T. H. Nevin Childhood

Margaret and Henry, you remember the map of the Deep Woods and the Hollow Tree Country, the Wide Grass Lands, and the rest? I amused myself the other day making a map, in something of the same style, of my father’s place in Sewickley, below the railroad, where I was born and where I spent all of my boyhood. It was a lot of fun and when the map was finished it occurred to me that you might be interested in some account of the place and of my boyhood days there. I know if my father had told me about his youth on the farm near Shippensburg in the early part of the last century or had written down some of his recollections I should have prized the story tremendously. So - I’ll just jot down a few of my memories from time to time - and maybe you’ll run across them in this old battered desk of mine.

You both know the place, though it is greatly changed now. The old square, red brick house stands there among a lot of newer ones of yellow brick. It used to face the railroad but the old front porch is now at the rear, the house is supposed to face on Maple Lane, which has been cut through. You have both seen the house and have been in it, But it is only the front part of the original building that you know. The long extension in the rear, one room wide and two stories high, with its porch along the western side is gone. It was torn down to make way for the extension of Maple Lane through our place and Mr. McDonald’s, next door. That was in 1904 (the year your mother and I were married) when the whole seven acre tract was sold. After purchasers had laid it out in lots and built the yellow brick houses they failed and we foreclosed the mortgage and took the property back - all except the yellow bricks - and the old "Homestead", with the rear part chopped off, came again into our possession. ("Our doesn’t mean your mothers and mine. It means the Nevin Estate’s)

Father’s place - "our yard" - contained seven acres and ran from the Ft. Wayne railroad (double tracked) down to low water mark in the Ohio River. Next to us on the up river side was the J. Sharp McDonald place. To the west, down river, were the Murdochs, on the river bank and from Maple Lane (or "The Lane" as we then called it) to the railroad ran Pine Street.

It was in 1851 that Father bought from Rev. Charles Thorn two acres on the river bank where he lived till 1863, when he built the red brick house on the land adjoining to the east. This land he had bought from Rev. Joseph S. Travelli - his brother-in-law. He first bought, in 1858, two acres fronting on the river and in 1861, five acres on the railroad, making up the seven acres. In 1866 he sold the frame house he had been living in to Rev. D. R. Kerr and it was in that house that our next-door neighbors, the Murdochs, lived. In 1863, then, the red brick homestead was built by John McMillen, carpenter and contractor. That was during the Civil War, you remember. "On to Richmond!" was the cry in the North, while General McClellan went on drilling the Army of the Potomac and would not move. Father laid out a path from the house to the northwest corner of this lot, at the railroad crossing and halfway down, he divided the path and carried it around both sides of a big elm tree. (The elm is still there, and a bit of the path). His neighbors said to Father that if General McClellan should never reach the house. He’d be unable to decide on which side to pass the elm tree! That part of the property in front of the house and along the railroad was considerably lower than the rest and sometimes, in the spring or late winter the ground next to Pine Street would be overflowed and covered with ice.

Here there was a pocket of blue clay that was fine for modeling, making dishes, etc. There weren’t many trees to the front of the house, just a line of tulip trees and maples along the front fence, a bunch of willows near the northeast corner and two big elms, both of which are still there. The rest of the place was pretty thickly planted with trees that Father set out himself, - buckeyes, water maples, lindens, larches, evergreens, etc. - and one white birch that he was especially fond of, at the head of the path to the "little gate." At the "big gate" where the Lane ended, there stood two tall Lombardy poplars, one at either side. When the place was laid out in lots, in 1904, Mr. McDonald told me that more than sixty of Father’s trees were cut down. Then there was the apple orchard, between the house and the river - I’ll come to that later. Between our lot and the railroad tracks there was a 30 foot street - Way Street - along which the McDonalds had to drive to reach their entrance. Locust trees grew along this street next to the tracks and tramps used to loaf around a fire among those trees. There was a narrow board walk along the fence an one also along the Pine Street fence where the ground dipped quite sharply from the Lane. Years later, and long after Father’s death we had a lawsuit with the railroad over Way Street. Nobody knew much about the exact location of the property line. Nobody except old J. Sharp McDonald. He was interested with us in the suit and was desperately hunting for witnesses who would be familiar with the landmarks. He said to me "Migosh! Frankie, I wish your father was alive for about fifteen minutes! He knowed about it all!"

The map I have drawn shows how the house was placed, and how the drives went around it. From the Lane to the house and around the pear-shaped "circle" it was of gravel, but around the house and down to the "little gate" the road and path were "tar walks" - the first of the kind that I ever saw. Fine, we thought, for roller skating and, later, for bicycles. There were lots of out buildings, coal house, ice house, wash house and stable. Just back of the "scullery" (which joined on behind the kitchen) and across the driveway was the coal house on the roof of which I always dried my walnuts in the fall. Next to the coal house was the ice house. It had a ground floor room over the ice pit with a big square hole in the middle over which was a windlass or winch with cog wheels and handles for raising the cakes of ice. It was great fun, in the summer time, to jump down barefooted onto the cool sawdust to bury the watermelon where it would get well chilled for tomorrow’s dinner. The ice pond about 75 or 100 feet square, was right across the drive from the ice house. Father built it in 1879. William Reno scooped it out and Robert Little "puddled" it with blue clay dug from our own lot, down near the little gate. The puddling was about six inches thick, and was a big job. When Robert Little had finished it, my nephew, Will Nevin ("Button" - my brother Alex’s boy), then three years old, came over to inspect the job. He turned the hose on it and proceeded to wash out ten or twelve feet of the clay. I wasn’t around when his grandfather discovered this. Anyhow, the puddling proved leaky and Father had the whole pond, bottom and sides, bricked - the water coming in through a standpipe in the middle. The ice when cut was slid across into the ice-house and packed in sawdust - but not untill all of us boys, and girls, had thoroughly skated on it for some weeks. Were there germs in those days? I don’t know.

Continuing around by the drive you came to the stable, a long red two story building - horse stalls at one end, carriage house next, then the cow stable with chicken house behind it and the cow yard reaching nearly to the river bank. Upstairs, the hayloft was above the stalls, with holes where the hay was thrown down to the horses. Across the hayloft, under the roof, were two beams along which we would climb for a breathtaking jump down onto the springy hay. Over the carriage house was a big, more or less empty room containing some old corn chopping machines, discarded furniture, etc., and, at one end a big wooden hopper full of oats which flowed down to the horses’ mangers when a gate was opened below. To climb up and sit on the edge of this big hopper and speculate on how you would smother to death in the oats if you should fall in was always pleasant recreation. Over the cow stable was a room appropriated by me as a carpenter shop, though what I ever actually carpentered there I don’t just recall. I remember more clearly a bees’ nest under the eaves and some exiting fight with the bees, I aided and abetted by my small black and tan terrier "Jot" who frantically tried to bite the crawling bees without getting his lips stung. With his lips drawn back he looked as if he were laughing. We used this room several times to give circuses in. A horizontal bar or "turning pole" made up the equipment or paraphernalia. Admission, two pins. The way to the stable roof was out through the second story door of this carpenter shop, up over the top of the door onto the eaves. The purpose in going was simply to enjoy the view while you carved your initials on the ridge pole.

