im that what is
false or pretentious proves no longer attractive.

My visit to Europe also gave me my first great treat in music. The
Handel Anniversary was then being celebrated at the Crystal Palace in
London, and I had never up to that time, nor have I often since, felt
the power and majesty of music in such high degree. What I heard at
the Crystal Palace and what I subsequently heard on the Continent in
the cathedrals, and at the opera, certainly enlarged my appreciation
of music. At Rome the Pope's choir and the celebrations in the
churches at Christmas and Easter furnished, as it were, a grand climax
to the whole.

These visits to Europe were also of great service in a commercial
sense. One has to get out of the swirl of the great Republic to form a
just estimate of the velocity with which it spins. I felt that a
manufacturing concern like ours could scarcely develop fast enough for
the wants of the American people, but abroad nothing seemed to be
going forward. If we excepted a few of the capitals of Europe,
everything on the Continent seemed to be almost at a standstill, while
the Republic represented throughout its entire extent such a scene as
there must have been at the Tower of Babel, as pictured in the
story-books--hundreds rushing to and fro, each more active than his
neighbor, and all engaged in constructing the mighty edifice.

It was Cousin "Dod" (Mr. George Lauder) to whom we were indebted for a
new development in our mill operations--the first of its kind in
America. He it was who took our Mr. Coleman to Wigan in England and
explained the process of washing and coking the dross from coal mines.
Mr. Coleman had constantly been telling us how grand it would be to
utilize what was then being thrown away at our mines, and was indeed
an expense to dispose of. Our Cousin "Dod" was a mechanical engineer,
educated under Lord Kelvin at Glasgow University, and as he
corroborated all that Mr. Coleman stated, in December, 1871, I
undertook to advance the capital to build works along the line of the
Pennsylvania Railroad. Contracts for ten years were made with the
leading coal companies for their dross and with the railway companies
for transportation, and Mr. Lauder, who came to Pittsburgh and
superintended the whole operation for years, began the construction of
the first coal-washing machinery in America. He made a success of
it--he never failed to do that in any mining or mechanical operation
he undertook-