steamboat lines. On the morning of December 7, 1853, the citizens of Erie were summoned by the ringing of the court-house bell. Men rushed to the centre of the town to find that the eastern railroad company had begun work at the state line altering their road from their four-feet-ten-inches gauge to the six-foot width of the western railway. As the road ran for a short distance through the street of the town the municipal authorities had refused a permit for change, but the company had begun, nevertheless. After listening to impassioned speechmaking from the court-house steps till it was thoroughly roused, the crowd, led by the mayor, started for the wooden railroad bridge. They found it guarded by employees of the railroad, who were soon scattered by a shower of rotten eggs and other missiles. The mob then attacked the bridge, tore up the tracks and the timber, and returned triumphantly to the city. Two days later a similar mob tore up the track, destroyed the bridge, and ploughed the road at Harbor Creek, seven miles east of Erie. Mob-rule had come in earnest. It was two months before a single train got through to any point near these places, and it was three years before the matter was finally adjusted. The courts and the state militia became involved. State feeling ran high between Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York over the question of their local gauges, and the press of the whole country took sides in the matter. Passengers and freight had to be transferred during the winter months, when the lake was closed, by wagon from the stop east of Erie to the stop west of that town, a process that was called “Crossing the Isthmus.” But still the Erie people rallied with the watchword, “Break gauge at Erie, or have no railroad.” Horace Greeley, going west at this time, had to ride the seven miles across the “Isthmus” in an open sleigh through a severe storm of wind, snow, and sleet, and after that the railroad managers and the townspeople were continually denounced in the _New York Tribune_. “Let Erie be avoided by all travellers,” he wrote on his return, “until grass shall grow in her streets, and till her piemen in despair shall move away to some other city.” Homes of railroad officers and sympathizers were mobbed by the “Rippers,” as the opponents of the road were called because of their violent methods. The bridge at Harbor Creek was rebuilt by the company four times, only to have it burned or torn down. At last when the whole town was split into bitter factions and all united local spirit was for the time being destroyed, the courts and legislature settled the matter. The railroad company, having made certain concessions to Erie interests, was allowed to change to a compromise gauge of four feet eight and a half inches (that of the New York Central road) and run trains through Erie on what is now a part of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad. The great era of consolidation which was to create our transcontinental lines had begun.