The history of the first locomotives in America. From original ...

THE JUDGE'S FIRST EIDE. 189
presented to tlie eye, are, as it were, photograplied upon
his brain, so ranch, so, and witli such indelibility, that
it was not actually necessary for an individual to be
present and stand for a likeness. A glance for a moment
at an individual in some accustomed position or
attitude only was necessary, and the likeness could be
produced hours, days, weeks, and often years thereafter,
entirely from memory alone.
The author, for several years, made a very lucrative
business by the exercise of this peculiar faculty of
taking likenesses, and during that time visited all the
principal cities of the country. His first object on visit-
ing a new field for the exercise of his art was to notice
several prominent and well-known citizens as they
walked upon the streets, and- place their likenesses most
accurately upon paper as evidences of his 'skill in this
peculiar art and his wonderful memory of persons and
forms.
It so happened that, on one of the author's professional-visits
to the city of Albany, that a trip, which
was then supposed to be the first train of cars drawn
by a locomotive in America, was run upon the Mohawk
and Hudson Railroad. A graphic and particular
description of this same first trip is given in a letter
from a well-known and distinguished gentleman, now
over eighty years of age, who is one of the few sur-
vivors. The letter is as follows :
" William H. Beowit, Esq.—
" EiDGEWAT, Pa., June 24, 1870.
"Deak Sik: Your iiote of tlie Slst inst., asking for my recollections
of such incidents as impressed themselves on my mind
in the ever-memoraWe first trip by locomotive-powerfrom Albany
to Schenectady in 1831, is before me. In the early part of the
month of August of that year I left Philadelphia for Canaadaigua,
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