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 Hk\.!amin and Deborah Franklin (See F. 161) 
 
TRAVELS IN 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 BY 
 CHRISTOPHER MORLEY 
 
 with drawings by 
 Frank H. Taylor 
 
 What could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes 
 all the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the himiane 
 security of coming home again? What could be better than to have all 
 the fun of discovering South Africa without the disgusting necessity of 
 landing there? What could be more glorious than to brace one's self 
 up to discover New South Wales and then realize, with a gush of happy 
 tears, that it was really Old South Wales. . . . How can we con- 
 trive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? How 
 can this world give us at once the fascination of a strange town and the 
 comfort and honour of being our own town? 
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 Orthodoxy 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 DAVID McKAY COMPANY, Publishers 
 604-608 South Washington Square 
 

 Copyright, 1920, by 
 David McKay Company 
 
 WM • F. FELL CO • PRINTERS 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 
Affectionately Dedicated To 
 
 BART HALEY 
 
 (The Soothsayer) 
 
 JIMMY CRAVEN 
 
 (The Epicure) 
 
 ROY HELTON 
 
 (The Mountaineer) 
 
 MY GENIAL TUTORS IN THE DELICATE ART 
 OF LIVING IN PHILADELPHL\ 
 
AUTHOR'S NOTE 
 
 These sketches were all written for the Philadel- 
 phia Evening Public Ledger, which has kindly given 
 permission for their reissue. They were put down 
 under necessary conditions of haste, and I fear 
 that scrupulous and better informed lovers of the 
 city may find much to censure. But they were not 
 intended as a formal portrait, merely as snap- 
 shots of vivacious phases of the life of today. 
 Philadelphia, most Uvable and lovable of large 
 cities, makes a unique appeal to the meditative 
 stroller. 
 
 I am very grateful indeed to Mr. Frank H. 
 Taylor for letting me include some of his delight- 
 ful drawings, which preserve the outlines and 
 graces of so many Philadelphia scenes. 
 
 Pbiladelphia 
 December 29, 1919 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The publishers of these ''Travels" have asked 
 me to write an introduction to this little volume: 
 it needs no introduction, but I gladly comply, 
 for I am happy to link my name with that of the 
 author. 
 
 Occasionally, on red letter days, for two j^ears 
 past these papers have been appearing in the 
 Evening Ledger, and many of us have turned to 
 the editorial page on which they were printed to 
 quiet our nerves preparatory to a glance at the 
 stock market column to discover what has hap- 
 pened to our investments. And reassured on this 
 point, it may be, or discouraged, we have turned 
 back to re-read slowly these httle essays which, 
 with a humor all their own and a strong local 
 flavor, have a quality which we supposed had 
 disappeared with the essayists who were writing 
 in London, just a century ago. Finally, the 
 "Travels" became so popular that I have seen 
 men carefully cut them out with their penknives 
 and place them in their wallets to pass on to some 
 appreciative friend later, with the remark, " Have 
 you seen that last thing of Morley's? I cut it 
 out for you." 
 
 And so it is that these seeming ephemera have 
 been thought worthy of being collected in a vol- 
 ume, and rightly too, for they have a charm which 
 we shall seek for in vain elsewhere. Which we 
 shall seek for in vain in Philadelphia, perhaps I 
 should have written, for with the publication of 
 
vm irNinujJU^^iiuiN 
 
 these papers, Christopher Morley, the well- 
 beloved "Kit" of his many friends, shakes the 
 dust of Philadelphia from his ample feet and be- 
 takes himself to "fresh woods and pastures new," 
 or to drop the elegance of Milton, he goes to New 
 York, there to create in the columns of the 
 Evening Post that atmosphere of amiability which 
 we have come to regard as inseparable from him. 
 Of course, some of us will resolve to submit to 
 the inconvenience of awaiting at Broad Street 
 Station the arrival of the four o'clock train from 
 New York which usually brings to us the after- 
 noon edition of the Evening Post, but I fear that 
 after a time our resolution will go the way of 
 good resolutions generally, and that we will force 
 ourselves to be content with second best. For 
 after Morley, whatever comes will be second best. 
 Where else shall we find simplicity, the gayety, 
 the kindly humor, and the charm of this gentle 
 essayist? Who, other than Morley, could make 
 a walk out Market Street of interest and a source 
 of fun? His little skit in the manner of Karl 
 Baedeker is inimitable. Who, but he, would 
 think of calling Ridge Avenue, that diagonal 
 that passes over the shoulder of Philadelphia, 
 "the Sam Brown belt"? Who, but he, could 
 find in the commonplace, sordid, and depressing 
 streets of our city, subjects for a sheaf of dainty 
 little essays, as delightful as they are unique? 
 For say what you will, to most of us the streets 
 of Philadelphia are dirty and depressing. But 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 Morley sees everything — not red but rosy — which 
 is a very different matter. 
 
 It is a thousand pities that Morley agreed to 
 go to New York just at the arrival of our new 
 Mayor, who has promised that our streets shall 
 be swept and garnished, — and I, for one, believe 
 that he will keep his word, — but perhaps he is 
 leaving Philadelphia on this very account, for 
 I remember that neatness never had any charm 
 for him. Have we not, all of us, read of the 
 condition of his roll-top desk? 
 
 Be this as it may. We are to lose him, and I, 
 for one, am desolate. Students and men of the 
 world we have, but of ''saunterers," in these days 
 of big business, of "snappers-up of unconsidered 
 trifles," we have too few. We have all kinds of 
 cusses but Autoly cusses. We can ill spare Morley 
 to New York. But wherever he goes, our good 
 wishes go with him, and he may yet, when he 
 has had his fling in the *'metrolopus," as Francis 
 Wilson used to call the great city, rid himself of 
 his motley and, assuming a collegiate gown, re- 
 turn to his Alma Mater, Haverford, there to 
 carry on the splendid tradition of his and my old 
 friend Gummere; for beneath his assumption 
 of the vagabond, Morley has the learning as well 
 as the tastes and traditions of the scholar, as will 
 be evident to the reader of these pages. 
 
 A. Edward Newton 
 Daylesford, Pa., 
 January 20, 1920 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAQE 
 
 Benjamin Franklin 7 
 
 Sauntering 10 
 
 Little Italy 15 
 
 Meeting the Gods for a Dime 21 
 
 Wild Words We Have Known 24 
 
 The Enchanted Village 28 
 
 Trailing Mrs. Trollope 33 
 
 The Haverford Comes Home 39 
 
 Marooned in Philadelphia 45 
 
 The Ronaldson Cemetery 50 
 
 Willow Grove 56 
 
 Chestnut Street from a Fire Escape 60 
 
 The Parkway, Henry Ford and Billy the Bean Man. . . 64 
 
 Wildey Street 69 
 
 Hog Island 75 
 
 South Broad Street 81 
 
 The Recluse of Franklin Square 87 
 
 Catterina of Spring Garden Street 92 
 
 A Slice of Sunlight 98 
 
 Up the Wissahickon 103 
 
 Darkness Visible 108 
 
 On the Way to Baltimore 115 
 
 The Paoli Local 119 
 
 Travels in Philadelphia — As They Would Be Reported 
 
 by Some Eminent Travelers 124 
 
 To League Island and Back 129 
 
 The Whitman Centennial 135 
 
 Anne Gilchrist's House 141 
 
 Along the Green Neshaminy 147 
 
 Penn Treaty Park 152 
 
 The Indian Pole 156 
 
 Claud Joseph Warlow 162 
 
 xi 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 At the Mint 167 
 
 Stonehouse Lane and The Neck 174 
 
 Valley Forge 178 
 
 The Mercantile Library 184 
 
 Meditations on Oysters 190 
 
 Darby Creek 192 
 
 Darby Revisited 197 
 
 The Happy Valley 200 
 
 OurOldDesk 206 
 
 Calling on William Penn 211 
 
 Madonnas of the Curb 217 
 
 The Paradise Special 222 
 
 Up to Valley Green 228 
 
 On the Sightseeing Bus 233 
 
 September Afternoon 238 
 
 Broad Street Station 244 
 
 The Shore in September 250 
 
 Putting the City to Bed 259 
 
TRAVELS IN PHILADELPHIA 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 Jan. 17, 1919 
 
 Benjamin Franklin, sagacious and witty, 
 The greatest of all who have lived in this city, 
 Earnest and frugal and very discerning, 
 Always industrious, bent upon learning. 
 Athlete, ambassador, editor, printer. 
 Merchant and scientist, wTiter, inventor. 
 None was more canny or shrewder of brain. 
 None was more practical or more humane. 
 None was e'er wiser 
 
 With common sense ripe, 
 Great advertiser 
 
 And founder of type. 
 
 Troubles he suffered, but he didn't dodge any: 
 Born the fifteenth of a numerous progeny 
 (Seventeen children Josiah had sired, 
 
 A whole little font of good lower-case types; 
 A fact that the census man must have admired — 
 I think old Josiah might well have worn 
 stripes. 
 But that was in Boston where folks are proUfic) 
 He passed through a boyhood by no means pacific. 
 Through most of his teens, young Benjamin lent 
 
 his 
 Best efforts to being his brother's apprentice. 
 But Jimmy was crusty — they didn't get on. 
 And one autumn morning young Benny was gone. 
 He vowed he would make his sour kinsman look 
 
 silly. 
 And so he took ship and descended on Philly. 
 
8 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 The very first thought that came into his nob 
 (After buying some buns) was to look for a job. 
 So up from the ferry 
 
 Our Benjamin stalked, 
 And hungrily, very, 
 
 Ate buns as he walked. 
 A certain blithe flapper, 
 
 A whimsical lass. 
 Observed the young strapper 
 And thought he lacked class, 
 And so, in the manner of feminine strafing. 
 The superior damsel just couldn't help laughing; 
 But Ben, unabashed by this good-natured chaffing. 
 Although young Deborah 
 
 Was certainly rude, 
 He thought he'd ignore her 
 And cheerfully chewed. 
 With the best kind of repartee later he parried her, 
 For seven years afterward he went and married 
 her. 
 
 Well, you all know of his varied successes, 
 Electrical hobbies and his printing presses. 
 See how his mind, with original oddity 
 Touched and found interest in every commodity : 
 Busy with schemes to domesticate lightning. 
 Inventing a stove for home warming and brighten- 
 ing, 
 Scribbhng a proverb, a joke or a sermon, 
 PubHshing too (what I am loth to mention 
 For fear of its bringing up any dissension) 
 Printing, I say, a newspaper in German — 
 Also, for which he's remembered by most. 
 He founded the Saturday Evening Post, 
 For which Irvin Cobb has consistently praised 
 
 him — 
 And its circulation would much have amazed him! 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 9 
 
 Busy with matters too many for telling — 
 Saving of daylight and simplified spelling — 
 Still his chief happiness, as one may think, 
 Came when he found himself dabbUng in ink, 
 And all his writings, though slight he did think 
 
 'em, 
 Brought him a very respectable income. 
 His was a mind that was chiefly empirical, 
 Not at all given to theory or miracle — 
 
 Nothing chimerical, 
 
 Nothing hysterical, — 
 Though he wrote verses, they weren't very lyrical, 
 And he was touched with a taste for satirical. 
 Though his more weighty affairs were so numerous 
 Yet he was quaintly and constantly humorous, 
 Loved Philadelphians, but when he was one of 
 
 them 
 Nothing he hked quite so well as make fun of them. 
 
 Scarce an invention since his time has burst 
 
 But Benjamin FrankUn had thought of it first; 
 
 Indeed it would cause me no ejaculations 
 
 To hear he suggested the new League of Nations. 
 
 He truly succeeded in most that he tried, he 
 
 Confounded his enemies, and when he died he 
 
 Was guiltless of sin except being untidy. 
 
 He died of old age, not of illness or tumor. 
 
 And wrote his own epitaph, full of good humor. 
 
 Every tradition and custom he broke. 
 
 This first Philadelphian who dared make a joke! 
 
10 SAUNTERING 
 
 SAUNTERING 
 
 Some famous lady — who was it? — used to say 
 of anyone she richly despised that he was "a, 
 saunterer." I suppose she meant he was a mere 
 trifler, a lounger, an idle stroller of the streets. It 
 is an ignominious confession, but I am a confirmed 
 saunterer. I love to be set down haphazard among 
 unknown byways; to saunter with open eyes, 
 watching the moods and humors of men, the shapes 
 of their dwelhngs, the criss-cross of their streets. 
 It is an implanted passion that grows keener and 
 keener. The everlasting lure of round-the-corner, 
 how fascinating it is ! 
 
 I love city squares. The most interesting per- 
 sons are always those who have nothing special 
 to do: children, nurses, policemen, and actors at 
 1 1 o'clock in the morning. These are always to be 
 found in the park; by which I mean not an enor- 
 mous sector of denatured countryside with bridle 
 paths, fishponds and sea lions, but some broad 
 patch of turf in a shabby elbow of the city, striped 
 with pavements, with plenty of sun-warmed 
 benches and a cast-iron zouave erected about 1873 
 to remind one of the horrors of commemorative 
 statuary. Children scuffle to and fro; dusty men 
 with spiculous chins loll on the seats; the uncouth 
 and pathetic vibrations of humankind are on 
 every side. 
 
 It is entrancing to walk in such places and cata- 
 
SAUNTERING 11 
 
 logue all that may be seen. I jot down on scraps 
 of paper a list of all the shops on a side street; 
 the names of tradesmen that amuse me; the ab- 
 surd repartees of gutter children. Why? It 
 amuses me and that is sufficient excuse. From 
 now until the end of time no one else will ever 
 see life with my eyes, and I mean to make the 
 most of my chance. Just as Thoreau compiled a 
 Domesday Book and kind of classified directory 
 of the sights, sounds and scents of Walden (care- 
 fully recording the manners of a sandbank and the 
 prejudices of a woodlouse or an apple tree) so I 
 love to annotate the phenomena of the city. I 
 can be as solitary in a city street as ever Thoreau 
 was in Walden. 
 
 And no Walden sky was ever more blue than 
 the roof of Washington square this morning. Sit- 
 ting here reading Thoreau I am entranced by the 
 mellow flavor of the young summer. The sun is j ust 
 goodly enough to set the being in a gentle toasting 
 muse. The trees confer together in a sleepy 
 wliisper. I have had buckwheat cakes and syrup 
 for breakfast, and eggs fried both recto and verso; 
 good foundation for speculation. I puff cigarettes 
 and am at peace with myself. Many a worthy 
 waif comes to lounge beside me; he glances at 
 my scuffed boots, my baggy trousers; he knows 
 me for one of the fraternity. By their boots ye 
 shall know them. Many of those who have 
 abandoned the race for this world's honors have a 
 shrewdness all their own. What is it Thoreau 
 
12 ISAUJNTEKlJNli 
 
 says, with his penetrative truth? — ''Sometimes 
 we are inclined to class those who are once and a 
 half witted with the half witted, because we ap- 
 preciate only a third part of their wit." By the 
 time a man is thirty he should be able to see what 
 life has to offer, and take what dishes on the menu 
 agree with him best. That is whole wit, indeed, 
 or wit-and-a-half. And if he finds his pleasure 
 on a park bench in ragged trousers let tiim lounge 
 then, with good heart. I welcome him to the 
 goodly fellowship of saunterers, an acolyte of the 
 excellent church of the agorolaters! 
 
 These meditations are incurred in the ancient 
 and noble city of Philadelphia, which is a sur- 
 prisingly large town at the confluence of the 
 Biddle and Drexel famiUes. It is wholly sur- 
 rounded by cricket teams, fox hunters, beagle 
 packs, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. It has a 
 very large zoological garden, containing carnivora, 
 herbivora, scrappleivora, and a man from New 
 York who was interned here at the time of the 
 Centennial Exposition in 1876. The principal 
 manufactures are carpets, life insurance premiums, 
 and souvenirs of Independence Hall. Philadel- 
 phia was the first city to foresee the advantages 
 of a Federal constitution and oatmeal as a break- 
 fast food. 
 
 And as one walks and speculates among all this 
 visible panorama, beating one's brains to catch 
 some passing snapshots of it, watching, listening, 
 imagining, the whole hullabaloo becomes ex- 
 
SAUNTERING 13 
 
 traorclinarily precious. The great faulty hodge- 
 podge of the city, its very pavements and house- 
 corners, becomes vividly dear. One longs to 
 clutch the whole meaning in some sudden embrace 
 — to utter some testament of affection that will 
 speak plain truth. '^Friday I tasted hfe," said 
 Emily Dickinson, the American Blake. ''It was 
 a vast morsel." Something of that baffled exul- 
 tation seizes one in certain moments of stroUing, 
 when the afternoon sun streams down Chestnut 
 Street on the homeward pressing crowd, or in 
 clear crisp mornings as one walks through Wash- 
 ington Square. Emily utters her prodigious 
 parables in flashing rockets that stream for an 
 instant in the dusk, then break and sink in colored 
 balls. Most of us cannot ejaculate such dazzles 
 of flame. We pick and poke and stumble our 
 thoughts together, catching at a truth and losing 
 it again. 
 
 Agreeable vistas reward the eye of the resolute 
 stroller. For instance, that delightful cluster of 
 back gardens, old brick angles, dormer windows 
 and tall chimneys in the little block on Orange 
 street west of Seventh. Orange street is the little 
 alley just south of Washington Square. In the 
 clean sunlight of a fresh May morning, with 
 masses of green trees and creepers to set off the 
 old ruddy brick, this quaint huddle of buildings 
 composes into a delightful picture that has been 
 perpetuated by the skilful pencil of Frank H. 
 Taylor. A kindly observer in the Dreer seed 
 
14 SAUNTERING 
 
 warehouse, which backs upon Orange street, 
 noticed me prowling about and offered to take 
 me up in his elevator. From one of the Dreer 
 windows I had a fascinating glimpse down upon 
 these roofs and gardens. One of them is the rear 
 yard of the Italian consulate at 717 Spruce street. 
 Another is the broader garden of The Catholic 
 Historical Society, in which I noticed with amuse- 
 ment Nicholas Biddle's big stone bathtub sunning 
 itself. Then there is the garden of the adorable 
 little house at 725 Spruce street, which is par- 
 ticularly interesting because, when seen from the 
 street, it appears to have no front door. The attic 
 window of that house is just our idea of what an 
 attic window ought to be. 
 
 A kind of philosophy distills itself in the 
 mind of the saunterer. Painfully tedious as 
 people often are, they have the sublime quality 
 of interesting one. Not merely by what they 
 say, but often by what they don't say. Their 
 eyes — how amazing is the thought of all those 
 millions of little betraying windows ! How bravely 
 they struggle to express what is in them. A 
 modern essayist has spoken of ''the haggard neces- 
 sities of parlor conversation." But the hfe of the 
 streets has no such conventions. It is real: it 
 comes hot from the pan. It is as informal, as 
 direct and as unpretentious as the greetings of 
 dogs. It is a never-failing remedy for the blues. 
 
LITTLE ITALY 15 
 
 LITTLE ITALY 
 
 There are three gentlemen with whom I have 
 been privileged, on happy occasions, to take 
 travels in Philadelphia. The first is the Moun- 
 taineer, a tall vagabond, all bone and gristle, mem- 
 ber emeritus of the Hoboes' Union, who can tramp 
 all day on seven cents' worth of milk chocolate, 
 knows the ins and outs of every queer trade and is 
 a passionate student of back alleys and mean 
 streets. Pawnshops, groggeries, docks and fac- 
 tories make his mouth water with the astounding 
 romance of every day. 
 
 The second is the Soothsayer, an amiable vision- 
 ary whose eye dotes on a wider palette. Sooth- 
 sayer by profession, artist and humanitarian at 
 heart, he is torn and shaken on every street by the 
 violent paradoxes of his hvely intellect. A beggar 
 assaults his sense of pity — but rags are so pictur- 
 esque ! A vast hotel, leaking golden flame at every 
 window against the green azure of the dusk, fasci- 
 nates his prismatic eyeball — but how about the 
 poor and humble? Treading the wide vistas of the 
 Parkway in a sunset flush he is transported by the 
 glory of the vision. Scouting some infamous alley 
 of smells he would blast the whole rottenness from 
 the earth. He never knows whether the city is a 
 sociological nightmare or an Arabian color-box. 
 
 And the third is the Epicure. In person very 
 similar to Napoleon the Third, late emperor of the 
 
16 LITTLE ITALY 
 
 French, some mysterious tincture of the Mediter- 
 ranean moves in his strictly Saxon blood. A man 
 of riotous and ungovernable humor, frequently 
 halting on the streets until his paroxysms of out- 
 rageous mirth will permit further locomotion, the 
 only thing he never laughs at is food. He sees the 
 city not as a vast social riddle, nor as a network of 
 heavenly back-alleys, but as a waste of irrelevant 
 architecture, dotted here and there with oases of 
 good meals. Mention some spot in the city and his 
 eye will brighten like a newly sucked glass marble. 
 ''Oh, yes," he cries, ''that's just round the corner 
 from the Cafe Pancreas, where they have those 
 admirable ortolans!" To eat a meal in company 
 with the Epicure is like watching a great artist at 
 work. He studies the menu with the bitter con- 
 centration of a sculptor surveying the block of 
 marble from which the statue is to be chiseled. He 
 does not assassinate his appetite at one swoop with 
 mere sum total of victuals. He gently woos it to 
 annihilation, so that he himself can hardly tell just 
 at what point it dies. He eats with the skill and 
 cunning of a champion chess player, forgoing a 
 soup or an entree in the calculating spirit of Lasker 
 or Marshall, sacrificing pawns in order to exe- 
 cute some coup elsewhere on the board. Waiters, 
 with that subtle instinct of theirs, know as soon as 
 they see that delicately rounded figure enter the 
 salle a manger, that here is a man to be reckoned 
 with. 
 
 You may imagine, then, my privilege in being 
 
LITTLE ITALY 17 
 
 able to accompany the Epicure the other day to 
 the ItaUan market at Ninth and Christian streets, 
 where he purposed to look over the stalls. It was a 
 day of entrancing sunlight, when all that lively 
 district of Little Italy leaped and trembled in the 
 fullness of light and appetizing fluent air. One 
 saw a secret pathos in the effort to reproduce in 
 the flat dull streets of a foreign city something of 
 the color and mirth of Mediterranean soil. One 
 often wonders what fantastic dream or illusion — 
 was it only a steamship poster? — led so many 
 citizens of the loveliest land on earth to forsake 
 their blue hills and opal valleys to people the cheer- 
 less byways of American towns? What does Little 
 Italy think of us and our climate in the raw, bitter 
 days of a western winter? Well, now that the 
 letters are speeding homeward telUng of the unbe- 
 lievable approach of prohibition, there will be few 
 enough of those bright-eyed immigrants! 
 
 Christian street breathes the Italian genius for 
 good food. After lunching in a well-known Ital- 
 ian restaurant on Catharine street, where the Epi- 
 cure instructed me in the mysteries of gnocchi, 
 frittura mista, rognone, scallopini al marsala and 
 that marvelously potent clear coffee which seems 
 to the uninstructed to taste more Hke wine than 
 coffee, and has a curious shimmer of green round 
 the rim of the liquid, we strolled among the pave- 
 ment stalls of the Uttle market. It seems to me, 
 just from a cursory study of the exhibit, that the 
 secret of Italian gusto for food is that they take 
 
18 LITTLE ITALY 
 
 it closer to nature, and also that they are less keen 
 than we about meat. They do not buy their food 
 already prepared in cardboard boxes. Fish, vege- 
 tables, cheese, fruit and nuts seem to be their chief 
 dehghts. Fish of every imaginable kind may be 
 seen on Christian street. Some of them, small, 
 flattened, silver-shining things, are packed cun- 
 ningly in kegs in a curious concentric pattern so 
 that the glitter of their perished eyes gleams in 
 hypnotizing circles. Eels, mussels, skates, shrimps, 
 cuttlefish — small pink corpses, bathed in their own 
 ink — and some very tiny ocean morsels that look 
 Hke white-bait. Cheeses of every kind and color, 
 some of them a dull yellow and molded in a queer 
 gourd-Hke shape. But the vegetables and herbs 
 are the most inscrutable. Even the gastrologer 
 Epicure was unable to explain them all to me. 
 Chopped bayleaves, artichokes, mushrooms, 
 bunches of red and green peppers, little boxes of 
 dried peas, beans, powdered red pepper, wrinkled 
 ohves and raisins, and strange-smelling bundles of 
 herbs that smell only like straw, but which pre- 
 sumably possess some strange seasoning virtue to 
 those who understand them. In the windows of 
 the grocers' shops j^ou will always find Funghi 
 secchi della Liguria (Ligurian dried mushrooms) 
 and Finocchio uso Sicilia (Fennel, SiciHan style), 
 which names are poems in themselves. And, of 
 course, the long Bologna sausages — and great 
 round loaves of bread. 
 
 The Italian sweet tooth is well hinted at in 
 
LITTLE ITALY 19 
 
 the Christian street pasticcerias (pastry shops), 
 where cakes, macaroons, biscuits and wafers of 
 every color beckon to the eye. Equally chromatic 
 are the windows of the bookshops, where bright 
 portraits of General Diaz, King Victor and Presi- 
 dent Wilson beam down upon knots of gossipers 
 arguing on the sunny side of the street, and a 
 magnificent edition of the Divina Commedia Hes 
 side by side with Amore Proibito and I Sotterranei 
 di New York. Another volume whose title is 
 legible even to one with scarcely any smattering of 
 tongues is II Kaiser AllTnferno! 
 
 Some of the shops in Little Italy seem to em- 
 brace a queer union of trades. For instance, one 
 man announces his office as a "Funeral agent and 
 detective bureau"; another, *' Bookbinder and 
 flower shop." In one window may be seen elabo- 
 rate plans of Signor Menotti Nanni's Ocean Float- 
 ing Safe, in which transatlantic passengers are 
 recommended to stow their valuables. The ship 
 may sink and likewise the passengers, but in 
 the Ocean Floating Safe your jewels and pri- 
 vate papers will float off undamaged and roam the 
 ocean until some one comes to salve them. The 
 Itahan name for this ingenious device is Cassaforte 
 Galleggiante, which we take to mean a swimming 
 strong-box. 
 
 No account of Christian street would be com- 
 plete without at least some mention of the theatres 
 between Eighth and Seventh streets. The other 
 afternoon I stopped in at one of them, expecting 
 
20 LITTLE ITALY 
 
 to see moving pictures, which are comprehensible 
 in all languages; but instead I found two ItaUan 
 comedians — a man and a woman — performing on 
 an odd little stage to an audience which roared 
 applause at every line. I was unable to under- 
 stand a word, but the skill and grace of the per- 
 formers were evident, also the suave and liquid 
 versification of their lines. The manager walked 
 continually up and down the aisles, rebuking every 
 sound and movement other than legitimate ap- 
 plause with a torrential hiss. Every time a baby 
 squalled — and there were many — the manager 
 sibilated Hke a python. The audience took this 
 quite for granted, so evidently it is customary. 
 It is a salutary lesson in modesty to attend a per- 
 formance conducted in a foreign language : there is 
 nothing that so rapidly impresses upon one our 
 stupid provincial ignorance of most tongues but 
 our own. 
 
 Little Italy is only a few blocks away from 
 Chestnut street, and yet I daresay thousands of 
 our citizens hardly suspect its existence. If you 
 chance to go down there about 1 o'clock some 
 bright afternoon, when all the children are enjoy- 
 ing the school recess, and see that laughing, romp- 
 ing mass of bright-eyed young citizens, you will 
 wonder whether they are to be congratulated on 
 growing up in this new country of wonderful 
 opportunity, or to be pitied for losing the beauty 
 and old tradition of that storied peninsula so far 
 away. 
 
MEETING THE GODS FOR A DIME ^1 
 
 MEETING THE GODS FOR A DIME* 
 
 If we had to choose just one street in Phila- 
 delphia to the exclusion of all others, probably 
 our greatest affection would be for Ludlow street. 
 We have constituted ourself the president, pub- 
 licity committee and sole member of the Ludlow 
 Street Business Men's Association and Chamber 
 of Commerce. We propose in this manifesto to 
 make known to the world just where Ludlow 
 street is, and why it is so fair. 
 
 Ludlow street is not in any sense a thoroughfare. 
 It does not fare through, for its course is estopped 
 by several bulky buildings. It reappears here and 
 there in a whimsical, tentative manner. We do 
 not pretend to know all about Ludlow street, nor 
 have we charted its entire course. But the pith 
 and quintessence of this runnel of culture is trod 
 almost daily by our earnest feet. 
 
