CHAPTER SEVEN 



GRADUATE YEAR— SECOND EXPEDITION 



I LEFT the train at Pittsburgh, on my way back from the West, to 

 pay a visit to my oldest brother, Charles, and was immediately struck 

 with the great change that had taken place since I had been there in 

 June. The fine Union Station and Hotel had disappeared and their 

 place was taken by a hastily erected structure of rough boards. My 

 brother had been called out as a special constable together with thou- 

 sands of others and put on riot duty, armed only with a baseball bat, and 

 had witnessed the terrible scene of destruction. He gave me a graphic 

 description of the dreadful night on which the riot culminated. For 

 some reason, the Pennsylvania Railroad was very unpopular in Pitts- 

 burgh; railroads were very haughty and domineering in those days and 

 very generally hated, but I don't remember just what was the special 

 grievance cherished by Pittsburgh against the Pennsylvania. At all 

 events, the burghers didn't exert themselves very strenuously to protect 

 the company and some of them even laughed at the destruction. 



The railroad officials were filled with a cold and relentless fury over 

 the behaviour of the citizens and they brought suit against the county 

 for $5,000,000 damages for negligence and failure to protect the com- 

 pany's property, and won it. This made the taxpayers laugh to a difFerent 

 tune and the liquidation of the debt took many years. At Altoona, there 

 were interminable lines of wrecked locomotives, from which everything 

 combustible, cabs, cowcatchers and the like had been burned away. This 

 made the engines present a strangely gaunt and plucked appearance 

 which made an even more striking impression of devastation than did 

 the burned and ruined buildings. 



When I returned to Princeton it was with hardly any definite notion 

 of what I should do next, except that, by taking a fellowship, I had 

 engaged to do a year's graduate work somewhere. I was therefore ready 

 to fall in with Dr. McCosh's suggestion and take it in Princeton, for he 

 was at last prepared to start graduate work in earnest. He initiated his 



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