Fifty years of prison service; an autobiography

Front matter

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Author's Preface

Y ADULT life during the last half of the nineteenth century was so identified with the modern prison reformatory movement in the United States, my prison service was so unusually continuous, that numerous requests have been made for a record of the facts and lessons of such an experience. In complying with these requests, and performing perhaps a duty, I shall essay to write a chronicle perchance interesting, peradventure suggestive, — haply useful.

Retrospection now reveals more clearly than was seen while the years wore on, a mystic thread that joins events in one eventuality. Whether Fortune, Fate, or Providence, none can deny that the origin and the relations of the self are beyond the individual control. He who reads the following pages may discern, between the lines, that which open eyes discover in every life and in all things, — the rule of Supreme Will, determinant.

Both heart and sense of obligation prompt full mention of the interesting personalities of friends, — assistants of inestimable serviceableness, — and also of individual prisoners possessed of unusual characteristics. Incidentally, the rise and progress of reforms in the penal laws and changes in prison practice will be shown ; and presentation given of the earlier conceived and finally conclusive views of sound penological prin-

AUTHOR S PREFACE ciples as exemplified in the American Reformatory System. No apology is made for so niucii about myself in the narrative, for that is its avowed intention.

Table Of Contents

rAOE

Editor's Note vii

Preface ix

List of I llustrations xiii

PART I Chapter IL Wethersfield Prison: The Pilsburys as

Managers 23

I H . At Albany : Penitentiary and Almshouse 43 IV. At Rochester: Monroe County Penitentiary 58

V. The Detroit House of Correction 68

VI. Federal Prisoners in Detroit 86

VI I . Educational Work and Co- Workers in

Detroit 101

Vlll. Birthof the Indeterminate Sentence Law 126

IX*. Accusation and Exoneration 136

X . Three Years of Private Life : 151

PART II / XL Elmira 161

i XII. Difficult Prisoners 175

XIII. The Better and the Average Types 195

XIV. Improvements and Hindrances 224

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

v XV. Agitation, Publication, and Vindication 232

\^ XVI. Recognition 242

XVII. Advance and Some Disquieting Events 266

XVIII. The Prison Labor Investigation 286

XIX. The Problem of Reformation 299

! XX. Under the Harrow 328

\ XXI. Classification and Discipline 340

XXII. The Conclusion of the Whole Matter. . 363

XXIII. Afterwards 377

appendIces

\/ I. The Ideal of a True Prison System for a

State 389

II. Miss Emma A. Hall 409

III. Indeterminate Sentence Resolutions 417

IV. The American Reformatory Prison System 419

Index 425

XII

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACINa

Zebulon R. Brockway, 1899 Frontispiece ^^^^

Zebulon Brockway (the author's father) 7

Caroline Brockway (the author's mother) 7

The Author's Birthplace 15

Newgate (Simsbury Mines) Prison, Connecticut . . 24

Connecticut State Prison, Wethersfield 24

Amos Pilsbury 33

Louis D. Pilsbury 33

Z. R. Brockway, 1853 51

Jane Woodhouse (Mrs. Z. R. Brockway), 1853. , . . 51

The Detroit House of Correction 75

Miss Emma A. Hall 105

Michael Mahoney 105

L. M.Mason 115

James McMillan 115

The New York State Reformatory, Elmira 161

Zebulon R. Brockway, 1878 204

The Ethics Class, Elmira Reformatory 249

Charts showing rate of progress of prisoners

toward release 277

Dress Parade, Elmira 292

Physical Culture, Elmira 292

The Author's Study in his Elmira Home 377

Zebulon R. Brockway, 191 1 384

PART I

Chapter I Introductory Ancestry '

THE New England branch of the Brockway family, from which both my maternal and my paternal ancestry are traced, was founded by Wolston Brockway, who was born in England about 1638 and, at twenty-four years of age, emigrated to America. He lived in the town of Lyme, Connecticut, near the mouth of the Connecticut River, where he died November 11, 171 7, aged seventy-nine years. He was twice married and of his eight children William, the second child, was the progenitor of four sons and two daughters. The second son, John, born May 10, 1697, was the great-grandfather of both of my parents; thus my father and mother were second cousins.

This John Brockway, son of William, married Elizabeth Banning and produced a family of eight children. Their second son, also named John Brockway, married Caroline Reed: from these descends my mother's family. Their third son, Ebenezer Brockway, jnarried Mary Butler, niece of Colonel Zebulon Butler of Wyoming, and from this pair my father's family descends.

