Travel and Adventure

Winter of 1924 - 1925.

I wonder if some additional reminiscences would interest you children. (You haven’t yet seen those that I wrote last winter.) I feel another attack of the Kakoethes Scribendi upon me. Those early voyages of adventure away from the Sewickley Valley deserve a word - so, here goes!

My earliest and dimmest recollection is of Doubling Gap - or was it Wopsononock? - in the Allegheny Mountains near Carlisle, or Altoona. Just a vague picture of a hotel porch - a van or bus driving up and my Mother, in a linen duster, getting out and coming up the path. It must have been later that I learned that she had been at Bedford Springs and had come up from there. I probably was in Aunt Martha Bell’s care, as occasionally happened when Mother was in need of a rest. I was three years old at the time - 1870. I remember, too, a man dressed up in women’s clothes doing a comical dance on the lawn. It was a Mr. Peterson, somebody told me years later, a brother-in-law of Uncle Henry Irwin’s.

Another faint recollection of about this time, when Mother was on one of her visits to Bedford Springs and I was left at home. You know the old stone spring-house by the side of the road, down at Lark Inn? "Spring house" and "Bedford Springs" must have been confused in my mind, for I though Mother was in there and I hollowed and cried for her when driving by with Father.

Then - 1872. That was the year that Father, Mother and Sister Lide spent the summer in Europe. Father, Mr. R. H. Davis and Dr. Bittinger were appointed by the Governor as delegates to an International Prison Congress in London. This was a real event in Sewickley. The whole village saw them off at the Station. It was on this trip that Father bought the Frodsham watch in London, that I now carry. The date, July 4, 1872, is engraved inside of the case. As usual, Aunt Martha mothered me in their absence - I five years old at the time. A boy named George Dravo was then living in the Cottage and he and I were pals that summer. (I have never seen him since, but your Aunt Mary met him in Europe last summer.)

My brother Alex was then in Yale (Class of 1874) and he and his friends cut loose and ran the place. They laid out a ball field in the front yard and played match games with (as I thought) immense crowds of spectators swarming over our porches and lawn. (Father wouldn’t have stood for it if he’d been at home.)

"Our Alick of Yale" was my big hero. An athlete, powerful, yet quick as a cat, and a wonderful baseball player. He was the first in these parts to pitch a curve ball - and was sometimes ruled out of the pitcher’s box on that account. I have seen him scratch a line on the ground, toe the mark and, turning a back somersault, land three feet in front of the line. He terrified, and at the same time delighted George Dravo and me as he put us through gymnastic feats. One or the other of us would stand on the palms of his hands as he lay on his back - then he would get up slowly and stand upright, hands above his head, with the scared kid still standing balanced on his palms. Or - taking each of us by an ankle, he would whirl around with the two of us held at arm’s length. Scared? Yes. But with never a thought of mishap. He used to put me up on top of Mother’s pipe organ in the parlor where my head touched the high ceiling, and at the word of command I would jump, knowing confidently that he would catch me. I remember once when we were playing "I spy" in the house, upstairs and down; Alex was sitting on the window sill in the "boys’ room". He took me by the wrist and hung me down outside of the second story window while he nonchalantly whistled and I remained successfully hidden till there was a chance to "run in free."

But - to go back to my early "travels". In 1876, the Centennial Year, Father gave your Aunt Mary and me our choice between two trips - to Minneapolis with Mother in the summer, or to Philadelphia in the fall with a big party to see the Centennial Exposition. I chose Minneapolis, my sister the Centennial. So, in June, Mother, Aunt Margaret Nevin and I set out for the West and we spent the summer with Aunt Martha Bell in Minneapolis - at #917 Second Avenue, South; the address was indelibly impressed upon me, in case I should wander too far afield and have to inquire the way back. Mowry Bell took me in tow and showed me a good time. Fourth of July was a high spot. We slept out in the back yard so as to be up bright and early to begin the day’s celebration with firecrackers and noise.

