"Oh, please," I said, "don't speak to me of money!"
It was not a case of mere hire and salary, and then and there my promotion was sealed. I was to have a department to myself, and instead of signing "T.A.S." orders between Pittsburgh and Altoona would now be signed "A.C." That was glory enough for me.
The order appointing me superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division was issued December 1, 1859. Preparations for removing the family were made at once. The change was hailed with joy, for although our residence in Altoona had many advantages, especially as we had a large house with some ground about it in a pleasant part of the suburbs and therefore many of the pleasures of country life, all these did not weigh as a feather in the scale as against the return to old friends and associations in dirty, smoky Pittsburgh. My brother Tom had learned telegraphy during his residence in Altoona and he returned with me and became my secretary.
The winter following my appointment was one of the most severe ever known. The line was poorly constructed, the equipment inefficient and totally inadequate for the business that was crowding upon it. The rails were laid upon huge blocks of stone, cast-iron chairs for holding the rails were used, and I have known as many as forty-seven of these to break in one night. No wonder the wrecks were frequent. The superintendent of a division in those days was expected to run trains by telegraph at night, to go out and remove all wrecks, and indeed to do everything. At one time for eight days I was constantly upon the line, day and night, at one wreck or obstruction after another. I was probably the most inconsiderate superintendent that ever was entrusted with the management of a great property, for, never knowing fatigue myself, being kept up by a sense of responsibility probably, I overworked the men and was not careful enough in considering the limits of human endurance. I have always been able to sleep at any time. Snatches of half an hour at intervals during the night in a dirty freight car were sufficient.
The Civil War brought such extraordinary demands on the Pennsylvania line that I was at last compelled to organize a night force; but it was with difficulty I obtained the consent of my superiors to entrust the charge of the line at night to a train dispatcher. Indeed, I never did get their unequivocal authority to do so, but upon my own responsibility I appointed perhaps the first night train dispatcher that ever acted in America—at least he was the first upon the Pennsylvania system.
Upon our return to Pittsburgh in 1860 we rented a house in Hancock Street, now Eighth Street, and resided there for a year or more. Any accurate description of Pittsburgh at that time would be set down as a piece of the grossest exaggeration. The smoke permeated and penetrated everything. If you placed your hand on the balustrade of the stair it came away black; if you washed face and hands they were as dirty as ever in an hour. The soot gathered in the hair and irritated the skin, and for a time after our return from the mountain atmosphere of Altoona, life was more or less miserable. We soon began to consider how we could get to the country, and fortunately at that time Mr. D.A. Stewart, then freight agent for the company, directed our attention to a house adjoining his residence at Homewood. We moved there at once and the telegraph was brought in, which enabled me to operate the division from the house when necessary.
Here a new life was opened to us. There were country lanes and gardens in abundance. Residences had from five to twenty acres of land about them. The Homewood Estate was made up of many hundreds of acres, with beautiful woods and glens and a running brook. We, too, had a garden and a considerable extent of ground around our house. The happiest years of my mother's life were spent here among her flowers and chickens and the surroundings of country life. Her love of flowers was a passion. She was scarcely ever able to gather a flower. Indeed I remember she once reproached me for pulling up a weed, saying "it was something green." I have inherited this peculiarity and have often walked from the house to the gate intending to pull a flower for my button-hole and then left for town unable to find one I could destroy.
With this change to the country came a whole host of new acquaintances. Many of the wealthy families of the district had their residences in this delightful suburb. It was, so to speak, the aristocratic quarter. To the entertainments at these great houses the young superintendent was invited. The young people were musical and we had musical evenings a plenty. I heard subjects discussed which I had never known before, and I made it a rule when I heard these to learn something about them at once. I was pleased every day to feel that I was learning something new.
It was here that I first met the Vandevort brothers, Benjamin and John. The latter was my traveling-companion on various trips which I took later in life. "Dear Vandy" appears as my chum in "Round the World." Our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Stewart, became more and more dear to us, and the acquaintance we had before ripened into lasting friendship. One of my pleasures is that Mr. Stewart subsequently embarked in business with us and became a partner, as "Vandy" did also. Greatest of all the benefits of our new home, however, was making the acquaintance of the leading family of Western Pennsylvania, that of the Honorable Judge Wilkins. The Judge was then approaching his eightieth year, tall, slender, and handsome, in full possession of all his faculties, with a courtly grace of manner, and the most wonderful store of knowledge and reminiscence of any man I had yet been privileged to meet. His wife, the daughter of George W. Dallas, Vice-President of the United States, has ever been my type of gracious womanhood in age—the most beautiful, most charming venerable old lady I ever knew or saw. Her daughter, Miss Wilkins, with her sister, Mrs. Saunders, and her children resided in the stately mansion at Homewood, which was to the surrounding district what the baronial hall in Britain is or should be to its district—the center of all that was cultured, refined, and elevating.
To me it was especially pleasing that I seemed to be a welcome guest there. Musical parties, charades, and theatricals in which Miss Wilkins took the leading parts furnished me with another means of self-improvement. The Judge himself was the first man of historical note whom I had ever known. I shall never forget the impression it made upon me when in the course of conversation, wishing to illustrate a remark, he said: "President Jackson once said to me," or, "I told the Duke of Wellington so and so." The Judge in his earlier life (1834) had been Minister to Russia under Jackson, and in the same easy way spoke of his interview with the Czar. It seemed to me that I was touching history itself. The house was a new atmosphere, and my intercourse with the family was a powerful stimulant to the desire for improvement of my own mind and manners.