It was a genuine pleasure when Willie, his son,
bought ground from me in 1900 opposite our New York residence for his
two married daughters so that our children of the third generation
became playmates as our mothers were in Scotland.
My father was induced by emigration agents in New York to take the
Erie Canal by way of Buffalo and Lake Erie to Cleveland, and thence
down the canal to Beaver--a journey which then lasted three weeks,
and is made to-day by rail in ten hours. There was no railway
communication then with Pittsburgh, nor indeed with any western town.
The Erie Railway was under construction and we saw gangs of men at
work upon it as we traveled. Nothing comes amiss to youth, and I look
back upon my three weeks as a passenger upon the canal-boat with
unalloyed pleasure. All that was disagreeable in my experience has
long since faded from recollection, excepting the night we were
compelled to remain upon the wharf-boat at Beaver waiting for the
steamboat to take us up the Ohio to Pittsburgh. This was our first
introduction to the mosquito in all its ferocity. My mother suffered
so severely that in the morning she could hardly see. We were all
frightful sights, but I do not remember that even the stinging misery
of that night kept me from sleeping soundly.
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