The circus was another big event. I did the regular small boy stunt - "helped" put up the tents in the early morning, watered the elephants, etc., and was rewarded with a great re-union for the four Irwin sisters, Aunt Mary Adair - who also lived there - Aunt Margaret Nevin, Mother and Aunt Martha Bell, and they had a good time together (I have a group photograph of them, taken that summer). Ye gods! I am older now then Mother was then! I can remember their singing together. They were all musical and knew the hymn by heart, as well as the old Scotch ballads and sentimental songs of "before the War". They gave an imitation of a brass band that I thought was great. Cousin Jack Bell took Mowry and me on tramps around the lakes where we picked up shells and searched for carnelians. Lake Calhoun, Lake Harriet, Lake of the Woods, I remember. These I suppose are all within the city limits now. I remember a boat trip on Lake Minnetonka. Was Excelsior the name of the farthest point? I’m not sure. Maybe it was Enterprise. But I do remember the engineer on the boat who was by way of being a ventriloquist - one who could "throw his voice," which as we said then, and who had a horse hair snake in a bottle tail. -- It was a great summer. I missed my old dog "Rab", but consoled myself by writing to him regularly, as I did to the other members of the family. When we returned to Sewickley and the party, made up of relatives and Sister Lide’s friends, started off for Philadelphia and the Centennial under Father’s guidance, I was smuggled along, somewhat to your Aunt Mary’s chagrin, and so got both the Western and Eastern trips! Some things about the Centennial I remember very clearly. (I was nine. Your mother, down in Delaware County, was one year old. I hadn’t met her then.) The crowds I recall especially - also the long waits, sitting on the curbstone, till the horse cars came to take us to our boarding house. I remember the Vienna Cafe with its rolls and milk - the bronze hand and torch that were to form a part of Bartholdi’s statue of Liberty later to be erected in New York harbor; - the Russian Exhibit with its lapis lazuli - the stamp collections (for even then I was a keen collector of stamps) - the carved pulpit from Belgium that the girls named "Pompey’s Pillar", where we rendezvoused at stated hours; - the great Corliss engine in Machinery Hall, the pipe organ with its electrical keyboard at the other end of the building; - "Old Abe", the Illinois war eagle; - some of the paintings in Memorial Hall. I remember a joke of Uncle Daniel’s about a rather startling French painting that was catalogued "Pan and Bacchante". He would have us believe that he overheard a farmer lad puzzling over the name and saying "Pan and bacon. I can’t see it!" Father and Uncle Daniel would get footsore and would spend hours sitting in the easy chairs of the Bankers Building, watching the crowds - while I pressed my face against the pane and longed to get out for a run. - One frightfully low, vicious sight met my youthful and prudish gaze. The press of the crowd waiting for the horse cars at the end of the day forced some of us onto the doorstep of a saloon and there I had my first vision of men lined up at a bar drinking beer!

Well - so much for the Centennial. In 1878, two years later, I was lucky enough to have another trip East. Father, with the other members of the Board of Inspectors of the Western Penitentiary, made a tour of the eastern prisons to get ideas for the new penitentiary that was to be built at Woods Run. Warden E. S. Wright was of the party and with him his son, Leland. "Lel" and I were old friends. We had frequently played together in the corridors of the old "Pen", on West Park, Allegheny, and we enjoyed this trip to the full.

I remember several of the party very well. Mr. Ormsby Phillips - ex-Mayor of Pittsburgh, tall, fussy - greatly worried when Lel and I walked along the tops of walls or balanced on railings. Mr. John Dean, a jolly old Irishman with a strong brogue and a fund of funny stories. Warden Wright, with his venerable white beard. The Continental Hotel; Philadelphia, was our first stopping place. Lel and I didn’t inspect the Eastern Penitentiary, if I remember. Then to New York and the St. Nicholas Hotel which was the last word in hotels of that day. Visits to the prison on Blackwell’s Island and to Bellevue Hospital I recall. Then, one day, Lel and I were left to our own devices while the men inspected some outlying institutions. We explored the St. Nicholas from stem to stern. Down in the basement we made the acquaintance of a kindly old gentleman who must have been the superintendent. He showed us through the kitchens and storerooms - and then took us on a personally conducted tour of lower New York. He showed us the Five Points, the toughest section of the city - took us to the Cooper Institute and there, lifting us up so that we could look through a glass door, he pointed out to us Peter Cooper, seated at his desk. He took us down to the water front, to Fulton Market, and on board of a sailing vessel that was to weigh anchor the next day for China and the South Seas. Here is where we should have been kidnapped and never heard from again - but, after writing our names on the mast, we allowed ourselves to be pried loose from the fascinating surroundings and taken back to the hotel. In the meantime, Father and the rest had returned and, not finding Lel and me, there was a whale of an uproar - until we appeared, under the care of our good friend, Mr. Bacon - William Allen Bacon, the name comes back to me as I write. He gave each of us his card. That evening Warden Wright gave us a treat. He took us to Tony Pastor’s Varieties, where Tony himself appeared and sang "Where was Moses When the Lights Went Out?" I believe this was my first visit to a theatre.

