of men, things would somehow come right in the end, and a man get
shaken into the corner where he belonged if he took a hand in the game.
I think I was right in that. If it took a lot of shaking to get me
where I belonged, that was just what I needed. Even my mother admits
that now. . . .

I made it my first business to buy a navy revolver of the largest size,
investing in the purchase exactly one-half of my capital. I strapped
the weapon on the outside of my coat and strode up Broadway, conscious
that I was following the fashion of the country. I knew it upon the
authority of a man who had been there before me and had returned, a
gold digger in the early days of California; but America was America to
us. We knew no distinction of West and East. By rights there ought to
have been buffaloes and red Indians charging up and down Broadway. I
am sorry to say that it is easier even to-day to make lots of people
over there believe that than that New York is paved, and lighted with
electric lights, and quite as civilized as Copenhagen. They will have
it that it is in the wilds. I saw none of the signs of this, but I
encountered a friendly policeman, who, sizing me and my pistol up,
tapped it gently with his club and advised me to leave it home, or I
might get robbed of it. This, at first blush, seemed to confirm my
apprehensions; but he was a very nice policeman, and took time to
explain, seeing that I was very green. And I took his advice and put
the revolver away, secretly relieved to get rid of it. It was quite
heavy to carry around.

I had letters to the Danish Consul and to the president of the American
Banknote Company, Mr. Goodall. I think perhaps he was not then the
president, but became so afterward. Mr. Goodall had once been wrecked
on the Danish coast and rescued by the captain of the lifesaving crew,
a friend of my family. But they were both in Europe, and in just four
days I realized that there was no special public clamor for my services
in New York, and decided to go West.

A missionary in Castle Garden was getting up a gang of men for the
Brady's Bend Iron Works on the Allegheny River, and I went along. We
started a full score, with tickets paid, but only two of us reached the
Bend. The rest calmly deserted in Pittsburg and went their way. . . .

The [iron works] company mined its own coal. Such as it was, it
cropped out of the hills right and left in narrow veins, sometimes too
shallow to