A Little Girl in Old Pittsburg

by Amanda M. Douglas

So, after much discussion to shorten the time, mid-September was settled upon.

"Oh," Daffodil said in her most adorable tone, "I shall pray daily that nothing will befall you, that God will send you back safely to me."

"And I shall be praying for you. Love surely opens one's heart to God."

There was not much to be made ready. The girl laid aside this and that for the son's wife when he should take one, "for," said she, "there is so much in my new house already. And Felix must marry young, so you will have a new daughter in my place."

She would not be married in church nor wear the olden wedding gown. "Let it skip a generation," she said, "and that may change the luck."

So the time came and the lover so full of impatience. She would have the ceremony in the old room that had been so interwoven with her life, and she fancied the spirit of great-grandfather was sitting there in the old chair and she went for his blessing.

The little girl passed out of Old Pittsburg and left behind lonely hearts. Grandad could not be reconciled, there were some fine young fellows in the town that would make good husbands. But Norah gave her a blessing and the best of wishes. So Daffodil Bartram went out to her new life, wondering how one could be so glad and happy when they were leaving behind so much love.

Old Pittsburg did not vanish with the little girl, however. But she went on her way steadily, industriously. The new century came in with great acclaim. Shipbuilding prospered. Iron foundries sprang up. The glass works went from the eight pots and the capacity of three boxes at a blowing to double that number, then doubled it again. The primitive structure erected by George Anshuts before the century ended was the progenitor of many others sending their smoke defiantly up in the clear sky. And all along the Monogahela valley as well as in other places the earth gave up its stores of coal as it had given up its stores of iron.

And in 1816 Pittsburg was incorporated as a city and had a mayor and aldermen and her own bank. It was a new Pittsburg then, a hive of human industry, where one business after another gathered and where fortunes were evolved from real work, and labor reaps a rich reward.

There are not many of the old things left. The block house built in 1764 by Colonel Bouquet still stands. A great depot covers the site of the ancient Fort, and the spot of Braddock's defeat. But there are Duquesne Heights, all her hills have not been levelled, if most of the old things have passed away. She is the workshop of the world now, one writer calls her "the most unique city in the world." And she has not neglected the finer arts of beautifying. She has magnificent buildings, fine libraries, and cultivated people, musical societies, and half a hundred benevolent institutions. And we must not forget that in six days after the firing on Fort Sumter a company of Pittsburgers marched to Washington and offered their services to the secretary of war.