After New York - Boston - The Revere House, where Lel and I compared unfavorably the slow elevator with that of the St. Nicholas. Out to Concord, Mass., next, to visit the State Prison there. Mr. Butz, the architect of the party, made use of Lel and me in taking tape-line measurements down the corridors. Here we were shown Jesse Pomeroy, "The Boy Murderer", a life prisoner, then about three years in confinement. I remember his appearance well: - a shock of red hair and a sullen wild look of the eye, as he paced up and down in his solitary cell. A horrible sight! And - to think that he is still there, forty-seven years later! I was reading about him in the New York Times only the other day.

On our way back to New York we stopped over at Providence to go through the new prison, just completed. My most vivid recollection is of the New England baked beans at the railroad restaurant.

Next a visit to Sing Sing where we dined as the warden’s guests, and where I couldn’t go the chowder or the rare roast beef, and Lel was too shy even to enter the dining room. - But I am forgetting the great experience we had in Boston. Father was the host this time and took us to the theatre. Only, it wasn’t called a theatre, but "The Boston Museum". I suppose, Like Library Hall", in Pittsburgh, it had to go under an alias if the Puritans, like the Scotch Irish Presbyterians, were to be coaxed in. Here we saw one of the old school and a great favorite in Boston. He was related to Joseph Jefferson - I’ve forgotten just how. You’ll find a picture of him in Jefferson’s Autobiography. The play was "My Son" and while I don’t remember anything of the plot I do have a recollection of Warren in character.

Between the acts, a lady sitting behind me dropped her handkerchief and I handed it to her. Instead of saying "Thank you" - or maybe "thanks", in Western Pennsylvania fashion, she covered me with confusion by saying "You’re very kind!" I was moving in Boston society! Well - so much for that trip in the fall of 1878.

In May 1882 I had a never-to-be-forgotten trip down the river to Cincinnati on the "Katie Stockdale". A dozen or more of Sister Lide’s friends made the trip to attend Theodore Thomas’s May Musical Festival - and I was willing to go along, you may well believe. There was a glamour, a fascination about our peaceful progress down the Ohio that took a strong hold of me. I’ve never forgotten those hours spent in the pilot house enjoying the scenery; the mild excitement of the landings, especially at night the loading and unloading of freight, the shuffling black stevedores running up and down the gang plank to the shouts of the mate and the "mud clerk", the plank being hauled in as the last of the darkies dashed back on board. I have forgotten the names of our two pilots but they were very friendly to a small boy, and when, on our up-river trip, I pointed out the location of "our place" on the river bank, they promised to whistle for me each Monday evening as the "Stockdale", passed on her way down. They kept their promise, and many a time, hearing the well-known whistle, I dashed out to the river bank to wave to my good friends.

It was in that same summer of 1882 that I had my first taste of camping. My brother Herbert was one of a party made up to go fishing in the Muskoka Lakes, in Canada, and he took me along. Cousin Joe Nevin, Mr. Charles Atwell and Mr. George H. Christy were of the party - and a "Mr. Cloakey", an old steamboat steward went as our cook. I had dug a big supply of fishing worms out in the Old Stable yard in preparation for the trip. We camped on Bass Island, in Lake Joseph, opposite Redwood, where Mr. Clause now has his "cottage" - and here for a couple of weeks we fished for black bass - and caught some, too. Our talent was small and on rainy days old Cloakey would put up what he called the "tarpoleon" under whose shelter we enjoyed our fish, bacon and coffee - my first taste of coffee. (I hadn’t yet learned to smoke - excepting cornsilk. Tobacco was reserved for my later college days.) A very mild camping experience it was, but one greatly enjoyed by the kid of the party. Before leaving for home we planted the unused portion of our bait supply in Mr. Nixon’s yard at Redwood, and two years later, when I went up again with Herbert and another party we dug up some descendants of those same worms for bait. This time, after a short stay on Lake Joseph, we moved to Baysville, above Bracebridge. The Muskokes were not then the popular resort that they are today.