The only cellar was under the carriage house. Here the apple crop was stored in wide bins, one above the other, along the walls. The cellar door was never locked and we boys firmly believed that an apple every once in a while kept the doctor away. There were always four horses in the box stalls. First, there was "Minnie", white and very old. She was the first in my recollection though I often heard Mother speak of two that ante-dated old "Min" and were named "Peace" and "Plenty." Then there were two bay horses, "Sam Weller" and "Dick Swiveller" (Father was fond of his Dickens). The fourth stall was occupied by a fat "buckskin" mare, "Nellie". Minnie was the first horse we ventured to ride upon. I never rode Sam or Dick, but later Father bought a pair of orans in their place which he named "Hans" and "Paul" for the two Reibisch boys, friends of my brother Herbert, in Dresden. A memorandum book of Father’s shows that he paid $600.00 for them, in 1881. Hans was a single-footer and as easy as a rocking horse. He was a practical joker too. One night he broke out of his stall, sauntered over to the cow stable and picked up Onyx’s calf with his teeth and gave it a shaking. (Onyx was one of the four or five Alderneys that Father always had - or maybe three or four.) The calf carried the marks of Hans’s teeth on either side of her back bone all the rest of her life.

Did I mention the wash-house which stood just back of the ice-house? It was floored with tile and equipped with fixed washtubs (three of them) of thick white porcelain. That was before the days of iron enameled "porcelain." (One of those laundry trays is still in service in the laundry of 712 Maple Lane, formerly "The Cottage"). Keep on past the stable and corn crib and you come to the river bank. The corn crib floor had cracks about an inch wide between the floor boards - for ventilation. When Jot was a puppy I put him in the corn crib and he was too badly scared to walk. He lay with his feet sprawled wide apart to keep from falling through those cracks.

Reaching the river bank you turned to the right and walked along the edge till you came to the "Old Stable" yard, in the corner next to the Murdoch place. The river front measured close to 500 feet. The edge of the bank was many feet further out then and was lined with a row of big locust trees some of which were always leaning far out and ready to fell as the bank caved away. You have seen the bank. I suppose it is 75 feet high. The only path down to the beach was just back of the cow yard, on the McDonald line, a sort of ravine, full of locusts. It was known as "Wheelbarrow Alley". We boys went down most anywhere though. We were usually in too big a hurry to make use of the "Alley." There is a short street now, running from Maple Lane to the river bank right at Wheelbarrow Alley. It lies one half on our property and one half on the McDonald lot, so you can locate the site of the stable by that. This street runs right where the stable formerly stood; the long red stable, I mean.

We have now, in imagination, walked around to the "Old Stable". (In actual practice we always ran through the orchard, by a trail or path that ran diagonally from our back porch).

"The Old Stable!" Now we are on hallowed ground! Here was the center of all of our activities. Here we reigned supreme. It had formerly been called the White Stable, but that was before my time. When Father lived in the Murdoch house, before the red brick was built, this stable, I suppose, had some connection with that place. In all the years that I knew and loved it, it was abandoned for all practical purposes and was taken over by the younger generation. It was nearly square, the part toward the river in somewhat ruinous condition, below and above, and standing open to the breeze. There were the remains of painted inscriptions here and there, partly legible, dating from the reign of my older brothers. Two of the ground floor rooms were finished and ceiled and contained a kitchen range. In these my sister Mame (Your Aunt Mary Booth) and her girl friends had kept house, cooked meals and given parties. "Riverside Villa" they called it. I have one of their dinner invitations in an old scrap-book, addressed to "Mr. T. H. Nevin." It must be dated about 1873. Following the heyday of Riverside Villa came the reign of "our crowned." We ran largely to secret societies and gymnasiums. My earliest recollection of the place is of a solemn conclave held by three or four of us in an unfloored room in the second story where we sat astride the joists and gazed in silence at a red painted wooden arrow which was nailed to an upright staff in the middle of the room "The Red Spear" was the name of the Society - and that is all I remember about it. I suppose I must have been five or six years old. Later followed more ambitious - if not more mystical organizations which met in a long dark room at the head of the steep narrow stairs. You had to jump down a few feet to get into the lodge-room, ("Meeting room," we called it). I wonder who designed that building! He certainly had an eye to the requirements of youngsters. Floors at different levels, mysterious trap doors here and there - ‘n’ everything! - All the cracks in the walls of the meeting room were carefully sealed up that no light might get in. There were no windows. When light was needed you threw open the small square door at the end of the room which gave out onto - nothing. It was a pretty stiff jump excepting in the spring when the mud was soft. In this dark and mysterious room we held the initiations, patterned after that of the "Centipedes" in Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s "Story of a Bad Boy." We really followed it pretty closely. I remember one red-headed initiate who whimpered audibly during part of the performance. Our membership was small and select (like the small-pox funeral). Never over six or eight, I should say-mostly Murdochs. The name of the Society? Various and sundry. You see there were frequent changes, for a member now and then got "mad" at the bunch and deserted, which made a change of name necessary, to preserve secrecy. The name was never spoken - only the initials. "C.S.T.A." was one. I’ve no idea now what the letters stood for. One of the highest sounding ones was "Mystic Heroes of Sewickley" - "M.H.S." to the general. (Don’t laugh!) I went down to see Dr. Bittinger of the Presbyterian Church and learned from him the Greek equivalents of M.H.S. which we entered in the Proceedings of the Society, together with the Constitution and By-Laws - but we never attained much proficiency in Greek. "M.H.S." was good enough for everyday use. I don’t remember how often we met or why - or what we did - except to sit in the twilit lodgeroom and talk in low whispers. There was an official position for every member but one, from Grandmaster down through Secretary and Treasurer, filled by election at stated intervals. The unfortunate member who temporarily held no office was called the "chairman" because he set in the lone chair at the end of the line. That is what we thought "chairman" meant. Not the Ku Klux Klan nor the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine and anything on us as we sat there in the darkened chamber, each member a Knight with a resounding name.

I wish I could remember them all. "The Knight of the Flaming Sword"; "The Knight of the Mystic River"; The Knight of the Winged Horse", are samples. The rest I forget. We carried these tremendous titles without cracking a smile - we "mystic heroes"! I had so much secret society when I was kid, followed by my Greek letter fraternity (Delta Kappa Epsilon) at College that I was fed up on it and have never felt drawn to masonry on any of the secret orders since.

Following the era of pass-word and countersign came the physical culture craze - though we didn’t it by that name. "Muscle worship," you might call it. Though we were constantly on the go, all day long, busy with baseball, shinny, skating or swimming, in season, we felt the need of "regular exercise"; took up Indian clubs, boxing (with homemade gloves), running and jumping. I would get up before six o’clock in the morning, meet Alex Adair or one of the Murdochs (Heaven knows how early Alex must have risen!) and run off a measured mile around the pear-shaped "circle" of our driveway. Then "a cold shower, a rub-down and a hearty breakfast" - so the training directions ran. Sister Lide gave me a rough, unbleached Turkish towel for my rub. We realized though that what we needed to keep us fit was a gymnasium. Naturally we turned to the Old Stable, and there, to our hand, was the long dirt-floored room under our old "meeting room." It required only the tearing down of some old cow stalls, the rooting up of some heavy stones and the leveling off in preparation for the layer of sawdust. For some reason we called it the "room" - tho’ why the "i", I can’t say. Perhaps to distinguish it from our former room upstairs. We worked at the job like nailers, for weeks, after school hours - Hugh, Dave and Floyd Murdoch, Alex Adair and I. Hugh dropped out, "mad" and the remaining four of us, when the gym was completed, organized the "S.J.A. and S." Sewickley Junior Athletes and Sportsmen! The four members were designated by letter - Dave was "S", I was "J", Floyd "A" Alex "and S". The room was kept under padlock and each of us carried a key. Inside, the sawdust covered floor - two windows on the west wall and one to the north "glazed" with oiled wrapping paper. There was a turning pole where one cow stall had been and beside it a pair of swinging rings. Our prize bit of equipment was the ladder that was nailed to the ceiling - along which you traveled by hand, raising the worst blisters you ever saw. In the center of the roomi we planted a stout timber post to strengthen the ceiling. Before setting this up we solemnly buried under it a bottle containing a paper with our names, the name of the Society, date of its organization - October 11th, 1879, etc. How do I remember the date? Well, you know, certain important dates always stick in one’s memory. Like 1066, 1492, 1776, etc. Years after, in 1886 to be exact, the Old Stable was torn down and I dug up the bottle, took out the paper, sent it around to the former members to be re-signed - and then buried it again in the same location, where I suppose it remains to this day. (We were always burying something or other - I’ll take that up later). Outside, near the river bank, we put up a flying-horse, a big plank with a hole in the center, revolving on a post and well daubed with axle-grease. And how sick some of the younger kids got when they rode on it! We never seemed to lack boards or planks or posts as we needed them. Father apparently had plenty of building material lying about, ready to hand. Then, always there was "Old Man Harbaugh’s" board pile, down the Lane, to draw upon. We considered lumber public property, like fruit.

