FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



shook hands, saying as a farewell: "Well, my boy, perhaps there 

 is something in the world that is bigger than business, and per- 

 haps some day you will be a bigger man than I am." A younger 

 brother of his, Abner G. Thurber, lived over in Brooklyn. His 

 farewell to me was quite different. He walked out of the house 

 to the street and, taking me by the coat lapel in a confidential 

 way, he said, "Old boy, if you ever get into a scrape, and don't 

 want your mother to know about it, and need a friend, call on 

 me." That went to my heart. That uncle surely knew young 

 men. But the incident that interested me most was that my dear 

 old grandmother, who was then living with my Uncle Horace, 

 remarked to her son and daughter-in-law after I had left, "Yes, 

 Leland is a nice boy, but I do wish that he was not in such a 

 trifling business." 



The journey from New York to Washington was especially 

 interesting since the train passed from New York across New 

 Jersey into Pennsylvania, and thence through Delaware and 

 Maryland, before reaching the District of Columbia. That fact 

 in itself was quite exciting to an up-State New York boy who 

 had never been out of his own state except to the Philadelphia 

 Centennial. And then it was quite interesting when, at Balti- 

 more, the engine was unfastened from the train and the train 

 itself was drawn across the city by a chain of mules, led by one 

 extremely intelligent old white horse, to be met on the other 

 side of the city by another engine and pulled on to Washington, 

 forty miles away. Later I was to know Baltimore very well, as 

 may appear in subsequent pages. 



In the class behind me in Cornell, there was a joyous, sandy- 

 haired, freckled youth, named J. McK. Borden, commonly 

 known as "Mac" or as "Judge." He had graduated the previous 

 June, and had gone to Washington to become a draughtsman in 



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