I have already spoken of the intimacy between our family and that of the Phippses.  In the early days my chief companion was the elder brother, John.  Henry was several years my junior, but had not failed to attract my attention as a bright, clever lad.  One day he asked his brother John to lend him a quarter of a dollar.  John saw that he had important use for it and handed him the shining quarter without inquiry.  Next morning an advertisement appeared in the “Pittsburgh Dispatch”: 

“A willing boy wishes work.”

This was the use the energetic and willing Harry had made of his quarter, probably the first quarter he had ever spent at one time in his life.  A response came from the well-known firm of Dilworth and Bidwell.  They asked the “willing boy” to call.  Harry went and obtained a position as errand boy, and as was then the custom, his first duty every morning was to sweep the office.  He went to his parents and obtained their consent, and in this way the young lad launched himself upon the sea of business.  There was no holding back a boy like that.  It was the old story.  He soon became indispensable to his employers, obtained a small interest in a collateral branch of their business; and then, ever on the alert, it was not many years before he attracted the attention of Mr. Miller, who made a small investment for him with Andrew Kloman.  That finally resulted in the building of the iron mill in Twenty-Ninth Street.  He had been a schoolmate and great crony of my brother Tom.  As children they had played together, and throughout life, until my brother’s death in 1886, these two formed, as it were, a partnership within a partnership.  They invariably held equal interests in the various firms with which they were connected.  What one did the other did.

The errand boy is now one of the richest men in the United States and has begun to prove that he knows how to expend his surplus.  Years ago he gave beautiful conservatories to the public parks of Allegheny and Pittsburgh.  That he specified “that these should be open upon Sunday” shows that he is a man of his time.  This clause in the gift created much excitement.  Ministers denounced him from the pulpit and assemblies of the church passed resolutions declaring against the desecration of the Lord’s Day.  But the people rose, en masse, against this narrow-minded contention and the Council of the city accepted the gift with acclamation.  The sound common sense of my partner was well expressed when he said in reply to a remonstrance by ministers: 

“It is all very well for you, gentlemen, who work one day in the week and are masters of your time the other six during which you can view the beauties of Nature—­all very well for you—­but I think it shameful that you should endeavor to shut out from the toiling masses all that is calculated to entertain and instruct them during the only day which you well know they have at their disposal.”