AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
which he was interested was stagnant, and he hoped for the return of Penrose to the United States Senate.
“I have just received a letter from the head of the firm of Harjes & Co., in Paris. It is pitiable. He asks me to be his executor. He tells me the Germans are near the city, that he does not know whether he or his children will be alive a week hence, that he does not know whether he will have anything to leave to them, that no man can tell what will happen.”
Stotesbury was interested in the opera in Philadelphia.
“I paid Mary Garden,” said he, “eighteen hundred dollars a night, and made an engagement to pay her eighty thousand dollars in the course of the winter. The newspapers accused me of spending too much time in her dressing room, while on the other hand she described me as “such a timid little man.”
Peary — Amundsen — Shackleton
On the evening of January 16, 1913, at the Art Club in Philadelphia, I met Robert E. Peary, who discovered the North Pole, Roald Amundsen, who reached the South Pole, and Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Englishman who made a brave attempt to get to the South Pole, but failed. It certainly was an unusual combination to encounter at one time. A reception was given them by the Art Club, at which many distinguished Philadelphians were present. John Cadwalader escorted me to a seat at the luncheon upstairs and, being a member of the club, acted as a personal host. While we were chatting, we were interrupted, however, by a gentleman who said he had been hunting for me and that the president of the club wanted me to dine with the guests. About twenty persons sat at the dinner table. It gave me the opportunity of seeing at closer range the explorers and saying a few words to them. Peary I have known and have elsewhere depicted. Amundsen is a tall,