My maternal grandparents were Reed Brockway and Mary Niles, and my paternal grandparents were Zebulon Brockway and Abigail Banning. My own baptismal names, Zebulon Reed, were doubtless derived from these grandparents' names.

My father, Zebulon Brockway, was born at Lyme, Connecticut, March lo, 1791; and died at Hadlyme, Connecticut, January 12, 1862, at seventy-one years of age. My mother, Caroline Brockway, was born at Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, March 22, 1801. At seven years of age her mother, Mary Niles Brockway, died and she was taken in charge and reared by Mrs. Caroline LaPlace of Lyme, Connecticut. When she was scarcely nineteen years old and my father twenty-nine, they were married, on the second of March, 1820. Mother lived to be eighty years of age. She died at my residence at the Elmira Reformatory, New York, July 3, 1881.

Seven children were born to my parents — four sons and three daughters — of whom (1912) three are living; namely, Semantha (Mrs. Comstock), aged eighty-six, Hadlyme, Connecticut; Fannie (Mrs. Fay), aged seventy, Chicago, Illinois; and myself, aged eighty-five. Wesley, first-born, died in infancy; Wilbur at the age of thirty-three; Hugh* when seventy-six; and Mary at the age of seventy-three.

My father was nearly six feet in stature, erect, and symmetrically formed. He weighed about 160 pounds, was of light complexion, large cranium (he wore a 7§ hat), had strong rather than heavy features, and

* Hugh, whose full name was Hugh Blair Brockway, spent nearly all his mature life in the prison service, mostly associated with myself at Detroit and Elmira. For a time he was superintendent of the state institutions at Cranston, Rhode Island. Hugh served three years (1862-1865) in the volunteer service of the United States Army, Third Cavalry division of the Army of the Potomac, under the active command of Custer and Wilson in the army corps of General Phil Sheridan.

was athletic. I n intellect he was superior as to strength and quality: he possessed excellent reasoning powers, a vivid imagination, and facility in expression.

This native mental superiority coupled with completest moral integrity and instinctive philanthropy, rather than any tinsel of wealth or circumstance, secured for him not only the uniform respect of his community and associates, but their fullest confidence and regardful esteem. Thus naturally he became the chosen arbiter of differences between neighbors and neighboring communities, and confidential counselor for the perplexed and worried, all of whom he gladly served without fee or reward. In business he was a merchant, gaining thus a comfortable living for himself and family, but he did not possess a mercantile mind nor strong desire to achieve accumulations. The large scope and contemplative character of his mind carried him constantly quite beyond the field of money making. Business was pursued because it was necessary for subsistence and never for business ambition.

Father was a man of importance in his time and place: a local magistrate, county commissioner, and state railroad commissioner; he was also for thirteen years one of the directors of the state prison. He held the rank of colonel in the state militia, by vote of the legislature and governor's commission — an appointment which, so soon after the war of 1812, was deemed a serious trust. In the decade of the 50's he was elected to the house of representatives and again to the senate of the state legislature. In the Fremont campaign he was candidate for presidential elector. Quite exceptionally, when nearly seventy years of age, he was admitted to the bar of the high court in order that he might as an attorney conduct an important litigation between towns, a case made familiar by iiis connection with it as magistrate and arbiter.

His native tendency and his ability for deductive reasoning, reinforced by intellectual as well as moral honesty, operated to withdraw him, during the middle and latter years of his life, from adherence to any of the religious denominations. For a time, in adolescence, it is said he connected himself with the JVlethodists; and three sons were named after admired Methodist university men and preachers — Hugh Blair, Wilbur Fisk, and the first-born named after Wesley. Though an irregular and rather indifferent attendant on stated public religious services, yet the grasp of his mind warrants the belief that he was alive to the great problems of Being and Knowing and to the mystery of the human relation to the Infinite. The dictum of professional dogmatists in theology and philosophy was not satisfying to his inquiring mind. He remained immune to their persuasions, and to the last retained in such matters his individual independence.