But, I mustn’t let the Old Stable crowd everything else off the map. There was The River. Seems to me we spent our entire summer and fall on, in, or at the river. The first swim of the season - about the middle of May - was a high spot, and the last one, in late September, equally an adventure. How our mothers stood it I don’t know. I never was made conscious of any fear or worry caused by my swimming or rowing. Sometimes there were rules about the number of times per day - or week - that I might "go in" - but even then it was permissible to indulge in extras, called "ducks", merely for cleanliness - so called. And it wasn’t so cleansing either, as I remember it. Sometimes there would be oil on the surface. Then you would wade out up to your neck and stand there till you had collected a black oily ring. Wading in a bit toward shore you would acquire a second ring a couple of inches down - and so on till you were ringed from neck to ankles. Then for an Indian dance on the beach! Our soles were like shoe leather for we ran barefoot all summer - excepting on Sundays. To get (most of) the oil off meant quite a prolonged and vigorous rubbing with sand and mud and a final dash into the water and out again.

The best Indian game though was played on the mud flats on the other side of the river opposite Osburn Station. We would smear our bodies with the black mud and then draw with our fingers white designs, skulls , cross-bones and the like, after which we proceeded to howl and dance about like young devils, chasing each other and throwing fat tadpoles that hit you with a plop. It was easy to cross the river in the summer. It wasn’t a long swim when the river was low and up at the Riffle, at Osburn, I have crossed there on horseback, which would of course be impossible now since the system of government dams has been built.

Sometimes on rainy days, we would undress in the Old Stable and slide down the bank for a swim. Sed revocare gradum! Hic difficile - erat. You’d get almost up to the brink - then slip, or some fellow would push you, and you’d slither halfway back to the beach and of course have to go to the river again to wash off the mud. Swimming and rowing! We were at it all summer. In those days there were great lumber rafts in the river, floated down from the upper Allegheny. A beautiful sight it was, to our eyes, one of those big rafts, like a floating island, quietly drifting down with the current. Two big sweeps at the front and two behind, for steering, with a board wigwam in the middle, the living quarters of the half dozen rough lumber men in charge. Great sport and excitement it was to swim out and clamber aboard, to run up and down on the clean pine boards, and dive off before it had carried you too far down stream. Our village side-walks were made of planks from those rafts, "seconds", bought cheap I suppose, because they had the auger holes in them where the stakes had been driven to hold the raft together.

Then there was old Stevenson’s scow to swim from - if he wasn’t around. The old flat that he pulled around, wading up to his waist and picking up the big round stones that he sold "up in town" as paving or cobble stones. Stevenson was an old crab and you didn’t dare to swim off his scow if he was about. He would steal your clothes - besides giving you a bawling out. One summer evening, about dusk, I heard a faint whistle outside my window. Looking out, I saw one of the fellows, Fred Bright, stark naked, beckoning to me. Old Stevenson had caught him and grabbed his clothes and Fred had to stick around on the beach the rest of the afternoon till it was dark enough to venture up to our house and get me to lend him something to go home in. "Brighty" thought nothing of diving from the deck of a steamboat or from the top bucket of the stern wheel. The edge of an empty barge was my limit - about six feet. Everybody made use of the river as a pleasure ground in those days. There were the politer swimming parties, where all appeared in bathing suits of very modest pattern. My older sisters and their friends - mostly cousins, would go in and of course we kids, too. The men would dress in the stable and we’d all go down via Wheelbarrow Alley. The river was a real circumstance in our lives then. Even when we boys weren’t swimming we played on the beach, dug for springs, caught crawfish, made selections of queer looking stones, fossils that we called "coral" (maybe they were) and picked up "keel" that came in handy for writing on board fences and elsewhere. (I wonder what that yellow and red "keel" was! We hadn’t any scout masters to tell us.)

My earliest memories of the river are associated with the jo-boats that floated down with the opening of spring. Particularly those that carried a tin-type "gallery" where, in charge for your dog.) I have two or three of those old tin types yet. You, Margaret and Henry, have seen them. Each was paid for by a year’s savings of scrap iron collected here and there and stored in the Old Stable. Sometimes you’d get instead of your tin-type, a bit of pressed glassware, say a pair of salt cellars in the shape of swans or elephants or something graceful like that - over which your mother of course enthused when you displayed them. The jo-boat man fixed the price of the old iron and you took whatever he said, for it. Judging from the tin-type portraits I should say that I dabbled in this form of merchandising at a very early age - say six years, or thereabouts. We Had never heard the word "kidnap" and apparently our parents hadn’t either. And yet - why did we run and hide when we saw a covered wagon? "Gypsies! They’ll take you!" - and we would hot-foot it for home. The last time I was in one of those river jo-boats was in the spring of 1907, just before the big flood began, when I bought those willow rustic porch chairs we still have. The jo-boatmen had just brought north his stock of chairs that he had spent the winter making down in the south. -- (And I haven’t yet said a word about rowing - and my! my! how these "memoirs" are running on! I began them a good while ago and am having a lot of fun writing them. I wonder if you youngsters will be at all interested.) Well then - still in the chapter on "The River" - sub-title - "Rowing".

The first row-boat I ever had was home-made. So was the second, for that matter. The first one was not originally intended to be a boat, though it was shaped something like one - flat bottomed, one board high at the sides and a turn up at either end. It lay in our cellar and Mother used to ripen Bartlett pears in it. The cellar window proved just large enough for us to slide it out. Then, of course, we carried it out to the Old Stable where we drove a few extra nails in the bottom, caulked it with cotton and smeared the underside with tar. A pair of oar locks nailed to either side - and a pair of oars chopped out of a couple of palings that we tore from Old Man Harbaugh’s fence - and the "Skiff" was complete. (Half the crowd said "skift".) Next, we slid it down over the bank to the beach, pulling out most of the cotton caulking en route. You’d suppose it would never have floated, but it did - and without leaking so very much either, after the water had swelled the boards. How three of us managed to travel about in it at one time is hard to understand. We rowed across the river, ‘n’ everywhere. Those rough-hewn oars were terrors. I carried a "bealed" finger half the summer from a blister those oars produced. (An "infected sore" it would be called now.) Our next boat was much better both in design and construction. Hugh Murdoch and I built it on a foundation of an old "working-boat" that we picked up somewhere. It was pointed, bow and stern, had a sliding seat and out riggers - with real oars. We painted it blue. It was a boat, but very tippy and unsteady. Nevertheless it carried three people too, on occasion - when we crossed the river for walnuts. One of us would row across with the combined clothes and the bags for the walnuts. Then he would come back and get the other two of us who would sit astride bow and stern with our feet in the water to steady the boat and avoid accident. Once across, we put on our clothes, pulled the boat into the willows and set out for the walnut trees. The return trip, with the walnuts was made in the same manner. Regular fox and goose stunt. We worked hard for our fun!

