Anecdotes of public men; by John W. Forney.

100 ANECDOTES OF PUBLIC MEN.
walks, and recruit the energies of the nation from the sons of
those who have been hardened in the stern school of necessity
and toil.
Thomas Alexander Scott was born in the village of Loudon,
Franklin County, Pennsylvania, on the 28th of December, I824,
and on his next birthday will be forty-seven years old. He began as a boy in a country-store at a very low salary, after having completed his education in the one village school, with the
one teacher, Robert Kirby, of Loudon; and upon the death of
his father, in 1834, went to live with his eldest sister, whose
husband kept a country-store near Waynesborough, in Franklin County, where he remained eighteen months; then he lived
a short time with his brother, James D. Scott, also a merchant,
at Bridgeport, in the same county; then with Metcalf & Ritchie,
merchants in Mercersburg. In all these situations he exhibited
the same energy, and had the confidence and respect of employers and associates for the ability and correctness now so
universally awarded to the man. In all his past history his
frank, honest, candid, clear, and prompt manner in business
transactions has deservedly secured him the confidence and respect of the business world-above all, his goodness of heart,
the measure of his favors and charities being the necessities of
the friends. My first recollection of him was in Lancaster
County, where he was a clerk of Major James Patton, his brother-in-law, who was collector of tolls at Columbia, on the State
road, under the administration of Governor Porter, I think, in
the year I838. From this he was transferred to the extensive
warehouse and commission establishment of the Leeches, at
Columbia, where he remained until 1847, when he came to Philadelphia as chief clerk at Seventh and Willow Streets, on the
Schuylkill front, under A. Boyd Cummings, collector of tolls at
the eastern end of the Public Works. In 1850 he entered the
service of the great Pennsylvania Central at Duncanville, as
their general agent of the Mountain or Eastern division. On