of, and remained "a real force in his life to the very end."
When the Carnegie family settled in America, their capital was brains, pluck, honesty, willingness to work, and loyalty to one another. The early stages in their pecuniary progress were marked first by payment of their debts, then by purchase of their first little house, and later by their first investment, in five shares of the Adams Express Company. "Andy" did not long remain a telegraph messenger, because he promptly developed his faculty for doing "something beyond the sphere of his duties," which attracted the attention of those over him. He picked up telegraphy while waiting for messages; he learned to receive by ear while others used the paper slip; he mastered the duties of a traindispatching superintendent of division while sending the messages of his superior. When his chief's arrival at the office was delayed one morning and the division was in confusion, he assumed responsibility and sent out the orders in the superintendent's name, saying to himself "death or Westminster Abbey." The union of special knowledge with courage, which made "the little white-haired Scotch devil" a first-rate assistant at the age of eighteen, promoted him in six years to the superintendency of the Pittsburgh Division. "I was only twenty-four years old," he says, "but my model then was Lord John Russell." Two years later he was assistant director of telegraphs and military railroads