"Gillie’s skiff" was our real stand-by. A real skiff. Jim Gilmore, older than we, and one of my sister Mame’s crowd, was most good natured and frequently loaned us the keys. The river, from the wing dam at the Riffle, down to Dead Manis Island, opposite Edgeworth was our Kingdom. That wing dam, by the way, didn’t run across the river but, starting below Middletown (Coraopolis) it ran downstream from some distance, its purpose and being, I suppose, to force more water into the channel at that point and deepen it over the riffle.

When the fall came along and even the winter, we didn’t desert the river. The beach was strewn with driftwood and often on cold blustery afternoons we would build big fires and roast potatoes. We didn’t need salt to make them taste good. The quarter inch or so of charcoal, too, was good for the teeth. Then with the winter came the skating. I have seen the river frozen over but don’t remember ever skating on it then. The best skating was up opposite Osburn, back of the wing dam, but it was hard to get to. Usually the ferry wouldn’t be running at that season. There was apt to be plenty of more or less rough skating along the beach though, and I remember, once, skating clear to Economy that way.

But our regular skating ground was "Harbaugh’s Pond" which lay under the slope between the Lane and the railroad. It’s mostly filled in now. The old locust tree is still there, where we used to put on our skates - (when we didn’t put them on at home in the kitchen and clump down to the pond on them). I wore boots in the winter time (before I was ten) and they got pretty stiff in spite of the tallow I rubbed into them. Well do I remember the sores and scabs on my ankle bones that the skate straps made! (Ever hear of copper-toed shoes? I wore them - ditto boots). I used to hear tales of the Ice Carnivals on the Pond in earlier days; of night skating parties, with torches and costumes. Some of the spangles and other remains of fancy dress still lay up in our attic. I remember a big Greek helmet made of tin with a flowing plume of horse hair.

The pond furnished sport in the summer time too - and plenty of frog music in the spring. (Probably that was where our mosquitoes came from. Every bed in the house had a hook in the ceiling above it from which hung a mosquito bar that reached to the floor and covered the whole bed.) I remember once, when I must have been a very small boy, getting stuck on a raft out in the middle of the pond with my pole so fast in the clay that I couldn’t pull it out. - - Going back to the river again for a moment - none of us was ever drowned strange to say. But once some of us had a narrow escape. We were out in Gillie’s skiff, four or five of us, and it had grown dark before we started to row home. We heard a towboat coming up the river and hurried to cross in front of it. It proved to be much nearer than we had supposed, and the first thing we knew we saw the front of the tow of barges almost on us - we could see the white water dashing up. We rowed like mad and just cleared the tow amid the ringing of bells and the cursing of the captain who had almost run us down. A pretty tight squeak it was ! A regular game of ours was to row out to a passing towboat and pull into the waves just back of the wheel. I never saw a skiff upset in doing this - and it was great fun.

I haven’t quite finished The River yet. There were the steamboats, tow-boats and packets. The former took the big coal fleets downstream and pushed up the empty barges from the South, great tows of sixteen or more, like a big island. The packets were passenger and freight carriers and were our special pets with their high decks trimmed with fancy woodwork painted white and the "texas" and pilot house on top. We collected the names of the boats (just as you, Henry, collect the names of Pullman cars.) We knew them all and some of the boys (though not I) could tell the name of most any boat, before it came in sight around the bend, just by the whistle or even by the way it puffed. Once in a great while a boat would come up from the lower river, below Cincinnati - or even from the Mississippi. Then there would be great excitement! And when a boat landed (at the floor of Chestnut Street, if it was a packet) we loved to go aboard, up the gangplank and among the real southern darky roustabouts, to be chased off with a rush when the starting bell sounded.

Sometimes, during low water, a towboat would tie up for weeks along the beach somewhere, furnishing us with a grand swimming place. That was our opportunity for diving. Ordinarily, the best we could do in that line was to swim out to some well-known sunken log or snag where the water would be, maybe, up to your waist as you stood on the log and over head on either side of it. Gradually the Government cleared away all of the sunken logs, to make navigation safer. The boat that did the work was a somewhat rare visitor and its coming always aroused great interest. It had a double hull which enabled it to ride over a snag or sawlog and raise it from the river bottom by chains and grappling irons. This boat was named "U.S. Lighthouse Tender Lily." "Tender Lily" I always thought a sweetly pretty name. It was not till years later that I realized that the snag-boat "Lily" was simply a government lighthouse tender, that is, it attended to the shore lights that the boats steered by, at night!

At the foot of Chestnut Street was Lashell’s Ferry. Mr. Lashell lived, on the other side, in a stone house, back from the river, long since torn down. The skiff ferry was operated by old "Mr. Jolly" who sat sideways as he rowed, so that he could spit easily into the water. Ten cents it would cost you to cross over and back. For horses and wagons there was the big flat that required two men manage. Later it was operated by pulling on a wire cable that ran across on the bottom of the river and came up and ran over pulleys on the flat. Back about 1880 and for several seasons, there was a regular Monday Picnic held at Rock Spring, about two-thirds of the way up the hill - now overlooking the end of the bridge. The Monday picnickers were my oldest sister’s ("Sister Lide’s") "crowd" (tho’ they didn’t call themselves a "crowd"). No special arrangements were made for these affairs. It was just understood that on each Monday at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, some or all would report at Rock Spring, bringing baskets of food. This was enough, of course, for us kids, and we never forget to attend. Nor did "Jot", my black and tan dog. Now, you may believe this or not, but it is actually true. Jot knew Monday as well as any of us. You see, he regularly spent his Sundays with a family up at Osburn, named Bakewell, and Monday was the day after. See? On Monday morning then, after taking a squint at the sky and a hasty glance at the barometer to see if the weather conditions were favorable, Jot would trot down to the ferry and wait till Mr. Jolly crossed over for some passenger when he would jump into the skiff and go along. He evidently enjoyed his morning in the woods for when the picnic crowd arrived in the afternoon Jot would be at the beach to welcome crowd arrived in the afternoon Jot would be at the beach to welcome us, covered with Spanish needles and stickers, his nose and paws muddied from digging and smelling for woods animals. He did this trick repeatedly. Old Jolly would say "The little black dog crossed with me this morning." After the picnic supper the whole party usually climbed up to the "Camel" at the top of the hill, and sang for an hour or two. The "Camel" isn’t there anymore and the hill is no longer called the "Camelback." There were two trees side by side out in the open, up at the top of the hill. One was tall, the other one short, and both were covered with a thick growth of wild grapevine. It looked very much like a camel, seen from our side of the river and to preserve the likeness the older girls used to prune and trim it occasionally. Returning home, about half past nine, or ten o’clock it was a job to find Jot and sometimes we had to cross without him. That meant that he had to swim the river - quite a tiring job, after you had raced through the woods all day. One night, returning in Gilly’s skiff, instead of the ferry, we heard a splashing near the barges or flats tied up below the landing, and there was Jot, almost exhausted, vainly trying to climb up into the driftwood that had collected there. Another time - and this is a true story too - Jot found the passenger packet "Katie Stockdale", pulled up at the foot of Chestnut Street and, I suppose, taking it for a new kind of ferry boat, he went aboard. That was the last we heard of him for weeks. Jot was lost! It seems the captain had wanted to throw him off but some passengers took a fancy to him, adopted him - or he them - and took him along to Cincinnati and back again to Pittsburgh. Jot was full of engaging tricks and fond of showing them off, so he quickly mad a place for himself in his new surrounding. Some weeks later a Sewickley man happening to see him in his East End home said "Why that is Jot Nevin!" and the result was that we got him back again, to the great sorrow of his new owners. Jot evidently enjoyed the experience for he tried to do it again. He ran up the gang-plank another time when the Stockdale landed but I was there and yelled to the roustabouts who threw him off into the river. Now that we are on Dogs, I’d better mention "Rab" and "Police." Rab dated back as far as I can remember. A solemn-faced old black and tan, gray about the mouth. He was a lot older than I. I remember when I was away from home one summer, nine years old at the time, I wrote letter to the Rab the same as I did to the other members of the family. That’s Rab sitting on the chair beside me in the ol jo-boat tin-type - and beside me on the sofa in another one. Jot came much later, say 1880. His full name was Jonathan France Nevin, after a hotel man who gave him to my brother Alex. Then there was "Police" (1883) a big, awkward, ugly-looking but good natured bindle bull dog. He lived in the stable - Jot in the house, - but there was no social barrier between them on that account. Jot was as many years old as Police was months and about half his size. The bull pup was big and husky and when I would get the two pulling at either end of a rubber (or "gumshoe" as we called it), Police would shake little Jot clear off his feet and, backing away, would drag him all about the place. Police had no elegant parlor tricks but he loved to jump into the river and swim out for a stick you would throw for him. This became a passion with him - an obsession. I have gone out to the river-bank and looking down, I have seen Police hard at work hauling driftwood for his own amusement. He was so strong that he could hold a big stick out of the water as he swam to shore with it. He didn’t pile his lumber in regular fashion, as the Burma elephants do their teakwood. He just dropped it anywhere on shore and dashed in for another piece.