It is with filial approbation, not without admiration, that 1 record the following incident of the closing hours of my father's life. Yielding to solicitations he had consented to see the local clergyman, a cultured and lovable man. Only the concluding words of their conversation are known and can be here repeated. The clergyman, retiring, said his everlasting farewell, and expressed his regret at their diflference of view and his hope that in the great beyond the truth disclosed there would reconcile the differences. My father, speaking with difficulty, replied: " It is of course possible that your thought may prove true. And possibly, you will concede, it may prove that my estimation of these hidden things may not be altogether unrealized. But the greater probability is that neither of us has correctly forecast the future; and, maybe, both of us are wholly wrong. However that may be, it is my preference, as it is my privilege, to take my departure maintaining my own opinions."

Mother was of medium height and shapel}'. She had black hair and eyes, florid countenance, nervo-sanguine temperament; was energetic, enduring, alert of mind and emotional, and yet remarkably self-controlled. Never in my knowledge of her entire life, with its trying incidents, do 1 recall a single instance of irritated impatience. She attributed her self-mastery to conscious superhuman support. She was devoutly religious. Sterling good sense held in leash her deep imaginative and emotional nature, but she dwelt much in transcendental spiritual consciousness. The Bible was my mother's book of books, her constant companion. 1 possess and lovingly cherish the well annotated copy she kept ever at hand and tearfully read; and also another copy of the Scriptures, given by my mother with her loving inscription when, at eighteen years of age, I first left home for extended absence. These keepsakes contribute to consciously connect my youth and old age, and they seem to perpetuate in fresh and tender remembrance the loving relation of mother and son in the earlier years of my life.

Her strong restful faith in the immanence and guidance of the Divine presence never faltered; and with rare insight she discerned the spiritual in the material, which accounts for her remarkable love of natural phenomena. This faith and consciousness supported her under the trials and exigencies of all her life, it was her habit to occasionally seclude herself for contemplation or, from open casement, to observe the earth and sky and moving clouds until, entranced, the common was replaced with the deeper spiritual appreciation. One summer morning shortly before her final illness 1 found her up and gazing from a window overlooking a charming landscape. Enraptured, she was unconscious of my presence. It was the first flush of dawn. The hilltops were touched with silver light; the deep shadows in the valley below were slowly disappearing — night consumed of day. It was the hush of early morning; diamond dewdrops everywhere, the lazy sway of leaf and branch in the freshening morning breeze, birds aloft calling mate to mate, awakening nature, the uprising sun: behold the day has come! Absorbed my mother sat, teardrops upon her cheek, her face aglow with inward happiness. How do 1 treasure that image! It is a precious memory and makes all the clearer that profound love for nature which in some degree her children have inherited.

The pecuniary circumstances of the family, if measured by the then New England standards, were comfortably sufficient. Our parents were not ambitious for wealth of worldly goods. Luxurious living, with sensuous enjoyments, did not attract them, and the social status was left to shape itself without their regardful thought. They were by nature above and beyond the field of current competition; they were satisfied with their merited neighborly regard and their own personal self-respect.

For her children the mother's longing was to see them possessed of religiousness like her own, willing then to

INIRODUCIORY

leave their earthly fortune and guidance to that Providence she herself so leaned upon. Father, with more rationalistic thought, relied on the ruling natural order of things and left his children to make their vi^ay according to their ability and circumstances, predetermined but unforeseen. They themselves — my parents — in all relations maintained the noblest standard. Recalling them for this brief genealogical sketch across the abyss of time that separates us, I estimate them and their lives as the best patterns of citizen and neighbor.

BIRTH, ENVIRONMENT, AND EARLY IMPRESSIONS 1827-1836

The family records show that the date of my birth was April 28, 1827; the place at Brockway's Ferry, Lyme, Connecticut, a road terminus, river landing, and ferry nine miles from the mouth of the Connecticut River where it empties into Long Island Sound. The house in which 1 was born occupied a terrace overlooking my father's store and the docks situated beneath the terrace on the river bank. The house and the store were red, with trimmings of white, nestled picturesquely under the nearby rocky bluff on the north and east. The river, here scimiter shaped, fully half a mile in width and nearly two miles in length between the bends, stretches out its silvery surface always in full view. On the southeast, at the river's sharp curve, rises a rocky promontory near whose summit, indented yet apparently projecting, was a rock flat and massive, where according to the local tradition King Joshua, an aboriginal Indian chief, was wont to scat himself and survey and rule his tribe. These "Joshua Rocks," the kingly seat with its legend, were always in the sight and mind of the children living near. The summit glistening in the noonday sun seemed a huge diamond, the sign of untold wealth beneath, and when suffused with moonlight witchery it was to our childish imaginations peopled with goblin or fairy forms. The weird impression was enhanced by the deep, dark, silent stream that submerged the mountain base and flowed on out to the ocean depths so near. The rocky prominence, the legend connected with it, and the river — its peaceful flow or strange activity when stirred with wind and tide; the marshes, the wooded shores and bluffs, the life upon its surface or in the depths; the sailing craft, fishing boats, and seines reeled or spread upon the sandy beach, — all together made and leave a memory image winsome and suggestive even now after the passage of the intervening seventy-five years; a witchery that brooded beneath and within; a subtle, spiritual, directing agency.