Then next summer, 1883, saw me Out Wet. General Mackay had trekked from Frontenac, Minnesota down to a ranch in Nebraska, with his wife, Cousin Annie (Adair) Mackay, his cattle and all his household goods. Alex Adair was with them on the trip, helping drive the cattle. Cousin Annie invited me out to spend the summer with Alex - so, in May I set out on my first trip alone. (Age 16.) My first stop of course was Chicago and my instructions were to report at the office of Mr. B.W. Doyle (Charlie Doyle’s father) who was connected with one of the western railroads. He fixed me up with a cheap ticket through to Creighton, Nebraska. (The ticket said I was taking up land there.) At Creighton I heard the old familiar Sewickley whistle, and there was Alex Adair, with an extra horse for me to ride the 16 miles to the ranch which was a few miles from a place called Bazile Mells, not far south of Yankton, Dakota. But, first, I must tell you of a bit of the Wild West that I saw on the way out. It was Decoration Day, May 30th. We had crossed Missouri River and the train was standing at the station at Fremont, Nebraska, when I heard a shot just outside of my window and saw two men in G.A.R. uniform suddenly drop and flatten themselves out on their stomachs. There was some yelling and I ran out for a look-see. There was a pool of blood on the platform and people were ducking under our car and excitedly pointing out over the prairie. There I saw two men running and another after them. The man in pursuit stopped every now and then to take a shot at the two and you could see the dust jump up where the rifle bullets struck. The men who were being chased turned around and fired back at their pursuer, their bullets, I suppose, going over our heads. A woman from our car was much excited. She tore open her hand bag and got out a little ivory-handled revolver which she pressed into my hands - but couldn’t find any cartridges for it. Anyhow, it wasn’t big enough to shoot so far, the two men by now being well out on the prairie. We saw them hold up a man who was plowing, cut his horses loose from their traces, jump on them and gallop away. The sheriff who was after them - and whose deputy had been shot when they tried to arrest the men - came back and raised a posse to go in pursuit, and the last we saw was a the wagon, loaded with men, starting off to round up the fugitives. A week or so later I read all about it in the Chicago "Tribune". The men were bank robbers who had cracked a safe somewhere in Iowa and were jumping off our train on the Nebraska side of the river where the sheriff and a deputy were "laying for" them. Their burglar tools were found hidden in a coal box on our train. The sheriff overtook them, it seems, as they were pushing out in a skiff to cross the River Platte, shot and killed one of them and captured the other. Some sensational doings for a youngster to see on his first trip into the West! I looked out for the scene on my return trip, in August, but couldn’t see twenty feet from the tracks, the corn was so high. --There is little to record of that summer. Some herding with Alex; some terrific night thunderstorms that threatened our tent with destruction - we slept out of doors. The 4th of July celebration at Creighton to which the General drove us in the wagon. There were horse and pony races - young Indian boys riding bareback - much dust and excitement. One event stands out - a three days’ horseback trip that Alex and I made to the Santee Sioux Reservation and Niobrara, on the Missouri River. We tried to imagine that we were in hostile country and that the Indians under their teepees by the side of the trail wanted our scalps. We got out of it all of fun that there was to be had. It was a pleasant interlude to our daily chores about the ranch. One of those chores was to plant locust seeds, for timber. The only trees were on the timber claim - the largest perhaps a couple of feet high. We kept a crock full of seeds soaking in a warm water on the back of the range and every day we would pick out those that had swelled up like lima beans and those we would plant. The soaking caused them to sprout almost immediately. We grew sunflowers, the stocks for firewood and the seeds for chicken feed. The fuel in our kitchen range that gave the best heat was the shelled corn that we shoveled up on the barn floor. It would coke and was most satisfactory. My visit ended in August and I returned home to enter the Western University (now Pitt) in the fall, while Alex Adair stayed on at the ranch.

One amusing incident of this trip I’ve forgotten to mention. It occurred on the way out, as our train was crossing an unbroken stretch of prairie; just slightly rolling grass-lands as far as you could see, with the single line of railroad track across it, as straight as a string, back to the horizon. The train was jogging along at an easy gait when suddenly, it sopped with a jerk and began to back up. There wasn’t a house or even a water tank in sight and we wondered what was up. I went back into the baggage car at the rear end of the train and looking out I saw, away off in the distance, something black bobbing between the rails. After some time we were close enough to see that it was a man walking toward us carrying a chair slung over one arm. Finally we reached him and he climbed aboard. He was our baggage-master who had tilted his chair back beside the door of the baggage car and was enjoying a nap when a jerk of the train threw him and the chair out onto the prairie. It was a lucky thing for him that the conductor noticed his absence before he had quite receded over the eastern horizon. Neither man nor chair was any worse for the adventure.