What finally became of Rab, Jot or Police I never knew. There were no automobiles to run them down, they just disappeared - that was all.

Supper time was 5:30 P.M. and that meant long summer evenings for play. Frequently Father would take some of the family for an evening drive or for a longer one on a Saturday afternoon, out Little Sewickley or Big Sewickley Creek, or maybe to Economy. The Big Sewickley Creek road, that part that runs along the creek bottom, was a terror to me when I was very small. I didn’t enjoy it when the horses splashed into the water and the road seemed to disappear. Father knew and loved every bit of the country round about Sewickley and he was very fond of his horses. He enjoyed nothing so much as those drives. The long summer evenings are most strongly associated in my mind with The Lane. That was our evening play-ground. No macadam or asphalt in those days, you remember, just a nice soft dirt road, easy on barefeet. There were no houses on the Lane then, excepting four back on the riverbank and one at the corner of Pine Street that I’ll tell about later. It was the first of the row to be built on that side. From it there ran a four board fence clear to Chestnut Street, and inside the fence was "Harbough’s field," where we played shinny in the fall and coasted in the winter. (We climbed up on the hill above Hopkins Street to cut our shinny stocks. That was a long country ramble for us.) I wonder why we called the shinny goals "haleys". I never see the word nowadays. Supper over, I made a dash for the Lane to join the crowd. To this day I can remember that surge of spring-time feeling. As I ran out to the "big gate" between the tall arbor vitae hedges that screened the garden on one side and the cottage on the other, while the robins and song sparrows sang. I felt as if I’d fairly burst if I didn’t squeal and jump like a young colt, to relieve the pressure. After much preliminary yelling and bickering for positions a game of ball would be started and this usually lasted till dark. Frequently the Lane would be pre-empted by the older boys and we kids had to be content to sit on the fence and keep score by cutting notches in the top rail. After the game the whole crowd, players and spectators, would adjourn to the river for a swim. One of the older boys was rather a nut and was a good deal picked upon by the rest. He was almost sure to find his shirt and underwear tied in hard knots when he came out to dress, the knots made harder to untie by being thoroughly wet. Then, as he used his teeth on them the cry would go up "Green apples are ripe and ready to bite, Chawbeef!" A refined, pretty game - what?

We played other games than baseball in the Lane. When we were a bit smaller, "sockball" was our favorite. It would take too long to describe it, but it was a prime favorite.

I have mentioned the house in the corner of "Harbaugh’s field," now the first one in the row. Mr. Harbaugh fixed it up for his daughter Sophronia ("Aunt Fronc" - you knew her) after she married my brother Alex, in 1875. The front part he built new, but the back part he brought on rollers from Chestnut Street at the railroad crossing where it had formed the rear end of old "Pop" Howard’s store and residence. "Pop" was a stout old gray-haired darky who kept a candy store and barber shop - the only barber shop in the village. Mother sent me one day - when I was a spry little kid - up Chestnut Street to Mrs. Somebody’s to buy two cents’ worth of yeast (it didn’t come in cakes then - you brought it home in a little tin pail). That left me with twenty-three cent change - and Pop Howard’s candy store to get past with it. I hate to tell it, but I came away with twenty-three cents worth of cocoanut candy, in pink and white strips - at least Pop gave me all that was left in the box. I sat in the gutter and ate it all - but I didn’t get away with it. It made me so sick that I have never cared for cocoanut since. I think, now, that Pop Howard should have had a share of my punishment that followed. Well - Mr. Harbaugh, as I said, cut off the rear part of Pop’s house, leaving the dining room with the one wall missing - like a scene on a stage. Coming home from school one day, before the room closed in, I saw the Howard family at dinner. The apple that I threw landed on the dining room table in the midst of the dishes and I arrived home just about two jumps ahead of Pop Howard’s big son.

But I am getting away from my subject and these "notes" are running away with me. I had no idea in the beginning of ever drawing them out to this extent. I am a little ashamed too, for it looks as though I thought the chronicle of some importance. Of course it is not and maybe you won’t be interested enough to read it this far. But the writing of it, at odd times, during the winter of 1923-24, has amused me considerably, bringing back as it has, vivid recollections of earlier days when Sewickley was much more of a country village than it is now.

I have mentioned The Cottage. You know it still by that name though it has a second story and attic and to most people it is merely "No. 712 Maple Lane." Your mother and I went to housekeeping there when we were married, and you, [?], just born there. When the plan of lots was laid out in 1904, the Cottage was moved to its present location some 165 feet to the south of where it originally stood. The extension of Maple Lane runs right over the spot where it formerly stood. The other frame house (No. 718 Maple Lane) that was built about 1890, was moved about 50 feet to make room for the Cottage. Aunt Martha Bell, mother’s sister, lived in the Cottage, down by the big gate, when I was a very small boy. She was sort of a foster mother to me and took complete charge when Father, Mother, and Sister Lide went to Europe in the summer of 1872. Some of my earliest and dimmest recollections are connected with the Cottage. The McKnight family lived there for about fifteen years. Father built the second story to accommodate their growing needs in the spring of 1884, just before his death which occurred on April 30th of that year.

The tall arbor vitae hedges on either side of the road at the big gate made a dark entrance to our place that I used to hurry through pretty fast when I happened to come home a bit late in the evening. It was dark coming up the walk from the little gate too, at the upper end, that is. I was coming up there, under the trees one dark night when I tripped and fell over a cow that was lying across the path. She and I both got up hurriedly - but I was the only one that ran.