Our home was a hostage house for visiting preachers, some strong minded men, more of the evangelistic type, whose conversation of scriptural prophecy and fulfilment, of millenarianism, and of a spiritual consciousness, served, together with influences apparently trivial yet worthy of mention, to develop my maternal heritage of mystic tendency, useful as stimulating efl'ort, strengthening in trials, but liable to excessive ideality. While not belittling the importance of religious impulsion to reformative eff'orts of later years, 1 am doubtless indebted for the avoidance of fanaticism to the counterbalancing paternally inherited tendency to rationalism.

Of the four of us born within the first ten years one, the eldest, Wesley, was from earliest infancy, by an accident, completely helpless until his death at nine years of age, myself then but six. Mother's burdens and devotion, her grief at his death, the funeral, and the little grave within our own grounds, have always been and now are most tender recollections.

Sally Joy, the housemaid and nurse, affectionate, faithful, and to my infantile sense sweetfaced and radiant, also made on me a lasting good impression. I was jealous of her lover, one Griswold, a sterling New Englander, a stoutarmed rower who on Sundays rowed his craft across the baylike river bend plain in sight for two miles. The boat, the man, the wake upon the water, — I seem to see them as I did then, and to feel the jealousy. Sally was never a "servant" proper but New England "help" instead. She matured into a noble woman, the mother of a numerous family, all worthy. She gained ownership of the homestead where once she helped and at eighty years of age died there. Never quite forgotten is the good savor that also came at this early period from casual contact with a stalwart common laborer, an unexpressed but emanative quality, the product of genuine religiousness and moral worthiness. This quality of his personality memorably affected me as back and forth from school or meeting, my hand in his broad palm, he led my steps.

A certain enduring conscious taste, or bias, is traceable for something of its source to the home of our grandparents where not infrequently we made visits. The hardby babbling brooklet, the woods, pastures, and animals of the farm; the spacious house with hupe open fireplace, hearthstone, crane, utensils, and back

II log fire; our tall, calm, most kindly grandmother; the grandfather, his reserved, strong character (for even then I had a notion of his independence of opinion and disregard of current superstitions, a notion afterwards notably confirmed), — surely some formative influence originated amid these surroundings.

Another not unimportant permanent leaning, a taste and tendency, was formed when at eight years of age 1 was in love with the brunette elfin schoolgirl-mate with the euphonious name of Nancy Lay. Fascinated, 1 often ran away to her companionship causing worry and trouble at home. This was a genuine heart attachment, not to pass unnoticed, for it is not effaced and is now a pleasant recollection. Habitual high regard for women and maybe a preference for their society, finds here its root in this child love for Nancy Lay.

Then too began the discipline of conscious experiences, alternating joy and sorrow, the suffering of injustice and neglect, the hardening effect of futile punishment on the one hand and on the other the yielding responsiveness to love and to the proffer of sacrifice. Some remorse crept in and then came impressions and lessons from the knowledge of crimes committed and observation of criminals at large. The foregoing is perhaps too pretentious for the following recital of simple facts, but the activity of principles is shown by the occurrences, so the recital should proceed.

My parents gave me a live little watch; it ticked and the hands moved round. The sailors of a craft lying at my father's dock gave me a fuUrigged toy ship three feet long. Here was happiness! Soon by accident the watch was lost and a thievish fellow stole my ship. Then came sorrow. At the " infant school"