 Our doings with Ludlow street begin when we 
 turn off Eleventh street and caress the flank of 
 the Mercantile Library in an easterly gambit. 
 Then, with our nose cocked for any wandering 
 savors from the steaming roast beeves of a Tenth 
 street ordinary well known to epicureans, we dart 
 along until our progress is barred by the Federal 
 Building. This necessitates a portage through 
 the Federal Reserve Bank on to the roaring coast 
 of Chestnut street. We double back on Ninth 
 
22 MEETING THE GODS FOR A DIME 
 
 and find Ludlow reappearing just above Leary's 
 Book Store. 
 
 Here it is that our dear Ludlow street finds its 
 mission and meaning in life. From the tall- 
 browed facade of the Mercantile Library it has 
 caught a taste for literature and against the north 
 wall of Leary's it indulges itself to the full. Per- 
 haps you would think it a grimy Httle alley as it 
 twists bhthely round Leary's, but to us it is a 
 porchway of Paradise. How many hours we have 
 daUied under that httle penthouse shelter mulhng 
 over the ten-cent shelves! All the rumors and 
 echoes of letters find their way to Ludlow street 
 sooner or later. We can lay our ear to those 
 battered rows of books as to a whorled conch 
 shell and hear the solemn murmur of the vast 
 ocean of hterature. There we may meet the proud 
 argosies or the humble derelicts of that ocean for 
 ten cents. 
 
 Yes, they all come to Ludlow street in the end. 
 We have found Wentworth's Arithmetic there, 
 old foe of our youth; and George Eliot, and 
 Porter (Jane) and Porter (Gene Stratton). There 
 used to be a complete set of Wilkie Colhns, bound 
 in blue buckram, at the genteel end of the street 
 among the twenty-five centers. We were buying 
 them, one by one (that was before the days of 
 thrift stamps), when some plutocrat came along 
 and kidnapped the whole bunch. He was an un- 
 discerning plutocrat, because he took the second 
 volume of ''The Woman in White" while we were 
 
MEETING THE GODS FOR A DIME 23 
 
 still reading the first. When we went gayly to buy 
 Volume II, lo! it was gone. 
 
 Clark Russell is there, with his snowy canvassed 
 yachts dipping and creaming through azure seas; 
 and once in a while a tattered Franl^ Stockton or a 
 ''Female Poets of America" or "The Mysteries 
 of Udolpho.'^ We have learned more about books 
 from Ludlow street than ever we did in any course 
 at college. We remember how we used to hasten 
 thither on Saturday afternoons during our college 
 days and, fortified with an automatic sandwich 
 and a cup of coffee, we would spend a delirious 
 three hours plundering the jeweled caves of joy. 
 Best of all are the wet days when the rain drums 
 on the httle shelter-roof and drips down the back 
 of the fanatic. But what true fanatic heeds a 
 chilled spine when his head is warmed by all the 
 fires of Olympus? 
 
 Ludlow street has quiet sorrows of its own, 
 however. At the end of the ten-cent shelves, 
 redeemed and exalted, even intoxicated by these 
 draughts of ehxir, it staggers a Httle in its gait. 
 It takes a wild reeling twist round behind Leary's, 
 cHnging to that fortress of the Muses as long as it 
 may. And then comes the thorn in its crown. 
 Just as it has begun to fancy itself as a highbrow 
 pathway to Hehcon, it finds itself wearing against 
 its sober brick wall one of the Street Cleaning De- 
 partment's fantastic and long-neglected ash piles. 
 This abashes the poor little street so that when it 
 strikes Eighth street it becomes confused, totters 
 
24 WILD WORDS WE HAVE KNOWN 
 
 feebly several perches to the north and commits 
 suicide in a merry httle cul de sac frequented by 
 journeymen carpenters, who bury it in their 
 sweet-smelling shavings. 
 
 O blessed little Ludlow street! You are to 
 Philadelphia what the old book stalls on the Seine 
 bank are to Paris, what Charing Cross Road is to 
 London. You are the home and haunt of the 
 shyest, sweetest Muses there are: the Muses of 
 old books. The Ludlow Street Business Men's 
 Association, in convention assembled, drinks a 
 beaker of Tom and Jerry to your health and good 
 fortune! 
 
 WILD WORDS WE HAVE KNOWN 
 
 About noon on Saturday the city heaves a 
 sigh of relief. Indeed, it begins a little earUer than 
 that. About eleven-forty even the most faithful 
 stenographer begins to woolgather. Letters dic- 
 tated in that last half hour are likely to be ad- 
 dressed ''Mrs. Henrietta Jenkins, Esq.," or ''Miss 
 John Jones." The patient paying teller has to 
 count over his notes three times to be sure of not 
 giving a five instead of a one. The glorious 
 demoralization spreads from desk to desk. No 
 matter who we are or how hard we have worked, 
 it is Saturday noon, and for a few hours we are 
 going to forget the war and spend our pocketful 
 of carefree fresh-minted minutes. As Tom Daly, 
 the poet laureate of Philadelphia, puts it — 
 
WILD WORDS WE HAVE KNOWN 25 
 
 ''Whenever it's a Saturday and all my work is 
 
 through, 
 I take a walk on Chestnut street to see what news 
 
 is new." 
 
 Every Jack and Jill has his or her own ideas of a 
 Saturday afternoon adventure. Our stenographer 
 hastens off with a laughing group to the Automat 
 and the movies. Our friend with the shell-rimmed 
 spectacles, tethered by a broad silk ribbon, is 
 bound to the Academy of the Fine Arts to censure 
 the way Mr. Sargent has creased John D. Rocke- 
 feller's trousers, and will come back bursting 
 with indignation to denounce the portrait ''a 
 mere chromo." We ourself hasten to the Reading 
 Terminal to meet a certain pair of brown eyes 
 that are sparkhng in from Marathon for lunch 
 and a mobilization of spring miUinery. And 
 others are off to breast the roaring gusts of March 
 on the golf meads or trundle baby carriages on 
 the sunny side of suburban streets. 
 
 But there is another diversion for Saturday 
 afternoon that is very dear to us, and sometimes 
 
 we are able to coax B W to agree. That 
 
 is to spend two or three glorious hours in the 
 library muUing over the dictionaries. Talk about 
 chasing a golfball over the links or following 
 Theda Bara serpentining through a mile of cellu- 
 loid, or stalking Tom and Jerry, mystic affinities, 
 from bar to bar along Chestnut street — what can 
 these excitements offer compared to a breathless 
 word-hunt in the dictionaries! Words — the 
 
26 WILD WORDS WE HAVE KNOWN 
 
 noblest quarry of the sportsman ! To follow their 
 spoor through the jungles and champaigns of the 
 English language; to flush them from their hiding 
 places in dense thickets of Chaucer or Spenser, 
 track them through the noble aisles of Shake- 
 speare forest and find them at last perching gayly 
 on the branches of O. Henry or George Ade! 
 The New Oxford Dictionary, that most splendid 
 monument of human scholarship, gives moving 
 pictures of words from their first hatching down 
 to the time when they soar like eagles in the open 
 air of today. 
 
 We know no greater joy than an afternoon spent 
 with dear old Dr. Johnson's Dictionary of the 
 English Language, published after seven years' 
 patient labor in 1755. Probably somewhere in 
 Philadelphia there is a copy of the first edition; 
 but the one we know (at the Mercantile Library) 
 is the revised fourth edition which the doctor put 
 out in 1775. One can hardly read without a lump 
 in the throat that noble preface in which Doctor 
 Johnson rehearses the greatness and discourage- 
 ment of his task. And who can read too often his 
 rebuff to the Earl of Chesterfield, who, having 
 studiously neglected to aid the lexicographer 
 during the long years of his compilation, sought 
 by belated flattery to associate himself with the 
 vast achievement? "Is not a Patron, my Lord, 
 one who looks with unconcern on a man strug- 
 gling for life in the water, and, when he has 
 reached ground, encumbers him with help?" 
 
WILD WORDS V> E HAVE KNOWN 27 
 
 And who does not chuckle over the caustic humor 
 of the doctor's definitions of words that touched 
 his own rugged career? ''Lexicographer: a harm- 
 less drudge;" ''book-learned: versed in books or 
 literature; a term implying some sHght con- 
 tempt"; "Grub street: a street in London much 
 inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries 
 and temporary poems." 
 
 O. Henry was a great devotee of word-beagling 
 in dictionaries, and his whimsical "review" of 
 Webster deserves to be better known: — 
 
 "We find on our table quite an exhaustive 
 treatise on various subjects written in Mr. Web- 
 ster's well-known, lucid and piquant style. There 
 is not a dull line between the covers of the book. 
 The range of subjects is wide, and the treatment 
 light and easy without being flippant. A valu- 
 able feature of the work is the arranging of the 
 articles in alphabetical order, thus facilitating the 
 finding of any particular word desired. Mr. 
 Webster's vocabulary is large, and he always uses 
 the right word in the right place. Mr. Webster's 
 work is thorough, and we predict that he will be 
 heard from again." 
 
 What exhilaration can Theda Bara or the nine- 
 teenth putting green offer compared to the bliss 
 of pursuing through a thousand dictionary pages 
 some Wild Word We Have Known, and occa- 
 sionally discovering an unfamiliar creature of 
 strange and dazzHng plumage? 
 
28 THE ENCHANTED VILLAGE 
 
 THE ENCHANTED VILLAGE 
 
 It was a warm morning. Everybody knew 
 it was going to be hot later on and was bustling 
 to get work well under way before the blaze of 
 noon. The broad vista of Market street was 
 dimmed by the summer haze that is part atmos- 
 pheric and part gasoline vapor. And as I strolled 
 up Sixth street I kept to the eastern side, which 
 was still in pleasant shadow. 
 
 Sixth street has a charming versatility. Its 
 main concern in the blocks north of Market street 
 seems to be machinery and hardware — cutlery 
 and die stamping and tools. But it amuses itself 
 with other matters — printing and bookbinding, 
 oysters and an occasional smack of beer. Like 
 most of our downtown streets, it is well irrigated. 
 It is a jolly street for a hot day, calling out many 
 an ejaculation of the eye. For instance, I cannot 
 resist the office window of a German newspaper. 
 The samples of job printing displayed are so de- 
 lightful a medley of the relaxations which make 
 the world safe for democracy. Dance Program of 
 the Beer Drivers' Union, Annual Ball of the Bell- 
 boys of Philadelphia, Russian Tea Party, First 
 Annual Picnic of the Young People's Socialist 
 League, Banquet of the Journeymen Barbers' 
 Union — who would not have found honest mirth 
 (and plenty of malt and hot dogs) at these enter- 
 tainments! Just so we can imagine Messrs. 
 
THE ENCHANTED VILLAGE £9 
 
 Lenine and Trotskj^ girding their seidels for a 
 long midsummer day's junket with the Moscow- 
 Soviet. There also are the faded announcement 
 cards for some address by Mme. Rosika Schwim- 
 mer (of Budapest), secretary of the International 
 Woman Suffrage Alliance. Dear me, what has 
 happened to the indefatigable Rosika since she 
 and Hem-y Ford and others went bounding and 
 bickering on a famous voyage to Stockholm? As 
 some steamship company used to advertise, ''In 
 all the world, no trip like this." 
 
 At Race street I turned east to St. John's 
 Lutheran Church. The church stands between 
 Fifth and Sixth. In front of it, in a little semi- 
 circle of sun-bleached grass, stands the family 
 vault of Bohl Bohlen. In this vault lie Brigadier 
 General W. Henry C. Bohlen, killed in action at 
 Freeman's Ford on the Rappahannock River, 
 August 22, 1862, and his wife, Sophie. It is 
 interesting to remember that they were the grand- 
 parents of the present Herr Krupp. 
 
 The Httle burying ground behind St. John's 
 is one of the most fascinating spots in Philadel- 
 phia. I found George Hahn, the good-natured 
 sexton, cutting the grass, and he took me round 
 to look at many of the old tombstones, now mostly 
 unreadable. Several Revolutionary veterans came 
 to their resting in that Httle acre, among them 
 Philip Summer, who died in 1814, and who is 
 memorable to me because his wife was called 
 Solemn. Solemn Summer — her name is carved 
 
30 THE ENCHANTED VILLAGE 
 
 on the stone. If I were an artist I should love to 
 picture the quaint huddle of tawny red brick 
 overlooking St. John's churchyard, the vistas 
 of narrow little streets, the corners and angles of 
 old houses. The sunny walls of the burying 
 ground are a favorite basking place for cats of 
 all hues — yellow, black and gray. I envy George 
 Hahn his quiet hours of work in that silent in- 
 closure, but he assured me that the grass is rank 
 and grows with dreadful speed. The somewhat 
 desolate and forgotten air of the graveyard, with 
 its broken stones and splintered trees, adds 
 greatly to the wistfulness of its charm. 
 
 Behind the churchyard is a kind of enchanted 
 village. Summer street bounds the cemetery, and 
 from this branch off picturesque Httle lanes — 
 Randolph street, for instance, with its row of 
 trim little red houses, the white and green shutters, 
 the narrow cobbled footway. It was ironing day 
 and, taking a furtive peep through basement 
 doors, I could see the regular sweep of busy sad- 
 irons on white boards. Children abound, and I 
 felt greatly complimented when one infant called 
 out Da-Da, as I passed. Parallel with Randolph 
 street run Fairhill and Reese — tiny httle byways, 
 but a kind of miniature picture of the older Phila- 
 delphia. Snowy clothes were fluttering from the 
 hues and pumps gushing a silver stream into wash- 
 tubs. Strong white arms were sluicing and lather- 
 ing the clothes, sousing them in the bluing-tinted 
 water. Everywhere children were playing merrily 
 
THE ENCHANTED VILLAGE 31 
 
 in the overflow. And there were window-boxes 
 with bright flowers. 
 
 At the corner of Reese and Summer streets is a 
 Httle statuary workshop — a cool dim place, full 
 of white figures and an elderly man doing some- 
 thing mysterious with molds. I would have liked 
 to hear all about his work, but as he was not very 
 questionable I felt too bashful to insist. 
 
 If I were a sketcher I would plant my easel at 
 the corner of Summer and Randolph streets and 
 spend a long day puffing tobacco and trying to 
 pencil the quaint domestic charm of that vista. 
 The children would crowd round to watch and 
 comment and little by little I would learn — what 
 the drawing would be only a pretext for learning — 
 something of their daily mirth and tears. I would 
 hear of their adventurous forays into the broad 
 green space of Frankhn Square, only a few yards 
 away. Of scrambles over the wall into St. John's 
 churchyard when George Hahn isn't looking. Of 
 the sweets that may be bought for a penny at 
 the little store on the corner. I should say that 
 store sells more soap than anything else. Ran- 
 dolph street simply glistens with cleanhness — all 
 except the upper end, where the city is too lazy 
 to see that the garbage is carried away. But then 
 a big city is so much more concerned "v^dth parades 
 on Broad street than removing garbage from the 
 hidden corners where little urchins play. 
 
 Round the corner on Fifth street is the quaint 
 cul de sac of Central place, which backs up against 
 
m THE ENCHANTED VUXAGE 
 
 Reese street, but does not run through. It is a 
 quiet Httle brick yard, with three green pumps 
 (also plopping into washtubs) and damp garments 
 fluttering out on squeaky pulley hues from the 
 upper windows. The wall at the back of the court 
 is topped with flowers and morning-glory vines. 
 On one of the marble stoops a woman was peeling 
 potatoes and across the yard a girl with a blue 
 dress was washing clothes. It seemed to me Hke a 
 scene out of one of Barrie's stories. 
 
 Who is the poet or the artist of this little village 
 of ruddy brick behind St. John's graveyard? Who 
 will tell me how the rain lashes down those narrow 
 passages during a summer storm, when the chil- 
 dren come scampering home from Franklin 
 Square? Who will tell me of the hot noons when 
 the hokey-pokey man tolls his bright bell at the 
 end of the street and mothers search their purses 
 for spare pennies? Or when the dripping ice 
 wagon rumbles up the cobbles with its vast store 
 of great crystal and green blocks of chill and per- 
 haps a few generous splinters for small mouths 
 to suck? I suppose poets may have sung the 
 songs of those back streets. If they haven't they 
 are verv foolish. The songs are there. 
 
TRAILING MRS. TROLLOPE 33 
 
 TRAILING MRS. TROLLOPE 
 
 The Mountaineer has lent us a copy of "Do- 
 mestic Manners of the Americans," in which Mrs. 
 Trollope, the mother of Anthony, recorded her nu- 
 merous chagrins during a three-year tour among 
 the barbarians in 1827-30. 
 
 She visited Philadelphia in the summer of 1830, 
 and remarks as follows upon some scenes familiar 
 to us: 
 
 "The State House has nothing externally to 
 recommend it . . . there is a very pretty in- 
 closure before the Walnut street entrance, with 
 good, well-kept gravel walks. . . . Near this 
 inclosure is another of much the same description, 
 called Washington Square. Here there was an ex- 
 cellent crop of clover; but as the trees are numer- 
 ous, and highl}^ beautiful, and several commodious 
 seats are placed beneath their shade, it is, in spite 
 of the long grass, a very agreeable retreat from 
 heat and dust. It was rarely, however, that I saw 
 any of these seats occupied; the Americans have 
 either no leisure or no inclination for those mo- 
 ments of delassement that all other people, I be- 
 Heve, indulge in. Even their drams, so universally 
 taken by rich and poor, are swallowed standing, 
 and, excepting at church, they never have the air 
 of leisure or repose. This pretty Washington 
 Square is surrounded by houses on three sides, but 
 (lasso!) has a prison on the fourth; it is, neverthe- 
 less, the nearest approach to a London square that 
 is to be found in Philadelphia." 
 
34 TRAILING MRS. TROLLOPE 
 
 Even after nearly ninety years there is a certain 
 pang in learning that while Madam Trollope found 
 nothing comely about the exterior of Independence 
 Hall, she proclaimed New York's City Hall as 
 ''noble." 
 
 Trying to imagine that we were Mrs. Trollope, 
 we took a stroll up Ninth street in the bright April 
 sun. It was chilly and the burly sandwich-man of 
 Market street, the long-haired, hatless philosopher 
 so well known by sight, was leaning shivering in 
 his shirt-sleeves against an arc light standard try- 
 ing to wrap his advertising boards around him like 
 an overcoat. ''Why don't you walk up and down 
 a bit?" we asked him, after he had rebuked the 
 thermometer with a robust adjective which would 
 have caused Mrs. Trollope to call for hartshorn 
 and ammonia. 
 
 "Can't do it," he said. "I've got a bum job 
 today. Got to stand on this corner, advertising a 
 new drug store; 7:30 to 12:30 and 1:30 to 5:30. 
 It's a long day, I'll say so." 
 
 Ninth street above Market is a delightful and 
 varied world in itself. At the corner of Filbert we 
 found the following chalked on a modest black- 
 board : 
 
 Irish Stew 
 
 Pot Roast 
 
 2 Vegatables 
 
 15c 
 
 Within, a number of citizens were taking those 
 standing drams Mrs. Trollope deprecated. We 
 
TRAILING MRS. TROLLOPE 35 
 
 were reminded by these social phenomena that we 
 had not lunched. In a neighboring beanery we 
 dealt with a dehghtful rhubarb pie, admiring the 
 perfection of the waitress's demeanor. Neither too 
 condescending nor too friendly, she laid the units 
 of our repast upon the marble table with a firm 
 clank which seemed to imply that our eating there 
 meant nothing to her; j^et she hoped we might 
 find nourishment enough not to die on her hands. 
 The assorted attractions of North Ninth street 
 never fail the affectionate stroller. Novelty shops 
 where mysterious electric buzzers vibrate and 
 rattle on the plate-glass panes, and safety razors 
 reach bottomless prices that would tempt even a 
 Russian statesman to unbush. Picture shops, 
 where such really delightful sentimental engrav- 
 ings as "The End of the Skein" cause soft-hearted 
 bystanders to fly home and write to dear old grand 
 mother; wine shops where electric bulbs shimmer 
 all day long within pyramids of gin bottles. ''Stock 
 Up Before July First!" cries the vintner. ''There's 
 a Bad Time Coming!" And he adds: 
 
 We know a man who sells a 
 
 quart of water with a little 
 
 cheap whisky in it 
 
 VERY CHEAP 
 
 Morale! 
 
 If you really want a highball 
 
 buy our, etc. 
 
 The animal shops always attract the passers-by. 
 One window was crowded with new-hatched 
 
36 TRAILING MRS. TROLLOPE 
 
 chicks, tender yellow balls of fluff that cause 
 grizzled bums to moralize droopingly on the sweet- 
 ness of youth and innocence. They (the chicks) 
 were swarming around their feeding pans like 
 diplomats at the Hotel Crillon in Paris. 
 
 These feeding pans are made like circular mouse- 
 traps, with small holes just large enough for the 
 chicks to thrust in their heads. One ambitious 
 infant, however, a very Trotzky among chicks, 
 had got quite inside the pan, and three purple- 
 nosed Falstaffs on the pavement were waiting with 
 painful agitation to see whether he would emerge 
 safely. In a goldfish bowl above, spotted newts 
 were swimming, advertised at fifteen cents each as 
 desirable 'Sscavengas." Baby turtles the size of a 
 dollar piece were crawhng over one another in a 
 damp tray. Bright-eyed rabbits twitched their 
 small noses along the pane. 
 
 Then came Louis Guanissno, the famous balloon 
 man, moving along in a blaze of color, his red and 
 blue and yellow balloons tugging and gleaming in 
 the sunny air. Louis is a poem to watch, a poly- 
 chrome joy to behold. And such graceful suavity ! 
 "Here's health and prosperity, and God bless 
 you," he says, his kindly rugged face looking down 
 at you; ''and when you want any little bal- 
 loons" — 
 
 On a sunny afternoon there are sure to be many 
 browsers picking over the dusty volumes in the 
 pavement boxes of that little bookshop near the 
 old archway above filbert street. Down the dark 
 
TRAILING MRS. TROLLOPE 37 
 
 alley that runs under the archwaj^ horses stand 
 munching their nosebags, while a big yellow coal 
 wagon, lost in the cul-de-sac, tries desperately to 
 turn around. The three big horses clatter and 
 crash on the narrow paving. A first edition of 
 ** Rudder Grange'' for fifteen cents wasn't a bad 
 find. (I saw it listed in a recent bookseller's cata- 
 logue for $2.50.) By prying up a flyleaf that had 
 been pasted down I learned that ''Uncle George" 
 had given it to Helen L. Coates for ''Xmas, 
 1880." 
 
 Up at the Arch street corner is the famous 
 Dumont's Minstrels, once the old Dime Museum, 
 where Frank Dumont's picture stands in the lobby 
 draped in black. Inside, in the quaint old audi- 
 torium, the interlocutor sits on his throne and 
 tosses the traditional jest back and forth with the 
 end men, Eennie Frankhn and Alf Gibson, clad 
 in their glaring scarlet frock-coats. The old quips 
 about Camden are still doing brave service. Then 
 Eddie Cassady comes on in his cream-colored duds 
 and sings a ditty about Ireland and freedom while 
 he waves the banner with the harp. Beneath the 
 japes on prohibition there is an undertone of pro- 
 found sadness. Joe Hamilton sings a song which 
 professes to explain that July 1st will be harder 
 on the ladies than any one else. ''Good-by, Wild 
 Women, Good-by," it is demurely called. Joe 
 Hortiz gets "Come Back to the Farm" over the 
 footlights, a plaintive tenor appeal, in which the 
 church steeple chimes 3 (a. m.) and all the audi- 
 
S8 TRAILING MRS. TROLLOPE 
 
 ence can hear the cows lowing out in Manayunk 
 and Marcus Hook. We are all nigh to tears for 
 the little sister gone astray in the bad mad city; 
 but here come Burke and Walsh in a merry little 
 duo about whistle-wetting. ''We took this coun- 
 try from the Indians," sings Burke. ''We'll give 
 it back after the 1st of July," repHes Walsh in his 
 dulcet barytone. Then, to show they really don't 
 care so much, they wind up with a jovial bit of 
 dancing. 
 
 Dumont's famous "timely burlesques" still 
 keep pace with the humors of the town. The 
 "Drug Store Telephone Fight" reduces the audi- 
 ence to cheery hysteria. Joe Hamilton or some 
 body gets Saint Peter on the wire; the rival dem- 
 onstrator gets connected with "the other place." 
 The problem is whether the Jazzbo Phone Com- 
 pany or its rival can locate the whereabouts of Mr. 
 William Goat, who (it appears) is the father of 
 the interlocutor, the dignified interlocutor in his 
 purple dress suit, who is writhing in embarrassed 
 distress on his throne. And then, as we are already 
 trespassing on the preserve of the dramatic editor, 
 comes what the program calls "intermission of 
 several minutes, to enable the ladies to powder 
 their noses." 
 
thp: haver ford comes hoime 39 
 
 THE HAVERFORD COMES HOME 
 Philadelphia's hands were tied in the matter of 
 welcoming the Haverford. What a greeting we 
 could have given her men if they had been per- 
 mitted to parade through the center of the citjs 
 past Independence Hall — the symbol of all they 
 fought for — and down the shining sweep of Broad 
 street! And yet, although we were morosely for- 
 bidden to ''come in contact with them" (it sounds 
 I rather hke the orders given to citizens of Coblenz), 
 : what a fine human note there was in the mass of 
 I humbler citizens that greeted the transport at the 
 I foot of Washington avenue. I wish Mr. Baker 
 might have been there — the scene would have made 
 I him more tender toward those loyal Philadelphians 
 who don't quite see why most of the transports 
 should dock at — well, at another Atlantic port! 
 
 But I hadn't intended to go down to see the 
 Haverford come in. I have traveled on her myself 
 and know her genial habits of procrastination. I 
 shrewdly suspected she would arrive at her dock 
 long after the hour announced. Days ago, when 
 we were told she would arrive on the 27th, I 
 smiled knowingly. When she was off the Capes 
 and word was telegraphed of a "disabled steering 
 gear," I chuckled. The jovial old ship was her- 
 self again! It is almost incredible that an enemy 
 submarine should have dared to fire a tin fish at 
 her. I should think a cautious, subaqueous com- 
 
40 THE HAVERFORD COMES HOME 
 
 mander would have sheered off and dived away 
 in panic, fearing some devil's ruse. Surely no 
 harmless vessel (he ought to have gutturaled to 
 himself) would travel as leisurely as that! How 
 many U-boat captains must have fled her dignified 
 presence, suspecting her to be one of Beatty's trick 
 fleet, sent out to lure innocent submarines to 
 death by loitering blandly on the purple sea. This 
 is no ill-natured jibe. Slow ships are ever the best 
 to travel on. Her unruffled, imperceptible pro- 
 gress across blue horizons is her greatest charm, 
 and was undoubtedly her subtle security. 
 
 But passing along Pine street, about thirty to- 
 bacco whiffs after breakfast, I saw three maidens 
 run out from the Peirce School in a high cackle of 
 feminine excitement. Evidently they had been 
 let off for the day. ''What shall we do with these 
 old books?" I heard one say. ''Do we have to 
 cart them round with us?" It was plain from 
 their gleeful chatter that they were bound for 
 Washington avenue. And then on Broad street I 
 saw little groups of pedestrians hurrying south- 
 ward. Over that spacious thoroughfare there was 
 a feeling of suspense and excitement — the feeling 
 of "something happening" that passes so quickly 
 from brain to brain. I could not resist temptation 
 to go down and join the throng. 
 
 Washington avenue is not a boulevard of pleas- 
 ure. Most of it is a dreary expanse of huge fac- 
 tories and freight cars. But over the cobbles citi- 
 zens of all sorts were hurrying with bright faces. 
 
THE HAVERFORD COMES HOME 41 
 
 Peddlers carried bundles of flags and knots of 
 colored balloons, which tugged and eddied in the 
 cold wind. In an Italian drug store at the corner 
 of Sixth, under a sign, Telefono PubbHco per 
 Qualsiasi Distanza, a distracted pretzel basket 
 man, who had already sold out his wares, was 
 calling up some distant base of suppHes in the hope 
 of replenishing his stock. Jefferson Square, brown 
 and leafless, was packed with people. Down by 
 the docks loomed up a tall, black funnel, dribbling 
 smoke. ''There she is!" cried an excited lady, 
 leaping from cobble to cobble. For a moment I 
 almost apologized to the good old Haverford for 
 having misjudged her. Was she really docked al- 
 ready, on the tick of time? Then I saw that the 
 ivessel in sight had only two masts, and I knew 
 [that my old favorite had four. 
 