I haven’t said much about the apple orchard, excepting that the path to the Old Stable lay through it. It was a big orchard with many varieties of apples - sheep’s nose, golden gate brambo, maiden blush and a lot more that I don’t know the names of. The July apple tree was located conveniently near to the Old Stable. Mother made great quantities of apple butter every fall. Old Mrs. Scott came to stir it in the copper kettle over the open fire by the coal house. We all helped to pare and quarter the apples and they filled a barrel. You don’t see those mechanical apple-paring machines nowadays - do you? You fastened it to a table and turning the handle the apple revolved and a knife passed around it. Gallons and gallons of apple butter - I’d be afraid to say how many were made, enough to supply the families of my married brothers as well as our own. Bread was baked in a big oven built in between the kitchen and scullery with the oven door beside the kitchen range. Wood was burned in there till it was good and hot; then the ashes were scooped out and the loaves put in. Mother has told me how once she had just drawn out a baking of twenty-six loaves when a troop train stopped in front of the place. (This was during the Civil War). She took the whole baking down to the train and gave it to the soldiers.

The big time for baking, and for cooking in general, was Christmas. It was the custom for many years to have a Christmas Eve party of all the relatives at our house, and in those days the Nevin and Irwin relatives were legion. I suppose there must have been upwards of fifty invited. The girl cousins would gather at our house days in advance, to bake cakes and pies, to make chicken salad and other eats and to trim the rooms - and the tree. (Chicken salad and Christmas were always closely associated in my mind.) The "big double parlor with the sliding doors between the two rooms, was kept mysteriously closed, for some special surprise was always prepared, with greatest secrecy. The tree of course was the central feature, with the distribution of presents, to each guest after his kind. Sometimes a Christmas ballad was read by some one behind the scenes, with accompanying tableaux and music. Such cheery bits as "The Mistletoe Bough", for instance, with Bob Nevin and me, in the final scene, gazing into the opened chest where the skeleton of the long deceased bride had been discovered. Cousins John and Nellie Nevin had been recently married and they took the chief roles. One year, Father’s brother, Uncle William Nevin, came from Lancaster unbeknownst to all but the chief plotters. Dressed as Santa Clause, he distributed the presents, not disclosing his identity - till the fun was over. The Nevin Octet sang on these occasions; eight Nevin men led by Cousin John Nevin. The Octet had more than a family reputation. They occasionally gave public concerts in the village and elsewhere. The very use of those sliding doors that I have mentioned was an event, for they were never drawn shut excepting at Christmas. It was under that archway that your Aunt Mary Booth was married, April 2nd, 1891.

The other large Nevin gathering of the year took place on the Fourth of July. We always had a big all-day family picnic out Little Sewickley Creek, composed of our family and the Nevins and Irwins who lived "Down the Road" - that is in what is now Edgeworth. Father would send our "hired man" with the wagon in the morning, to hold the grounds - and naturally I went along. The usual place for holding the picnic was where the oil well pumping station now is, beyond the stone bridge and just before you come to the old log house. These picnics were grand fun for us youngsters but they must have meant a lot of work for our elders, for there were two big meals to prepare and serve, dinner and supper, and dozens of us to feed. The creek furnished most of the fun. The boys went to the swimming hole and the girls and kiddies went wading. That old swimming hole by the sycamore tree was occasionally visited by us at other times during the summer. It was reputed to be "fifteen feet deep" - and probably has that reputation still.

"McDonald’s Grove" next door to our place, cut quite a figure in our lives. In the summer time the colored people of Sewickley held "bush meetings" there on Sunday afternoons, singing, praying and shouting loud enough to be heard a mile. I was mostly restricted to "our yard" on Sundays (so were the Murdochs to theirs) and I can hear no the hush of the summer Sunday afternoons - the only sound would be the mournful song of the turtle doves and the occasional crow of a rooster. The bush meetings livened things up quite a bit. I remember temperance meetings there too - during "Francis Murphy Movement", I suppose when the best known village drunkards would rise up and give their "experience", weep a bit and sign the pledge, to an accompaniment of hymns and approving shouts. With these exceptions, Sundays just verged on the dull. There were, of course, Sunday school and church in the morning and church again in the evening - a big mid-day dinner - and lethargy in the afternoon. It was some comfort to slip away to the garden and hold converse with the Murdoch boys through the picket fence. Once, when I was a wee bit kiddy, I ran away on a Sunday afternoon and called on the Colemans, brought home to a proper scolding. I was seldom whipped - tho’ I do remember a few painful occasions that we need not dwell upon. This Mr. Columbus Coleman, by the way, was a steamboat captain and once he brought Father a present from the South, a whole bunch of bananas, the first bananas I had ever seen. There were no refrigerator cars then, or fruits out of season. The seasons for the various fruits and berries began when they ripened at home. Our red and black raspberries grew in a plot to the east of the house, next to the McDonald hedge, and Mother used to pay us boys a cent a quart for picking them. Out in the Old Stable yard were the sour or Murillo cherries ("pie cherries" you Mother calls them) and seckel pears. We had no sweet cherries - but the Murdochs next door had - so what was the difference? I thought nothing of being discovered high up in one of Mr. Murdoch’s cherry trees while their family was yet at the breakfast table.

- But - I was telling you about Mr. McDonald’s Grove when the bush meeting interrupted me. Beside a few oaks, the grove contained a limited number of hickory and chestnut trees, and it never occurred to us boys that the nuts didn’t belong to us. In the fall, after a frost night, the early morning would see us over there busily gathering the nuts. Old Sharp McDonald told me, years later, that once when his man had beaten us to it he made him scatter the nuts over the ground again so that we kids might have our pickings.

And, speaking of "hired men" - I have a pocket memorandum book of Father’s, dated 1883, that contains the well-remembered names of some of ours: Tommy Branson, William Braxton, Henry Jackson, all darkies; Sam Sheppard, Reuben Merriman, and others. And what do you suppose they were paid? From $8.00 per month for the boy, Reuben, to $13.50 and $15.00 per month for the rest! And all that they had to do, besides making garden, picking the vegetables and working generally about the place, was to care for four horses, five cows and the chickens and to drive the family to church twice on Sundays!

The very first of these family servitors that I can remember were "Old Christo" and "Dutch John". There is a daguerreotype of Christo somewhere about our house today. I remember when he died, in the little room over the "scullery". Dutch John was a terror to my older brothers. He used to drive them out of his garden with German cuss words and was reputed to get drunk occasionally on vinegar. Driving the family to church, I have mentioned as one of the hired man’s jobs. The church vehicle was the "van", a big two-horse covered wagon with two deats running lengthwise behind that of the driver, on which the passengers sat facing each other. It held eight or ten, maybe more. Then for other occasions there were the carriage, and a larger one, the "big carriage", the buggy, the "Dexter spring" and the phaeton to which "Nell" was always driven. Lots of conveyances but nothing especially elegant about any of them.

