AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
the amount in settlement, and I made this proposition to counsel of the company. Information from their detectives made them sure of having both the boy and the money in a few days, and they declined the proposition. Days and weeks rolled by and then they wanted to have it renewed, but in the meantime the anxiety of my clients had to some extent been relieved; they had grown more accustomed to the situation, and they refused. For twenty years the events remained a mystery, and then were disclosed. The boy wrote home. He had never before in his life seen so much money; the opportunity to grasp a fortune lay in his hand, he yielded to the temptation and stole the money. Instinctively he turned toward home. He went to the depot of the North Pennsylvania Railroad Company and bought a ticket for his native village. Then it suddenly occurred to him that he could not be safe there and he turned on his steps, went to the Pennsylvania Railroad depot and started for the far West. No cunningly devised plan would have resulted in such success as this impulsive action. The detectives traced him to the North Penn depot and there learned the station for which he had bought a ticket. Then in their wisdom they knew that his relatives were hiding him in Bucks County. They watched accordingly, watched in vain, and so prevented the company from getting the mortgage. Inside of three months he had lost every cent of the money. Then he went to work in a powder mill where the danger was great and the wages high, and he saved. Then he learned bookbinding, prospered and became the head of an establishment. He had changed his name, married, had a family of children and grown rich, and at last he wrote home to pay off the old score with interest.
E. Greenough Platt, a very capable lawyer in the office of John C. Bullitt, and my friend Hollingsworth, had undertaken to prepare a third volume of the index to the English Common Law Reports, which had been commenced years
before by George W. Biddle and Richard C. McMurtrie.
