The eventful business career and commendable private life of Mr. Rogers ended on the 10th of April, 1842, he falling suddenly in the old Light-street Methodist Church while attending divine service. The Baltimore _Sun_ of April 11, 1842, mentioned his death as follows: "The illness of Jacob Rogers, Esq., occurred in Light-street Church; he fell in a faint from which he died an hour after at his residence, No. 9 South street. He was well known and respected as one of the most worthy, industrious, and valuable of our citizens of Baltimore." [Illustration: WESTERN EXPRESS, 1825.] OLD METHODS. No. 9. Just as the first half of the present century was expiring, an invention was made that at once revolutionized the whole system of hat-making. A machine was patented in the United States by H. A. Wells, in the year 1846, which successfully accomplished the work of making or forming a hat in a very short space of time, which heretofore had required the slow, tedious and skillful labor of the hands, thus so equally dividing the century that the first half may be practically considered as following the _old_ method, and the latter half as using the _new_ method. So remarkable was this invention that its introduction quickly produced a change in the character of hats by greatly reducing their cost of manufacture, together with a change in the manner of conducting the hat business. To show up the _old_ method of hat-making that existed prior to the use of the Wells machine is the purpose of this chapter, the greater part of the information here given having been gained from an article in "Sears' Guide to Knowledge," published in 1844. Let us enter a Baltimore hat "shop" of fifty years ago and watch the making of a single hat. Fur and wool constitute the main ingredients of which hats have always been made, because possessing those qualities necessary for the process of "felting," the finer and better class of hats being made of the furs of such animals as the beaver, bear, marten, minx, hare and rabbit. The skins of these animals after being stripped from the body are called "pelts"; when the inner side has undergone a process of tanning the skins obtain the name of "furs" in a restricted sense, and the term is still more restricted when applied to the hairy coating cut from the skin.