It would seem that I am rather neglecting to comment upon the house itself in the "notes" - (which are expanding so outrageously). I have mentioned the double parlor and the kitchen. Well - across the central hall from the back parlor was the dining room and opposite the front parlor was the library. This last was our living-room (tho’ no one ever heard of a "living-room" then), with three book-cases or presses that reached up to the ceiling. Under each book-case was a sort of cupboard. The one next to the fireplace was mine and of course it was full of odds and ends of junk. Upstairs, Mother’s and Father’s room was over the back parlor, my sister Mame’s over the front parlor, Sister Lide’s over the library and the boys’ room over the dining room. From the upstairs hall you went down four steps to the bathroom which was over part of the kitchen and the passage way between kitchen and dining room. The rooms over the kitchen and the scullery were for the hired girl and the man. (I had never heard a hired girl called "the maid" till I was ‘most grown up). Then, over the front part of the house and up another flight of stairs was the attic; one large room and two smaller ones. While of course our attic did not have about it the romance and fascination of those New England ones that we read about, it did have its attractions, and I have always regretted that you two youngsters did not have a third floor in our Hopkins Street house to play and rummage in. My older brothers, then married and moved into houses of their own, had left many of their books behind and these were to be found in an old walnut book-case that stood in the little front attic room. Many an hour I spent there on the floor, reading "Oliver Optic", "Our Young Folks" (the predecessor of "St. Nicholas") Speke’s and Baker’s Travels in Africa, McKnight’s "Our Western Border" are such thrilling books. (I wonder what became of them all!) In the big room was a collection of loose Civil War numbers of Harper’s Weekly, of Our Boys and Firls, The Galaxy and other magazines. "The Galaxy" I never read but I did feast upon the Harpers Weeklies with their wood cuts and Thomas Nast’s cartoons. The attic hadn’t the romance of old spinning wheels and Revolutionary relics and costumes, but it was not without its charm. There was, to be sure, an old army musket. It had been my brother Will’s who died in the service in September 1862, a private in Hampton’s Battery.

The little room at the head of the attic stairs was furnished as a bedroom. (I remember the bed, with rope springs, also a queer sort of three-cornered washstand in the corner). Mother used to like to slip up there for a quiet nap or a good night’s sleep away from the rest of the family.

It must not be supposed, from all this talk of indoor and outdoor sports, that I didn’t go to school. Of course I did. And first to "Mrs. Mudies", which was held in the St. Stephens Sunday School building, a one-story frame, in the shape of a cross, which stood where the Episcopal Church now is. The little old frame church was next to Mr. Christy’s lot, about where the Parish House stands. The entire lot was surrounded by a paling fence, with boardwalks outside, and our play-ground, inside the fence, on Broad Street, was plenty large enough for our games, of which Black Man and Prisoners’ Base are the ones I remember best. I suppose I attended Mrs. Mudie’s school from about the age of six to nine. I know I was going there in 1876, for that summer I spent with Mother and Aunt Margaret Nevin in Minneapolis, visiting Aunt Martha Bell, and I remember telling Mrs. Mudie afterwards (rather boastfully, I fear) that I had seen the Minneapolis bridge that was pictured in our Geography.

Next came "The Sewickley Institute", presided over by Miss Polly Wilkins. This rather high-sounding seat of learning was under the rear end of Choral Hall, back of McElwain’s feed store, with the entrance by way of the alley from Broad Street. I suppose tht part of the rear of the Highway Shop and of Ohlman’s wall paper store occupy the space now. I don’t remember much about "The Sewickley Institute" now, except that I had my first Latin there. Miss Wilkins is clear in my recollection tho’, as is Mrs. Mudie, my first teacher. Then, about 1880, I starte to the "Public", entering Room 6, Class B., Miss Miller, teacher. (Miss Jane McDonald, your "Miss Jane," and Miss Wakeham were then teaching in Room 1.) From Room 6 I passed into Room 7 in 1881, where I was under John B. Ague, now a practicing physician in Beaver Falls. Finally, in 1883, I was graduated, after a year in Room 8, under Prof. O. H. Phillips, the School Principal. I believe there were only two in the class - Louise Wallace - now Dean of the American College, Constantinople - and myself. I know there were no Commencement exercises. There was no High School.

I don’t know how it happened that I was sent to the public school, when Mr. Way’s Academy, down by Sand Hill, had such a good reputation. A great many of my friends went there. We used to play base-ball with the Academy occasionally. THier ball field was about opposite where the Edgeworth Club now is. The outfield was farhter over near the ravine. Academy Avenue was not yet cut through. You went across lots and through a hole in the fence to reach the ball field.

One year, - probably 1878 or 9 - I was kept out of school - I have no idea why. I never asked. That year I studied German with my brother Herbert as teacher. He had spent the winter of 1876 in Germany with cousin Theodore W. Nevin, living with the Reibisch family in Dresden. Herb was full German and couldn’t help teaching - though I believe I did what I could to dicourage him. Just the same, being caught at an impressionable age, I did absorb some of his teaching and the little German I got then stood me in good stead later when in College.

In the fall of 1883 I entered as Freshman in the Class of 1887 at the Western University, now University of Pittsburgh but went there only one year. In April 1884, my father died, and Mother having talked College with Dr. Bittinger, decided that I shoud go to Williams. That meant tutoring in Latin and Greek, so I began in July with a young lawyer, William L. Pierce, who lived in the little house on Mr. Christy’s lot, next to the Catholic church, and in September 1886 I entered Williams College, with the Class of 1890.

It was about at the period of my preparations for College that the bicycle "came into my life" - maybe a year or two earlier. My first "wheel" was an iron tired, wooden-spoked, 36 inch bicycle. (All bicycles then had a big wheel in front and a little one behind). It had come almost to the junk pile after some years of service and several different ownerships. Another chap and I went partners and bought it for 90 cents and paid the blacksmith $1.25 to fix it up. On it we learned to ride - and the bicycle bug rode us from that time on. I craved a rubber tired wheel - also 36 inch - price $25.00. Father was persuaded, and bought it for me, I agreeing to repay him in one year’s time. I gave him a promissory note, payable one year from date and then, to earn money, I took the contract to pump the organ at the Presbyterian church for a year - salary $30.00. This I did - twice on Sundays and at chori practice Saturday evenings. At the end of my year’s service I was handed six five dollar gold pieces by Mr. George Cochran, the church treasurer, and immediately I gave Father the $25.00 for the bicycle. Father kept the money a while and then gave it back to me with my note across which he had written "Paid" - and the date. I can show you that note in my old scrap-book.

We rode everywhere on those bicycles - dusty roads, and all. I believe that when Frank and George Hutchinson, Wils Porter and I rode into Economy ours were the first bicycles that the Economites had ever seen. Later, I acquired a beautiful 50 inch Expert Columbia, which I took to College with me. I paid $127.50 for it and five years later, in my Senior year, just as the low "Safeties" were coming in, I sold it to the Williamstown barber for $75.00, plus free hair-cutting and shaving privilege for the rest of the term. That will do, about the Bicycle Days.

Going back a few years - just a word about our "entertainments". Of course you know we had no mivies in those days. Out entertainments were of the simplest character and mostly centered about the various churches in the village; strawberry festivals ("festibles", we called them) - suppers and the like. These were held in the Sunday school rooms or in summer time in somebody’s yard. Sometimes they were given in Choral Hall, over the shoe store of John Miller and McElwain’s feed store - where Christman’s upholstery and awning workroom is now located. We youngsters had high old times on these occasions with the price of a 50 cent supper and maybe 25 cents to spend in extras.