the teacher, through her ignorance, indiscretion, or arbitrariness, refused one day my most reasonable because necessary request. Then 1 bolted from the room, made resistance to the attempted punishment, and was expelled from school. Thus by means of unwise governance open insubordination began and the spirit of it was strengthened. Disobedience thus initioated in this private class showed later in the public district school, and truancy was added to the other faultiness. Punishments ensued but wrought no change of conduct. The sensitive but unyielding nature irresponsive to punishments derived nevertheless a certain benefit therefrom. Punishment served to heighten the contrast of love and persuasiveness and increased perhaps susceptibility thereto. Better behavior and consequent change of habitual mood, with later suggestiveness of a sound disciplinary principle, was produced when the district school teacher, a refined and lovely lady, having detained me after school hours, supposedly for punishment, surprised me with quite an opposite manifestation. Making no reference to my bad behavior, with sorrowful mien, tenderly, delicately, and in her womanly way, she revealed her genuine affectionate regard. This proved effective for the immediate object in view and left its abiding impression. Now as 1 write after so many years the memory excites feelings of gratitude for contact with this beautiful character in my obdurate childhood, and inextinguishable love for the treasured image of her charming personality. My efforts proved vain years ago to discover Miss Nichols or her descendants, that I might make some requital for her graciousness to me.

So too when my father had failed by floggings to change my behavior, and relentingly gave up the birch and insistently offered himself for vicarious castigation at my hands, the changed relation wrought immediately the desired effect, — not an instantaneously magical change of the native disposition, but the desired particular change of conduct. Of course the bettered habitual conduct in this one respect, the habit of obedience, thus begun tends to change of character but does not insure it.

The third item of salutary disciplinary experience is of quite a different character; it is the lesson of submissiveness to the inevitable which when well learned is scarcely distinguishable from faith in the dominance of Providence. 1 n a schoolboy quarrel 1 was overcome and pinned to the ground by the combined strength and weight of three large boys lying across my slender frame. It was a memorable moment when the superior physical force stilled my struggles and compelled submission. This lesson of existent compulsive power beyond individual control proved a salutary lesson in prudence and avoidance of excessive presumption. For knowledge of a certain nameless corruption of character prevalent with prisoners, and the consequent need of precaution in the matter of permitted association among them, 1 am considerably indebted to the evil communications at this early period of my life of an older and vicious youth, a neighborhood acquaintance, from whose bad influence I myself was rescued by the removal of my family to the Hadlyme locality.

Another childhood experience which initiated lifelong sympathy with the friendless is the mental anguish I suffered when at seven years of age I was left alone

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E and forgotten. On a bleak winter morning, on a country road deep-snowed and pathless, a bevy of us children, mittened and muffled, carrying our books and lunch baskets, were trudging on to school a mile away. In the road we met our gay young neighbor with sleigh and horse caparisoned with bells and robes and silver-decorated whip and harness. Generously he gathered in the children and drove them joyfully off to school, all but myself, inadvertently omitted. Not fear, or anger, but distress of desolateness came then, poignant and ineffaceable from memory. Throughout my mature life, when among the many thousands of the constant throng of oflFenders committed to my charge there came to my notice any who were abandoned by relatives, outcast, lost, or forgotten by their community, these have especially appealed to my sympathies, and all the more 1 truly believe because of this little incident.

Still earlier in infancy the consequence of my own rash act planted a memory germ that has always made for salutary self-restraint. In a baby quarrel with my sister, moved by impulsive childish anger 1 scratched her face with three sharp fingernails, leaving scars which well on to her middle life showed in the color of the cheek. Restraint of impulsive prompting and retaliation may be traced to that occurrence.

Finally, to these very early impressions, which through the whole of life have more or less affected my disposition and conduct, I will add one more. My father's store was entered by a burglar, one Moody, whose arrest, trial, and committal to prison made a permanent impression upon me. Larceny of the toy ship and malicious injury to other of my prized possessions by a worthless young fellow I knew, made real the hurt and injury of crime. Then the appearance on the road and wharf of Ferguson, a discharged state prison convict, whose long term of imprisonment had given to him the lockstep gait and servile demeanor of Wethersfield prisoners, engraved on my memory forever the miserable consequence of imprisonment and gave a decided bent to my mind.

