birth of no special
significance. Outside of the family it was a matter of no moment. Births
were frequent. The Brownsville people heard of it, and passed on to
forget, as a ripple in the Monongahela flashes on the careless sight for
a moment, then the river rolls on as before. Ephraim Blaine was proud of
another son; the little brother and the smaller sister hailed a new
brother. The mother, with a deep joy which escaped not in words, looked
onward and tried to read the future when the flood of years should have
carried her new treasure from her arms. That flood has swept over her
now, and all her highest hopes and ambition is filled, but she seems not
to hear the church bells that ring nor the cannon that bellow at the
sound of his name.

"All his early childhood years were spent about his home playing in the
well-kept yard gazing at the numerous boats that so frequently went
puffing by. For a short time the family moved to the old Gillespie House
further up the river, and some of the inhabitants say that at one time,
while some repairs were going on, they resided at the old homestead of
Neal Gillespie, back from the river, on Indian Hill."

At seventeen he graduated from school and, his father, losing what
little property he did have, young Blaine was thrown upon his own
resources. But it is often the best thing possible for a young man to be
thus tossed over-board, and be compelled to sink or swim. It develops a
self-reliant nature. He secured employment as a teacher, and into this
calling he threw his whole soul. Thus he became a success as an educator
at Blue Lick Springs. He next went to Philadelphia, and for two years
was the principal teacher of the boys in the Philadelphia Institution
for instruction of the blind. When he left that institution he left
behind him a universal regret at a serious loss incurred, but an
impression of his personal force upon the work of that institution which
it is stated, on good authority, is felt to this day. Mr. Chapin, the
principal, one day said, as he took from a desk in the corner of the
school-room a thick quarto manuscript book, bound in dark leather and
marked 'Journal:' "Now, I will show you something that illustrates how
thoroughly Mr. Blaine mastered anything he took hold of. This book Mr.
Blaine compiled with great labor from the minute-books of the Board of
Managers. It is a historical view of the institution from the time of
its foundation, up to the time of Mr. B