 The crowd at the lower end of Washington 
 avenue was immense, held firmly in check by 
 mounted police. Red Cross ambulances and 
 trucks were slowly butting their way down to the 
 pier, envied by us humbler souls who had no way 
 of getting closer. Perched on a tall wagon a group 
 of girls, apparently factory hands, were singing 
 merrily ''Bring Back My Bonnie to Me." On 
 every side I heard scraps of detached conversation. 
 "He was wounded and gassed, and he says 'if they 
 send me back to that stuff it'll be in a box.' " 
 sheltering behind a stout telephone pole, perhaps 
 the very one which was flinging the peddler's an- 
 guished cry for more pretzels, I sought a light for 
 
42 THE HAVERFORD COMES HOME 
 
 my pipe and found myself gazing on a red-printed 
 dodger: ''WORKING CLASS, KNOW THE 
 TRUTH. The workers of Russia have done away 
 with the capitahstic, distroctive, parasitic sistem, 
 which on one hand creates Milhonaires and luxury 
 and on the other hobos and misery." 
 
 The longest way round is usually the shortest 
 way home, and it occurred to me that the grave- 
 yard of Old Swedes Church would be a useful 
 vantage point. I found my way there down the 
 quaint httle vista of League street and the oddly 
 named channel of Reckless street. Apparently the 
 same thought had occurred to several other wise- 
 acres, for I got to the gates just as the sexton was 
 locking them. Ignoring the generous offer that 
 the church makes on several signboards — "$10 
 Reward for Any Person Found Destroying the 
 Church Property" — I took my stand at one corner 
 of the churchyard, looking out over the docks and 
 the thousands crowded along the pavements be- 
 low. Reading the tombstones passed away the 
 time for the better part of an hour. 
 
 One sad little inscription runs like this: 
 
 LIZZIE 
 
 affectionate daughter of 
 
 died Dec. 24, 1857 
 
 When Christmas bells ring out their chime 
 And holly boughs and sprigs of thyme 
 
 Were hung on many a wall. 
 Our LIZZIE in her beauty's prime 
 
 Lay in our darkened hall. 
 
THE HAVERFORD COMES HOME 48 
 
 Escaping the chilly wind that blew up from the 
 river I spent some time studying the interior of the 
 lovely little church and reading the epitaphs of the 
 old Swedish pastors. Of Olaf Parlin, one of these, 
 it is nobly written '^A.nd in the Last Combat, 
 strengthened by Heavenly Succours, he Quit the 
 Field not Captive but Conqueror." 
 
 But still there was no sign of the Haverford. I 
 strolled up the waterfront, stopping by the barge 
 Victor to admire a very fat terrier fondled by the 
 skipper's wife. I was about to ask if I could step 
 aboard, thinking that the deck of the barge would 
 afford a rather better view of the hoped-for trans- 
 port, when I saw the ferry Peerless, one of the 
 three ancient oddities that ply between South 
 street and Gloucester. And at the same moment 
 the whistles down the river began to blow a deep, 
 vibrant chorus. Obviously, the best way to see 
 the Haverford was to take a deep sea voyage to 
 Gloucester. 
 
 And so it was. When the Peerless pulled away 
 from her slip the first thing we saw was the recep- 
 tion boat City of Camden, with the Mayor's com- 
 mittee aboard, backing up-stream in a flutter of 
 flags. And then we came right abreast of the big 
 liner, which had just come opposite her pier. 
 She stood very high in the water, and seems none 
 the worse for the five months' ducking she is said 
 to have had. Her upper decks were brown with 
 men, all facing away from us, however, to acknowl- 
 edge the roar of cheering from the piers. So they 
 
44 THE HAVERFORD COMES HOME 
 
 did not hear the feeble piping set up by the few 
 intrepid travelers to Gloucester. A spinster next 
 to me cried out entranced: ^'Oh, I would like to 
 take each of those boys and hug them." 
 
 A ship is always a noble sight, and while the 
 Haverford was never built for beauty, she has the 
 serene dignity of one who has gone about many 
 hard tasks in her own uncomplaining fashion. 
 She has a large and solid stateliness. Hurricanes 
 cannot hustle her, nor have all the hosts of Tirpitz 
 marred her sturdy comehhood. Her funnel is too 
 outrageously tall and lean, her bows too bluff, her 
 beam too broad for her to take on any of the 
 queenly grace of her slim and swagger sisters. She 
 is a square-toed, useful kind of creature; just the 
 sort of vessel the staid Delaware loves, with no 
 swank or swagger. And yet, in the clear yellow 
 light of the winter morning, she seemed to have a 
 new and very lovely beauty. Her masts were 
 dressed with flags, from the bright ripple of the 
 Stars and Stripes at the fore to the deep scarlet of 
 her own Red Ensign over the taffrail. Half a 
 dozen tugs churned and kicked beside her as she 
 swung slowly to the dock. Over the water came 
 a continuous roar of cheering as the waiting thou- 
 sands tried to say what was in their hearts. In 
 the crude language of the Board of Health, her 
 passengers had not been ''disinfected" and we 
 were not to be allowed ''contact" with them; but 
 they had traveled far and dared much; they had 
 gone out hoping no gain; they had come back 
 
MAROONED IN PHILADELPHIA 45 
 
 asking no glory. From the low deck of the Peer- 
 hss we could see them waving their brown caps 
 against the bright blue nothingness of the skyline. 
 They were home again, and we were glad. 
 
 MAROONED IN PHILADELPHIA 
 
 If A Philadelphian of a hundred years ago could 
 walk along our streets at night, undoubtedly the 
 first thing that would startle him would be the 
 amazing dazzle of light that floods from all the 
 shop windows. Particularly during the few weeks 
 directly preceding Christmas city streets at night 
 present a panorama that would cure the worst fit 
 of the blues. What a glowing pageant they are, 
 blazing with radiance and color! Here and there 
 you will find a display ornamented with Christmas 
 trees and small red, blue and green electric bulbs. 
 Perhaps there will be a toy electric train running 
 merrily all night long on a figure-eight-shaped 
 track, passing through imitation tunnels and 
 ravines with green artificial moss cunningly glued 
 to them; over ravishing switches and grade cross- 
 ings, past imposing stations and little signal tow- 
 ers. Perhaps you may be lured by the shimmer of 
 a jeweler's window, set with rows and rows of gold 
 watches on a slanting plush or satin background. 
 There, if you are a patient observer, you will 
 usually find one of the ultra-magnificent time- 
 pieces that have an old-fashioned railroad train 
 
46 MAROONED IN PHILADELPHIA 
 
 engraved on the case. We have always admired 
 these hugely, but never felt any overwhelming 
 desire to own one. They are sold for $14.95, being 
 worth $150. 
 
 Sometimes even the most domestic man is ma- 
 rooned in town for the evening. It is always, after 
 the first pang of homesickness is over, an enlarging 
 experience. Instead of the usual rush for train or 
 trolley he loiters after leaving the office, strolling 
 leisurely along the pavements and enjoying the 
 clear blue chill of the dusk. Perhaps the pallid 
 radiance of a barber's shop, with its white bowls of 
 light, lures him in for a shave, and he meditates on 
 the impossibility of avoiding the talcum powder 
 that barbers conceal in the folds of a towel and 
 suddenly clap on his razed face before they let him 
 go. It avails not to tell a barber ''No powder!" 
 They put it on automatically. We know one man 
 who thinks that heaven will be a place where one 
 may lie back in a barber's chair and have endless 
 hot towels applied to a fresh-shaved face. It is an 
 attractive thought. 
 
 But the most delightful haunt of man, about 
 7 o'clock of a winter evening, is the popular lunch 
 room. This admirable institution has been 
 hymned often and eloquently, but it can never be 
 sufficiently praised. To sit at one of those white- 
 topped tables looking over the evening paper (and 
 now that the big silver-plated sugar bowls have 
 come back again there is once more something 
 large enough on the table to prop the newspaper 
 
INTAROONED IN PHILADELPHIA 47 
 
 against) and consume sausages and griddle cakes 
 and hot mince pie and revel in the warm human 
 glitter round about, is as near a modest 100 per 
 cent of interesting satisfaction as anything we 
 know. Joyce Kilmer, a very human poet and a 
 very stout eater, used to believe that abundant 
 meals were a satisfactory substitute for sleep. For 
 our own part, we are always ready to postpone bed 
 if there is any prospect of something to eat. But 
 we do not like to elaborate this subject any fur- 
 ther, for it makes us hungry to do so, and we dare 
 not leave the typewriter just yet. 
 
 Our marooned business man, after a stroll along 
 the streets and a meal at the lunch room, may very 
 likely drop in at the movies. Most of us nowadays 
 worship now and then at this shrine of Professor 
 Muybridge. The pubhc is long suffering, and 
 seems fairly well pleased at almost anything that 
 appears on the screen. But the extraordinary 
 thing at a movie is hardly ever what is on the 
 screen, but rather the audience itself. Observe the 
 mute, expectant, almost reverent attention. The 
 darkened house crowded with people prayerfully^ 
 and humbly anxious to be amused or thrilled! One 
 wonders what their evenings must have been like 
 when there were no movies if their present reaction 
 is so passionately devout. A movie audience is a 
 more moving spectacle than any of the flashing 
 shadows that beam before it. If all this mar- 
 velous attention-energy, gathered every evening 
 in every city in the land, could be focussed for a 
 
48 MAROONED IN PHILADELPHIA 
 
 few moments on some of the urgent matters that 
 concern the world now — say the League of Nations 
 — it would be a wonderful aid to good citizenship. 
 The movies are bhndly groping their way, by 
 means of current-event films, war films and the 
 like, toward an era in which they will play a lead- 
 ing and indispensable part in education and civic 
 life. 
 
 It should be a function of every large city gov- 
 ernment to provide '' municipal movies," by which 
 we mean not free motion-picture shows, but reels 
 of film distributed free among all the motion-pic- 
 ture theatres in the city, exhibiting various phases 
 of municipal activity and illustrating by sugges- 
 tion how citizens may co-operate to increase the 
 welfare of the community. We hear a good deal 
 about street-cleaning evils, about rapid-transit 
 problems, about traffic congestion, about the evils 
 of public spitting, the danger of one-way streets 
 and a score of other matters. All these could be 
 interestingly illuminated on the screen, with seri- 
 ous intent, and yet with the racy human touch 
 that always enlivens the common affairs of men. 
 And when some discussion arises that concerns us 
 all, such as the character of the proposed war 
 memorial, various types of memorials could be 
 illustrated in films to stimulate public suggestion 
 as to what is most fitting for our environment. 
 None of us know our own city as well as we would 
 like to. Let the city government, through some 
 film bureau, show us our own citizens at work and 
 
MAROONED IN PHILADELPHIA 49 
 
 play and so quicken our curiosity and civic pride 
 or shame, as the case may be. 
 
 Another pubHc clubhouse which the marooned 
 business man finds delightful and always full of 
 good company is the railroad terminal. A big rail- 
 road station is an unfaihng source of amusement 
 and interest. From news-stand to lunch counter, 
 from baggage room to train gate, it is rich in char- 
 acter study and the humors of humanity in flux. 
 People are rarely at their best when hurried or 
 worried, and many of those one meets at the 
 terminal are in those moods. But, for any rational 
 student of human affairs, it is as well to ponder our 
 vices as well as our virtues, and the statistician 
 might tabulate valuable data as to the number of 
 tempers lost on the railway station stairs daily or 
 the number of cross words uttered where com- 
 muters stand in line to buy their monthly tickets. 
 The influence of the weather, the time of year and 
 the time of day would bring interesting factors to 
 bear upon these figures. 
 
 There is just one more pastime that the casta- 
 way of our imagination finds amusing, and that is 
 acting as door-opener for innumerable cats that 
 sit unhappily at the front doors of little shops on 
 cold evenings. They have been shut out by chance 
 and sit waiting in patient sadness on the cold sill 
 until the door may chance to open. To open the 
 door for them and watch them run inside, with 
 tail erect and delighted gesture, is a real pleasure. 
 With a somewhat similar pleasure does the ma- 
 
50 THE RONALDSON CEMETERY 
 
 rooned wanderer ultimately reach his own front 
 door and rededicate himself to the delights of 
 home. 
 
 THE RONALDSON CEMETERY 
 
 Whenever I feel weary of life, liberty and the 
 pursuit of some one else's happiness, whenever 
 some one tells me that the League of Nations is 
 sure to be a failure, or reminds me that the Ameri- 
 can Press Humorists are going to hold their con- 
 vention here next June and we shall all have to 
 flog our lethargic brains into competition with all 
 the twenty-one-karat drolls of this hemisphere — 
 whenever, in short, life is wholly gray and obhque, 
 I resort to Veranda's for lunch. 
 
 Veranda's, of course, is not its name; nor shall 
 I tell you where it is. Eighteen months of faithful 
 lunching and, perhaps, half a ton of spaghetti con- 
 sumed, have given me a certain prestige in the 
 bright eyes of Rosa, the demurest and most inno- 
 cently charming waitress in Philadelphia. I do 
 not wish to send competitors in her regard flocking 
 to that quiet little Italian restaurant, where the 
 table cloths are so white, the coffee so fragrant and 
 where the liver and kidneys come to the board 
 swimming in a rich brc n gravy the reality of 
 which no words can approach. And that Italian 
 bread, so crisply crusted, so soft and absorbent 
 within ! A slab of Veranda's bread dipped in that 
 
^' 
 
 i 
 
 ¥- 
 
THE RONALDSON CEMETERY dl 
 
 kidney gravy atones for three speeches by Senator 
 Sherman ! And then when Rosa brings on the tall 
 pot of marmalade, which another devotee and I 
 keep there for dessert, and we light up our ciga- 
 rettes and watch the restaurant cat sprawling in 
 Oriental luxury by the steam pipes — then we come 
 somewhere near the throne of human feUcity men- 
 tioned by Doctor Johnson. 
 
 Veranda's is an outpost of Little Italy, which 
 does not really begin until you get south of Lom- 
 bard. And the other day, after lowering the level 
 of the marmalade by several inches, it occurred to 
 me to renew my acquaintance with Little Italy 
 proper. 
 
 Ninth street is the best channel of approach to 
 Philadelphia's Mediterranean colony. There is a 
 good deal to distract attention before you cross the 
 Alps of South street. If you have a taste for alleys 
 you will be likely to take a side tour of a few versts 
 in the quaint section of stables and little brick 
 houses that lies just below Locust street and be- 
 tween Ninth and Tenth. Just now you will find 
 that region liberally placarded with small neat 
 notices announcing the loss (on January 8) of a 
 large yellow and white Angora cat, having white 
 face, breast and feet and answering to the name of 
 Taffy. This struck at my heart, for I once owned 
 a yellow Angora of the same name, which I 
 smuggled home from Boston one Christmas Eve 
 in a Pullman sleeper, against all railway rules, and 
 I hope and trust that by this time Taffy has re- 
 
52 THE RONALDSQN CEMETERY 
 
 turned to his home at 260 South Ninth street, and 
 to Mrs. Walter M. James, his bereaved mistress. 
 
 The little notice about the recreant Master 
 Taffy was strangely appropriate for this queer 
 little district of Hutchinson, Delhi, Irving and 
 Manning streets, for it is just what in London 
 would be known as a ''mews." It is a strange 
 huddle of old brick houses, full of stables and car- 
 penters' workshops, with agreeable vistas of 
 chimneys, attic windows, and every now and then 
 a gentleman of color leisurely bestraddling a horse 
 and clumping along the quiet pavements. Small 
 brown dogs of miscellaneous heritage sit sunning 
 themselves on doorsteps; on Hutchinson street a 
 large cart was receiving steaming forkloads of 
 stable straw. In the leisurely brightness of mid- 
 afternoon, with occasional old clo' men chanting 
 their litany down the devious alleyways, it seems 
 almost village-hke in its repose. A great place to 
 lead a fat detective a chase ! The next time George 
 Gibbs or John Mclntyre writes a tale of mystery 
 and sleuthing, I hope he will use the local color 
 of Delhi street. Why do our native authors love 
 to lay the scenes of their yarns in Venice, Madrid, 
 Brooklyn or almost anywhere except Philadelphia? 
 
 On Ninth street below Pine one comes upon a 
 poem in a window which interested me because the 
 author, Mr. Otis Gans Fletcher, has evidently had 
 difficulty with those baffling words ''Ye" and 
 "Thou," which have puzzled even greater poets — 
 
THE RONALDSON CEMETERY 53 
 
 such as Don Marquis. The poem is called ** Wel- 
 come to Our Heroes/' and begins: 
 
 Welcome! home, Great Heroes, 
 Nobly! hath thou fought 
 
 and continues, 
 
 We know the price, the sacrifice 
 That ye each paid to learn, 
 
 and by and by concludes: 
 
 Welcome! thrice!!! welcome, Great Heroes, 
 
 Defenders of Humanity; 
 The world now lives, on what thou didst give, 
 
 For the great spirit, De-moc-ra-cy. 
 
 After putting Lombard street behind the 
 voyager becomes immediately aware of the Italian 
 atmosphere. Brightly colored cans of olive oil 
 wanton in the windows; the Tripoli Barber Supply 
 Company, whose window shines with all manner 
 of lotions and shampoos, offers the Vesuvius Qui- 
 nine Tonic, which is said to supply ''unrivaled 
 neutrement " for the hair. Little shops appear dis- 
 playing that curious kind of painting which seems 
 to be executed on some metallic surface and is 
 made more vivid by the insertion of small wafers 
 of mother-of-pearl where the artist wants to throw 
 in a note of high emotion. These paintings gen- 
 erally portray Gothic chapels brooding by lakes of 
 ultramarine splendor; their only popular com- 
 petitor is a scene of a white terrier with an expres- 
 sion of fixed nobility watching over the bedside of a 
 
54 THE RONALDSON CEMETERY 
 
 young female innocent who lies, clad in a blue 
 dress, beneath a scarlet coverlet, her golden locks 
 spread over a white pillow. The faithfulness of the 
 animal and the secure repose of the child may be 
 profitably studied in the length of time necessary 
 to light a pipe. I feel sure that no kind-hearted 
 footpad's home is complete without this picture. 
 The Ronaldson Cemetery, laid out in 1827 at 
 Ninth and Bainbridge streets, comes as a distinct 
 shock to a sentimental wayfarer already un- 
 manned by the above appeal to the emotions. 
 Mrs. Meredith, the kindly caretaker, admitted 
 me through the massive iron gates, surprised and 
 pleased to find a devotee of cemeteries. In the 
 damp chill of a February afternoon the old grave- 
 yard is not the cheeriest of spots, but I was re- 
 stored to optimism by this inscription: 
 
 Passing stranger think this not 
 
 A place of fear and gloom : 
 We love to linger near this spot, 
 
 It is our parents' tomb. 
 
 This, however, was carved some fifty years ago. 
 I fear there is little lingering done in Ronaldson's 
 Cemetery nowadays, for the stones are in ill re- 
 pair, many of them ftillen. According to Scharf 
 and Westcott's history, it was once considered the 
 finest cemetery in the country and "a popular place 
 of burial." Just within the gateway are two little 
 houses, in at least one of which a merry Uttle 
 family of children is growing up undepressed by 
 
THE RONALDSON CEMETERY 55 
 
 the strange surroundings. One of these houses, 
 according to Ronaldson's cautious plan, was ''to 
 have a room provided with a stove, couch, etc., 
 into which persons dying suddenly might be laid 
 and the string of a bell put into their hand, so that 
 if there should be any motion of returning Hfe the 
 alarm bell might be rung, the keeper roused and 
 medical help procured." 
 
 James Ronaldson was a Scotchman, as I had 
 already/ surmised from an obelisk erected, ''Sacred 
 to the memory of Scottish Strangers," and pos- 
 sibly his cautiousness in the matter of burying 
 people alive may have suggested this favorite 
 theme to Edgar Allan Poe, who was living in 
 Philadelphia at the time when the magnificent 
 new cemetery must have been the talk of the 
 town. Scotchmen have always been interested in 
 cemeteries, and as I walked those desolate paths 
 among the graves I could not help thinking of 
 Stevenson's love of the old Grayfriars and Calton 
 Hill burying grounds in Edinburgh. A man was 
 busy digging a grave near the front gate, and a 
 new oak casket lay at the door of the keeper's 
 house. It was strange to see the children playing 
 round happily in such scenes. 
 
56 WILLOW GROVE 
 
 WILLOW GROVE 
 
 Speaking as a foreigner — every man is a foreigner 
 in Philadelphia until he has lived here for three 
 generations — I should say that no place is more 
 typical of the Philadelphia capacity for enjoying 
 itself in a thoroughly genteel and innocent way 
 than Willow Grove. Cynics have ascribed the 
 placid conduct of Willow Grove's merrymakers to 
 the fact that eighty minutes or so standing up in a 
 crowded trolley blunt human capacity for aban- 
 donment and furious mirth. Physiologists say 
 that the unprecedented quantity of root beer and 
 hard-boiled eggs consumed at the Grove account 
 for the staid bearing of the celebrants. Be that 
 how it may, Willow Grove has the genial and 
 placid flavor of a French amusement park. Con- 
 trary to popular theory the French, like ourselves, 
 are comely behaved on an outing. People to whom 
 enjoyment is a habit do not turn their picnics into 
 an orgy. 
 
 It takes practically as long to get to Willow 
 Grove as it does to Atlantic City, but the sunburn 
 does not keep one awake all night and asleep at 
 the ofhce the next day. That roUing watershed 
 where the creeks run alternately into the Delaware 
 and the Schuylkill is well hilled, watered and aired. 
 There is no surf, it is true; but a superb panorama 
 of the white combers of the sky, the clouds. And 
 fields of plumed and tasseled corn, flickering in: 
 
WILLOW GROVE 57 
 
 the wind, are no mean substitute for sand beaches. 
 Let us be practical; no one can eat the surf ! And 
 the most important matter in a picnic is to have 
 plenty of food. 
 
 Let me state, in passing, that the ideal picnic 
 lunch is always packed in a shoebox; there should 
 be included an opener for root-beer bottles, and 
 doughnuts calculated on a basis of three for each 
 adult. Inside the ring of each doughnut should 
 be packed a hard-boiled egg. Each party should 
 include one person (preferably an aunt) of prudent 
 instincts, to whom may be entrusted the money 
 for return carfares, Ada's knitting bag, Ada's 
 young man's wrist watch and registration card in 
 draft Class 4A, father's spare cigar for the home 
 voyage, grandmother's pneumatic cushion and 
 Cousin Janet's powder-papers and copy of Spumy 
 Stories. This prudent person will form a head- 
 quarters and great general staff, a strong defensive 
 position upon which the maneuvers of the excur- 
 sion will be based. 
 
 The first thing that always strikes me at Willow 
 Grove is how amazingly well dressed everybody is. 
 The frocks, hats and ankles of the j^oung ladies 
 are a vision of rapture. The young men, too, are 
 well dressed, in the best possible style, which is, of 
 course, the uniform of Uncle Sam. The last time 
 I was there it was a special celebration day for the 
 marines. Several hundred of them were loping 
 about in their cafe-au-lait khaki, fine, tall, lean 
 chaps, with that curious tautness of the trousers 
 
58 WILLOW GROVE 
 
 that makes the devil dogs look stiff-kneed. 
 Bronzed, handsome fellows, with the characteristic 
 tilt of the Stetson that must flutter the hearts of 
 French flappers. And as for the girls, if Willow 
 Grove on a Saturday afternoon is a fair cross- 
 section of Philadelphia pulchritude, I will match it 
 against anything any other city can show. 
 
 Willow Grove, of course, is famous for its music, 
 and at dusk the Marine Band was to play in the 
 pavilion. That open-air auditorium, under the 
 tremulous ceiling of tall maples and willows and 
 sycamores, with the green and silver shimmer 
 of the darkening lake at one side, is a cheerful 
 place to sit and meditate. I had a volume of 
 Thoreau with me, and began to read it, but he 
 kept on harping upon the blisses of solitude which 
 annoyed me when I was enjoying the mirths and 
 moods of the crowd. Nowhere will you find a 
 happier, more sane and contented and typicall}^ 
 American crowd than at Willow Grove. Perhaps 
 in wartime we take our pleasures a little more 
 soberly than of old. Yet there seemed no shadow 
 of sadness or misgiving on all those happy faces, 
 and it was a good sight to see tall marines romping 
 through the ''Crazy Village" arm in arm with 
 bright-eyed girls. Those boys in the coffee-and- 
 milk uniform will see crazier villages than that in 
 Champagne and Picardy. 
 
 The last arrows of sunlight were still quivering 
 among the upmost leaves when the Marine Band 
 began to play, and the great crowd gathered under 
 
WILLOW GROVE 59 
 
 the trees was generous with affectionate enthu- 
 siasm. And then, at a bugle call, the rest of the 
 sea-soldiers charged shouting down the dusky 
 aisles, climbed the platform, and sang their war 
 songs with fine pride and spirit. ''America, Here's 
 My Boy " ; " It's a Long, Long Way to Berlin, But 
 We'll Get there, by Heck"; "Goodby, Broadv/ay: 
 Hello, France" and "There's a Long, Long, Trail" 
 were the favorites. And then came the one song 
 that of all others has permeated American fiber 
 during the last year — "Over There." There is 
 something of simple gallantry and pathos in it that 
 I find genuinely moving. The clear, merry, auda- 
 cious male voices made me think of their brothers 
 in France who were, even at that very moment, 
 undergoing such fiery and unspeakable trial. The 
 great gathering under the trees seemed to feel 
 something of this, too; there was a caught breath 
 and a quiver of secret pain on every bench. " Over 
 There," unassuming ditty as it is, has caught the 
 spirit of our crusade with inspiration and truth. 
 It is the informal anthem of our great and dedi- 
 cated resolve. 
 
 As we walked back toward the station the roll- 
 ing loops and webbed framework of the scenic 
 railway were silhouetted black against a western 
 sky which was peacock blue with a quiver of green- 
 ish crystal still eddying in it. The bullfrogs were 
 drumming in the little ponds enameled with green 
 scum. And from the train window, as we rattled 
 down that airy valley, we could see the Grove's 
 
 5 
 
60 CHESTNUT ST. FROM A FIRE ESCAPE 
 
 spangles and festoons of light. Philadelphia may 
 take her amusements placidly, but she knows how 
 to enjoy them. 
 
 CHESTNUT STREET FROM A FIRE 
 ESCAPE 
 
 Just outside our office window is a fire-escape 
 with a little iron balcony. On warm days, when 
 the tall windows are wide open, that rather slender 
 platform is our favorite vantage ground for watch- 
 ing Chestnut street. We have often thought how 
 pleasant it would be to have a pallet spread out 
 there, so that we could do our work in that reclin- 
 ing posture that is so inspiring. 
 
 But we can tell a good deal of what is going on 
 along Chestnut street without leaving our desk. 
 Chestnut street sings a music of its own. Its 
 genial human symphony could never be mistaken 
 for that of any other highway. The various 
 strands of sound that compose its harmony grad- 
 ually sink into our mind without our paying con- 
 scious heed to them. For instance, there is the 
 light sliding swish of the trolley poles along the 
 wire, accompanied by the deep rocking rumble of 
 the car, and the crash as it pounds over the cross- 
 tracks at Sixth street. There is the clear mellow 
 clang of the trolley gongs, the musical trill of fast 
 wagon wheels running along the trolley rails, and 
 the rattle of hoofs on the cobbled strip between 
 the metals. Particularly easy to identify is the 
 
CHESTNUT ST. FROM A FIRE ESCAPE 61 
 
 sound every citizen knows, the rasping, sliding 
 clatter of a wagon turning off the car track so that 
 a trolley can pass it. The front wheels have left 
 the track, but the back pair are scraping along 
 against the setts before mounting over the rim. 
 
 Every street has its own distinctive noises and 
 the attentive ear accustoms itself to them until 
 they become almost a part of the day's enjoy- 
 ment. The deep-toned bell of Independence Hall 
 bronzing the hours is part of our harmony here, 
 and no less familiar is the vigorous tap-tap of 
 Blind Al's stick. Al is the well-known news- 
 dealer at the corner of Chestnut and Fifth. Sev- 
 eral times a day he passes along under our win- 
 dows, and the tinkle of his staff is a well-known 
 and pleasant note in our ears. We like to imagine, 
 too, that we can recognize the peculiarly soft and 
 easy-going rumble of a wagon of watermelons. 
 
 But what we started to talk about was the bal- 
 cony, from which we can get a long view of Chest- 
 nut street all the way from Broad street almost to 
 the river. It is a pleasant prospect. There is 
 something very individual about Chestnut street. 
 It could not possibly be in New York. The solid, 
 placid dignity of most of the buildings, the absence 
 of skyscrapers, the plain stone fronts with the 
 arched windows of the sixties, all these bespeak 
 a city where it is still a little bit bad form for a 
 building to be too garishly new. I may be wrong, 
 but I do not remember in New York any such 
 criss-cross of wires above the streets. Along Chest- 
 
62 CHESTNUT ST. FROM A FIRE ESCAPE 
 
 nut street they run at will from roof to roof over 
 the way. 
 
