CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
Two bruisers, Bradley and Sloan, anticipating the modern achievements of the negro Johnson, representing the two cities of Philadelphia and Baltimore, came to town, followed by the plugs who were financially interested, and fought a prize fight on the grounds of Nathan Pennypacker to the north of the borough. By baffling movements in different directions they succeeded in finishing their fight, but were afterward very properly thrown into jail.
Taylor, in 1847, went away to New York to be an editor upon the New York Tribune. From among his numerous letters to my father I select the following as an indication of their relations and as having a local interest:
Dear Doctor:
I was more gratified than you would perhaps imagine, on receiving your kind letter, a day or two ago. I did not suppose you had forgotten me, but I was afraid you might have thought me estranged by the years which have elapsed since I left Phœnixville. Your words brought all the old time back, and I half fancied I was looking down the Schuylkill Valley from your avenue of cedars, or pulling up the dam in our capacious “Sankanac”.
It is true I have lived through a great deal since then, the smallest half of my life seems to lie behind that time, so deep and varied have been the experiences of these latter years. My duties have vastly increased, and with them, my individual responsibility; but I fancy I have grown stronger by intercourse with the world, and am ready to fight its toughest battles.
You may readily imagine how exacting is the task of editing a daily journal, on so large a scale as ours, and that my times of leisure are indeed far between. The theft of a day, now and then, which is about the extent of my absence, I consider it my duty to spend at home—my Chester County home, of course.
Even my trip to California, harum-scarum as it may seem, was but one department of my business. The fact is, I am one of the galley-slaves of the Press, and can only take comfort in the thought that my fellow-laborers in the office are congenial minds, and that the harmony of our intercourse is never disturbed. In a few years, when I shall become a little freer in money matters,