There was a Boston colony in Cincinnati and I landed among friends, keeping the plunge from being as bad as it might have been. I remember nothing of the trip out except the foundries of Pittsburgh. This wonderful display of great columns of fire, shooting up to the sky, seemed to represent, as I had never seen it before, the Spirit of Flame. Upon arrival, I was seized by Jim Perkins and not allowed to spend a night in a hotel. His brother was married to a relative of close friends of ours on Milton Hill near Boston, and this was enough introduction for him to take me into his home. Afterward, I lived with Chap Dwight, whose mother had been an intimate friend of my father’s, and it was here that I got my first taste of a European influence. He was a wealthy bachelor and lived like one, but had very cosmopolitan ideas of life—a new change for me. My first job was an agent for an oil firm which had its main office in Pittsburgh. It may have been the only one I could get, but I rather imagine that my droolings and dreamings over the wondrous flames of the foundries of Pittsburgh invested the work (in my mind) with romance and took away (in the minds of my relatives) the sting of my having to be called a salesman. The first month I made one sale. Overjoyed at getting an order for a thousand barrels of oil, I signed a contract to deliver them at a certain time f. o. b.—Cincinnati. Harvard College had taught me many things, but had neglected to give me any idea whatever of those letters, “f. o. b.” My salary was fifty dollars a month, the freight was sixty, so I quit at the end of the month, owing my boss ten dollars. I considered the matter closed and that I had learned a good lesson; but, unfortunately, I had had a large amount of business stationery printed. Thinking my young cousins could use it to draw on and desiring never to see it again, I sent it home. But I had reckoned without my dear mother’s sense of economy. For years I was forced to receive letters from her with EDWARD SIMMONS AGENT —— OIL CO. at the head of the page. After this not very profitable occupation I turned my attention to tutoring, fitting a boy for West Point, and another for the Yale Scientific School. The former was the son of an ignorant Irishman and had got a limited amount of information at the Jesuit school. I taught him geography, history of the country and states, of which he knew nothing, and I made him learn the Declaration of Independence and simple mathematics. He went in with flying colors.