 Gazing from our little balcony the eye travels 
 down along the uneven profile of the northern 
 flank of Chestnut street. From the Wanamaker 
 wireless past the pale, graceful minaret of the 
 Federal Reserve Bank, the skyline drops down to 
 the Federal Building which, standing back from 
 the street, leaves a gap in the view. Then the 
 slant of roofs draws the eye upward again, over 
 the cluster of Httle conical spires on Green's Hotel 
 (like a French chateau) to the sharp ridges and 
 heavy pyramid roof of the Merchants' Union 
 Trust Company. This, with its two attendant 
 banks on either side, is undoubtedly the most ex- 
 traordinary architectural curiosity Chestnut street 
 can boast. The fagade with. its appalling quirks 
 and twists of stone and iron grillwork, its sculp- 
 tured Huns and Medusa faces, is something to con- 
 template with alarm. 
 
 After reaching Seventh street, Chestnut be- 
 comes less adventurous. Perhaps awed by the 
 simple and stately beauty of Independence Hall 
 and its neighbors, it restrains itself from any fur- 
 ther originality until Fourth street, where the or- 
 nate Gothic of the Provident claims the eye. From 
 our balcony we can see only a part of Independ- 
 ence Hall, but we look down on the faded elms 
 along the pavement in front and the long line of 
 iron posts beloved of small boys for leapfrog. Then 
 the eye climbs to the tall and graceful staff above 
 
CHESTNUT ST. FROM A FIRE ESCAPE 63 
 
 the Drexel Building, where the flag ripples cleanly 
 against the blue. And our view is bounded, far 
 away to the east, by the massive tower of the 
 Victor factory in Camden. 
 
 It is great fun to watch Chestnut street from the 
 little balcony. On hot days, when the white sun- 
 light fills the street with a dazzle of brightness and 
 bands of dark shadow, it is amusing to see how all 
 pedestrians keep to the shady southern pavements. 
 When a driving shower comes up and the slants 
 and rods of rain lash against the dingy brownstone 
 fronts, one may look out and see passers by hud- 
 dled under the awnings and the mounted police- 
 men's horses sleek as satin in the wet. The pave- 
 ment under our balcony is notable for its slipperi- 
 ness : it has been chipped into ribs by stonemasons 
 to make it less so. In the rain it shines like a 
 mirror. And our corner has its excitements, too. 
 Once every few months the gas mains take it into 
 their pipes to explode and toss manholes and pav- 
 ing sixty feet in air. 
 
 The part of Chestnut street that is surveyed by 
 our balcony is a delightful highway: friendly, 
 pleasantly dignified, with just a touch of old- 
 fashioned manners and homeliness. It is rather 
 akin to a London street. And best of all, almost 
 underneath our balcony is a little lunch room where 
 you can get custard ice cream with honey poured 
 over it, and we think it is the best thing in the 
 world. 
 
64 THE PARKWAY AND BILLY 
 
 THE PARKWAY, HENRY FORD AND 
 BILLY THE BEAN MAN 
 
 I WALKED down the Parkway yesterday morning 
 visualizing that splendid emptiness of sunshine as 
 it will appear five or ten years hence, lined with art 
 galleries, museums and libraries, shaded with 
 growing trees, leading from the majestic pinnacle 
 of the City Hall to the finest public estate in 
 America. It is a long way from those open fields 
 of splintered brick and gravel pits, where work- 
 men are now warming their hands over bonfires, 
 to the Peace Conference in Paris. But the hope 
 occurred to me that the League of Nations will not 
 tie itself down too closely to the spot where its 
 archives are kept. It will be a fine thing if the 
 annual meetings of the League can be held in dif- 
 ferent cities all over the world, visiting the nations 
 in turn. This process would do much to educate 
 public sentiment to the reality and importance of 
 our new international commission. And in the 
 course of time it is to be supposed that the league 
 might meet in Philadelphia, where, in a sense, it 
 was founded. The world is rich in lovely cities — 
 Rio, Athens, Edinburgh, Rome, Tokio and the 
 rest. But the Philadelphia of the future, as some 
 citizens have dreamed it, will be able to hold up 
 its head with the greatest. I like to think of a 
 Philadelphia in which the lower Schuylkill would 
 
THE PARKWAY AND BILLY 65 
 
 be something more than a canal of oily ooze; in 
 which the wonderful Dutch meadows of the Neck 
 would be reclaimed into one of the world's loveliest 
 riverside parks, and in which the Parkway will 
 stretch its airy vista from the heart of the city, 
 between stately buildings of public profit, out to 
 the sparkling waters of Fairmount. 
 
 The city shows a curiously assorted silhouette as 
 one walks down the Parkway from Twenty-fifth 
 street. There is the plain dark dome of the 
 Cathedral, with its golden cross flashing in the 
 sun and the tall cocoa-colored pillars. No one 
 would guess from the drab exterior the splendor 
 of color and fragrance within. There is, of course, 
 the outline of William Penn on his windy vantage, 
 the long, dingy line of Broad Street Station's train- 
 shed and the tall but unpretentious building of the 
 Bell Telephone Company, where the flag swims 
 against the sky on its slender staff. As one walks 
 on, past the Medico-Chirurgical Hospital, with its 
 memorable inscription {Think not the beautiful do- 
 ings of thy soul shall perish unremembered; they 
 abide with thee forever) , the thin white spire of the 
 Arch Street Methodist Episcopal Church and 
 the monstrous oddity of the Masonic Temple 
 spring into view. In an optimistic mood, under a 
 riot of sunlight and a radiant sky, one is tempted 
 to claim a certain beauty for this incongruous 
 panorama. Yet if there is beauty no one can claim 
 a premeditated scheme for it. Granite, marble, 
 brick and chocolate stone jostle one another. Let 
 
66 THE PARKWAY AND BILLY 
 
 us hope that the excellent ruthlessness with which 
 the paths of the Parkway have been made straight 
 will be equaled by diligent harmony in the new 
 structures to come. 
 
 The great churches of the Roman communion 
 are always an inspiration to visit. At almost all 
 hours of the day or night you will find worshipers 
 slipping quietly in and out, generally of the hum- 
 blest classes. I slipped into the Cathedral for a 
 few minutes and sat there watching the shimmer 
 of color and blended shadows as the vivid sun- 
 light streamed through the semicircular windows 
 above the nave. The body of the church is steeped 
 in that soft dusk described once for all as ''a dim 
 religious hght," but the great cream-colored pillars 
 with their heavj^ gold ornaments lift the eyes up- 
 ward to the arched ceiling with its small tablets 
 of blue and shining knots of gold. In the dome 
 hung a faint lilac haze of intermingled gentle hues, 
 sifting through the ring of stained windows. The 
 eastern window over the high altar shows one 
 brilhant note of rich blue in the folds of the 
 Madonna's gown. Over the gleaming terrace of 
 white marble steps hangs a great golden lamp with 
 a small ruby spark glowing through the twilight. 
 Below these steps a plainly dressed little man 
 knelt in prayer all the time I was in the church. 
 The air was faintly fragrant with incense, having 
 almost the aroma of burning cedar wood. A con- 
 stant patter of hushed footfalls on the marble floor 
 was due to the entrance and exit of stealthy wor- 
 
THE PARKWAY AND BILLY 67 
 
 shipers coming in for a few minutes of silence in the 
 noon recess. 
 
 Just around the corner from the Cathedral one 
 looks across the broad playground of the Friends' 
 Select School on to the bright, cheerful face of 
 Race street. In that 1600 block Race is a typical 
 Philadelphia street of the old sort — plain brick 
 houses with slanted roofs and dormer windows, 
 white and green shutters and scoured marble steps. 
 I was surprised to notice the number of signs dis- 
 played calling attention to '' Apartments," ''Va- 
 cancies" and ''Furnished Rooms." Certainly I 
 can imagine no pleasanter place to lodge, with the 
 sunny windows looking over the school ground to 
 the soaring figure of Penn and the high chffs be- 
 hind him. Romance seems to linger along that 
 sun-warmed brick pavement, and I peered curi- 
 ously at the windows so discreetly curtained with 
 lace and muslin, wondering what quaint tales the 
 landladies of Race street might have to impart if 
 one could muster up courage enough to question 
 them. In the news stand and cigar store at the 
 corner of Sixteenth I made a notable discovery — a 
 copy of Henry Ford's new Sunday school paper, 
 the Dearborn Independent — the Ford Inter- 
 national Weekly, he proudly subtitles it. I bought 
 a copy and took it to lunch with me. I cannot say 
 it left me much richer; nor, I fear, will it leave 
 Henry that way. Much can be forgiven Henry for 
 the honest simplicity of his soul, but the lad who's 
 palming off those editorial page mottoes on him, 
 
68 THE PARKWAY AND BILLY 
 
 in black-face type, ought to face a firing squad. 
 This is the way they run: 
 
 ** Where buy we sleep?" inquired the royal shirk; 
 The sweetest rest on earth is bought with work. 
 
 And this : 
 
 The truth of equal opportunity is this: 
 
 Life, death; love, hope and strife, no man may miss. 
 
 Or again: 
 
 When profit is won at the cost of a principle, 
 The winner has lost — this law is invincible. 
 
 Henry, Henry — didn't that cruise on the Oskar 
 teach you anything? It seems too bad that Henry 
 should go to the expense of founding a new 
 humorous journal when Life is doing so well. 
 
 Coming back along Arch street I fell in with 
 Billy the Bean Man. You may have seen Billy sell- 
 ing necklaces of white and scarlet beans on Broad 
 street, clad in his well-known sombrero, magenta 
 shirt and canvas trousers. Billy is a first-class med- 
 icine man, and he hits this town about once a year. 
 He wore the cleanest shave I ever saw, but his dark 
 WiUiam J. Bryan eyes were mournful. He tried 
 to lure me into buying a necklace by showing me 
 how you can walk on the beans without breaking 
 them. "Picked and strung by the aboriginal In- 
 dians of the Staked Plain," he assured me; "and 
 brought by me to this home of eastern culture. A 
 sovereign remedy for seasickness and gout." 
 
 "Billy," I said, "you amaze me. Last year 
 
^ WILDEY STREET 69 
 
 those same necklaces were curing mumps and 
 metaphysical error." 
 
 He looked at me keenly. ''Oh, it's you, is it? 
 Say, this is a bum town. Business is rotten. I'm 
 going on to Washington tomorrow." 
 
 "Sell one to Senator Sherman," I said; and 
 passing by the allurements of Dumont's matinee — 
 ''The Devil in Jersey: He Terrified Woodbury, 
 but He Couldn't Scare Us"— I gained the safety 
 of the office. 
 
 WILDEY STREET 
 
 I SET out for a stroll with the Mountaineer, who 
 knows more about Philadelphia than any one I 
 ever heard of. He is long and lean and has a 
 flashing eye; his swinging easy stride betrays the 
 blood of southern highlands. He tracks down dis- 
 tant streets and leafy glimpses with all the grim 
 passion of a Kentucky scout on the trail of a lynx 
 or some other varmint. No old house, no pictur- 
 uresque corner or elbow alley escapes his penetrant 
 gaze. He has secret trails and caches scattered 
 through the great forests of Philadelphia, known to 
 none but himself. With such a woodsman for 
 guide good hunting was a matter of course. 
 
 The first game we bagged was a tattooing studio 
 at 814 Summer street. Let no one say that war 
 means a decline of the fine arts, for to judge by the 
 photographs in the window there are many who 
 pine to have the Stars and Stripes, the American 
 
70 WILDE Y STREET 
 
 eagle and the shield of the food administration 
 frescoed on their broad chests. Professor Al E. 
 Walters, the craftsman, proclaims himself artistic 
 and reliable in this form of embroidery and the 
 sitter has '^1500 up-to-date designs to choose 
 from." The Mountaineer and I peered through 
 the window and were interested to see the pro- 
 fessor's array of tools laid out on his operating 
 table. 
 
 Passing by an imposing bust of Homer, which 
 we found in front of a junk shop at 52S Noble 
 street, the Mountaineer led me to see the old Ho- 
 boes' Union headquarters at ^ Fifth and Button- 
 wood streets. The war may have given tattooing 
 a fillip, but it seems that it has been the decline 
 and fall of philosophic hoboism, for the vagrants' 
 clubhouse is dusty and void, now used as some sort 
 of a warehouse. Work or fight and high wages 
 have done for romantic loafing. The Mountaineer 
 pointed out to me the kitchen in which the boes 
 held their evening symposia over a kettle of hot 
 stew. The house was donated through the munifi- 
 cence of J. Eads Howe, the famous miUionaire 
 hobo, and the Mountaineer admitted that he had 
 spent many an entertaining evening there discuss- 
 ing matters of intellectual importance. " How did 
 you get the entree to such an exclusive circle?" 
 I asked enviously. "I was a member of the union," 
 he said, with just the least touch of vainglory. 
 
 The Mountaineer led me north on Fourth street 
 to where Wildey street begins its zigzag career. We 
 
WILDEY STREET 71 
 
 found that the strip between Germantown avenue 
 and Front street was buzzing with preparations for 
 a '^ block party" in honor and benefit of its boys in 
 service. All down the gay little vista flags were 
 hanging out, Chinese lanterns had been strung on 
 wires across the street, shop windows were criss- 
 crossed with red, white and blue streamers and 
 booths were going up on the pavement swathed 
 in tricolored tissue paper. At one end of the block 
 the curbstones had been whitewashed. We 
 stopped to ask an elderly lady when the fun would 
 begin. 
 
 ''Tonight and tomorrow night," she said. (It 
 was then Friday afternoon.) '' Our boys are fight- 
 ing for us and we want to do everything we can to 
 help. I was at my summer residence when I heard 
 about this party, and I came back at once. We've 
 got to help as best we can." 
 
 The sky was clouding over and the Mountaineer 
 and I expressed the hope that rain wouldn't spoil 
 the festivity. 
 
 '' Oh, I hope not," she said. '' It doesn't seem as 
 though the Lord would send rain when we're 
 working for a good cause. We've hired a string 
 band for the two nights — that's $60 — and we're 
 going to have dancing in the street. You'd better 
 come around. It's going to be a great time." 
 
 Everybody in the street was busy with prepara- 
 tions for the jollification, and I was deeply touched 
 by this little community's expression of gratitude 
 and confidence in its boys who are fighting. That 
 
72 WILDEY STREET 
 
 is the real "stuff of triumph" of which the Presi- 
 dent spoke. And one has only to pass along 
 Wildey street to see that it is fine old native stock. 
 It is an all-American street, of pure native breed, 
 holding out stiffly and cleanly against the invasion 
 of foreign population. The narrow side alleys look 
 back into patches of vivid green; there are flower 
 boxes and vines, and the pavements and marble 
 steps are scrubbed as clean as water and soap will 
 make them. A Httle further along we found a 
 tavern dispensing Wildey street's favorite drink — 
 pop and porter — and we halted to drink health to 
 the block party. 
 
 Beyond Shackamaxon street we struck into the 
 unique silence and quiet cleanliness of "Fish- 
 town." The quietness of those streets of quaint 
 little houses is remarkable : in the golden flood of a 
 warm afternoon they lay with hardly an echo to 
 break the stillness. The prevaiUng color scheme 
 is green and red: many of the houses are neat 
 cottages built of wood; others are the old parti- 
 colored brick that comes down from ancient days. 
 Almost every house has its little garden, often 
 outlined with whitened shells. It seems like a 
 New England fishing village in the heart of the 
 city. An occasional huckster's wagon rumbles 
 smoothly along the asphalt paving; an occasional 
 tinkle of a piano in some cool, darkened parlor. 
 That is all. I can imagine no haunt of ancient 
 peace more drowsy with stiflness and the treble 
 chirp of birds than the tangled and overgrown 
 
I WILDEY STREET 73 
 
 cemetery at Thompson street and Columbia 
 avenue, in the hush of a hot summer siesta. 
 
 There is a note of grace and comeHness in 
 Wildey street Ufe that one attributes to the good 
 native stock of the inhabitants. The children are 
 clean and rounded and goodly. The Kttle girls 
 have plump calves and crisp gingham dresses and 
 blue eyes; they sit in their little gardens playing 
 with paper dolls. Their brothers, with the mis- 
 chief and errant humor that one expects of small 
 boys, garnish walls and hoardings with whimsical 
 legends scrawled in chalk. The old family tooth- 
 brush that laid on the floor was one such that 
 amused me. Another was a regrettable allegation 
 that a (presumably absent) playmate was afflicted 
 with ^'maines." The Mountaineer and I, after 
 tudying the context, came to the conclusion that 
 the scourge hinted at was ''mange!" 
 
 Most thrilling of all, Wildey street becomes 
 more and more maritime. Over the roofs of the 
 houses one sees the masts of ships — always a sight 
 to make the eager heart leap up. Cramps' ship- 
 yard is at hand, and many of the front windows 
 display the starred service cards of the United 
 States Shipping Board. On Richmond street, 
 parallel to Wildey, are ship chandlers' stores, with 
 windows full of brass pulleys and chocks and 
 cleats, coils of rope and port and starboard lan- 
 terns. We hurried down toward the waterfront 
 and peeped through the high board fence to see a 
 steamer in drydock for a coat of camouflage. 
 
74 WILDEY STREET 
 
 Great stripes of black and blue and white were 
 being laid along her hull. 
 
 Penn Treaty Park, at the foot of Columbia 
 avenue, would deserve an essay of its own. Here, 
 under a pavilion, the Mountaineer and I sat sur- 
 rounded by the intoxicating presence of water and 
 boats, watched the police patrol launches being 
 overhauled, watched a little schooner loading 
 lumber (I couldn't read her name, but she came 
 from Hampton, Va.), watched the profile of Cam- 
 den shining dimly through the rain. For a very 
 smart rainstorm had come up and we sat and felt 
 a pang of sympathy for the good people of Wildey 
 street, whose Chinese lanterns and tricolored 
 tissue paper would be ruined by the wet. We 
 watched the crew of the tug Baltic getting ready 
 for supper and dinghies nosing the piers and hob- 
 bling with the rise and fall of the water, and we 
 saw how the gleam of rain and mist on the roofs 
 of Camden looked exactly like a fall of snow. Fish- 
 town uses Penn Treaty Park as a place for loung- 
 ing and smoking under the peeling sycamores and 
 watching the panorama of the river. 
 
 P. 8. I thought a great deal about the block 
 party on Wildey street that night and hoped that 
 the rain would not have spoilt it. So the next 
 morning I got off the 8:13 at Columbia avenue and 
 walked down past that deep vioHn note of the 
 Columbia avenue sawmills to see how things were 
 going. I found the same old lady on the sidewalk, 
 
HOG ISLAND 75 
 
 hopefully renewing her red, white and blue tissue, 
 and I noticed that all the children were wearing 
 fantastic patriotic caps made of shirred and fluted 
 paper. ^'Well," I said, "how did things go?" 
 "Oh," she replied, "the rain hurt things a bit, but 
 tonight's going to be the big night. It's going to 
 bo a great time: you'd better come around." 
 The stuff of triumph! 
 
 HOG ISLAND 
 
 My only regret was that my friend John Fitz- 
 gerald didn't take Rudyard KipUng or Wilham 
 McFee or Philip Gibbs down to Hog Island, in- 
 stead of a humble traveler whose hand can never do 
 justice to that marvelous epic of human achieve- 
 ment. It would be worth Mr. Kipling's while to 
 cross the Atlantic just to see the Island. 
 
 Far across the low-lying meadows the great 
 fringe of derricks rises against the sky. Along a 
 beautiful soUd highw^ay, over the Penrose Ferry 
 drawbridge and past the crumbled ramparts of 
 old Fort Mifflin, motors and trolley cars now go 
 flashing down to the huge shipyard, where eigh- 
 teen months ago a truck struggled along a miry 
 country road carrying enough lumber to put up a 
 timekeeper's shack. The story of that great drama 
 of patient courage and effort lies behind and under- 
 neath all one sees at Hog Island. As we walked 
 along the marvelous stretch of fifty shipways, each 
 carrying a vessel in course of construction, and as 
 6 
 
76 HOG ISLAND 
 
 Fitz and I stood on the bridge of the Saluda, one 
 of the eleven steamers now getting their finishing 
 touches at the seven huge piers, one had a vision 
 of the Island as it was during that first winter. 
 Engineers and laborers wrestled with frozen swamp 
 and bhzzard snows. Workmen were brought from 
 Philadelphia day by day, roped in like sardines in 
 open trucks, arriving numbed to the bone. Per- 
 haps some day there will come some poet great 
 enough to tell the drama of Hog Island as it ought 
 to be told. The men who gritted their teeth and 
 put it through will never tell. They are of the old 
 stalwart breed that works with its hands. As they 
 talk you can divine something of what they en- 
 dured. 
 
 I don't believe there is a more triumphant place 
 on earth than Hog Island these days. Ships are 
 the most expressive creatures of men's hands, and 
 as I stood with Fitz on the bridge of the Saluda 
 and looked out through a driving rain on the 
 comely gray hulls of those 7500-ton cargo carriers, 
 it was hard to resist the thought that each of them 
 had a soul of her own and was partaking in the 
 general exultation. Eight ships now going about 
 their business on the world's waters, eleven at the 
 outfitting piers getting ready to smell blue water, 
 and fifty on the ways — the Island is launching one 
 every Saturday — that is the record. Smoke was 
 drifting from the funnels of several, whose turbine 
 engines were getting their tuning up. 
 
 These thousand-foot piers, each of which can 
 
HOG ISLAND 77 
 
 accommodate four 8000-ton ships at a time, will 
 one day make Philadelphia one of the world's 
 greatest ports. And the thought that every lover 
 of seafaring will bring away with him is that these 
 fabricated ships, built according to a set plan with 
 interchangeable parts, are beautiful ships. Hum- 
 ble cargo carriers, but to an untutored eye they 
 have much of the loveliness of form of some of the 
 statehest Hners. Looking into the newly finished 
 chartroom, wheelroom and other deckhouses of 
 the Saluda, I envied her future master. 
 
 We climbed down steep steel ladders to look at 
 the engine and boiler rooms. No grimy stokehold 
 on these ships — they are oil-burners. One of the 
 furnaces was lit, and through the half-open door 
 one could see a roaring glow of flame. In the engine 
 room quiet and skillful workmen were doing mys- 
 terious things to a huge turbine. The shining cyl- 
 inders and huge pistons of the old reciprocating 
 engine were missing; in their place a bewildering 
 complex of wheels and valves and asbestos covered 
 piping. Looking down from above the engine 
 room was a vast echoing cavern, spotted with 
 orange electric bulbs, with the occasional groan 
 and humming of electric motors and men in over- 
 alls moving quietly about their tasks. The quiet- 
 ness of Hog Island is one of its curiously impressive 
 features. It is not a wilderness of roaring, frenzied 
 machinery. Everything moves with efficient 
 docility. Even the riveting guns that echo inside 
 the hollow caves of unfinished hulls are hardly as 
 
78 HOG ISLAND 
 
 clamorous as I had expected. In the plate and 
 angle shops vast traveling cranes swing overhead 
 with the ease and silence of huge dark birds. 
 Acetylene torches, blowing dainty little wisps of 
 blue-gold flame, slice through half -inch steel plates 
 while the dissolving metal dribbles down in yellow 
 bubbles and streamers and a shower of brilliant 
 sparks flies off gently and quietly. Great wedges 
 descend on flat plates and bend them into right 
 angles with only a soft crunch. 
 
 Scahng tall scaffolds we clambered over one of 
 the half finished hulls, a naked shell of steel echo- 
 ing with sudden fierce outbursts of riveting. As it 
 was raining the out-of-door riveting had ceased, 
 as whenever there is danger of water getting under 
 the flange of the rivet there is a liability of the 
 work not being quite watertight. But between 
 decks some of the men were hard at work. Across 
 the deck red-hot rivets came flying through the air 
 from the brazier; these were deftly caught in a 
 metal cone by the passer. With a long pair of 
 tongs he inserts the glowing finger of metal in the 
 hole; the backer-up holds it rigid with a com- 
 pressed-air hammer, while the riveter, on the other 
 side of the plates, mushrooms down the shining 
 stalk of the rivet with his air gun. It is fascinating 
 to watch the end of the rivet flattening under the 
 chattering blows of the gun. An expert riveting 
 team can drive several hundred rivets a day, and 
 when paid on piecework the team gets six and one- 
 half cents per rivet. This is divided among the 
 
HOG ISLAND 79 
 
 team, usually in the proportion of 40 per cent to 
 the riveter, 30 per cent to the backer-up and 15 
 per cent each to heater and passer. Many expert 
 riveters earn as much as $60 a week. 
 
 We crawled under the bottom of the Schoodic 
 which is to be launched tomorrow morning. She 
 had just had her first coat of paint, and her tall, 
 graceful bow loomed high in air on the slanting 
 shipway. Mr. White, the engineer in charge of the 
 launchings, was kind enough to show me the inge- 
 nious system of shores, packing and ''sandjacks" 
 which holds up the hull on the ways and the special 
 Hog Island grease which is used to ease the ship's 
 slide toward the water. The cunning manipula- 
 tion by which the ship's great weight is thrown off 
 the shores onto the ''sand jacks," and then lowered 
 by removing the sand from these iron boxes, would 
 require an essay in itself. Not one of Hog Island's 
 launchings — and they have had nineteen — has 
 been marred by any hitch. Mr. White told me 
 that his gang of 120 men can put through a launch- 
 ing in two hours and a haK from the time they first 
 begin work. 
 
 In the training school, where about 200 men are 
 learning the various shipbuilding trades, 92 per 
 cent of the pupils are former soldiers and sailors. 
 They are all men of powerful physique, but many 
 of them were in sedentary clerical occupations 
 before the war. Many a man who has served in 
 the army has no taste now to re-enter a trade that 
 will keep him indoors eight or ten hours a day. 
 
80 HOG ISLAND 
 
 I must confess to an envy of those brawny fellows 
 who were learning to drive rivets. And after the 
 army pay of $30 or so a month it must seem good 
 to get 120 a week while learning the job. 
 
 Hog Island is a poem, a vast bracing chant of 
 manly achievement in every respect, that is, save 
 the names of the ships they are building down 
 there. I don't think Hog Island workmen will 
 ever quite forgive Mrs. Wilson for the names she 
 chose for their cherished and beautiful ships! 
 Quistconck, Saccarappa, Sacandaga, Saguache, 
 Sapinero, Sagaporack, Schoodic, Saugus, Schroon 
 — what will homely sailormen make of these odd 
 Indian syllables? As one said to me, whimsically, 
 ''Think of some wireless operator, calling for help, 
 trying to get that name across!" 
 
 We must assume, however, that no Hog Island 
 ship will ever be in distress, from her own fault at 
 any rate. The experiment of "fabricated" ships 
 was watched with eagerness by all shipping experts 
 some of whom didn't beUeve it could be successful. 
 The first chapter of Hog Island's epic closes fitly 
 with this cablegram, received the other day from 
 the American International Shipbuilding Corpora- 
 tion's representative in Rome : 
 
 Rome, March 16. — Quistconck arrived March 
 8th, Savona. Excellent voyage. Has been in- 
 spected by representatives of government, steam- 
 ship companies and banks. Opinion favorable. 
 Hope you will be able to send more of that type. 
 
SOUTH BROAD STREET 81 
 
 Hog Island men have accomplished what they 
 have partly because they go about their work with 
 such a sense of humor. There are more grins to 
 the square acre down there than any place I ever 
 visited. The Hog Islander who drove me down was 
 grumbhng because the man driving the car in front 
 didn't give the usual signal when turning across 
 our path. ^'Why doesn't he hold out his hand?" 
 he muttered. ''Must be afraid a flivver will run 
 up his arm." That's the jovial spirit of Hog 
 Island. 
 
 SOUTH BROAD STREET 
 One of the singularly futile and freakish little 
 "literary" magazines that flourish among desic- 
 cated women and men whose minds are not old 
 enough for the draft proudly raises the slogan that 
 it ''Makes no compromise with the public taste." 
 What I like about South Broad street is that it 
 does make compromise with the public taste, every 
 possible compromise. In the course of a three-mile 
 stroll from the City Hall down to the South Broad 
 Street plaza one may see almost every variety of 
 human interest. It is as though South Broad street 
 had made up its mind to see all phases of life 
 before leaping into the arms of Uncle Sam at 
 League Island. It is like the young man's last 
 night with the boys before enlisting. 
 
