Another step which exercised a decided influence over me was joining the “Webster Literary Society” along with my companions, the trusty five already named.  We formed a select circle and stuck closely together.  This was quite an advantage for all of us.  We had before this formed a small debating club which met in Mr. Phipps’s father’s room in which his few journeymen shoemakers worked during the day.  Tom Miller recently alleged that I once spoke nearly an hour and a half upon the question, “Should the judiciary be elected by the people?” but we must mercifully assume his memory to be at fault.  The “Webster” was then the foremost club in the city and proud were we to be thought fit for membership.  We had merely been preparing ourselves in the cobbler’s room.

I know of no better mode of benefiting a youth than joining such a club as this.  Much of my reading became such as had a bearing on forthcoming debates and that gave clearness and fixity to my ideas.  The self-possession I afterwards came to have before an audience may very safely be attributed to the experience of the “Webster Society.”  My two rules for speaking then (and now) were:  Make yourself perfectly at home before your audience, and simply talk to them, not at them.  Do not try to be somebody else; be your own self and talk, never “orate” until you can’t help it.

I finally became an operator by sound, discarding printing entirely.  The accomplishment was then so rare that people visited the office to be satisfied of the extraordinary feat.  This brought me into such notice that when a great flood destroyed all telegraph communication between Steubenville and Wheeling, a distance of twenty-five miles, I was sent to the former town to receive the entire business then passing between the East and the West, and to send every hour or two the dispatches in small boats down the river to Wheeling.  In exchange every returning boat brought rolls of dispatches which I wired East, and in this way for more than a week the entire telegraphic communication between the East and the West via Pittsburgh was maintained.

While at Steubenville I learned that my father was going to Wheeling and Cincinnati to sell the tablecloths he had woven.  I waited for the boat, which did not arrive till late in the evening, and went down to meet him.  I remember how deeply affected I was on finding that instead of taking a cabin passage, he had resolved not to pay the price, but to go down the river as a deck passenger.  I was indignant that one of so fine a nature should be compelled to travel thus.  But there was comfort in saying: 

“Well, father, it will not be long before mother and you shall ride in your carriage.”

My father was usually shy, reserved, and keenly sensitive, very saving of praise (a Scotch trait) lest his sons might be too greatly uplifted; but when touched he lost his self-control.  He was so upon this occasion, and grasped my hand with a look which I often see and can never forget.  He murmured slowly: