lead. I do not suppose
that such a team exists now. The trap that he drove we always called the
high phaeton. The wheels turned under in front. I have it yet. He drove
long-tailed horses, harnessed loose in light American harness, so that
the whole rig had no possible resemblance to anything that would be seen
now. My father always excelled in improving every spare half-hour or
three-quarters of an hour, whether for work or enjoyment. Much of his
four-in-hand driving was done in the summer afternoons when he would
come out on the train from his business in New York. My mother and one
or perhaps two of us children might meet him at the station. I can see
him now getting out of the car in his linen duster, jumping into
the wagon, and instantly driving off at a rattling pace, the duster
sometimes bagging like a balloon. The four-in-hand, as can be gathered
from the above description, did not in any way in his eyes represent
possible pageantry. He drove it because he liked it. He was always
preaching caution to his boys, but in this respect he did not practice
his preaching overmuch himself; and, being an excellent whip, he liked
to take chances. Generally they came out all right. Occasionally they
did not; but he was even better at getting out of a scrape than into
it. Once when we were driving into New York late at night the leaders
stopped. He flicked them, and the next moment we could dimly make out
that they had jumped. It then appeared that the street was closed and
that a board had been placed across it, resting on two barrels, but
without a lantern. Over this board the leaders had jumped, and there was
considerable excitement before we got the board taken off the barrels
and resumed our way. When in the city on Thanksgiving or Christmas, my
father was very apt to drive my mother and a couple of friends up to the
racing park to take lunch. But he was always back in time to go to the
dinner at the Newsboys' Lodging-House, and not infrequently also to
Miss Sattery's Night School for little Italians. At a very early age we
children were taken with him and were required to help. He was a staunch
friend of Charles Loring Brace, and was particularly interested in the
Newsboys' Lodging-House and in the night schools and in getting the
children off the streets and out on farms in the West. When I was
President, the Governor of Alaska under me, Governor Brady, was one of
these ex-newsboys who had been sent from New York out We