 "Broad and Chestnut" is a Philadelphia phrase 
 of great sanctity. It is uttered with even greater 
 
82 SOUTH BROAD STREET 
 
 awe than the New Yorker's "Broadway and 
 Forty-second," as though the words summed up 
 the very vibration and puise of the town's most 
 sacred life. And yet why is it that Broad street 
 seems to me more at ease, more itself, when it gets 
 away from the tremendous cliffs of vast hotels 
 and office mountains? Our Philadelphia streets 
 do not care to be mere tunnels, like the canyon 
 flumes of Manhattan. We have a lust for sun and 
 air. 
 
 So when Broad street escapes from the shadow 
 of its own magnificence it runs just a little wild. 
 In its sun-swept airy stretches perhaps it abuses 
 its freedom a little. It kicks up its heels and gets 
 into its old clothes. Certainly as soon as one gets 
 south of Lombard street one sees the sudden 
 change. Even the vast and dignified gray fagade 
 of the Ridgway Library does not abash our high- 
 way for more than a moment. It dashes on be- 
 tween a vast clothing factory and the old '^ South- 
 ern and Western Railroad Station." It indulges 
 itself in small clothing stores, lemonade stands and 
 all manner of tumble-down monkey business. It 
 seems to say, ''I can look just like Spring Garden 
 street, if I want to." 
 
 Perhaps it is because William Penn on the City 
 Hall is looking the other way that South Broad 
 street feels it can cut up without reserve. 
 
 The Ridgway Library ought to be able to daunt 
 this frisking humor, for a more solemn and repres- 
 sive erection was never planned. But what a fas- 
 
SOUTH BROAD STREET 83 
 
 cinating place it is, though I fear not much of 
 South Broad street ever takes the trouble to open 
 those iron gates marked '^Pull." Perhaps if they 
 had been marked "Push^^ the pubhc would have 
 responded more eagerly. But who are we to dis- 
 cuss the subtleties of advertising psychology? As 
 I pass the long, heavily-pillared frontage of the 
 Hbrary I seem to hear the quiet, deliberate ticking 
 of the clock in the cool, gloomy reading room and 
 smell the faint, delicious, musty fragrance of the 
 old volumes. It is no small thrill to step inside 
 and revel in the dim scholarly twilight of this 
 palace of silence, to pore over the rare books in 
 the glass showcases and explore the alcoves where 
 the marvelous collection of chess books is kept. 
 Those alcoves look out over a little playground at 
 the back, where the shady benches would be an 
 ideal place for a solemn pipe; but alas no men are 
 admitted. The playground is reserved for women 
 ^nd children. 
 
 Very different is the old railroad station across 
 the way, now used as a freight depot. Built in 
 1852, it was Philadelphia's crack terminus fifty 
 years ago, and as one studies the crumbled brown- 
 stone front one thinks of all the eager and excited 
 feet that must have passed into the great arched 
 hall. Now it is boarded up in front, but inside it 
 is crammed with box cars and vast cases stenciled 
 '^Rush — Military Supplies — U. S. Anny." Sixty 
 freight cars can be loaded there at one time. One 
 thinks what emotions that glass-roofed shed must 
 
84 SOUTH BROAD STREET 
 
 have seen in Civil War times. I suppose many a 
 train of men in blue said good-by to mothers and 
 sweethearts along those platforms. That thought 
 was with me as I stood inside the old station, 
 which in spite of its bustle of freight is filled with 
 the haunting sadness of all places that are old and 
 decayed and echoing with the whispers of long ago. 
 Does it seem absurd to sentimentalize over a rail- 
 way station less than seventy years old? Well, I 
 think a railway station is one of the most romantic 
 places in the world. I hke to imagine the old loco- 
 motives with their flaring stacks. And as I crossed 
 Washington avenue (which runs just south of the 
 station) I remembered a hot day in June twenty 
 years ago when I tugged a roll of steamer rugs 
 down that street from the trolley to the American 
 Line pier. We were going on board the old Belgen- 
 land, bound for Liverpool. Somewhere along the 
 hot, grimy pavement a barrel of molasses had 
 broken open; I recall the strong, sweet smell. 
 Childhood does not forget such adventures. 
 
 Below the quartermaster depot of the marine 
 corps and the Third Regiment Armory, Broad 
 street recalls its more sober responsibilities. Sud- 
 denly it reaUzes the fleeting uncertainty of life; 
 perhaps because half the houses hereabouts are 
 the offices of doctors and undertakers. It falls into 
 a quiet residential humor about Wharton street 
 and fines itself with trees and shady awnings. It 
 seemed to me I could discern a breath of Italy in 
 the air. At an Italian undertaker's a large and 
 
SOUTH BROAD STREET 85 
 
 sumptuous coffin was lying on the pavement with- 
 out any embarrassment, name-plate and all; pre- 
 sumably waiting for its silent passenger. Among 
 the womenfolk white stockings and sparkhng 
 black eyes betrayed the Latin blood. And I saw 
 that a church lettered its notice board both in 
 Itahan and Enghsh. ''Ingresso Libero," it said, 
 which I take to mean ''Everybody welcome!" 
 The same sort of hospitality is evinced by the doc- 
 tors and dentists. They all have httle notices on 
 their doors: "Walk in without knocking." 
 
 In a quaint effort to retrieve its brief escapade 
 into shabby Bohemianism, Broad street now goes 
 in for an exaggerated magnificence. It has a taste 
 for ornate metal doorknobs and brass handles. 
 (I cannot resist the thought that these mannerisms 
 were caught from the undertakers.) Moving- 
 picture theatres are done in a kind of Spanish 
 stucco. Basement gratings are gilded; parlor 
 windows are banded with strips of colored glass. 
 The brownstone fronts are gabled and carved; 
 cornices are fret worked. There are plaster statues 
 in the little side gardens. It is the opposite s^ving 
 of the architect's pendulum from the plain and 
 beautiful old houses of Pine and Spruce streets, 
 where Philadelphia expresses herself in the lovely 
 simphcity of rich old brick and white shutters. 
 
 Apparently Broad street lost hope of gaining 
 salvation by ornamenting its house fronts, for 
 about Morris and Mifflin streets it turns to educa- 
 tion and philanthropy. It puts up large hospitals, 
 
86 SOUTH BROAD STREET 
 
 and the vast gray building of the South Philadel- 
 phia High School, where, reading backward 
 through the stained glass transom I discerned the 
 grave and very Bostonian motto: ''Work — Self- 
 rehance — Culture — Life." But more exhilarating 
 to me was the Southern Home for Friendless Chil- 
 dren at Morris street. Its large playground is sur- 
 rounded by a high stone wall. I could easily have 
 scaled it and would have loved to smoke a pipe 
 sitting up there to watch the children playing in- 
 side. (I could hear their laughter, and caught a 
 glimpse of a small boy as he flew up in the air on 
 a swing.) But I feared penalties and embarrass- 
 ments. It does not do to love anything too well; 
 people naturally are suspicious of you. And 
 though my heart was warm toward the Southern 
 Home, I didn't quite Kke to do what I yearned 
 for. That would have been to ring the door bell 
 and ask to go in and play in the garden with the 
 others. Instead I snooped round the wall until I 
 found a corner with a ghmpse into the shady ground 
 where the urchins were busy. One small boy was 
 working in his garden, others were burning up rub- 
 bish and hammering at something along the wall. 
 I stood there a long time, listening to the warm, 
 drowsy hum of the afternoon, and almost wished 
 I were a friendless child. 
 
 After this excursion into culture and charity, 
 Broad street feels the need of one more whistle- 
 wetting before it wanders off onto the vast expanse 
 of sunny pollen-scented meadows that stretch to- 
 
THE RECLUSE OF FRANKLIN SQUARE 87 
 
 ward the dry zones of League Island. For this 
 purpose exists the cool haven of McBride, on the 
 corner of Moyamensing avenue. There I encoun- 
 tered one of the best beakers of shandygaff in my 
 experience. And — wonder of wonders — it can still 
 be bought for a nickel. 
 
 THE RECLUSE OF FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 
 Who can describe the endless fascination, allure- 
 ment and magic of the city? It is Hke a great 
 forest, full of enchantment for the eye and ear. 
 What groves and aisles and vistas there are for 
 wandering, what thickets and underbrush to ex- 
 plore! And how curious it is that most of us who 
 frequent the city follow only little beaten paths of 
 our own, rarely looking round the corner or in- 
 vestigating (in the literal sense) unfamiliar by- 
 ways. We tread our own routine, from terminal 
 or trolley to office, to the customary lunching 
 place, back to the office, and home. Year after 
 year we do this, until the city is for us nothing but 
 a few tedious streets we know by heart. 
 
 But how dull it is to be confined to one fife, one 
 habit, one groove of conduct. Do you ever pine 
 to shed the garment of well-worn behavior, to 
 wander off into the side-paths of the city, to lose 
 yourself in its great teeming fife? The thought is 
 fascinating to me. I hke to imagine myself dis- 
 appearing one day from my accustomed haunts, 
 sHpping away into some other quarter of the town. 
 
88 THE RECLUSE OF FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 
 taking up entirely new habits and environment. 
 Ah, that would be an adventure! 
 
 I think I would emigrate to Frankhn Square 
 which, after all, is only a few blocks north of the 
 territory where I oscillate every day , but it seems 
 almost Hke a different continent. I would go up 
 to Frankhn Square, take a room at one of those 
 theatrical lodging houses on the western side of 
 the square, grow a beard, wear a wide sombrero 
 hat, and keep my pockets full of sweetmeats for 
 the children of the square. In the course of a few 
 months quite a legend would accumulate about 
 me. I would be pointed out as one of the char- 
 acters of the neighborhood. Newspaper reporters 
 would be sent to interview me. Then I would 
 shave and move on to some other home. 
 
 Frankhn Square is a jolly place on a warm day. 
 There are red and pink geraniums round the pool 
 in the middle. There is the drowsy whirr and hum 
 of lawn mowers. There is a sweet, dull air moving 
 gently across the wide grass plots; the flag waves 
 heavily on the tall staff. There is a whole posse of 
 baby carriages gathered together in a shady patch 
 of pavement, with usually one small girl left to 
 "mind" them while the other httle guardians are 
 sprinkling themselves with water at the stand- 
 pipe, or playing hopscotch in the sun. You mind 
 my baby and I'll mind yours, is the tacit under- 
 standing of these ragged httle damsels. But, really 
 it is surprising how little minding the Franklin 
 Square babies seem to need. They lie in their car- 
 
THE RECLUSE OF FRANKLIN SQUARE 80 
 
 riages furling and unfurling their toes with a kind 
 of spartan restraint. They refuse to bawl or to 
 hurl themselves upon the paving below, because 
 they know that their young nurses are having a 
 good time. 
 
 Franklin Square pohcemen are stout and very 
 jovial. An Italian woman was sitting on a bench 
 opposite mine; she had a baby on her lap, one 
 leaning against her knee, three sitting on the bench 
 with her, and two in the carriage. Seven in all 
 and I gathered from her remarks that six of them 
 were boys. ''Quite an army ! " said the stout police- 
 man, passing by. Her face gleamed with the quick 
 pleasure of the Latin race. ''Ah, yes," she said, 
 "Italians good for boys!" 
 
 On the west side of the square are the theatrical 
 boarding houses, w^here ladies with very short 
 skirts and silk stockings air little fuzzy white dogs 
 that just match the soiled marble steps. Midway 
 in the row is a bulky chocolate-colored church, 
 Deutsche Evang. Lutherische, according to its 
 signboard. Gottesdienst, Morgens 10:45, Abends 
 7:30. It is well for us to remember that God is 
 worshiped in all languages. And up at the Httle 
 news-stall at the corner of Vine street, the Hterary 
 and dramatic leanings of Franklin Square seem to 
 be reflected in the assortment of paper-backed 
 volumes on display. "The Confessions of an 
 Actress," "The Stranglers of Paris/' and "Chicago 
 by Night" are among the books there, also some 
 exceedingly dingy editions of Boccaccio and 
 
90 THE RECLUSE OF FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 
 Napoleon's Dream Book. I could learn a good 
 deal, I am sure, by studying those volumes. 
 
 Franklin Square is full of color. The green 
 spaces are islanded in a frame of warm, red brick. 
 The fountain bubbles whitely, the flag is an eager 
 spot of brightness on the tall white mast. Shop 
 windows seem to display a broader, more lilting 
 kind of poster than they do on Market street. 
 There is one on a by-street representing a young 
 man blowing heart-shaped smoke rings and a 
 glorious young woman is piercing them with a 
 knitting needle or some other sharp instrument. 
 
 I don't know just what I would do for a Hving 
 on Frankhn Square. The only thought that has 
 occurred to me is this: some one must have to 
 look after those Httle white dogs while their de- 
 bonair mistresses are at the theatre. Why couldn't 
 I do that, for a modest fee? I would take them all 
 out at night and tow them through the fountain 
 pool. It would serve to bleach them. 
 
 Another thing I could do, which I have always 
 wanted to do, would be to decipher the last line of 
 the small tombstone that stands over the pathetic 
 grave of Benjamin Franklin's little son. That is 
 not far from the square. The stone reads, as far as 
 I can make it out, Francis F., Son of Benjanmi 
 and Deborah Franklin, Deceased Nov. 21, 1736. 
 Aged 4 years. The number of months and days I 
 can't make out, nor the last hne of the epitaph, 
 which begins with the sadly expressive word De- 
 light. It is much effaced, and without squatting 
 
THE RECLUSE OF FRANKLIN SQUARE 91 
 
 on Ben Franklin's tomb I can't read it. And as 
 I there are usually some young ladies sitting knitting 
 on the bench by the grave I am too bashful to do 
 'that. But if I Hved in Frankhn Square I would 
 find a way somehow. 
 
 But much as I love it, I doubt if I could live in 
 iPVanklin Square long. There is an air of unrest 
 about it, of vagabond whimsy. The short-skirted 
 ladies would come and go, and sooner or later the 
 bearded recluse, with his pocket full of candy, and 
 Ihis sombrero hat, would disappear and only the 
 children would lament his going. For I know that 
 if I were a wandering blade I could never resist a 
 summons like this, which I found posted up just 
 off the square. Here speak Romance and Adven- 
 ture, with golden lute: 
 
 MEN WANTED TO TRAVEL 
 
 WITH R 'S CIRCUS 
 
 A CHANCE TO SEE THE COUNTRY 
 
 EXCELLENT BOARD AND COMFORTABLE 
 
 SLEEPING CARS PROVIDED BY THE MANAGEMENT 
 
92 CATTERINA OF SPRING GARDEN ST. 
 
 CATTERINA OF SPRING GARDEN 
 STREET 
 
 Spring Garden street is a pleasant thorough- 
 fare for wandering on a cool summer morning about 
 eight-thirty of the clock. It has been my diversion, 
 lately, to get off the Reading train at the Spring 
 Garden Station and walk to the office from there 
 instead of pursuing the too famihar route from the 
 Terminal. Try it some day, you victims of habit. 
 To start the day by a httle variation of routine is 
 an excellent excitement for the mind. 
 
 That after-breakfast period, before the heat be- 
 gins, has a freshness and easy vigor of its own. 
 Housewives are out scrubbing the white marble 
 steps; second-hand furniture dealers have spread 
 their pieces on the pavement for better inspection 
 and sit in their morris chairs by the curb to read 
 the morning paper. Presumably the more ease 
 and comfort they show the more plainly the 
 desirabihty of a second-hand morris chair will be 
 impressed on the passer-by; such is the psychol- 
 ogy of their apparent indolence. A fire engine 
 with maroon chassis and bright silver boiler rum- 
 bles comfortably back to its station after putting 
 out a fire somewhere. The barbers are out wind- 
 ing up the clock-work that keeps their red and 
 white striped emblems revolving. And here and 
 there on the pavement, recHning with rich rehsh 
 
CATTERINA OF SPRING GARDEN ST. 93 
 
 where the sunhght falls in white jjatches, are gray 
 and yellow cats. 
 
 The cats of Spring Garden street are plump and 
 of high cheer and they remind me of the most 
 famous cat that ever lived in that neighborhood. 
 She was a big tortoise-shell puss called Catterina 
 (Kate for short) and she lived in a httle three- 
 story brick cottage on Brandy wine street, which is 
 j ust off Seventh street behind the garage that now 
 stands on the northwest corner of Seventh and 
 Spring Garden. Catterina played a distinguished, 
 even a noble, part in American literature. I am 
 the gladder to celebrate her because I do not be- 
 lieve any one has ever paid her a tribute before. 
 You see, she happened to be the particular pet and 
 playmate of Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Allan Poe. 
 
 It is curious that Philadelphia pays so little 
 honor to that house on Brandywine street, which is 
 associated with the brief and poignant domestic 
 happiness of that brilliant and tragic genius. Poe 
 Uved in Philadelphia from 1838 until 1844, and 
 during the last two or three years of his stay he 
 occupied the little brick house on Brandywine 
 street. One of those who visited it then described 
 it as ''a small house, in one of the pleasant and 
 silent neighborhoods far from the center of the 
 town, and though slightly and cheaply furnished 
 everything in it was so tasteful and so fitly dis- 
 posed that it seemed altogether suitable for a man 
 of genius." What is now only a rather dingy back 
 yard was then a little garden full of roses, grape- 
 
94 CATTERINA OF SPRING GARDEN ST. 
 
 vine and creepers. Perhaps the pear tree that is 
 still the most conspicuous feature of the yard was 
 growing in Poe's tenancy. It was a double tree, 
 with twin trunks, one of which was shattered by 
 lightning quite recently. 
 
 Mrs. William Owens, who has lived in the house 
 for eight years, was kind enough to take me 
 through and showed me everything from attic to 
 cellar. The house is built against a larger four- 
 story dwelling which fronts on Seventh street, 
 now numbered as 530. In Poe's day the two 
 houses were separate, the larger one being the 
 property of a well-to-do Friend who was his land- 
 lord. Since then doors have been pierced and the 
 whole is used as one dweUing, in which Mrs. Owens 
 takes several boarders. It would interest Poe 
 perhaps (as he was once in the army), to know 
 that a service flag with three stars hangs from the 
 front of the house. The stars represent John 
 Pierce, Harry Bernhardt and Dominic Dimonico, 
 the first of these being, as I understand, a foster 
 son of Mr. and Mrs. Owens. 
 
 It is not hard to imagine the charm of this snug 
 little house as it may have been in the days when 
 Poe (in his early thirties) and his sylphHke young 
 wife and heroic mother-in-law, Mrs. Clemm, faced 
 the problem of living on the irregular earnings of 
 editing and writing. Spring Garden was then near 
 the northern outskirts of the city: the region was 
 one of sober ruddy brick (of that rich hue dear to 
 Philadelphia hearts) and well treed and gardened. 
 
CATTERINA OF SPRING GARDEN ST. 95 
 
 Until very recent years an old lady was living, a 
 neighbor of Mrs. Owens, who remembered how 
 Virginia Poe used to sit at the window and play 
 her harp. 
 
 The house is well and solidly built; the door 
 opening toward Brandywine street still has its 
 original old-fashioned bolt lock, which Poe's hand 
 must have fastened many and many a time. The 
 little dining room has a fireplace, now filled in with 
 a stove. In one of the rooms upstairs (according to 
 local tradition) "The Raven" was written; and 
 there are two bedrooms with casement windows in 
 the attic. Some of Poe's finest work was done in 
 this house, among other tales probably ''The Mur- 
 ders in the Rue Morgue," ''The Gold Bug" and 
 
 The Black Cat." And here a curious coincidence 
 may be noted. It will be remembered that in the 
 story of "The Black Cat" Poe describes how some 
 very unpleasant digging was done in a cellar. In 
 cleaning the cellar of the Brandywine street house 
 Mrs. Owens discovered recently a place where the 
 bricks in the flooring had been removed and a 
 section of planking had been put in. Is it pos- 
 sible that this circumstance suggested to Poe the 
 grisly theme of his story? Just for fun I would 
 very much like to explore under those boards. 
 They are old and have evidently been there a long 
 time. 
 
 Imagination likes to conjure up the little house- 
 hold: the invalid Virginia Poe (it was in this house 
 that she broke a blood vessel while singing), the 
 
96 CATTERINxV OF SPRING GARDEN ST. 
 
 stout-hearted and all-sacrificing mother-in-law — 
 ''Muddy/' as the poet affectionately called her — 
 the roses that grew over the wall, and (let us not 
 forget her) Catterina, the cherished pet. Catterina 
 was very much a member of the family. In April, 
 1844, when Poe and his wife moved to a boarding 
 house in New York, where they found the table 
 amazingly cheap and plentiful, he wrote to Mrs. 
 Clemm : 
 
 "The house is old and looks buggy. The cheap- 
 est board I ever knew. I wish Kate could see it — 
 she would faint. Last night, for supper, we had 
 the nicest tea you ever drank, strong and hot — 
 wheat bread and rye bread — cheese — tea cakes 
 (elegant) , a great dish (two dishes) of elegant ham 
 and two of cold veal, piled up like a mountain — 
 three dishes of the cakes and everything in the 
 greatest profusion. No fear of starving here." 
 
 Poor Catterina! (or Kate, as they sometimes 
 called her). Does not this suggestion of her 
 swooning imply that she may have had to go on 
 rather short commons in the little home on Bran- 
 dywine street? But after all, there must have been 
 mice in the cellar, unless the ghost of the Black 
 Cat frightened them away. 
 
 In the same letter, written from New York the 
 day after the Poes had gone there to look for better 
 fortune, he says ''Sissy (his wife) had a hearty cry 
 last night because you and Catterina weren't 
 here." 
 
 But it was in the winter of 1846-47, when Mrs. 
 
( ATTERINA OF SPRING GARDEN ST. 97 
 
 Poe lay dying of consumption in the cottage at 
 Fordham, that Catterina came to her highest 
 glory. The description of that scene touches upon 
 a human nerve of pity and compassion that must 
 give the most callous a pang. Poe himself, har- 
 assed by poverty, pride and illness, had to witness 
 the sufferings of his failing wife without ability to 
 ease them. This is the description of a kind- 
 hearted woman who saw them then: 
 
 ''There was no clothing on the bed but a snow- 
 white counterpane and sheets. The weather was 
 cold and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that 
 accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She 
 lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husband's 
 great-coat with a large tortoise-shell cat in her 
 bosom. The wonderful cat seemed conscious of 
 her great usefulness. The coat and the cat were 
 the sufferer's only means of warmth." 
 
 Perhaps Philadelphia will some day do fitting 
 honor to the memory of that ill-starred household 
 that knew its best happiness in the little house on 
 Brandywine street. Mr. Owens, who is a druggist, 
 has whimsically set up in the front parlor one of 
 the big scarlet papier-mache ravens that are used 
 to advertise Red Raven SpHts. But it seems to me 
 that Philadelphia might go just a little further 
 than that in honoring the house where ''The 
 Raven" may have been written. 
 
98 A SLICE OF SUNLIGHT 
 
 A SLICE OF SUNLIGHT 
 About a quarter to 9 in the morning, at this 
 time of year, a shce of our pale primrose-colored 
 March sunhght cuts the bleak air across the junc- 
 tion of Broad and Chestnut streets and falls like 
 a shining knife blade upon the low dome of the 
 Girard Trust Building. Among those towering 
 chffs of masonry it is hard to see just where this 
 shaving of brightness slips through, burning in the 
 gray-lilac shadows of that stone valley. But there 
 it is, and it always sets me thinking. 
 
 Man has traveled far in his strange pilgrimage 
 and solaced himself with many lean and brittle 
 husks. It is curious to think how many of his 
 ingenious inventions are merely makeshifts to ren- 
 der tolerable the hardships and hmitations he has 
 imposed upon himself in the name of ''civiliza- 
 tion." How often his greatest cunning is ex- 
 pended in devising some pathetic substitute for 
 the joy that once was his by birthright! He shuts 
 himself up in beethng gibraltars of concrete, and 
 thinks with pride of the wires, fans and pipes that 
 bring him light, air and Warmth. And yet sun- 
 shine and sky and the glow of blazing faggots were 
 once common to all! He talks to his friends by 
 telephone, telegraph or machine-written letters 
 instead of in the heart-easing face-to-face of more 
 leisured times. He invents printing presses to do 
 his thinking for him, reels of translucent celluloid 
 
^ A SLICE OF SUNLIGHT 99 
 
 to thrill him with vicarious romance. Not until 
 the desire of killing other men came upon him did 
 he perfect the lovehest of his toys — the airplane. 
 How far, in his perverse flight from the natural 
 sources of joy, has his love of trouble brought him ! 
 
 So it is that one poor, thin, thwarted filament of 
 sunlight, falling for a few precious minutes across 
 a chasmed city street, seems so dazzling a boon 
 and surprise that he passes enchanted on his dark- 
 ened pavement. Man, how easily you are pleased! 
 
 Is there any one, in our alternate moods of 
 bafflement and exultation, who has not brooded on 
 this queer divergence of Life and Happiness? 
 Sometimes we feel that we have been trapped: 
 that Life, which once opened' a vista so broad and 
 golden, has somehow jostled and hurried us into a 
 corner, into a narrow treadmill of meaningless 
 gestures that exhaust our spirit and our mirth. In 
 recent years all humanity has been herded in one 
 vast cage of confusion and dread from which there 
 seemed no egress. Now we are slowly, bitterly, 
 perplexedly groping our way out of it. And per- 
 haps in the difficult years of rebuilding each man 
 will make some effort to architect his existence 
 anew, creeping humbly and hopefully a little 
 closer to the fountains of beauty and strength that 
 lie all about us. When did we learn to cut our- 
 selves apart from earth's miracles of refreshment? 
 To wall ourselves in from the sun's great laughter, 
 to forget the flamboyant pageantry of the world? 
 Earth has wisdom for all our follies, heahng for all 
 
100 A SLICE OF SUNLIGHT 
 
 our wounds, dusk and music for all our peevish 
 ness. Who taught us that we could do without 
 her? Can j^ou hear the skylark through a tele 
 phone or catch that husky whisper of the pines in f 
 dictograph? Can you keep your heart young in i 
 row of pigeonholes? Will you forego the surf o 
 ocean rollers to be serf to a rolltop desk? 
 
 Little by httle, and in haphazard ways, wisdon 
 comes to a man. No matter how resolutely hi 
 shuts his ears. Truth keeps pricking within him. 
 What a futility, what a meanness and paltriness o 
 living this is that would send us hence with al 
 Life's great secrets unlearned, her ineffable beau- 
 ties unguessed, her great foUo only hastily 
 glimpsed. Here is this spinning ball for us to mar 
 vel at, turning in an ever-changing bath of color 
 and shadow, blazed with sunshine, drenched witl 
 silver rain, leaning through green and orange veil; 
 of dusk, and we creep with bhnkered eyes along 
 narrow alleys of unseeing habit. What will ii 
 profit us to keep a balance at the bank if we can't 
 keep a balance of youth and sanity in our souls? 
 Of what avail to ship carloads of goods north, east, 
 south and west, if we cannot spare time to know 
 our own dreams, to exchange our doubts and 
 yearnings with our friends and neighbors? 
 
 In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that 
 answers to the vibration of beauty. I can imagine 
 no more fascinating privilege than to be allowed to 
 ransack the desks of a thousand American business 
 men, men supposed to be hard-headed, absorbed 
 
A SLICE OF SUNLIGHT 101 
 
 n brisk commerce. Somewhere in each desk one 
 \vould find some hidden betrayal of that man's 
 orivate worship. It might be some old newspaper 
 "clipping, perhaps a poem that had once touched 
 ;iim, for even the humblest poets are stout par- 
 isans of reality. It might be a photograph of 
 i'hildren playing in the surf, or a little box of fish- 
 hooks, or a soiled old timetable of some queer 
 ^ackwoods railroad or primitive steamer service 
 'hat had once carried him into his land of heart's 
 lesire. 
 
