My position as messenger boy soon made me acquainted with the few leading men of the city.  The bar of Pittsburgh was distinguished.  Judge Wilkins was at its head, and he and Judge MacCandless, Judge McClure, Charles Shaler and his partner, Edwin M. Stanton, afterwards the great War Secretary ("Lincoln’s right-hand man”) were all well known to me—­the last-named especially, for he was good enough to take notice of me as a boy.  In business circles among prominent men who still survive, Thomas M. Howe, James Park, C.G.  Hussey, Benjamin F. Jones, William Thaw, John Chalfant, Colonel Herron were great men to whom the messenger boys looked as models, and not bad models either, as their lives proved. [Alas! all dead as I revise this paragraph in 1906, so steadily moves the solemn procession.]

My life as a telegraph messenger was in every respect a happy one, and it was while in this position that I laid the foundation of my closest friendships.  The senior messenger boy being promoted, a new boy was needed, and he came in the person of David McCargo, afterwards the well-known superintendent of the Allegheny Valley Railway.  He was made my companion and we had to deliver all the messages from the Eastern line, while two other boys delivered the messages from the West.  The Eastern and Western Telegraph Companies were then separate, although occupying the same building.  “Davy” and I became firm friends at once, one great bond being that he was Scotch; for, although “Davy” was born in America, his father was quite as much a Scotsman, even in speech, as my own father.

A short time after “Davy’s” appointment a third boy was required, and this time I was asked if I could find a suitable one.  This I had no difficulty in doing in my chum, Robert Pitcairn, later on my successor as superintendent and general agent at Pittsburgh of the Pennsylvania Railroad.  Robert, like myself, was not only Scotch, but Scotch-born, so that “Davy,” “Bob,” and “Andy” became the three Scotch boys who delivered all the messages of the Eastern Telegraph Line in Pittsburgh, for the then magnificent salary of two and a half dollars per week.  It was the duty of the boys to sweep the office each morning, and this we did in turn, so it will be seen that we all began at the bottom.  Hon. H.W.  Oliver,[13] head of the great manufacturing firm of Oliver Brothers, and W.C.  Morland,[14] City Solicitor, subsequently joined the corps and started in the same fashion.  It is not the rich man’s son that the young struggler for advancement has to fear in the race of life, nor his nephew, nor his cousin.  Let him look out for the “dark horse” in the boy who begins by sweeping out the office.

[Footnote 13:  Died 1904.]

[Footnote 14:  Died 1889.]

[Illustration:  ROBERT PITCAIRN]