nceforth life lacks something, lacks much--my
first partner in early years, my dearest friend in old age. May I go
where he is, wherever that may be.]

Andrew Kloman had a small steel-hammer in Allegheny City. As a
superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad I had found that he made
the best axles. He was a great mechanic--one who had discovered, what
was then unknown in Pittsburgh, that whatever was worth doing with
machinery was worth doing well. His German mind made him thorough.
What he constructed cost enormously, but when once started it did the
work it was intended to do from year's end to year's end. In those
early days it was a question with axles generally whether they would
run any specified time or break. There was no analysis of material, no
scientific treatment of it.

How much this German created! He was the first man to introduce the
cold saw that cut cold iron the exact lengths. He invented upsetting
machines to make bridge links, and also built the first "universal"
mill in America. All these were erected at our works. When Captain
Eads could not obtain the couplings for the St. Louis Bridge arches
(the contractors failing to make them) and matters were at a
standstill, Kloman told us that he could make them and why the others
had failed. He succeeded in making them. Up to that date they were the
largest semicircles that had ever been rolled. Our confidence in Mr.
Kloman may be judged from the fact that when he said he could make
them we unhesitatingly contracted to furnish them.

I have already spoken of the intimacy between our family and that of
the Phippses. In the early days my chief companion was the elder
brother, John. Henry was several years my junior, but had not failed
to attract my attention as a bright, clever lad. One day he asked his
brother John to lend him a quarter of a dollar. John saw that he had
important use for it and handed him the shining quarter without
inquiry. Next morning an advertisement appeared in the "Pittsburgh
Dispatch":

"A willing boy wishes work."

This was the use the energetic and willing Harry had made of his
quarter, probably the first quarter he had ever spent at one time in
his life. A response came from the well-known firm of Dilworth and
Bidwell. They asked the "willing boy" to call. Harry went and obtained
a position as errand boy, and as was then the custom, his first duty
every morning was to sweep the office. He went to his parents and
obtained t