 I remember a friend of mine, a man much per- 
 )lexed by the cares of earth, but slow to give 
 , itterance to his inner and tenderer impulses, tell- 
 "ng me how he first grasped the meaning and 
 ^alue of these inscrutable powers of virtue that 
 'url the whole universe daily around our heads in 
 II unerring orbit. For some reason or other — he 
 •^.^yas writing a book, I think, and sought a place 
 ui quiet — he had drifted for some winter weeks to 
 the shore of a southern bay, down in Florida. 
 When he came back he told me about it. It was 
 several years ago, but I remember the odd look in 
 his eyes as he tried to describe his experience. ''I 
 never knew until now," he said, ''what sunshine 
 and sky meant. I had always taken them for 
 granted before." He told me of the strange sensa- 
 tion of lightness and quiet smiling that had flooded 
 through him in that land where Nature writes her 
 benignant lessons so plainly that all must draw 
 their own conclusions. He told me of sunset 
 
102 A SLICE OF SUNLIGHT 
 
 flushes over long, purple waters, and of lying on 
 sand beaches wrapped in sunshine, all the prob- 
 lems of human intercourse soothed away in a 
 naked and unquestioning content. What he said 
 was very little, but watching in his eyes I could 
 guess what had happened. He had found more 
 than sunshine and color and an arc of violet sea. 
 He had found a new philosophy, a new strength 
 and realization of the worthiness of life. He had 
 traveled far to find it: it might just as well be 
 learned in Independence Square any sunny day 
 when the golden light falls upon springing grass. 
 It is strange that men should have to be re- 
 minded of these things ! How patiently, how per- 
 sistently, with what dogged and misdirected pluck, 
 they have taught themselves to ignore the ele- 
 mental blessings of mankind, subsisting instead on 
 pale and wizened and ingenious substitutes. It 
 is like a man who should shoulder for a place at a 
 quick lunch counter when a broad and leisurely 
 banquet table was spread free just around the 
 corner. The days tick by, as busy, as fleeting, as- 
 full of empty gestures as a moving picture film. 
 We crowd old age upon ourselves and run out to 
 embrace it, for age is not measured by number of 
 days but by the exhaustion of each day. Twenty 
 days lived at slow pulse, in harmony with earth's 
 loveliness, are longer than two hundred crowded 
 with feverish appointments and disappointments. 
 Many a man has lived fifty or sixty hectic years 
 and never yet learned the unreckonable endless- 
 
UP THE WISSAHICKON 103 
 
 ness of one day's loitering, measured only by the 
 gracious turning of earth and sun. Some one often 
 asks me, '^Why don't you wind the clocks?" But 
 in those rare moments when I am sane clocks do 
 not interest me. 
 
 Something of these thoughts flashes into my mind 
 as I see that beam of pale and narrow sunlight 
 fallen upon the roof of that bank building. How 
 strange it is, when life is bursting with light and 
 strength, renewing itself every day in color and 
 freshness, that we should sunder ourselves from 
 these great sources of power. With all the 
 treasures of earth at hand, we coop ourselves in 
 narrow causeways where even a sudden knife-edge 
 of brightness is a matter for joyful surprise. As 
 Stevenson once said, it is all very well to believe 
 in immortaUty, but one must first believe in Hfe. 
 Why do we grudge ourselves the embraces of '* Our 
 brother and good friend the Sun?" 
 
 UP THE WISSAHICKON 
 
 The Soothsayer is a fanatical lover of Fair- 
 mount Park. His chief delight is to send his car spin- 
 ning along the Lincoln Drive about the time the sun 
 drops toward setting; to halt at a certain hostelry 
 (if the afternoon be chilly) for what Charles Lamb 
 vso winningly describes as ''hot water and its better 
 adjuncts"; and then, his stormy soul for the 
 moment at armistice with life, to roll in a gentle 
 simmer down gracious byways while the Park 
 
104 UP THE WISSAHICKON 
 
 gathers her mantle of dusk about her. Sometimes 
 he halts his curricle in some favorite nook, climbs 
 back into the broad, well-cushioned tonneau seat 
 and lies there smoking a cigarette and watching 
 the lights along the river. The Park is his favorite 
 relaxation. He carries its contours and colors and 
 sunsets in the spare locker of his brain, and even 
 on the most trying day at his office he is a little 
 happier because he knows the Wissahickon Drive 
 is but a few miles away. Wise Soothsayer! He 
 should have been one of the hermits who came 
 from Germany with Kelpius in 1694 and lived 
 bleakly on the hillsides of that fairest of streams, 
 waiting the millennium they expected in 1700. 
 
 The Soothsayer had long been urging me to 
 come and help him worship the Wissahickon 
 Drive, and when luck and the happy moment con- 
 spired I found myself carried swiftly past the 
 Washington Monument at the Park entrance and 
 along the margin of the twinkhng Schuylkill. At 
 first there was nothing of the hermit in the Sooth- 
 sayer's conversation. He was bitterly condemning 
 the handicraft of a certain garage mechanic who 
 had done something to his ^'clutch." He included 
 this fallacious artisan in the class of those he 
 deems most degraded: The People Who Don't 
 Give a Damn. For intellectual convenience, the 
 Soothsayer tersely ascribes all ills that befall him 
 to Bolshevism. If the waitress is tard}^ in dehver- 
 ing his cheese omelet, she is a bolshevixen. If a 
 motortruck driver skims his polished fender, he is 
 
UP THE WISSAHICKON 105 
 
 a bolshevik. In other words, those who Don't 
 Give a Damn are bolsheviks. 
 
 The Soothsayer lamented that I had not been 
 in the Park with him two weeks ago, when the 
 autumn foliage was a blaze of glowing color. But 
 to my eye the tints (it was the first of November) 
 were unsurpassably lovel3^ It was a keen after- 
 noon, the air was sharp, the sky flushing with rose 
 and massed w4th great banks of cloud the bluish 
 hue of tobacco smoke. When we neared the cor- 
 ner of Peter's Island the sun slid from under a 
 cloudy screen and transfused the thin bronze- 
 3^ellow of the trees with a pale glow which sparkled 
 as the few remaining leaves fluttered in the w^ind. 
 Most of the leafage had fallen and was being 
 ])urnt in bonfires at the side of the road, where 
 the gusts tossed and flattened the waving flames. 
 But the trees were still sufficiently clothed to show 
 a rich tapestry of russet and orange and brown, 
 sharpened here and there by wisps and shreds of 
 yellow. And where the boughs were wholly 
 stripped (the silver-gray beeches, for instance) 
 their delicate twigs were clearly traced against the 
 sky. I think one hears too much of the beauty of 
 October's gold and scarlet and not enough of the 
 sober, wistful richness of November buffs and duns 
 and browns. 
 
 The Wissahickon Drive is the last refuge of the 
 foot and the hoof, for motors are not allowed to 
 follow the trail up the ravine, which still remains 
 a haunt of ancient peace — much more so, indeed. 
 
106 UP THE WISSAHICKON 
 
 than in former years, when there must have been 
 many and many a smart turnout spanking up the 
 valley for supper at the Lotus Inn. Over the ruins 
 of this hostelry the Soothsayer becomes sadly 
 eloquent, recalling how in his salad days he used 
 to drive out from town in a chartered hansom and 
 sit placidly on a honeysuckled balcony over 
 chicken and waffles served with the proper flourish 
 by a colored servitor named Pompey. But we 
 must take things as we see them, and though my 
 conductor rebuked me for thinking the scene so 
 lovely — I should have been there not only two 
 weeks ago to see the autumn colors, but ten years 
 ago to see Pompey and the Lotus Inn — still, I was 
 marvelously content with the dusky beauty of the 
 glades. The cool air was rich with the damp, 
 sweet smell of decaying leaves. A tiny murmur of 
 motion rose from the green-brown pools of the 
 creek, ruffled here and there with a milky bubble of 
 foam below some boulder. In the feathery tops of 
 evergreen trees, blackly outlined against the clear 
 arch of fading blue, some birds were cheeping a 
 lively squabble. We stopped to listen. It was 
 plainly an argument, of the kind in which each side 
 accuses the other of partisanship. ^'Bolshevism !" 
 said the Soothsayer. 
 
 It is wonderfully still in the Wissahickon ravine 
 in a pale November twilight. Overhead the sk}^ 
 darkened; the sherry-brown trees began to shed 
 something of their rich tint. The soft earth of the 
 roadway was grateful underfoot to those too accus- 
 
UP THE WISSAHICKON 107 
 
 tomed to pav(?ment walking. Along the drive 
 came the romantic thud of hoofs : a party of girls 
 on horseback perhaps returning from tea at Valley 
 Green. What a wonderful sound is the quick 
 drumming of horses' hoofs! To me it always 
 suggests highwaymen and Robert Louis Steven- 
 son. We smoked our pipes leaning over the 
 wooden fence and looking down at the green 
 shimmer of the Wissahickon, seeing how the pallor 
 of sandy bottom shone up through the clear water. 
 
 And then, just as one is about to sentimentalize 
 upon the beauty of nature and how it shames the 
 crass work of man, one comes to what is perhaps 
 the loveliest thing along the Wissahickon — the 
 Walnut Lane Bridge. Leaping high in air from 
 the very domes of the trees, curving in a sheer 
 smooth superb span that catches the last western 
 light on its concrete flanks, it flashes across the 
 darkened valley as nobly as an old Roman viaduct 
 of southern France. It is a thrilhng thing, and I 
 scrambled up the bank to note down the names of 
 the artists who planned it. The tablet is dated 
 1906, and bears the names of George S. Webster, 
 chief engineer; Henry H. Quimby, assistant engi- 
 neer; Reilly & Riddle, contractors. Many poets 
 have written verses both good and bad about the 
 Wissahickon, but Messrs. Reilly & Riddle have 
 spanned it with a poem that will long endure. 
 
 We walked back to the Soothsayer's bolshevized 
 car, which waited at the turning of the drive where 
 a Revolutionary scuffle took place between Amer- 
 
108 DARKNESS VISIBLE 
 
 ican troops and a detachment of redcoats under a 
 commander of the fine old British name of Kny- 
 phausen. As we whirred down to the Lincohi 
 Drive and I commented on the lavender haze that 
 overhung the steep slopes of the glen, the Sooth- 
 sayer said: ''Ah, but you should have seen it two 
 weeks ago. The trees were like a cashmere shawl ! " 
 I shall have to wait fifty weeks before I can see 
 the Wissahickon in a way that will content the 
 fastidious Soothsayer. 
 
 DARKNESS VISIBLE 
 
 Of all gifts to earth, the first and greatest was 
 darkness. Darkness preceded light, you will re- 
 member, in Genesis. Perhaps that is why darkness 
 seems to man natural and universal. It requires 
 no explanation and no cause. We postulate it. 
 Whereas fight, being to our minds merely the 
 cleansing vibration that dispels the black, requires 
 some origin, some lamp whence to shine. From 
 the appaUing torch of the sun down to the pale 
 belly of the glowworm we deem light a derivative 
 miracle, proceeding from some conceivable source. 
 We can conceive darkness without thought of 
 light; but we cannot conceive light without dark- 
 ness. Day is but an interval between two nights. 
 In other words, darkness is a matter which includes 
 light just as the conception of a joke includes that 
 of humor. One can think (alas!) of jokes without 
 
DARKNESS VISIBLE 109 
 
 hmnor; but no one can conceive of humor without 
 jokes. 
 
 This philosophy, probably scoffable for the 
 trained thinker, is a clumsy preface to the thought 
 that city streets at night are the most fascinating 
 work of man. Like all other handouts of nature, 
 man has taken darkness and made it agreeable, 
 trimmed and refined and made it acceptable for 
 the very nicest people. And the suburbanite who 
 finds himself living in town for a week or so is 
 likely to spend his whole evenings in wandering 
 espial, poring over the glowing caves of shop win- 
 dows and rejoicing in the rich patterns of light 
 wherewith man has made night lovely. Night by 
 herself, naked and primitive and embracing, is em- 
 barrassing; she crowds one so; there is so much 
 of her. So we push her up the side streets and 
 into the movie halls and out to the suburbs, and 
 taking her a little at a time we really learn to 
 enjoy her company. 
 
 There is a restaurant on Arch street near Ninth 
 where one may dine on excellent jam omelet and 
 coffee, after which it is good to stroll along Ninth 
 street (which with its tributary Ludlow I esteem 
 the best street we have) to admire the different 
 tints of light that man has set out in order to get 
 a look at the darkness. There is the wan white 
 glow of the alabaster inverted bowls that are 
 favored in barbers' shops. There is the lucent 
 gold of jewelers' windows where naked electric 
 bulbs of great candlepower are masked in silvered 
 
110 DARKNESS VISIBLE 
 
 reflectors along the top and bottom of the pane. 
 There is the bleak moonshine of tiled and enameled 
 restaurants, where they lose much lightness by 
 having everything too white. If (for instance) the 
 waitresses would only wear scarlet or black dresses, 
 how much more brilliant the scene would be. 
 There is the pale lilac and lavender of the arcs, 
 and the vicious green glare of mercury vapor 
 tubes in the ten minute photograph studios that 
 are always full of sailors. Over all soars the orange 
 disc of the City Hall clock, which has been hailed 
 by so many romantic wastrels as the rising or 
 setting moon. And the fierce light that is said to 
 beat upon a throne is twilight compared to that 
 which shimmers round our jewelled soda fountains. 
 The long, musty corridor of the postoffice on 
 Ninth Street is an interesting place about 8 o'clock 
 in the evening. Particularly in these last weeks, 
 when movies, saloons and theatres have been 
 closed on account of the influenza epidemic, the 
 postoffice has become a trysting place for men in 
 uniform and young ladies. The gloomy halls at 
 each end of the corridor are good ground for gig- 
 gling colloquy; light love (curiously) approves the 
 dusk. Through the little windows one catches 
 ghmpses of tiers of pigeonholes packed with let- 
 ters, and wonders what secrets of the variable 
 human heart are there confided to the indulgent 
 secrecy of Uncle Sam. If a novelist of imaginative 
 sympathy might spend a week in reading through 
 those pigeonholes, what a book he could make of 
 
DARKNESS VISIBLE 111 
 
 them! Or could we only peer over the shoulders 
 of those who stand writing at the blackened, ink- 
 stained desks, what meshes of joy and pain we 
 might see raveled in the Hves of plain men and 
 women. The great tapestry of human life hes all 
 round us, and we have to pluck clumsil}^ at its 
 patterns thread by thread. 
 
 One who is interested in bookish matters ought 
 to make a point of going upstairs to the registered 
 mail room on the second floor. In a corner of that 
 room, sitting in a well-worn chair under a drop 
 light, you may be fortunate enough to find one of 
 the post-office guards, an elderl}^ philosopher who 
 beguiles the evening vigil with a pipe and a book. 
 He is a genial sage and a keen devour er of print. 
 He eats books alive. Marie Corelli and Marion 
 Crawford are among his favorites for lighter min- 
 istration, but in the past few weeks his mind has 
 been on graver matter. He has just finished a life 
 of Napoleon and a biography of Joan of Arc. 
 Tonight when I went in to register a letter his 
 chair was empty (he was having his supper of 
 sandwiches and a little bucket of coffee at a table 
 in the dim hallway outside) but on the shelf lay 
 his book, pipe and tobacco pouch. I could not 
 resist peeking to see what the volume was. Little's 
 Life of Saint Francis of Assisi. Verily, if our 
 government officials are taking to reading of Saint 
 Francis, the world looks forward to happier days. 
 
 The Secretary of the Treasury says in a notice 
 ''Loitering about this building is prohibited," but 
 
112 DARKNESS VISIBLE 
 
 I fear I have committed what Don Marquis used 
 to call lese-McAdoo in often halting to scrutinize 
 the bulletin board in the north hall of the post- 
 office. Here are posted statements of stores and 
 materials needed by the Federal departments. 
 One finds such notices as this: Sealed proposals 
 will he received by the undersigned until 2 o'clock 
 p. m., October 30, for supplying this building with 
 three dozen scrubbing brushes. And the Navy 
 Yard's bulletin board, near by, alwaj^s has inter- 
 esting requirements: Wanted, for United States 
 naval training camp, seventy-five bubbling heads 
 sanitary drinking fountains. (Imagine how amazed 
 seamen of the tarry pigtail era would be at the idea 
 of drinking from a sanitary drinking fountain!) 
 The Inspector of Engineering Material, U. S. N., 
 Cleveland, O., announces that he desires space for 
 storing one five-passenger Ford touring car and 
 washing it at least once each week for the period 
 ending June 30, 1919. It would be a bit incon- 
 venient, we think, to store the flivver here in 
 Philadelphia. The Navy Yard desires bids for 
 supplying submarines with copper-jacketed gas- 
 kets, which has a business-like sound. The Public 
 Works Department admits that one dozen mouse 
 traps, revolving, are needed, to be delivered and 
 inspected at Building No. 4, Navy Yard. Wanted 
 for overseas vessels (here our heart leaps up at the 
 prospect of something exciting) eleven revolving 
 office chairs, oak finish, and eleven dozen pencils. 
 The Naval Hospital at League Island asks bids on 
 
DARKNESS VISIBLE 113 
 
 100 poinsettias, 50 cyclamens, 100 primroses, 100 
 carnations, 12 hydrangeas, all in pots. And there 
 are requisitions posted for wires and shackles, for 
 anchors and propellers, for chemicals and talcum 
 powder and vast radio towers to be erected at a 
 naval base in France. War, you see, is not all a 
 matter of powder and shot. If you are ever 
 tempted to wonder what the Government does 
 with the Liberty Loans, go up to the Federnl 
 Building and look over a few of those invitations 
 for bids posted on the bulletin boards. 
 
 Ninth street, as I said, often seems to me the 
 most alluring street in town. Perhaps it is because 
 of certain bookshops; perhaps it is because at a 
 table d'hote restaurant above Market street I first 
 learned the pleasant combustion of cheap claret 
 and cigarettes ignited by the spark of youthful 
 converse. To these discoveries of a dozen years 
 ago I am happy to add others; for example, that 
 the best spaghetti I have ever eaten is served on 
 Ninth street; and that there is a second-hand 
 bookstore which is open at night. Nor am I likely 
 to forget a set-to with sausages and corncakes and 
 sirup that I enjoyed on Ninth street the other 
 evening with the Soothsayer. We had been mo- 
 toring in the suburbs, a crisp and bravely tinted 
 October afternoon, and getting back to town after 
 8 o'clock as hungry as bolshevik commissars, w^e 
 entered into the joy of the flesh in a Ninth street 
 hash cathedral. Here and now let me pay tribute 
 to those blissful lunch rooms that stay open late at 
 
114 DARKNESS VISIBLE 
 
 night to sustain and replenish the toiler whose 
 business it is to pass along the lonely pavements of 
 midnight. Waiters and waitresses of the all-night 
 shift, we who are about to eat salute you! Let it 
 be a double portion of corned-beef hash and " coffee 
 with plenty." And many a midnight luncher has 
 blessed you for your unfailing good humor. Is it 
 not true, admit it, that most of the happy recol- 
 lections of mankind deal with food we have 
 enjoyed? 
 
 You will find it well worth while to take a stroll 
 up Ninth street some evening. You will usually 
 find a roasted chestnut cart at the southeast 
 corner of Market street. The noble savor of cook- 
 ing chestnuts is alone worth the effort of the walk. 
 Then you can pass on northward, by the animal 
 shop, where the dogs sleep uneasily in the window, 
 agitated by the panorama outside; past the 
 cuckoo clock shop and the old Dime Museum. 
 As the street leads on to less exalted faubourgs 
 you will notice that it grows more luxurious. 
 Windows glow with gold watches, diamond studs, 
 cut glass carafes. Haberdashers set out S8 silk 
 shirts, striped with the rainbow, infinitely more 
 glorious than anything to be found on Chestnut 
 street. And then, at Race street, you can turn 
 off into the queer sights of Chinatown. 
 
ON THE WAY TO BALTIMORE 115 
 
 ' ON THE WAY TO BALTIMORE 
 
 The other day we had occasion to take a B.* 
 and O. train down to Baltimore. We had to hurry 
 to catch the vehicle at that quaint abandoned 
 chateau at Twenty-fourth and Chestnut, and 
 when we settled down in the smoker we realized 
 that we had embarked with no reading matter but 
 a newspaper we had already read. We thought, 
 with considerable irritation, that we were going to 
 be bored. 
 
 We were never less bored in our life than during 
 that two-hour ride. In the first place, the line of 
 march of the B. and O. gives one quite a different 
 view of the country from the course of the P. R. R., 
 with which we are better acquainted. From the 
 Pennsy, for instance, Wilmington appears as a 
 smoky, shackish and not too comely city. In the 
 I eye of the genteel B. and O. it is a quiet suburb, 
 with passive shady lawns about a modest station 
 where a little old lady with a basket of eggs and 
 black-finger gloves got gingerly on board. There 
 were a number of colored doughboys in the car, 
 just landed in New York and on their way to 
 southern homes. '' Oh, boy ! " cried one of these as 
 we left Wilmington, ''de nex' stop's Baltimuh, an' 
 dat's wheah mah native home at." Every ten 
 minutes a fawn-tinted minion from some rearward 
 dining car came through with a tray of ice-cream 
 cones, and these childlike and amiable darkies 
 
116 ON THE WAY TO BALTIMORE 
 
 cleaned out his stock every time. They had ail 
 evidently just bought new and very narrow-toed 
 cordovan shoes in New York; there was hardly 
 one who did not have his footgear off to nurse his 
 tortured members. The negro soldier has a genius 
 for injudicious purchase. We saw some of them 
 the other day in a '' pawn-brokers' outlet" on 
 Market street laying down their fives and tens for 
 the most preposterous gold watches, terrible em- 
 bossed and flashy engines of inaccuracy, with 
 chains like brass hawsers, obviously about as 
 reliable as a sundial at night. 
 
 It was a gray and green day, quite cool — for it 
 was still early forenoon — and we looked out on 
 vanishing woodlands and bosky valleys with a 
 delight too eager to express. Why (we thought) 
 should any sane being waste his energy bedeviling 
 the Senate when all a hfetime spent in attempting 
 to describe the beauty of earth — surely an inno- 
 cent ambition — would be insufficient? Statesmen, 
 we thought, are but children of a smaller growth; 
 and with a superbly evacuated mind we gazed 
 upon the meadows and dancing streams near 
 Leslie, just over the Maryland border. There 
 w^ere glimpses of that most alluring vista known 
 to man: a strip of woodland thin enough to let 
 through a twinkle of light from the other side. 
 What a mystery there is about the edge of a wood, 
 as you push through and wonder just what you 
 may be coming to. In that corner of Cecil county 
 there are many Forest of Arden glimpses, where 
 
ON THE WAY TO BALTIMORE 117 
 
 the brown and velvety cows grazing in thickets 
 seem (as the train flies by) almost like venison. 
 There are sw^elling meadows against the sky, white 
 with daisies and Queen Anne's lace; the lichened 
 gray fences, horses straining at the harrow and 
 white farmhouses sitting back among the domes of 
 trees. 
 
 Then comes the glorious Susquehanna — that 
 noble river that caught the fancy of R. L. S., you 
 remember. He once began a poem with the re- 
 frain, ''Beside the Susquehanna and along the 
 Delaware." Olive-green below the high railway 
 bridge, the water tints off to silver in the pale 
 summer haze toward Port Deposit. The B. and O. 
 bridge strides over an island in midstream, and 
 looking down on the tops of the (probably) maples, 
 they are a bright j^ellow with some blossom-busi- 
 ness of their own. A lonely fisherman was squat- 
 ting in a gray and weathered skiff near the bridge. 
 What a river to go exploring along! 
 
 It is quaint that men, who love to live in damp 
 and viewless hollows, always select the jovial and 
 healthy spots to bury themselves in. Just beyond 
 the Susquehanna, on the south side of the track, 
 we pass a little graveyard in quite the most charm- 
 ing spot thereabouts, high on a hill overlooking the 
 wide sweep of the river. And then again the green 
 rolling ridges of Harford countj^ with, yellow dirt 
 roads luring one afoot, and the little brooks scut- 
 tling down toward Chesapeake through coverts of 
 
118 ON THE WAY TO BALTIMORE 
 
 fern and brambles. We remembered the lovely 
 verse of the Canadian poet, Charles G. D. Roberts: 
 
 Comes the lure of green things growing, 
 Comes the call of waters flowing — 
 
 And the wayfarer desire 
 Moves and wakes and would be going. 
 
 What a naughtiness of pagan temptation sings 
 to one across that bewitching country ; what illicit 
 thoughts of rolltop desks consumed in the bonfire, 
 of the warm dust soft under the bootsoles, and the 
 bending road that dips into the wood among an 
 ambush of pink magnolias. If the train were to 
 halt at one of those little stations — say Joppa, near 
 the Gunpowder river — there might be one less 
 newspaper man in the world. I can see him, drop- 
 ping off the train, lighting his pipe in the windless 
 shelter of a pile of weather-beaten ties, and setting 
 forth up the Gunpowder valley to discover the 
 romantic hamlets of Madonna and Trump, lost in 
 that green paradise of Maryland June. Or the 
 little town of Loreley, on the other side of the 
 stream ! Think of the fireflies and the honeysuckle 
 on a June evening in the village of Madonna! 
 Ah, well, of what avail to imagine these things! 
 The train, unluckily, does not stop. 
 
 And Baltimore itself, with its unique and 
 leisurely charm, its marvelously individual atmo- 
 sphere of well-being and assured loveliness and old 
 serenity, how little it realizes how enchanting it is! 
 Baltimore ought to pay a special luxury tax for the 
 
THE PAOLI LOCAL 119 
 
 dark-eyed and almost insolent beauty of its girls, 
 who gaze at one with the serene candor of un- 
 questioned divinity. But that is a topic that be- 
 longs to Baltimore chroniclers, and we may not 
 trespass on their privileges. 
 
 At any rate, we got our fishing rod, which is 
 what we went for. 
 
 THE PAOLI LOCAL 
 
 It is alwaj^s puzzling to the wayfarer, when he 
 has traveled to some sacred spot, to find the local 
 denizens going about their concerns as though 
 miaware that they are on enchanted ground. It 
 used to seem a hideous profanation to the Bae- 
 deker-stained tourist from Marsupial City, Ind., 
 to step off the train at Stratford and find the 
 butcher's cart jogging about with flanks and 
 rumps. And even so does it seem odd to me that 
 people are getting aboard the Paoli local every 
 day, just as though it were the normal thing to 
 do instead of (what it really is) an excursion into 
 Arcadia. 
 
 Some day a poet will lutanize the Paoli local as 
 it ought to be done, in a tender strain — 
 
 Along that green embowered track 
 My heart throws off its pedlar^s pack 
 In memory commuting hack 
 
 Now swiftly and now slovAy — 
 Ah! lucky people, you, in sooth 
 Who ride that caravan of youth 
 TJie Local to Paoli! 
 
120 THE PAOLI LOCAL 
 
 The 2:15 train is a good one to take, for it 
 affords an interesting opportunity to observe those 
 who may be called sub-commuters: the people 
 who come in town in the morning, like honest 
 working folk, but get back to the country after 
 lunch. These, of course, are only half-breed com- 
 muters. They are the silver-chevron suburbanites, 
 deserving not the true golden stripes of those who 
 moil all day. They are teachers, schoolboys, golfo- 
 maniacs and damsels from the home of Athene, 
 Bryn Mawr. They are mere cherubim and sera- 
 phim, not archangels. Stern and grizzled veterans, 
 who go home on the Hjw6:05 ('^H" Will not run 
 New Year's, Memorial, Independence, Thanksgiv- 
 ing and Christmas Days; '' j " will not run Satur- 
 days June 7 to Sept. 27, both inclusive; ''w" No 
 baggage service) speak of them scornfully as ''Sam 
 Brown belt commuters." 
 
 One who was nourished along the line of the 
 Paoli local, who knew it long before it became 
 electrified with those spider-leg trolleys on its roof 
 and before the Wynnewood embankments were 
 lined with neat little garages, sometimes has an 
 inner pang that it is getting a bit too civihzed. 
 And yet no train will ever mean to us what that 
 does ! The saying that was good enough for Queen 
 Mary and Mr. Browning is good enough for me. 
 When I kie, you will find the words PAOLI LOCAL 
 indehbled on my heart. When the Corsican pa- 
 triot's aicentennial comes along, in 1925, I hope 
 there w^l be a grand reunion of all the old travelers 
 
THE PAOLI LOCAL 121 
 
 along that line. The railroad will run specially 
 decorated trains and distribute souvenirs among 
 commuters of more than forty years' standing. 
 The campus of Haverford College Avill be the 
 scene of a mass-meeting. There ^^dll be reminiscent 
 addresses by those who recall when the tracks ran 
 along Railroad avenue at Haverford and up 
 through Preston. An express agent will be bar- 
 becued, and there will be dancing and song and 
 passing of the mead cup until far into the night. 
 The first surprise the Paoli local gives one never 
 fails to cause a mild wonder. Just after leaving 
 West Philadelphia Station you see William Penn 
 looming up away on the right. As you are con- 
 vinced that you left him straight behind, and 
 have not noticed any curve, the sensation is odd. 
 At Fifty-second street rise the shallow green slopes 
 of George's Hill, Avith its Total Abstinence foun- 
 tain. Nearer the track are wide tracts of vacant 
 ground where some small boys of the sort so de- 
 lightfully limned by Fontaine Fox have scooped 
 mihtary dug-outs, roofed over with cast-off sheets 
 lof corrugated iron, very lifelike to see. 
 I At Overbrook one gets one's first glimpse of 
 those highly civilized suburbs. It is a gloriously 
 sunny May afternoon. Three girls are sitting 
 under a hedge at the top of the embankment read- 
 ing a magazine. The little iron fences, so charac- 
 teristic of the Main Line, make their appearance. 
 A lady tubed in a tight skirt totters valiantly down 
 the road toward the station, and the courteous 
 
122 THE PAOLI LOCAL 
 
 train waits for her. If the director general of rail- 
 roads were a bachelor perhaps he would insert a 
 new footnote in his time-tables: ^'Sk," will not 
 wait for ladies in hobble skirts. The signal gives 
 its blithe little double chirp and we are off again. 
 
