With the motor running again we soon passed No. 18 and snorted off around a sharp bend, through Two Locks where we were lowered into the waters of the Potomac. I say "snorted" advisedly. "Sometub" exhibited colt-like behavior when unleashed from the slow-moving canal craft. The towpath follows the northern bank of the river and the boats hug the shore closely, but we careened far out into the stream. "Sometub" had found a nautical playground more spacious than it had ever enjoyed before.
After a two-mile run on the river we entered another lock and once more were confined to the comparatively narrow channel of the canal. We found all conditions favorable and at sunset we crossed the great stone aqueduct over the winding Conococheague and a few minutes later tied up at the Williamsport lock.
I was now on familiar ground. Eleven years before I had visited historic Williamsport in quest of newspaper "feature stories," and a decade had witnessed but little change in the place. In the early days of the Federal government Williamsport was a pretentious bidder as the seat for the national capital. In the Civil War it was a sort of Pryzmyl, having been taken and retaken by the armies of both the north and the south, but the town itself was of no importance except as the key to strategic positions beyond. Here in June, 1863, the vanguard of Lee's conquering legions crossed the Potomac when they swept down the Shenandoah and crossed triumphantly into Pennsylvania, and here less than a month later their ragged columns made a bold stand against Meade's victorious forces while the retreating Confederates waited for the flood to subside so that they could withdraw into Virginia. Along the street that leads down to the river are many of the old houses whose walls resounded with the tread of those valiant armies—Union and Confederate. In those houses, too, many a soldier suffered the agony of wounds received in the desperate charges at Gettysburg. Of those southern heroes who raced with death from that immortal field, scores gave up their lives here in sight of their native Virginia hills.
Williamsport today is another of those outposts for supplying alcoholic drinks to bleary-eyed pilgrims from West Virginia and in consequence does not afford hotel accommodations for the ordinary traveler. After trying in vain to get dinner, we boarded a trolley car and 40 minutes later reached Hagerstown where we stopped for the night, enjoying the solid luxury of a "room with bath connecting."
AMONG Hagerstown's well known business men is Mr. Walter E. Pattison, a former Pittsburgher. We sent him a grape-vine telegram of our advent in town and on coming down from breakfast in the morning he hailed us with a motorcar and an invitation for a drive through Greater Hagerstown. We accepted with alacrity, remembering the tedious hours of the previous day, and made no objection when the chauffeur cut up didoes with the Maryland speed limit.
Mr. Pattison accompanied us to Williamsport in the afternoon to see "Sometub" and to join a little reunion with Col. George W. McCardell, the veteran editor of the Williamsport Leader. Editor McCardell had been looking for me for eleven years and we were somewhat in doubt as to the outcome of the interview. The reason for his desire to lay hands on me was, as nearly as I can remember, the following paragraph which was printed over my name in the Pittsburgh Gazette in the summer of 1905:
The Williamsport Leader is more than a journalistic enterprise—it is a well founded institution. It is the oracle of rockribbed Democracy, the unflinching champion of pure Jeffersonism and unfaltering Andyjacksonism.... The editor will take two pairs of Maryland frying-size chickens on subscription, but of his Virginia subscribers he requires three pairs in advance because, he says, the Maryland pullets are better and more tender.
I resolved to meet the editor and finish the argument. Mr. Pattison led the way to a new and prosperously attractive sanctum. It was publication day—Friday—and Col. McCardell, after a strenuous week, stood with folded arms beside an imposing stone with type still wet from the day's "run." My wife, who embodies the traditions of five generations of the editor's brand of politics but who stood ready to defend the quality of Virginia chicken against the world, was the first to enter the den of the journalistic lion. It was a clever ruse on Mr. Pattison's part, for first of all Col. McCardell is a chivalrous southern gentleman. Why, of course, Virginia fried chicken is the finest in the land. And Virginia women compose the very flower of American womanhood. Their presence here is welcomed like the May-time sunshine. The Potomac ripples softly when they cross the river and in the trees on the Maryland shore the summer zephyrs sing sweet benisons to the fair daughters of the Old Dominion.
And when I entered the feud of eleven years had vanished. I could only blush and bow my acknowledgements.