. It was the artist's idea of a battle. The other picture told the story of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown to the French fleet. Washington had nothing whatever to do with it. I had grown up under another impression, but still perhaps it is well to modify these early impressions. I said to a man whom I met in the street in Paris:
“Pouvez vous me dire ou est l'Eiffel Tour?” emphasizing the first syllable in Eiffel. He looked at me in blank amazement. After a long conversation he said:
“Vous pensez au Tour Eiffel?”
“Oui, Monsieur.”
Then he pointed out the way.
We went to the opera, where Mrs. Pennypacker had a great struggle to retain her cloak with a French woman who insisted upon taking it away as she talked at the top of her speed, but in the end American grit prevailed. The French people, as I saw them at their work, impressed me as being more rather bright and cultivated, than earnest and strong. They seemed eager to finish their tasks and get away to the concert gardens. Amusement appeared to be a motive in life. We had crossed the ocean and the Zuyder Zee and Lake Geneva without being seasick and the English Channel had ​no terrors for us. On our way to London we took the long route from Dieppe to New Haven. As we got on to the mean, creaky and overloaded little boat, I overheard the skipper say to a woman who had a six-year-old child with her: “Madam, if I were you I would take that boy down stairs and put him on his back in a cot.” It was an ominous suggestion. The channel was in bad shape. A trip, usually finished in two hours, on this day required six. Everybody was seasick. The floor of the saloon was filled with groaning women. On the deck where I was I saw a deck hand thrown flat by a toss of the sea. I paid a couple of the seamen to take Mrs. Pennypacker below and I abandoned her to her fate. Sitting on a camp stool, I steadied myself by clutching a staple driven into the wall of the saloon, and cold, sick and miserable, let the sea beat over me as it willed. Thrusting my hand into my overcoat pocket to warm it up, I found there occupying the space a pound of confectionery bought in Paris to eat on the voyage. I threw it with disgust into the sea. One poor woman who sat near me by the rail absorbed salt water apparently by the pail full and I never offered to help her. All the while the boat strained and quivered and creaked and nobody cared. It was so crowded that the men were forced to remain upon deck with the beating sea for solace, and as the hours rolled by and the darkness of the coming night came over them not a word was uttered. It was an experience worth a trip to Europe.
We stayed in London about a week and put up at the Charing Cross. We rode on top of the omnibuses and watched with interest the tangle of cabs in Threadneedle Street. We stood on London Bridge, went through St. Paul's, saw the grave of Milton and the bit of the old Roman Wall and attended a service in Westminster, where the beauties of the prayer book were mouthed in a way I could not appreciate. When I asked who broke off the fingers of Queen Elizabeth I was told it was done by Cromwell and his ragamufiins, which I did not believe. I said to a girl ​who waited upon us in a dining-room about three squares away:
“I suppose you go often to Westminster.”
“Do you mean the Habbey?”
“Yes.”
“I 'ave never been in the Habbey in my life. I don't often get away from 'ere and when I do I 'ave other places to go to beside the Habbey.”
On one slab is only the name “Charles Dickens.” No more is needed. We went through Windsor Castle, saw the Burnham Beeches and the yew of Gray's Elegy at Stoke Pogis.
At the Tower the room in which the jewels were kept was closed. The tall flunkey with a big hat and a most gorgeous covering for clothes refused to open it. A brilliant thought occurred to me and I produced the letter from Blaine, the American Secretary of State. The scheme worked beautifully and he opened the door. The consequential piece of red tape egotism assumed, however, that the letter was written to him personally and he deliberately proceeded to put it in his pocket. Then I was in trouble. However, by the use of persuasion and even threat I finally recovered my credentials.
We went to Hyde Park in a cab and were refused admittance unless we should get out and walk. Only the equipages of gentlemen were permitted in the Park.
From London we went to Coventry, where we found the Craven Arms, a real old-fashioned inland English inn. Intending to remain but a few days, I sent my trunk through to Liverpool, where we intended to take the City of New York for our return home. I said to the official:
“Have you no system of checking baggage?”
“No.”
“How do you identify the owners?” I inquired.
“We never have any trouble.”
I gave him some money. He tore off a slip of newspaper, ​on which he wrote his initials and gave it to me and promised that he would see to it that I should find my trunk in the baggage room in Liverpool.
Coventry is a most interesting old town, though Americans go to Leamington in preference, redolent with the memories of the Lady Godiva, mystery plays, tournaments in which knights errant in the days of chivalry fought for the favor of fair women, Sherwood Forest with its tales of Robin Hood and his merry men, battles of kings for their thrones and, in later days, of George Fox the Quaker. Here may be seen the walls and gates which shut out the enemy and stranger, ancient tapestries, curiously built houses and the three spires which impressed Tennyson. We drove to Kenilworth, rich in its traditions, but found little there save the merest remnants of a ruined castle and a field of oats, the half of which appeared to be Canada thistle. This thistle, protected by the hedges, has overrun the whole island and must be a serious drawback to agriculture. At Leicester hospital we were shown some needlework attributed to the unfortunate Amy Robsart. We inspected Warwick Castle, with its portrait of Henry VIII, and since my lineage has been traced to the Kingmaker, with a faint reflection of proprietorship. At Stratford we saw the birthplace of Shakespeare, a house insignificant and mean in all of its suggestions. The church was being repaired and I secured a bit of old worm-eaten wood which had been removed from above the famous inscription.
At Liverpool I went to the man in charge of the baggage room and sought my trunk. He looked over his books and said he had no record of it. He sent men over the building who hunted and returned reporting that it could not be found.
“You must find it,” I said with some indignation. “We leave in the boat for America tomorrow and I must have my trunk.”
“Perhaps it is in the lost department,” said he.
​“Perhaps it is,” I responded.
He and I, with some assistants, went to this place, a huge caravansary filled with the property of other unfortunates. A search of half an hour, while Mrs. Pennypacker sat in dismal patience in the depot, failed to reveal it.
“I can do no more,” said he.
“I believe that trunk is over there in the building from which we started,” I replied, “and I will find it myself.” That fellow in London impressed me as being reliable and he said he would see to it that I should find it there. I believe he did.”
There, down in the cellar, far back in a corner I found my trunk. Then from the figures on it the baggageman was able to trace the entries in his books. The incident illustrates the results of the pig-headedness of the English in refusing to adopt a system so simple as that of checking baggage, after its utility has been long demonstrated. On the City of New York I met Richard Croker, the head of the Tammany Club in New York, a silent man who gave the suggestion of great force.
“Did anybody ever tell you that you looked like General Grant?” I inquired.
“Yes,” he replied.
Another time he said to me: “I like your man. Quay. I never met him, but I think he must be much of a man.”
One of the most agreeable features of a European trip is the return. After having been fed upon sole and vegetable marrow, to find yourself again where you may eat lima beans, corn, sweet potatoes and tomatoes, has its satisfactions. Three months are long enough to be away. To untangle the twisted threads of memory which confuse the ill-digested contents of museums and art galleries is a relief. To meet again the familiar faces of those whose lives are interwoven with yours is a sweetness and a comfort.