FROM BOYHOOD TO YOUTH 1836-1845

In the year 1836 the family removed to Hadlyme, a river landing four miles north. There my father's business interests were extended to include a general merchandizing copartnership, ship chandlery, and a shipyard where coasting vessels were hauled out for repairs and new vessels built, rigged, and completely fitted out for service. The removal and the life at Hadlyme were beneficial, supplying more and better companions, better opportunity for school and church attendance, the improvement of incidental contact with the large business activities conducted with more enterprise and ability, and the ennoblement of the prevalent social moral tone of the community wrought by leading men through their personal worthiness, forehandedness, dignity of bearing, and a sense of what is honorable in public affairs. With these men in those days it was deemed disgraceful to be an office seeker or to be neglectful of pecuniary and public obligations. The formation of a standard of personal probity was emphasized doubtless by the presence of others in the community with contrary characteristics, — by the contrast thus presented. It is out of the heart that I add here in this memorandum of unconscious formative influences, seen clear in retrospect, that I owe. much to my good parentage, — my father's recognized ability, integrity, and accepted moral rank in the community, and my mother's sterling qualities of character, her self-respect, her refinement, devotion, humanity, and her scrupulous, cheerful, though toilsome care of us all.

The following citation of incidents such as are common enough in the experience of youth, apparently unimportant in themselves considered, is made because, to my own sense of things, they reveal and confirm the abiding presence of a brooding protective influence, recall the existent communal sympathy, show subtle incentive and easy initiative to wrong acts, suggest consideration due to first offenders, "some soul of goodness in evil," and a useful lesson for restraint and ministering.

A giant insane negro who had been arrested was chained to the center of a vacant room awaiting the dilatory unorganized action of the town authorities. He seized me when thoughtlessly I was within his reach and would have crushed out my life but for accidental help and rescue by neighbors who were passing by. This insane man, the damage he had done and manifestly was liable to do, showed the need of systematic, effective care and treatment of dangerous individuals. Soon again there appeared a similar demand when a brutal, bloody fight with sheath-knives occurred between the sailors of a craft undergoing repairs in my father's shipyard. The shocking scene not only hurt my sensibilities but also seemed to change for a time the social atmosphere by the introduction into it of brutality and disorder. The fight and the scene it presented brought to my consciousness the fact that such bad characters are abroad and that governmental machinery is required for their restraint and treatment. This consciousness was accentuated too by knowledge of the depredations of a resident thievish family, so frequent and annoying as to create a general state of worry and some alarm.

Two surprising deliverances from death and an unusual rescue from other serious injury in the course of an indiscretion, occurred at this period.

In company with a lad about the same age (ten years) 1 was frolicking in the shallow water of a deep swift stream that nearby developed into a whirlpool. Beyond my depth, borne on towards the whirlpool, 1 had quit effort, lost consciousness, and sunk out of sight. When consciousness returned 1 lay on the bank of the stream in the sun-hot sand, my companion working over me. He had swum out and dived for my rescue and had borne my limp body to the bank, then rolled and rubbed me back to life. His name was Joseph Luther. To his presence of mind, bravery, and strength my life is due. In the summer of 1910, the skipper of a launch in which 1 sailed on the Connecticut River proved to be the son of Joseph Luther.

Again, another day, alone on horseback I rode unwittingly into a quagmire where both horse and rider floundered down beneath the surface. The swamp was near a lonely road, untraveled and sparse of habitations, yet strange to say two laborers chanced that way, saw my predicament, and saved me from the fatal consequence. The deliverance from moral disaster will be mentioned later.

The almost fatal illness of my eldest and favorite sister, away at boarding school, brought out such neighborly sympathy and helpfulness, both at home and at the school, and the unselfish devotion of the noble man who afterwards became her husband made so evident the reality of genuine human friendship and exalted personal love, that though the natural trend of my vocation would lead toward misanthropy, my distrust became and remains well tempered with a certain hopeful confidence in human nature.

Erelong an episode occurred which somewhat enlarged my experience. A mingled business and benevolent commission took me, a boy of about eighteen, to Indiana, a journey then rather formidable to my inexperienced youthful mind because it was my first important independent commission and the distance seemed considerable. The trip was made by sailing craft to New York, thence up the Hudson River to Albany, by rail (strap-rail-stringers and primitive cars of slow motion) to Buffalo. (The return over this route was on the Erie Canal in a packet boat.) By stern-wheel steamer I went from Buffalo to Toledo, Ohio, and by stage to my destination. I remember that during the discomfort of the railroad ride I had a vision of the luxurious appointments of modern travel, but not clearly enough to stimulate invention and fortune seeking. It was, however, an incipient exercise of mental forecast. En route I fell in with a former Connecticut acquaintance then in business at Austinburg, Ohio, the proprietor of an extensive mercantile establishment and a dealer in and shipper of cheese made on the Western Reserve. After duly fulfilling my particular commission 1 engaged myself