 Toward Merion we skirt a brightly sliding little 
 brook under willow trees, with glimpses of daintily 
 supervised wilderness. It is all so trimly artificed 
 that one is surprised to see that the rubbery stalks 
 of the dandelion have evaded the lawn-mower just 
 as they do in less carefully razored suburbs. 
 Honeysuckles sprawl along the embankments, 
 privet hedges bound neat gardens. There is a new 
 station at Merion. In old bucolic days the Main 
 Line station masters lived and kept house in the 
 depots, and if one had to wait for a train one could 
 make friends with the station master's little girl 
 and pet cat. But all those little girls are grown up 
 now and are Bryn Mawr alumnse. 
 
 At Narberth one sees clustered roofs embow- 
 ered in trees, in the hollow below the railway, and 
 a snatch of plowed land. Now one is really in the 
 country. Narberth, Wynnewood, Ardmore, Hav- 
 erford — so it runs, like a chapter of begats. At 
 Wynnewood, if you are sitting on the right, you 
 see an alluring vista of a long alley through sun- 
 speckled greenery. The baggage agent has nailed 
 an old chair seat to a little wooden box which 
 provides a meditating throne for such small leisure 
 as a Main Line baggage agent gets. Ardmore — 
 strange to think that it used to call itself Athens- 
 
THE PAOLI LOCAL 123 
 
 ville — doesn't quite know whether it is a suburb 
 or a city. Clumps of iris look upon busy freight 
 yards; back gardens with fluttering Monday linen 
 face upon a factory and a gas tank. And then, in 
 a flash, one is at Haverford, the goal of pilgrimage. 
 
 Haverford is changed as little as any of the 
 suburbs since the days when one knew it by heart. 
 Yet Mr. Harbaugh has moved his pharmacy to a 
 new building and it can never be quite the same! 
 The old stuffed owl sits bravely in the new win- 
 dow% but the familiar drug-scented haunt where 
 we drank our first soda and bought our first to- 
 bacco is empty and forlorn. But the deep butter- 
 cup meadow by the Lancaster pike is still broad 
 and green, with the same fawn-colored velvety 
 cow grazing. 
 
 And there is one thing that they can never 
 change: the smell of the Haverford lawns in 
 May, when the grass is being mowed. A dazzling 
 pervasion of sunlight loiters over those gentle 
 slopes, draws up the breath of the grass, blue 
 space is rich with its balmy savor. Under the 
 arches of the old maples are the white figures of 
 the cricketers. In the memorial garden behind 
 the library the blue phlox is out in pale masses. 
 The archway of the beech hedge looks down on 
 the huge prostrate mock-orange tree. Under the 
 hemlocks (I hope they're hemlocks) by the obser- 
 vatory is that curious soft, dry, bleached grass 
 which is so perfect to lie on with a book and not 
 read it. And here comes Harry Carter careering 
 
 9 
 
124 MARKET STREET 
 
 over the lawns with his gasohne mowing machine. 
 Everything is the same at heart. And that is why 
 it's the perfect pilgrimage, the loveUest spot on 
 earth, then, now and forever! 
 
 MARKET STREET 
 
 AS CERTAIN EMINENT TRAVELERS MIGHT HAVE 
 DESCRIBED IT 
 
 I. Edgar Allan Poe 
 
 During the whole of a dull and oppressive 
 afternoon, when the very buildings that loomed 
 about me seemed to lean forward threateningly as 
 if to crush me with their stony mass, I had been 
 traveling in fitful jerks in a Market street trolley; 
 and at length found myself, as the sullen shade of 
 evening drew on, within view of the melancholy 
 tower of the City Hall. I know not how it was — 
 but, with the first glimpse of the building a sense 
 of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say 
 insufferable, for the feeling was unrelieved by any 
 of that half-pleasurable sentiment with which the 
 mind usually receives even the sternest images of 
 the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the simple 
 visages of the policemen on guard in the court- 
 yard — upon the throng of suburban humanity 
 pressing in mournful agitation toward their 
 solemn hour of trial — upon a deserted litter of 
 planks left by the heedless hand of the subway 
 contractor — and an icy anguish seized upon my 
 
MARKET STREET 125 
 
 spirit. What was it — I paused to think — what 
 was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation 
 of the City Hall? Was it the knowledge that any 
 one of these bluecoats could, with a mere motion 
 of his hand, consign me to some terrible dungeon 
 within those iron walls — or the thought that in 
 this vast and pitiless pile sat men who held the 
 destiny of my fellow citizens in their hands — or 
 the knowledge that time was flying and I was in 
 imminent peril of missing my train? It was a 
 mystery all insoluble, and I mused in shadowy 
 fancy, caught in a web of ghastly surmise. 
 
 At last I raised my head, breaking away from 
 these unanalyzed forebodings. I gazed upward 
 where the last fire of the setting sun tinged the 
 summit with a gruesome glow — O horror more 
 than mortal ! — fearful sight that drove the blood 
 in torrents on my heart — God shield and guard me 
 frorn the arch-fiend, I shrieked — had William Penn 
 gone Bolshevist? For they had painted the base 
 of his statue — a glaring, hloodlike red! 
 
 II. Henry Jambs 
 Thorncliff was thinking, as he crossed the, to 
 him, intolerably interwoven confusion of Market 
 street, that he had never — unless it was once in a 
 dream which he strangely associated in memory 
 with an overplus of antipasto — never consciously, 
 that is, threaded his way through so baffling a 
 predicament of traffic, and it was not until halted, 
 somewhat summarily, though yet kindly, by a 
 
126 MARKET STREET 
 
 blue arm which he after some scrutiny assessed as 
 belonging to a traffic patrolman, that he bethought 
 himself sufficiently to inquire, in a manner a little 
 breathless still, though understood at once by the 
 kindly envoy of order as the natural mood of one 
 inextricably tangled in mind and not yet wholly 
 untangled in body, but still intact when the pro- 
 pulsive energy of the motortruck had been, by a 
 rapid shift of gears and actuating machinery, 
 transformed to a rearward movement, where he 
 might be and how. 
 
 **This is Market street," said the officer. 
 
 "Market street? Ah, thank you." 
 
 Market street! Could it be, indeed? His last 
 conscious impression had been of some shop — a 
 milliner's, perhaps? — on, probably. Walnut street 
 where he had been gazing with mild reproach at 
 the price tickets upon the hats displayed, or, if 
 not displayed, a term implying a rather crude con- 
 cession to commercialism, at least exhibited, and 
 considering whether or not it would be advisable, 
 on so hot a day or a day that had every promise 
 of becoming hot unless those purple clouds that 
 hung over the ferries should liquidate into some- 
 thing not unlike a thunder shower, to carry with 
 him a small hat as an act of propitiation and re- 
 concilement with Mrs. Thorncliff. So this was 
 Market street. He gazed with friendly interest into 
 the face of the policeman, a gaze in which there 
 was not the slightest sign of any animating rebuke 
 at the interruption in his meditation, a meditation 
 
MARKET STREET 127 
 
 which, after all, had been unconscious rather than 
 actively cerebrated and with some vague intention 
 of inquiring ultimately whether it were safe, now 
 and here, to cross the highway or whether it would 
 be better to wait until the semaphore (which, as 
 he had just noticed, was turned to STOP) gave 
 him undoubted privilege to pass unhindered, re- 
 marked again, but without malicious motive, 
 which indeed would have been foreign to his mood 
 and purpose: ''Market street? How interesting." 
 
 III. Walt Whitman 
 
 I SEE the long defile of Market street, 
 
 And the young libertad offering to shine my shoes 
 
 (I do not have my shoes shined, for am I not as 
 
 worthy without them shined? I put it to you, 
 
 Camerado.) 
 And I see the maidens and young men flocking 
 
 into the movies. 
 And I promulge this doctrine, that the government 
 
 might have imposed twice as heavy a tax on 
 
 amusements, and still young men and maidens 
 
 would throng to the movies, 
 (O endless timidity of statesmen) 
 And I wonder whether I, too, will go in and give 
 
 the eidolons the once over. 
 But putting my hand in my pocket I see that I 
 
 have only thirteen cents 
 And it will cost me three cents to get back to 
 
 Camden. 
 In a window I see a white-coated savan cooking 
 
 griddle cakes, 
 And I think to myself, I am no better than he is, 
 And he is no better than I am. 
 
ns MARKET STREET 
 
 And no one is any better than any one else 
 
 (0 the dignity of labor, 
 
 Particularly the labor that is done by other people ; 
 
 Let other people do the work, is my manifesto, 
 
 Leave me to muse about it) 
 
 Work is a wonderful thing, and a steady job is a 
 
 wonderful thing. 
 And the pay envelope is a wonderful institution, 
 And I love to meditate on all the work that there 
 
 is to be done, 
 And how other people are doing it. 
 Reader, whether in Kanada or Konshohocken, 
 I strike up for you. 
 This is my song for you, and a good song, I'll 
 
 say so. 
 
 IV. Karl Baedeker 
 * * * Market Street (Marktstrasse) . Issu- 
 ing from the majestic terminus of the Camden 
 ferries the traveler will behold the long prospect of 
 Market street, ending with the imposing tower 
 (548 feet) which was until the recent rise in prices 
 the highest thing in Philadelphia. On the summit 
 of the tower will be observed the colossal statue of 
 WiUiam Penn, said to be of German extraction 
 (1644-1718). The Market street is the business 
 center of Philadelphia. A curious phenomenon, 
 exhibiting the perspicacious shrewdness of the na- 
 tives of this great city, may be observed on any 
 warm day about noon: the natives keep to the 
 shady side of the street. As the thoroughfare runs 
 due east and west, a brief astronomical calculation 
 will show this to be the southern side of the way. 
 
TO LEAGUE ISLAND AND BACK U9 
 
 Between October and April, however, it is quite 
 safe to walk at a leisurely pace on the sunny side. 
 By all means observe the great number of places 
 where soft drinks may be obtained, characteristic 
 of the American sweet tooth, but expensive (war 
 tax, one cent per ten cents or fraction thereof). 
 The dignified edifice at the corner of Ninth street 
 is the federal building, often carelessly spoken 
 of as the postofEce. An entertaining experiment, 
 often tried by visitors, is that of mailing a letter 
 here. (See note on Albert Sidney Burleson, else- 
 where in this edition.) The visitor who wishes 
 to make a thorough tour of Market street may 
 cover the ground between the river (Delaware, a 
 large sluggish stream, inferior to the Rhine) and 
 the City Hall in an hour, unless he takes the sub- 
 way. (Allow 13/^ hrs.) 
 
 TO LEAGUE ISLAND AND BACK 
 
 Yesterday afternoon the American Press 
 Humorists visited League Island. When the party 
 boarded a Fifteenth street car I was greatly ex- 
 cited to see a lady sitting with a large market 
 basket in her lap and placidly reading The Amaz- 
 ing Marriage. ''You see," I said to Ted Robin- 
 son, the delightful poet from Cleveland, ''we have 
 a genuine culture in Philadelphia. Our citizens 
 read Meredith on the trolleys as they return from 
 shopping." "That's nothing," said Ted, "I al- 
 ways read Meredith on the cars at home. I've 
 
130 TO LEAGUE ISLAND AND BACK 
 
 often read the greater part of a Meredith novel on 
 my way to the office in the morning." So perhaps 
 the Cleveland transits aren't any more rapid than 
 our own. 
 
 The rain came down in whirling silver sheets as 
 we crossed the flats toward League Island, but 
 after a short wait at the end of the car line the 
 downfall slackened. Under the guidance of three 
 courteous warrant officers we were piloted about 
 the navy yard. 
 
 Notliing is ever so thrilling as a place where 
 ships are gathered, and the adventurousness of a 
 trip to the navy yard begins as soon as one steps 
 off the car and finds great gray hulls almost at 
 one's side. It seems odd to see them there, appar- 
 ently so far inland, their tall stacks rising up 
 among the trees. The Massachusetts and the Iowa 
 were the first we passed, and we were all prepared 
 to admire them heartily until told by our naval 
 convoy that they are "obsolete." Passing by a 
 pack of lean destroyers, leashed up like a kennel 
 of hounds, we gazed at the gray profile of the 
 Nevada, The steep chains perpending from her 
 undercut prow we were told were for the use of 
 the paravanes, and I think the ladies of the party 
 were pleased not to be paravanes. The older 
 destroyers — such as the Wainwright — are very 
 small compared with the newer models; but it is 
 curious that the outmoded types of battleship 
 appear to the civilian eye more massive and tower- 
 ing than the latest superdreadnoughts. The Ohio, 
 
TO LEAGUE ISLAND AND BACK 131 
 
 the Connecticut, the New Hampshire, all older 
 vessels, loomed out of the water like cliffs of stone ; 
 their two and three high funnels out-topping the 
 squat single stack of the new oil-burners. 
 
 The word submarine has become a commonplace 
 of our daily Ufe, but there is always a tingle of 
 excitement on seeing these strange human fishes. 
 The 0-16, one of the American undersea craft that 
 operated from the Azores base during the war, was 
 lying awash at her pier. I would have given much 
 to go aboard, but as the officer guiding us said, 
 ''It pretty nearly takes an act of Congress to get 
 a civilian aboard a submarine." 
 
 In a vast dry-dock, Hke small minnows gasping 
 for breath in a waterless hollow, lay four diminu- 
 tive submarines of the K type. Men were hosing 
 them with water, as though to revive them. Their 
 red plates made them look absurdly like goldfish; 
 the diving rudders, like a fish's tail, and the little 
 fins folded pathetically upon their sides toward 
 the bow, increased the likeness. Their periscopes 
 were stripped off, and through openings in the hull 
 workmen were clambering inside. One tried to 
 imagine what the interior of these queer craft 
 might be Hke. Of all the engines of man they are 
 the most mysterious to the layman. Their little 
 brass propellers seemed incongruously small to 
 drive them through the water. At their noses we 
 could see the revolving tubes to hold the four 
 torpedoes. 
 
 We passed, alas too fast, the great air-craft 
 
132 TO LEAGUE ISLAND AND BACK 
 
 factory, with its delicious glimpses of clean and 
 delicate carpentry, the steamboxes for bending 
 the narrow strips of wood, the sweet smell of 
 banana oil which I suppose is used in some var- 
 nishing process. A little engine came trundling 
 out of a shed, pulling a shining gray fuselage on a 
 flat-car. Its graceful lines, its sensitive and shin- 
 ing metal work, its sleek, clean body, all were as 
 beautiful and tender as the works of a watch. 
 Overhead roared an older brother, a flying hydro- 
 plane with tremendous sweep of wing, singing that 
 deep hum of unbelievable motor power. 
 
 In the recreation hall we stopped for orange 
 soda and salted peanuts. Sailors in white ducks 
 were playing pool. The sailor soda-tender passed 
 out his iced bottles from a huge chest under the 
 counter. In the old days of naval tradition one 
 doubts whether a sailors' bar would have been a 
 place, where a party including ladies and children 
 could have tarried with such satisfaction. In the 
 Y. M. C. A. building next door marines in their 
 coffee-and-milk uniforms were writing letters; a 
 band was tuning up some jazz in preparation for 
 a theatrical show; a copy of Soldiers Three lay on 
 a table. Oilskins lying along the benches gave a 
 nautical touch. There was something character- 
 istically American about the sharp, humorous, 
 nonchalant features of the men. Everywhere one 
 saw sturdy, swing-strided marines whose shoulders 
 would have thrilled a football coach. 
 
 At one of the wharves along the Delaware side 
 
TO LEAGUE ISLAND AND BACK 133 
 
 was the new destroyer Tattnall, just taking on her 
 equipment — coils of yellow, creaky rope; fenders, 
 cases of electric bulbs, galvanized buckets, cases 
 of heavy sea boots. It was a tale of adventure 
 just to study her lean, crisp, flaring bow with its 
 concave curves, her four slender funnels, her tall 
 glass-screened bridge, the sternward slant of her 
 hull. Even in the mild swell and swing of Dela- 
 ware water she rode daintily as a yacht, lifted and 
 caressed by the flow and wash of the water. How 
 she must leap and sway in the full tumble of open 
 seas. She seemed an adorable toy. Who would 
 not go to war, with such delicious playthings to 
 covet and care for! And beside her on the pier, 
 lay a clumsier and grimmer-seeming engine. 
 Th-ee great gun-mounts for Admiral Plunkett's 
 naval railroad battery, that carried the fourteen- 
 inch guns that dropped shells into Metz from 
 twonty-eight miles away. On one of these huge 
 steel caissons I saw that some member of the 
 A. E. F. had scratched his doleful message : George 
 W. Moller, a soldier of St. Nazaire, France, who 
 wishes to go home toot sweet. 
 
 The lively little tug Betty curtsied up to the 
 pier and took us on board. Harry Jones, her 
 friendly skipper, steamed us down past the green 
 mounds of old Fort Mifflin, past the long tangle 
 of Hog Island's shipways and the wet-basins where 
 the Scantic, the Pipestone County and other of Hog 
 Island's prides were lying, one of them kicking up 
 a white smother with her propeller in some engine 
 
134 TO LEAGUE ISLAND AND BACK 
 
 test. Then we turned upstream. It had been rain- 
 ing on and off all afternoon. From the Jersey shore 
 came the delicious haunting smell of warm, wet 
 pinewoods, of moist tree-trunks and the clean 
 whiff of sandy soil and drenched clover fields. 
 
 Our Humorist visitors admitted that they had 
 never realized that Philadelphia is a seaport. The 
 brave array of shipping as we came up the river 
 was an interesting sight. Among several large 
 Dutch steamers lying in the stream below Kaighn's 
 Point I noticed the Remscheid, which bore on her 
 side in large white letters the inscription : 
 
 WAFFENSTILLSTAND — ARMISTICE 
 
 Waffenstillstand is the German for armistice. 
 This struck me as particularly significant. Prob- 
 ably the cautious Dutch owner of the Remscheid^ 
 sending his ship to sea soon after November 11, 
 feared there might still be U-boats at large that 
 had not learned of the truce and would not respect 
 a neutral flag. 
 
 Among other ships we noticed the Edgemoor 
 and Westfieldy of Seattle, the four-masted schooner 
 Charles S. Stanford of Bangor, the Naimes of Lon- 
 don, the Meiningen of Brest, the Perseveranza of 
 Trieste, and Iskra of Dubrovnik (which W. M. 
 explains to me is the Slavic name for Ragusa). 
 Thus, in the names on the sterns along Philadel- 
 phia piers one reads echoes of the war. And most 
 appealing of all the ships we passed was the little 
 white Danish bark Valdivia, just such a craft as 
 
THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL 135 
 
 used to be commanded by the best-known sea 
 captain of modern years, Joseph Conrad. 
 
 It must be a brave life to be a tugboat skipper. 
 To con the Betty up the shining reaches of the 
 Delaware in a summer dusk, the soft flow of air 
 keeping one's pipe in a glow, that good musk of 
 the Jersey pines tingling in the nostril. Then to 
 turn over the wheel to the mate while one goes 
 below to tackle a tugboat supper, with plenty of 
 dripping steak and fried murphies and coffee with 
 condensed milk. And a tugboat crew sleep at 
 home o' nights, too. Think of it — a sailor all day 
 long, and yet sleep in your own bed at home! 
 
 THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL 
 Yesterday — Memorial Day — was a true Walt 
 Whitman day. The ferries thronged with cheerful 
 people, the laughing, eager throng at the Camden 
 terminal, piling aboard trolley cars for a holiday 
 outing — the clang and thud of marching bands, 
 the flags and flowers and genial human bustle, per- 
 vaded now and then by that note of tribute to the 
 final mystery — surely all this was just such a scene 
 as Walt loved to watch and ponder. And going on 
 pilgrimage with two English editors to Mickle 
 street and Harleigh Cemetery, it was not strange 
 that our thoughts were largely with the man whose 
 hundredth birthday we bear in mind today. 
 
 By just so far (it seems to me) as we find it 
 painful to read Walt Whitman, by just so far we 
 
136 THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL 
 
 may reckon our divergence from the right path of 
 human happiness. If it perturbs us to read his 
 jottings of "specimen days" along Timber creek, 
 wresthng with his twelve-foot oak sapling to gain 
 strength, sluicing in clear water and scouring his 
 naked limbs with his favorite flesh-brush, rumi- 
 nating in blest solitude among the tints of sunset^ 
 the odor of mint-leaves and the moving airs of the 
 summer meadow — if this gives us a twinge, then 
 it is probably because we have divorced ourselves 
 from the primitive joyfulness of the open air. If 
 we find his trumpetings of physical candor shame- 
 ful or unsavory, perhaps it is because we have 
 not schooled our thoughts to honest cleanliness. 
 (Though Anne Gilchrist's gentle comment must 
 not be forgotten: ''Perhaps Walt Whitman has 
 forgotten the truth that our instincts are beautiful 
 facts of nature, as well as our bodies; and that 
 we have a strong instinct of silence about some 
 things.") If we find him lacking in humor or think 
 some of his catalogues tedious — there are cata- 
 logues and shortage of humor even in some books 
 considered sacred. And Whitman, if not a humor- 
 ist himself, has been (as Mr. Chesterton would 
 say) the cause of humor in others. How adorably 
 he has lent himself to parody! But this by the 
 way. The point is. Whitman is a true teacher: 
 first the thrashing, then the tenderness. No one 
 ever found him exhilarating on the first reading. 
 But he is a hound of heaven. He will hunt you 
 down and find you out. Expurgate him for your- 
 
THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL 137 
 
 self, if you wish. He cannot be inclosed in a 
 formula. He asks you to draw up your own 
 formula as you read him. Rest assured, WiUiam 
 Blake would not have found him obscure. ^' If you 
 want me again, look for me under your bootsoles." 
 Is not that the very accent of Blake? 
 
 There is marvelous drama in Camden for the 
 seeing eye. The first scene is Mickle street, that 
 dingy, smoke-swept lane of mean houses. The 
 visitors from oversea stood almost aghast when 
 they saw the pathetic vista. For years they had 
 dwelt on Whitman's magnificent messages of pride 
 and confidence: 
 
 See, projected through time, 
 For me an audience interminable. 
 
 Perhaps they had conjured to mind a clean little 
 cottage such as an English suburb might offer: a 
 dainty patch of wallflowers under the front door, 
 a shining brass knocker, a sideboard of mahogany 
 with an etching of Walt on the wall. No wonder, 
 then, that the deathplaceof the poet with ''audi- 
 ence interminable" came as a shock. 
 
 And yet, one wonders, is not that faded box, 
 with its flag hanging from the second story and 
 little Louis Skymer's boyish sign in the window — 
 Rabbits for sale cheap — and the backyard littered 
 with hutches and the old nose-broken carved bust 
 of Walt chucked away in a corner — is it not in a 
 way strangely appropriate? Would not Walt al- 
 most have preferred it to be so, with its humble 
 
138 THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL 
 
 homeliness, so instinct with humanity, rather than 
 a neatly tidied mausoleum? If Walt had believed 
 that a man must live in a colonial cot in a fashion- 
 able suburb in order to write great poetry he would 
 not have been Walt. 
 
 The great matter is to reveal and outpour the Godlike 
 suggestions pressing for birth in the soul. 
 
 And then it must be remembered that Walt 
 didn't live much on Mickle street until he became 
 a confirmed invaUd, and his pack of listeners kept 
 him talking so hard he didn't know where he was. 
 He lived on the ferries, up and down Chestnut 
 street, or (for that matter) in the constellation 
 Orion. 
 
 The second scene of the Camden drama is at 
 Harleigh Cemetery. Here, among that sweet city 
 of the dead, in a little dell where the rhododen- 
 drons yield their fragrance to the sun-heavy air, 
 the massive stone door stands ajar. A great mass 
 of flowers, laid there by the English-Speaking 
 Union, was heaped at the sill. More instinctively 
 than in many a church, the passer lifts his hat. 
 
 Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? 
 I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, 
 and I know it. 
 
 I thought of what a little girl who was standing 
 on the pavement of Mickle street had said to me 
 as we halted in front of the Whitman house. "My 
 father was sick, and he died." 
 
 Yesterday — Memorial Day — was a day of poig- 
 
nant thoughts. Walt wrote once in ''Specimen 
 Days": 
 
 Somehow I got thinking today of young men's deaths — 
 not at all sadly or sentimentally, but gravely, realistically, 
 perhaps a little artistically. 
 
 What a curious note of apology there is in the 
 last admission! He who was so rarely ''artistic"! 
 He who began his career as a writer of incredibly 
 mawkish short stories and doggerels, and rigidly 
 trained himself to omit the "stock" touches! Let 
 us not try to speak of Walt, or of death, in any 
 "artistic" vein. 
 
 "Stop this day and night with me" (Walt said) 
 "and you shall possess the origin of all poems." 
 By which he meant, of course, you shall possess 
 your own soul. You shall grasp with sureness and 
 ecstasy the only fact you can cling to in this 
 baffling merry-go-round — the dignity and worth of 
 your own life. In reading Whitman one seems to 
 burst through the crust of perversity, artificial 
 complexity and needless timidity that afflicts us 
 all, to meet a strong river of sanity and courage 
 that sweeps away the petty rubbish. Because it is 
 so far from the course of our meaningless gestures, 
 we know instinctively it is right and true. There 
 is no heart so bruised, there is no life so needlessly 
 perplexed, but it can find its message in this man. 
 "I have the best of time and space," he said. So 
 have we all, for our Httle moment. Read his de- 
 fiant words, great and scornful as any ever penned : 
 
 lO 
 
140 THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL 
 
 What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege? 
 Lo, I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, im- 
 mortal. 
 And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery. 
 And artillerymen, the deadliest that ever fired gun. 
 
 He sends you your own soul. 
 
 As we rode back to Camden on the trolley one 
 of my companions spied the Washington statue in 
 front of the courthouse (which I had been hoping 
 he would miss). He smiled at the General grotes- 
 quely kneeling in stone. " Only giving one knee to 
 his Maker," was his droll comment. 
 
 It was so with Walt. He wanted to be quite j 
 sure what he was kneeUng to before he gave both 
 knees. 
 
 Perhaps the most curious (and gruesome) story 
 in connection with Whitman comes to me from 
 James Shields. He has showed me a monograph 
 by the late Dr. E. A. Spitzka, professor of anatomy 
 at the Jefferson Medical College, which gives a 
 brief review of scientific post-mortem measure- 
 ments made of the brains of 130 notable men and 
 four women. In this monograph, reprinted by 
 the American Philosophical Society in 1907, 
 occurs the following paragraph: 
 
 87. WHITMAN, WALT, American poet. The weight 
 of Walt Whitman's brain is variously given as 45.2 ounces 
 (1282 grams) and 43.3 ounces (1228 grams). His stature 
 was six feet and in health he weighed about 200 pounds. 
 The brain had been preserved, but some careless attendant 
 in the laboratory let the jar fall to the ground; it is not 
 stated whether the brain was totally destroyed bj'^ the fall, 
 but it is a great pity that not even the fragments of the brain 
 were rescued. 
 
ANNE GILCHRIST'S HOUSE 141 
 
 ANNE GILCHRIST'S HOUSE 
 The Kensington car that goes northward on 
 Seventh street carries one straightway into a land 
 of adventure. Hardly have you settled in your 
 seat when you see a sign, The Pickwick Cafe, 53 
 North Seventh street. Admirable name for a chop- 
 house! Glancing about, across the aisle is a lady 
 with one of those curious hats which permit the 
 wearer to scrutinize through the transparent brim 
 while her head is apparently bent demurely down- 
 ward. The surprising effect of impaling oneself 
 upon so unexpected a gaze is starthng. Bashfully 
 one turns elsewhere. On a hoarding stares a 
 theatrical sign: '^Did You Tell Your Wife ALL 
 Before Marriage?" 
 
