WH JUST A WORD OR TWO HAT is more satisfying, more soulful, than to sit by the fire with a friend, or chum, and have him recall the names of those whom you both knew in the past, maybe the long past, recount incidents in their lives, some of which you had almost forgotten but mighty glad to have revived? Well, there isn't anything. Everyone who has lived a score or more years in any city has lost track of many whom he had known, and who were well worth remembering, besides having almost forgotten others who were more or less in the limelight. The mention of their names, or a reference to some peculiar characteristic, brings back pleasant memories, if not tender recollections. You know that when you go back home again you spend most of your time asking about those whom you once knew, even to the boys and girls with whom you went to school. And what could be more delightful than to meet up with some one who had spent a long and busy life here in Pittsburgh, one with an unusual memory for names and events, besides having a wide acquaintance with the best men and women, and the happy faculty of bringing them to mind, introducing them to the circle gathered around a cozy, wholesome fireplace? This is just what your good friend, and mine, Percy F. Smith, has done in this book. He doesn't bore you with statistics, nor weary you with family pedigrees, or obituaries,-just calls up from the past folks whom you have known, or at least have heard of, and introduces them for old acquaintance sake. There is hardly another man in this city who can do this as well as Percy F. Smith, newspaper reporter, correspondent, publicist and business man since 1865, a good mixer and a splendid, wholesome fellow, with a matchless memory for names and faces, incident and event, and withal jovial and knows where a joke belongs. W 'HEN one has survived his three-score-and-tenth birthday, and lived during all that time in one community, and been an upright, intelligent, industrious and efficient member thereof, as Mr. Smith has been, he has naturally become the repository, as this book shows, of a vast and varied fund of valuable and interesting information about men with whom and things with which he became directly and indirectly identified-personally, officially, commercially, industrially, religiously, politically and otherwise. Was there ever anything worth while going on in Pittsburgh, or anybody worth knowing, or anything worth doing, in the last half century, that Mr. Smith did not have some connection therewith in some important or useful way? Deponent recalls none. And all this without any self-seeking on his part. The simple fact is that he has been a needful man, a capable, useful, enterprising citizen, always willing to take off his coat, roll up his sleeves and put his shoulder to the wheel of every car designed to carry Pittsburgh forward on the highway of progress and prosperity, and make her what she is today, the Industrial Wonder-City of the World. When at 16 years of age Mr. Smith really began his business career as office boy in 1865 in the old Chronicle office on Fifth avenue, the editor was W. A. Collins, and the business manager Joseph G. Siebeneck. Mr. Collins was one of the conspicously able editors of his period, noted for his exceptional literary acquirements. Associated with him were Daniel O'Neill, E. M. O'Neill, A. W. Rook, C. E. Locke, C. D. Brigham, William Anderson, David Fickes and David Lowry. Learning in a school where newspaper men such as these were his associates and instructors, it was but natural he should acquire a thorough knowledge of his profession. He is sole survivor of the Chronicle staff of 1865. He became a star reporter, especially of interesting trials in the county courts. A very swift, easy, longhand writer, his mind grasping quickly the essential points of testimony, his reports for the Chronicle, and in later years for the Dispatch, were remarkable for their fullness of important detail and exceptional accuracy. Judges and lawyers placed great reliance upon them in their office reviewals of and summaries of proceedings. The dailies were much more attentive to court news 30 and 40 years ago than they are now, and when there was a trial, especially in the criminal branches, in which the public was deeply interested, it was a usual day's work with Mr. Smith to provide the Dispatch with a report that occupied five and six of its long columns. There never was but one reporter in Pittsburgh his equal in capacity for speedy and accurate news writing. This was William B. Horner, of the old Gazette. In a celebrated ecclesiastical trial-the Gray case-in the old Liberty Avenue M. E. Church, about 1875, Mr. Horner, in one day's longhand reporting, filled eight columns of the Gazette. He wrote from the hour the trial court began its sitting in the forenoon until his paper went to press about 3 o'clock next morning. It was this ambitious industry, long continued, that put young Horner in his premature grave in 1881. His was a noble character enshrined in a fragile, nervous body. Step by step he had gone up from carrier boy of the Gazette until made managing editor, which responsible position he was holding at the time of his death. Mr. Smith, in connection with the late Hon. Morrison Foster, had the honor of giving the permanence of publication in bound book form to the music and songs of Stephen C. Foster-a treasure of priceless value now in thousands of homes all over this land. Mr. Smith's friendships have been notably enduring. His character is strongly independent, the usual concomitant of wholesome purpose to follow the dictates of one's own judgment rather than leadership of others. It is curious that a mentality so congenial to humor should also delight to revel in such abstract things as statistics, in which Mr. Smith has found the pleasure and profit of numerous local publications in transient and permanent form. He knows how to make facts and figures move, talk, walk, preach and prophesy; how to give big things their rightful importance, and illuminate the real value of little things; how even thereby to suggest romances and paint colorful pictures in industry and commerce-all to the glorification of Pittsburgh. His head is like Keller's magical hat. One can get almost anything out of the inside, albeit there is mighty little on the outside. Now, when the busy day's troubles are over, and darkness softly drops its encircling curtain; when the serene dream-hour of evening unbidden comes, as it often does to us all, how gratifying it must be to Mr. Smith, sitting by his own fireside, to look back over the long vista of his 70 mile-posts of life, and reflectively note that there runs in unbroken festoons from post to post an endless garland of beautiful flowers, the tributary wealth of thousands of warm personal friendships and cordial good wills. With so sweet a vision to engage him, "the night shall be filled with music, And the cares that infest the day Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, And as silently steal away." And mayhap he will also beguile himself for a moment in this hour of retrospection with the tender sentiment that inspired these lines of Proctor's: "Touch us gently, Time! Let us glide adown thy stream "Humble voyagers are we O'er life's dim, unsounded sea, JOHN S. RITENOUR. |