We were blessed at this time with a rather indolent operator, who was only too glad to have me do his work.  It was then the practice for us to receive the messages on a running slip of paper, from which the operator read to a copyist, but rumors had reached us that a man in the West had learned to read by sound and could really take a message by ear.  This led me to practice the new method.  One of the operators in the office, Mr. Maclean, became expert at it, and encouraged me by his success.  I was surprised at the ease with which I learned the new language.  One day, desiring to take a message in the absence of the operator, the old gentleman who acted as copyist resented my presumption and refused to “copy” for a messenger boy.  I shut off the paper slip, took pencil and paper and began taking the message by ear.  I shall never forget his surprise.  He ordered me to give him back his pencil and pad, and after that there was never any difficulty between dear old Courtney Hughes and myself.  He was my devoted friend and copyist.

Soon after this incident Joseph Taylor, the operator at Greensburg, thirty miles from Pittsburgh, wishing to be absent for two weeks, asked Mr. Brooks if he could not send some one to take his place.  Mr. Brooks called me and asked whether I thought I could do the work.  I replied at once in the affirmative.

“Well,” he said, “we will send you out there for a trial.”

I went out in the mail stage and had a most delightful trip.  Mr. David Bruce, a well-known solicitor of Scottish ancestry, and his sister happened to be passengers.  It was my first excursion, and my first glimpse of the country.  The hotel at Greensburg was the first public house in which I had ever taken a meal.  I thought the food wonderfully fine.

[Illustration:  HENRY PHIPPS]

This was in 1852.  Deep cuts and embankments near Greensburg were then being made for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and I often walked out in the early morning to see the work going forward, little dreaming that I was so soon to enter the service of that great corporation.  This was the first responsible position I had occupied in the telegraph service, and I was so anxious to be at hand in case I should be needed, that one night very late I sat in the office during a storm, not wishing to cut off the connection.  I ventured too near the key and for my boldness was knocked off my stool.  A flash of lightning very nearly ended my career.  After that I was noted in the office for caution during lightning storms.  I succeeded in doing the small business at Greensburg to the satisfaction of my superiors, and returned to Pittsburgh surrounded with something like a halo, so far as the other boys were concerned.  Promotion soon came.  A new operator was wanted and Mr. Brooks telegraphed to my afterward dear friend James D. Reid, then general superintendent of the line, another fine specimen of the Scotsman, and took upon himself to recommend