It was a genuine pleasure when Willie, his son, bought ground from me in 1900 opposite our New York residence for his two married daughters so that our children of the third generation became playmates as our mothers were in Scotland.
My father was induced by emigration agents in New York to take the Erie Canal by way of Buffalo and Lake Erie to Cleveland, and thence down the canal to Beaver--a journey which then lasted three weeks, and is made to-day by rail in ten hours.

There was no railway communication then with Pittsburgh, nor indeed with any western town.
The Erie Railway was under construction and we saw gangs of men at work upon it as we traveled.

Nothing comes amiss to youth, and I look back upon my three weeks as a passenger upon the canal-boat with unalloyed pleasure.

All that was disagreeable in my experience has long since faded from recollection, excepting the night we were compelled to remain upon the wharf-boat at Beaver waiting for the steamboat to take us up the Ohio to Pittsburgh.

This was our first introduction to the mosquito in all its ferocity.