AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
accepted with no sense of uncertainty, was that I should pursue a course at college and then read law. The Whitaker point of view was thoroughly practical. My grandfather had large means, but to provide gratification for idle and unproductive people was no part of his philosophy. In truth, even thus early in life I felt a great sense of responsibility and the need which had come to me to be up and doing. My mother came to me with her confidences and to a great extent began to lean upon me. She continued to do so through the whole of her long life and we were not thereafter for any length of time separated. Temporarily I went to the public school in Phœnixville on the south side of the creek in a yellow building at the corner of Church and Gay streets, the teacher being Joseph Addison Thomson, one of a local family, all of whom possess more than ordinary intelligence. Both boys and girls attended the school. We sang geography. We had spelling bees and spelled each other down. One of the duties of every teacher at that day was to write a head line on each page of each scholar's copy book, which he or she endeavored to imitate for the acquisition of good chirography. I remember on one occasion writing in my book, as a venture of my own, the line:
“An Austrian army awfully arrayed,”
and being surprised to find that the next copy given me by Thomson was the following line:
“Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade.”
About this period an unusual and interesting series of events occurred at Mont Clare. To understand them there need be added nothing more to the description of the house than to say that from the center of the hall a narrow entry led to the top of the stairway to the kitchen. In this entry, near the ceiling and far out of reach, hung the door bell from the front door. On the other side of the entry a crooked