Lectures and concerts too were occasionally given in Choral Hall; four dollars the price of a whole course of lectures, the proceeds for the benefit of the Yong Mens’ Library. The lectures came oftener than anything else, I should say. I must have listened to a lot of them that passed in at one ear and smoothly out at the other - or over my head. "Temperance lectures" were the most common. At the close we would usually march up in single file and sign the pledge "never to us whisky as a beverage". As to exactly what was meant by "beverage" I wan’t quite clear but - everybody was doing it, and the fancy card with Old English lettering was quite attractive. I remember hearing John B. Gough, the most famous termperance lecturer of them all. He spoke from the pulpit in our church - and he must have been quite an actor. It was considered quite the thing to heap ridicule on the drunkard and I well remember some of the antics and buffoonery that John B. Gough "pulled" in the course of his talk. A great show it was, for a church pulpit - but "the cause" was thought to justify it.

My brother Herbert for a number of year conducted a chorus of mixed voices known as the Sewickley Musical Society and we kids scoured the village, selling tickets for the concerts - one ticket free if we sold ten. I remember the cantata of "Esther" and an operetta, "The Haymakers", given under his leadership - also mixed programs and an occasional Olde Folks’ Concert, in costume. "Mrs. Jarley’s Wax Works", given by Mrs. George Gormly, was repeated from time to time before delighted audiences. She was the greater part of the show herself and was screamingly funny. The "Sewickley Minstrels" seemed to us to reach the highest pitch of musical comedy. Everyone on the stage was known to everybody in the audience in spit of the burnt cork disguise and all of the audience was personally known by the performers, so that the gags and jokes took on a very intimate and personal tinge and were greatly relished by all excepting possibly the victims.

And, speaking of personal jokes on members of the audience, this reminds me of the circus. The tent was usually pitched in "Grimes’s Lot" at the corner of Centennial Avenue and Grimes Street, all vacant property then. Before the evening performance some of the older boys would take the clown aside and fill him up with the names of well-known Sewickley people, the Burgess always, and social leaders and others, which he would make good use of during the show. Then - the screams of delight when the trick horse would spell out the name of some girl as "the biggest flirt in town" or would nod his head at dignified Mrs. Margaret Black when asked to point out the "most elegant lady present". Or, the clown would sing out "Why am I like Charlie Doyle?" - and we would all yell our heads off. - And how we would hang around the deserted circus ring the next day, trying to imitate the performers, and wishing our feet weren’t so heavy!

The very first circus - or was it an Indian SHow of some sort? - that I remember anything about - was exhibited back of old T. C. Little’s store (now the Community Kitchen) at the corner of Beaver and Little Streets. I dimly recall an Indian maiden, bound hand and foot, and standing with her back to the wall while a big chief threw knives at her till she was outlined on the boards with the quivering steel blades! It was too much for me and I was taken out howling.

Did you ever hear of "Mozart Hall"? It came before the more modern and elegant "Choral Hall" that I have told of. Mozart Hall was over Chamberlin’s store (now the Highway Shop), at the corner of Broad and Beaver Streets. I remember some early cnatatas and school plays given on that stage. One very early one was "Cock Robin", the rehearsals for which were held in our parlor. Your Aunt Mary can tell you more about that. Once, we were all invited over to Mozart Hall from the public school to see and hear the phonograph, Edison’s latest invention. It didn’t work expecially well, as I recall it.

The telephone was wonderful enough for me, and once, ormaybe twice, when I had to use it I nearly passed away with excitement and embarassment. I was sent by my mother to give some message to Father at the Bank, in Allegheny. The village telephone was in the little brick building back of Chamberlin’s store, now Matterer’s barber shop, and your "Miss Margaret" McDonald was the operator. After loafing around the door for some time I believe I finally gave the message to Miss Margaret and had her send it over the wire for me.

As this is the chronicle of a boy’s life in the old place down by the river, back in the ‘80’s it properly should not include my "travels" - so although I did go far afield as Minnesota n 1876 - followed by a trip to the Centennial at Philadelphia in the fall of that year, and two years later (1878) was taken by Father on a journey to Philadelphia, New York and Boston - and tho’ I was one of a large party, that went to Cincinnati on the packet "Katie Stockdale" in 1881, and spent the entire summer of 1883 on Gen. McKay’s ranch in Nebraska - I shall omit all account of these experiences - also of two camping trips (1882 and 1884) in the Muskokas, and shall say just a word about the trips to Bedford Springs that I took with Father, the recollection of which is perhaps the pleasantest and most vivid of all.

Father, as I have said, was a great lover of horses and enjoyed nothing so much as a drive over country roads and through farming country. He had been a farm boy himself and at the age of seventeen, when his father died, (1829) he, with his elder brother Daniel, had run and managed the farm at Shippensburg, Pa. So a trip to Bedford by carriage was a keen enjoyment to him driving the two horses in leisurely fashion over the mountains to the famous Springs. I was taken along several times. THe first of these trips that I remember was one with Father, Uncle Daniel and your Aunt Mary - all cooped up in a little high-bodied carriage. Mother was already at Bedford and drove on to Shippensburg. Another time, Father, Sister Lide, Cousin Fannie Travelli and I went. Again, Father, Mother, your Aunt Lizzie and Theodore, then about a year old (1879) composed the party and another time we made the trip in two carriages, Father, Sister Lide, cousins Alex and Alice Irwin and I. We always took three days for the journeyc going sometimes by the Philadelphia pike (now the Lincoln Highway) sometimes by Mt. Pleasant and Somerset. The pike was mostly in bad condition, particularly over the mountains and Father used to tell the tollgate keepers that they ought to pay us for driving over their road, instead of our paying them. Three days going over and three coming back - and today they do it in less then three hours! But they don’t get any greater enjoyment out of it than we did. I never shall forget these quiet dreamy days on the road. We didn’t hurry the horses and, going up the long mountain grades we would get out and walk, to relieve the horses and stretch our legs. Sometimes we would stay over night at a country hotel or tavern, sometimes at a farm house. One place Iremember particularly - old "Judge" Picking’s log house at Jennerstown, where the stairway leaned like the tower at Pisa, and where Father took off all four wheels and saked them over night in the creek to tighten up the spokes. And the farm house on top of the mountain where I went with the farmer’s boy to the barn to inspect a litter of pigs, and Father pretended to drive off without me. And the "burning spring" somewhere near Greensburg that we turned aside to examine and wonder at. Ntaural gas, of course, bubbling up through a crack in the ground. No one, at that time, had thought of making any use of it. Then, there was the farm house that we looked for on each trip, where, on a big stone at the front gate was painted the sign "Root, Hog, or Die".

Once I had a terrible shock - at the tavern at Ligonier, when, happening in the course of my explorations to look in at the bar, I saw Father standing there sampling a schooner of the Monastery beer, famous in that neighborhood! But what remains most vivid in my memory is the picture of the wide farm lands and the quiet country-side, the mountain views, and the long vistas of the road ahead, with the patient horses plodding along, Father holding the reins and pointing out to us the well-remembered landmarks. Those carriage trips to Bedford Spings! There is nothing quite like them in these days.

And now, Margaret and Henry, I really am going to stop. Have you read thus far? If you have, then I hope you will have got some idea of the kind of boyhood your father had at the old place down by the river. I have said nothing by way of characterization of my parents or of my brothers and sisters. Much of that you can get elsewhere. While, today, the old-fashioned quiet life we led would seem perhaps dull and rather staid, lacking as it did the excitement of automobiles, movies and radio, you must have gathered that the strict Presbyterianism of an earlier day was considerably relaxed by the time I came on the scene as the baby in my father’s family, and that I was allowed a good deal of freedom to enjoy life, as a healthy country boy.

So ends this rambling boyhood chronicle, set down in piecemeal and from time to time, during the winter of 1923 - 1924, by

Franklin T. Nevin

commonly (and irreverently)

called by his children,

"Fod".