AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
to the project and that the newspapers, with their usual inability to make a correct diagnosis of what is going on before them, attributed the movement to the Senator. The objections were that an extra session would mean a large outlay, that Governor Pattison had ignominiously failed when he called such a session, and that it would be used by insincere Democrats, supported by the press, to make political capital out of the situation. They were all more or less well grounded. There were certain measures, however, which I was anxious to see enacted, mainly the Greater Pittsburgh Bill, and reapportionment of the state, about which I was in dead earnest, and I had already determined to call the session, but not until after the election. For the postponement there were two controlling reasons. If it were called before, it would have been said that the object was to affect the election and both the deliberations and results would be influenced by political considerations. If the Republican party should be defeated, as I believed it would be, my interference would be assigned as the cause.
At this juncture I concluded to sell the greater part of my library. It was the most complete collection of the early literature relating to Pennsylvania which any individual had ever possessed. It is impossible that any man shall ever again have one of like importance. To part with it was to tear up forty years of my life by the roots. I had made a secret covenant with the commonwealth, unknown to the commonwealth, that if my future were provided for by a return to the Bench or otherwise, this record of its life should be preserved intact. One of the consequences of its failure to keep this unknown covenant is the loss which happened, greater to it than to me. I kept the faith for two years and a half. During that time the books, 12,000 of them, had remained in my house in town, a house which cost me $13,000. I could not rent the house or sell it, because there were the books. They were ever in danger of fire. They were ever in danger of theft, and now the time