 I got off at Master street and walked stolidly 
 west. It is a humble causeway in that region, rich 
 in j unk shops and a bit shaky in its speUing. At the 
 corner of Warnock is an impromptu negro church, 
 announcing ^'Servers every Sunday, 3 p. m." 
 The lithograph which is such a favorite on South 
 street, crops up again: the famous golden-haired 
 lassie with a blue dress, asleep under a red blanket, 
 guarded by a white dog with a noble, steadfast 
 expression. Fawn and Camac streets reappear and 
 afford quiet vistas of red brick with marble trim- 
 mings. I believe this is Fawn's first venture north 
 of Bainbridge. As its name implies, a shy, furtive 
 street. One could spend a lively day afoot tracing 
 
142 ANNE GILCHRIST^S HOUSE 
 
 the skip-stops of these two vagabonds. Camac 
 street has tried to concentrate attention on itself 
 between Walnut and Spruce, calling itself arro- 
 gantly the Greatest Little Street in the World. 
 But it leads a multiple life. I have found it pop- 
 ping up around Race street, at Wallace, and even 
 north of that most poetically named of all Phila- 
 delphia's thoroughfares. Rising Sun avenue. 
 
 The greenery of Ontario Park is likely to lure 
 the wayfarer from Master street for a detour. 
 There is a large pubUc school there, and an ex- 
 ceedingly pretty young teacher in a pink dress and 
 shell spectacles was gravely leading a procession of 
 thirty small urchins for their morning recess in the 
 open air. Two by two, with decent gravity, they 
 crossed the street, and demobihzed in the park for 
 hair ribbons, shoelaces and blouse strings to be 
 retied. 
 
 As it approaches Broad street, Master goes 
 steadily up grade, both physically and in the spirit. 
 At the corner of Broad it reaches its grand historic 
 climax in the vast ornate brown pile where Edwin 
 Forrest died in 1872. A tablet says, ''This house 
 was the residence of Edwin Forrest, the greatest 
 tragedian of his time." It is interesting to remem- 
 ber (with the aid of an encyclopedia) that one of 
 Forrest's favorite roles was Spartacus. Until the 
 arrival of Liebknecht he was supreme in that ac- 
 complishment. 
 
 At the top of the hill, at Fifteenth street, Master 
 street becomes almost suburban and frisky. It 
 
ANNE GILCHRIST'S HOUSE 143 
 
 abounds in gracious garden vistas, rubber plants 
 and an apartment house of a Spanish tinge of 
 architecture. A patriotic Presbyterian church has 
 turned its front lawn into a potato patch. At 1534 
 one of the smallest and most dehghtful black pup- 
 pies ever seen was tumbling about on a white 
 marble stoop. He was so young that his eyes were 
 still blue and cloudy, but his appeal for a caress 
 was unmistakable. I stopped to pay my respects, 
 but a large Airedale appeared and stood over him 
 with an air of ''You haven't been introduced." 
 
 A few blocks further on one abuts upon Ridge 
 avenue, the Sam Brown belt of Philadelphia. In 
 its long diagonal course from Ninth and Vine up 
 to Strawberry Mansion, Ridge avenue is full of 
 unceasing hfe and interest. It and South street 
 are perhaps the two most entertaining of the city's 
 humbler highways. Master street crosses it at a 
 dramatic spot. There is a great cool lumber yard, 
 where the piled-up wood exhales a fragrant breath 
 under the hot sun, and lilac-breasted pigeons flap 
 about among the stained rafters. A few yards 
 away one catches a glimpse of the vast inclosure 
 of Girard College, where the big silvery-gray Par- 
 thenon rises austerely above a cloud of foliage. 
 
 One aspect of Ridge avenue is plain at a glance. 
 It is the city's stronghold of the horse. You will 
 see more horses there than anywhere else I know 
 (except perhaps down by the docks). From horse- 
 shoeing forges comes the mellow clang of beaten 
 iron. As the noon whistles blow, scores of horses 
 
144 ANNE GILCHRIST'S HOUSE 
 
 stand at their wagons along the curb, cheerfully 
 chewing oats, while their drivers are dispatching 
 heavy mugs of ''coffee with plenty" in the nearby 
 delicatessens. Ridge avenue conducts a heavy 
 trade in furniture on the pavements. Its favorite 
 tobaccos are of a thundering potency: Blue Hen, 
 Sensation, Polar Bear, Buckingham cut plug. 
 There is a primitive robust quaUty about its mer- 
 chandising. ''Eat Cornell's Sauer Kraut and 
 Grow Fat," says a legend painted aross the flank 
 of a pickle factory. "Packey McFarland Recom- 
 mends Make-Man Tablets," is the message of a! 
 lively cardboard "cutout" in a druggist's window. 
 Odd little streets run off the avenue at obUque 
 angles : Sharswood, for instance, where two horses 
 stood under the shade of a big tree as in a barnyard 
 picture. On a brick wall on Beechwood street I 
 found the following chalked up: 
 
 Clan of the Eagle's Eye 
 Lone Wolf 
 Red Hawk 
 Arrow fire 
 Red Thunder 
 Deerfoot 
 
 This seemed a pathetic testimony that not even 
 the city streets can quench the Fenimore Cooper 
 tradition among American youth. And, oddly 
 enough, below this roster of braves some learned 
 infant had written in Greek letters, "Harry a dam 
 fool." Evidently some challenge to a rival tribe. 
 
ANNE GILCHRIST'S HOUSE 145 
 
 Twenty-second street north of Ridge avenue is 
 a quiet stretch of red brick, with occasional out- 
 croppings of pale yellow-green stone. At the noon 
 hour it is a cascade of children, tumbling out of 
 the Joseph Singerly Pubhc School. Happily for 
 those juveniles, there is one of the best tuck shops 
 in Philadelphia at the corner of Columbia avenue. 
 It is worth a long journey to taste their cinnamon 
 buns. And in the block just behind the school, at 
 1929 North Twenty-second, there is a little three- 
 story yellow-green house with a large bay window, 
 which gives Whitman lovers a thrill. That little 
 house is associated with one of the most poignant 
 and curious romances in the story of American 
 letters. For it was here that Mrs. Anne Gilchrist 
 and her children came in September, 1876, and 
 lived until the spring of 1878. Mrs. Gilchrist, a 
 noble and talented English woman, whose hus- 
 band had died in 1861, fell passionately in love 
 with Walt after reading '' Leaves of Grass." Her 
 letters to Walt, which were pubhshed recently by 
 Thomas Harned, are among the most searchingly 
 beautiful expressions of human attachment. After 
 Whitman's paralytic stroke Anne Gilchrist in- 
 sisted on coming from London to Philadelphia to 
 be near the poet and help him in any way she 
 could; and to this little house on Twenty-second 
 street Walt used to go day after day to take tea 
 with her and her children. Walt had tried earn- 
 estly to dissuade her from coming to America, 
 and his few letters to her seem a curiously enig- 
 
146 ANNE GILCHRIST'S HOUSE 
 
 matic reply to her devotion. Perhaps, as Mr. 
 Harned imphes, his heart was engaged elsewhere. 
 At any rate, his conduct in this dehcate affair 
 seems sufficient proof of what has sometimes been 
 doubted, that he was at heart a gentleman — a 
 banal word, but we have no other. 
 
 The present occupant of the house is Mrs. Alex- 
 ander Wellner, who was kind enough to grant me a 
 few minutes' talk. She has Hved in the house only 
 a year, and did not know of its Whitman associa- 
 tion. The street can hardly have changed much — 
 save for the new pubhc school building — since 
 Centennial days. The gardens behind the houses 
 are a mass of green shrubbery, and in a neighboring 
 yard stands an immense tree in full leaf. Perhaps 
 Walt and his good friends may have sat out there 
 for tea on warm afternoons forty-two years ago. 
 But it seems a long way from Camden! 
 
 As I came away, thinking of that romantic and 
 sad episode in the lives of two who were greatly 
 worthy of each other, the corner of my eye was 
 caught by a large poster. In a random flash of 
 vision I misread it in accordance with my thoughts. 
 THE GOOD GRAY POET, it seemed to say. 
 For an instant I accepted this as natural. Then, 
 returning to my senses, I retraced my steps to 
 look at it again. THAT GOOD GULF GASO- 
 LINE! 
 
ALONG THE GREEN NESHAMINY 147 
 
 ALONG THE GREEN NESHAMINY 
 There are scenes so rich in color, so flooded 
 with sunlight, that the hand hardly knows how to 
 set them down. They seem to yearn for expression 
 in what is called poetry, yet one fears to submit 
 them to the bending and twisting of rhyme. For 
 when one embarks on the ecstatic search for words 
 in tune with one another he may find bright and 
 jovial cadences, but rarely does he say just what 
 was in his heart. How, then, may one order the 
 mysterious mechanism that gears brain with fore- 
 finger so that the least possible color and contour 
 be lost in transmission? 
 
 The other day I rowed up Neshaminy Creek. 
 It is a bright little river seventeen miles or so from 
 Philadelphia, a stripling of the great-hearted Dela- 
 ware. Its wooded and meaded banks are a favored 
 pleasuring ground for pavement-keeping souls, 
 who set up a tent there in the summertime and 
 cruise those innocent waters in canoes. It is a 
 happy stream, beloved of picnic parties. Millions 
 of hard-boiled eggs and ice cream cones have per- 
 ished in the grove above the dam, and a long 
 avenue of stately poplar trees has grown up to 
 commemorate them. The picnicking point is 
 known as Neshaminy Falls, though the falHng is 
 done mostly by high-spirited flappers on the enter- 
 taining toboggan chute, down which they launch 
 themselves in a cheering line. The river falls 
 
148 ALONG THE GREEN NESHAMINY 
 
 tamely enough over a small dam; Niagara's 
 prestige is nowhere menaced. 
 
 There is a kind of emergency fleet corporation 
 doing a bustling traffic at the little plank landing 
 stage. The chief navigating officer was toting a 
 roll of bills larger than I can face with comfort. 
 From him one hires a vessel of sorts, propelled by 
 bright red oars, and then one sets forth up the 
 stream. Most of the voyagers are content after 
 passing the island, for the current, though slug- 
 gish, is persistent. But it is well to keep on. 
 Neshaminy shows her rarest charms to those who 
 woo her stoutly. 
 
 Above the island there is a long strip of thick 
 woodland on both banks. The treetops, rising 
 steeply into the bright air, keep tossing and 
 trembhng in the wind, but the stream itself is 
 entirely still. Along the bank, where the great 
 bleached trunks chmb out of the water, there 
 hangs the peculiar moist, earthy, pungent smell 
 of a river that runs among woods. Every fresh- 
 water bather must know that smell. It has in it 
 a dim taint as of decay, a sense of rotting vegeta- 
 tion. Yet it is a clean odor and a cool one. It is 
 a smell particularly dear to me, for it recalls to 
 my eager nostril the exact scent of the old bathing 
 place on the Cherwell at Oxford, quaintly known 
 as Parson's Pleasure. How vividly I remember 
 that moist, cool corner of turf, the afternoon sun- 
 light stabbing it with slanting arrows of gold, the 
 enigmatic old Walt Whitman (called Cox) handing 
 
ALONG THE GREEN NESHAMINY 149 
 
 out damp towels from his dingy hutch, and the 
 clean white bodies poised against green willows! 
 Would it hurt Neshaminy's feehngs if I were to 
 confess that the poignance of its appeal to me was 
 partly due to its kinship with the Oxford Cher? 
 
 A little farther up, the creek has the good sense 
 to throw off its mantle of woods. Wide meadows 
 come to the water's edge; hills of a friendly sort 
 are folded down about it, showing a bare line of 
 upland against the sky. A clean line of hill against 
 the emptiness of blue is a sight that never tires. 
 A country road crosses the stream on a flimsy 
 bridge that leans on stout old stone piers. The 
 road bends away uphill, among a wilderness of 
 blackberry bushes, winding among pastures where 
 the cows are grazing. That is a good kind of road ; 
 the sort of road one associates with bare feet and 
 hot dust sifting between boyish toes. 
 
 Above this bridge the creek shallows. Through 
 the clear water one sees the bottom humped with 
 brown stones. Many of the larger boulders bear a 
 little white paint stain on their upward ridges, 
 showing where a venturesome excursionist has 
 bumped one of the transports of the emergency 
 fleet corporation. Dragonflies gleam like winged 
 scarf pins. Under the boat flashes the bright shape 
 of a small perch or sunfish. On the willow trunks 
 that lean along the bank an occasional fisherman 
 is watching his float. The current moves faster 
 here, dimpling and twisting in little swirls. The 
 water shines and glows: it seems to have caught 
 
150 ALONG THE GREEN NESHAMINY 
 
 whole acres of living sunlight. Far above a great 
 hawk is lazily slanting and sHding, watching 
 curiously to see the mail plane from Bustleton 
 that passes up the valley every afternoon. 
 
 There is no peace like that of a little river, and 
 here it is at its best. 
 
 At last we reached the point where, if the boat 
 is to go further, it must be propelled by hand, the 
 pilot walking barefoot in the stream. Easing her 
 round sharp reefs, pushing through swift little 
 passages where the current spurts deeply between 
 larger stones, she may be pushed up to a huge tree 
 trunk lying along the shore, surrounded by the 
 deliciously soft and fluid mud loved by country 
 urchins, the mud that schloops when one with- 
 draws the sunken foot. Here, the world reduced 
 to *'a green thought in a green shade," one may 
 watch the waterbirds tiptoeing and teetering over 
 the shallows, catch the tune of the little rapids 
 scuffling round the bend and eat whatever sand- 
 wiches are vouchsafed by the Lady of the White 
 Hand. High above treetops and framing the view 
 stands the enormous viaduct of the Trenton cut- 
 off. A heavy freight train thundering over it now 
 and then keeps one in touch with the straining 
 world. 
 
 In the swift sparkle that bickers round the bend 
 one may get a dip and a sprawl in the fashion 
 that is in favor with those who love the scour of 
 lightly running water over the naked flesh. That 
 corner of the stream is remote and screened. There 
 
ALONG THE GREEN NESHAMINY 151 
 
 is a little gap between two shouldery stones where 
 the creek pours itself chuckling and vehement. 
 The bottom is grown with soft, spongy grasses 
 that are very pleasant to squat upon. I presume 
 that every man in the world takes any opportunity 
 he can to wallow in a running brook. It is an old 
 tradition, and there cannot be too much of it. 
 
 The little rivers are excellent friends of man. 
 They are brisk, cheerful and full of quiet corners 
 of sun. They are clear and clean, the terror of 
 dark unknown waters is not in them. I have 
 known and loved many such, and I hope to make 
 friends with more. When I look back and reckon 
 up the matters that are cause for regret there will 
 not stand among them my private and pagan 
 sluice in the bright water of Neshaminy. 
 
152 PENN TREATY PARK 
 
 PENN TREATY PARK 
 
 Down by the wharf in old Peiin Treaty Park 
 
 The trees are all a canopy of green — 
 
 The staunch policeboat Stokley, ancient craft, 
 
 Is purring with a gentle push of steam 
 
 That whispers in her valves. Along the pier 
 
 The water clucks and sags. Two river cops 
 
 Sit smoking pipes outside their small caboose, 
 
 Above them looms a tragic rusty bow, 
 
 The Roald Amundsen, Norwegian tanker, 
 
 She that caught fire last winter at Point Breeze 
 
 While loading oil. The river cops will tell you 
 
 How all the Schuylkill was a hell of flame 
 
 And ten men lost their lives. The good old Stokley 
 
 Dredged the river afterward for bodies. 
 
 At sunset time in old Penn Treaty Park 
 The children sprawl and play: the tawny light 
 Pours through the leafy chinks in sifted gold 
 And turns the middle-stream to level fire. 
 Then, after that red sunset comes the dusk. 
 The little park is steeped in living shadow, 
 And Cupid pairs the benches by the pier. 
 But there's one girl who always sits alone. 
 Coming at dark, she passes by the shaft 
 That marks the treaty ground of William Penn. 
 Too dusk for reading, yet how well she knows 
 The words carved in the stone: Unbroken Faith. 
 
 Mary, of Wildey street, had met Alf Larsen 
 Up at a picture show on East Girard. 
 Her father was a hard one: he said fiercely 
 No girl of his should run around with sailors, 
 
PENN TREATY PARK 153 
 
 No girl of his should play with bolsheviks. 
 Alf was Norwegian, and a decent fellow, 
 A big blond youngster with a quiet eye; 
 He loved the girl, but old man Morton swore 
 All Scandinavians were the same as Russians, 
 And every Russian was a bolshevik. 
 
 Mary was stubborn; all her blood was willful; 
 At twihght, by the old Penn Treaty stone. 
 She used to wait for Alf, or he for her. 
 And in some whim of Celtic flame and fancy 
 The carven words became her heart's own motto, 
 And there they pledged their love: Unbroken 
 Faith. 
 
 Oh, golden evenings there along the river! 
 
 When all the tiny park was Eden land — 
 Oh eager hearts that burn and leap and shiver, 
 
 Oh hand that mates with hand! 
 And they would cross the Shackamaxon ferry, 
 
 Or walk by Cramps' to see the dry-docked ships 
 Or in a darkened movie house make merry 
 
 With sudden lips on lips — 
 
 And half their talk was tremulous with yearning. 
 
 And half was of their future, shrewdly planned — 
 How Alf would leave the sea, and soon be earning 
 
 Not less than thirty in a job on land; 
 Between their kisses they would talk of saving. 
 
 Between their calculations, kiss again, 
 And she would say that he must be behaving 
 
 While she described a house to rent at ten. 
 
 With Alf at sea, the girl would still go down 
 To see the very bench where they had sat, 
 The tidy Stokley moored beside the pier, 
 
154 PENN TREATY PARK 
 
 The friendly vista of the Camden shore, 
 
 The stone where they had locked their hearts in 
 
 one. 
 So time went by. The armistice came on, 
 And Mary radiant, for her lad no more 
 Would run the gauntlet of the submarines, 
 And he had heard a chance to get a job 
 As watchman up at Cramps. Just one more voy- 
 age 
 He planned; then he would quit and they'd begin. 
 So, late one night, in the familiar park 
 They said good-by. It was their last good-by, 
 As Mary said: his ship was due to sail 
 Day after next, and he would have no chance 
 To come again. She turned beside the stone 
 To fix in view that place of happy tryst. 
 The quiet leafless park with powdered frost. 
 The lamps of the pohceboat, red and green. 
 
 The Roald Amundsen was Larsen's ship. 
 
 She lay at the refinery, Point Breeze, 
 
 Taking on oil for Liverpool. The day 
 
 She was to sail, somehow she caught on fire. 
 
 A petaled rose of hell, she roared in flame — 
 
 The burning liquid overflowed her decks. 
 
 The dock and oil-scummed river blazing, too. 
 
 Her men had little chance. They leaped for Ufe 
 
 Into the river, but the paraffin 
 
 Blazing along the surface, hemmed them in. 
 
 They either burned or drowned, and Alf was one. 
 
 The irony of fate has little heed 
 
 For tenderness of hearts. The blistered hulk. 
 
 Burnt, sunk and raised, with twisted, blackened! 
 
 plates, 
 A gaunt and gutted horror, seared and charred, 
 
PENN TREATY PARK 155 
 
 Was towed upstream, and, to be sold for junk, 
 Was moored beside the Stokley. Where her bow, 
 All scarred and singed with flame and red with 
 
 rust. 
 Must almost overhang the very bench 
 Of love and happy dreams, the Roald lay. 
 And Mary, coming down to that old haunt 
 Where all her bliss and heartbreak were most near, 
 Found the dead ship, approached, and read the 
 
 name. 
 
 Well, such a tale one cannot tell in full; 
 Heart's inmost anguish is the heart's alone. 
 But night by night the girl is sitting there. 
 Watching the profile of that ship of death, 
 Watching the Stokley, and the kindly men 
 Who fought the fire and grappled in the ooze 
 And did not find the thing she hoped and feared. 
 And still her only consolation lies 
 In those two words cut on the trysting stone, 
 U7ibroken Faith. Her faith unbroken still 
 She sits in shadow near their meeting place: 
 She will not fail him, should he ever come. 
 She watches all the children at their play, 
 And does not fear to dream what might have been, 
 And half believes, beneath the summer leaves, 
 To see, across the narrow strip of park. 
 His ruddy face, blond head and quiet eyes. 
 Yet not until the kindly dusk has come 
 And fills the little park with blue that heals 
 Does she go down. She cannot bear to see 
 The sunset sheet the river o'er with flame. 
 
156 THE INDIAN POLE 
 
 THE INDIAN POLE 
 
 Every street has a soul of its own. Somewhere 
 in its course it will betray its secret ideals and pref- 
 erences. I like to imagine that the soul of Callow- 
 hill street has something to do with beer. Like a 
 battered citizen who has fallen upon doleful days, 
 Callowhill street solaces itself with the amber. 
 
 Between Tenth and Fourth streets Callowhill 
 numbers at least a dozen pubs, not to enumerate 
 a score of ''cider saloons." A soft breath of hops 
 seems to haunt the air, and the trucks unloading 
 kegs into cellars give promise of quenchers to 
 come. Generally one may meet along those pave- 
 ments certain rusty brothers who have obviously 
 submitted themselves to the tramplings of the 
 brewer's great horses, as Homer Rodeheaver's an- 
 them puts it. 
 
 Callowhill street, like so much of Philadelphia's 
 old and gentle beauty, is in a downward pang, at 
 any rate so far as the picturesque is concerned. It 
 is curious to see those comely old dwellings, with 
 their fluted dormer windows, their marble facings 
 and dusty fanlights, standing in faded dignity and 
 wistfulness among factories, breweries and rail- 
 road spurs. Down their narrow side alleys one 
 may catch a glimpse of greenery (generally the ail- 
 anthus, that slummish tree that haunts city back 
 yards and seems to have such an affinity for red 
 brick) . If one has a taste for poking and exploring, 
 
THE INDIAN POLE 157 
 
 he will find many a little court or cul de sac where 
 hardly a stone or a window has changed for a hun- 
 dred years. One does not need to travel abroad to 
 find red walls with all the mellow stain that one 
 associates with Tudor manors. There is an old 
 wagon yard on the north side of Callowhill, near 
 Fifth, where an artist might trance himself with 
 the plain lines of old houses, the clear sunlight 
 falling athwart the flattened archway and the 
 decrepit vehicles with their weary wheels. 
 
 It is a perpetual delight to wander in such by- 
 ways, speculating on the beauty of those rows of 
 houses in days gone by. What a poetry there is in 
 the names of our streets — Nectarine, Buttonwood, 
 Appletree, Darien, Orianna! Even the pawn- 
 brokers are romantics. There is a three-ball estab- 
 lishment on Ninth street where the uncle keeps a 
 great rookery of pigeons in his back yard. They 
 coo seductively to embarrassed wanderers. I can 
 hardly keep my watch in my pocket when I hear 
 their soft suggestions. What a city of sober dig- 
 nity and clean comfort Philadelphia must have 
 been in the forties — say when Mr. and Mrs. James 
 Russell Lowell came to the northeast corner of 
 Fourth and Arch on their honeymoon, in 1845. 
 ''My cheeks are grown so preposterously red," 
 wrote Lowell, "that I look as if I had rubbed them 
 against all the brick walls in the city." 
 
 As I turned off Callowhill street, at the oblique 
 junction of York avenue, leaving behind the 
 castellated turrets of a huge brewery, I came upon 
 
158 THE INDIAN POLE 
 
 an interesting sight. Where Wood street cuts 
 York avenue and Fourth street there stands a tall 
 white flagpole, surmounted by an enormous 
 weather-vane representing an Indian with bow and 
 quiver, holding one arm outstretched. At its foot 
 stands an iron drinking fountain of the S. P. C. A., 
 dated 1868, and on the other side another water 
 basin (now dry) with a white marble slab behind 
 it. I thought that this might offer some inscrip- 
 tion, but it is pasted over with a dodger commend- 
 ing '^The coolest theatre in town." The Indian 
 figure engaged my curiosity and I made for a near- 
 by tobacconist to inquire. (I always find to- 
 bacconists genial people to supply information.) 
 He referred me to Mr. William Renner, the maker 
 of flags and awnings round the corner at 403 Vine 
 street, and from Mr. Renner I learned many things 
 of interest. 
 
 Startling pleasures accrue to the wanderer who 
 starts upon his rambles in total ignorance of what 
 he is going to find. Let me frankly confess that I 
 know^ nothing of the history and topography of 
 Philadelphia; I am learning it as I go. Therefore 
 when I discover things they give me the vivid de- 
 light of a totally fresh experience. The Indian 
 Pole, as it is called, may be an old story to many 
 citizens; to me it was entirely new. 
 
 Mr. Renner, who has taken the landmark under 
 his personal protection, tells me that the weather- 
 vane was erected many years ago to commemorate 
 the last Indian ''powwow" held in Philadelphia, 
 
THE INDIAN POLE 159 
 
 and also that it is supposed to have been a starting 
 place for the New York stage coaches. However 
 that may be, at any rate the original pole was re- 
 placed or repaired in 1835, and at that time a sheet 
 of lead (now kept by the Historical Society) was 
 placed at the top of the pole bearing the names of 
 those who had been instrumental in the restora- 
 tion. The work was done at the expense of the 
 '^ United States" Fire Engine Company, that 
 being the day of the old volunteer fire depart- 
 ments. 
 
 Apparently the Indian Pole became a kind of 
 rallying point for rival fire engine companies, and 
 there was much jealous competition, when steam 
 fire apparatus was introduced, to see which com- 
 panj^ could first project a stream of water over the 
 top of the staff. This rivalry was often accom- 
 panied by serious brawls, for Mr. Renner tells me 
 that when the Indian figure was repaired recently 
 it was found to be riddled with bullet holes. This 
 neighborhood has been the scene of some dan- 
 gerous fighting, for St. Augustine's Church, which 
 was destroyed in the riots of 1844, stands only a 
 few yards away down Fourth street. 
 
 In 1894 the pole again became dangerous, not as 
 a brawling point, but on account of age. It was 
 removed by the city, but at the instance of Mr. 
 Howard B. French, of Samuel H. French & Com- 
 pany, the paint manufacturers on Callowhill 
 street, the Indian figure and the ball on which it 
 revolved were kept and a new pole was erected by 
 
160 THE INDIAN POLE 
 
 Mr. French and four other merchants of the neigh- 
 borhood, T. Morris Perot, Edward H. Ogden, John | 
 C. Croxton and William Renner (the father of the 
 present Mr. Renner). That pole, which is still 
 standing, is eighty-five feet from ground to truck. 
 The Indian figure is nine and one-half feet high; 
 it stretches nine feet from the rear end of the bow 
 to the outstretched hand. The copper ball be- 
 neath it is sixteen inches in diameter. Mr. Renner 
 says the figure is of wood, several inches thick, and 
 sheathed in iron. He thinks that the hand alone 
 would weigh 150 pounds. He thinks it quite re- 
 markable that though many church steeples in the 
 neighborhood have been struck by Hghtning the 
 Indian has been unscathed. On holidays Mr. 
 Renner runs up a large flag on the pole, twenty- I 
 one by thirty-six feet. j 
 
 When I remarked that this was a pretty big flag 
 I touched Mr. Renner in a tender spot. Probably 
 there is no man who knows more about big flags 
 than he, for he told me that in 1911 he had made | 
 in his workroom on Vine street a Stars and Stripes |, 
 which is supposed to be the largest flag ever j 
 made. It measured 75 by 150 feet. It was flown 
 in Chestnut Hill Park that summer and the next 
 year was hung in a park in Bridgeport, Conn. It 
 was hung on a wire cable between two masts, 
 each 125 feet high and 780 feet apart. Mr. Renner 
 was to have taken it to Panama to be exhibited 
 there when the canal was opened, but unfortu- 
 nately it was damaged in a fire in Bridgeport. 
 
THE INDIAN POLE 161 
 
 What has become of it since he does not know. 
 The flag was made of standard wool bunting and 
 weighed half a ton. It was sold for S2500. 
 
 We are not thought to be very sentimental 
 about our flag, but Mr. Renner tells me that a few 
 years ago, when he was hoisting a very large flag 
 at Chestnut Hill Park, he had an amusing experi- 
 ence which sounds more Parisian than Philadel- 
 phian. He had been sitting in a ''bosun's chair" 
 at the top of the staff while the flag was pulled up 
 and his face was black with soot from the smoke 
 of the nearby scenic railway. Descending from the 
 pole he was leaning against a pavilion looking up 
 at the flag, when an old lady who had been watch- 
 ing rushed up, threw her arms round his neck and 
 embraced him. Mr. Renner still blushes modestly 
 when he recalls the ordeal. 
 
 It is a pleasant thing for any community to have 
 some relic or trophy of its own that fosters local 
 pride. Those who hve in the neighborhood of 
 Fourth and Callowhill streets are proud of the 
 Indian Pole, which the city once consigned to the 
 dump heap, but which they rescued and have 
 cherished as an interesting landmark. And there 
 are other matters thereabout to invite imagina- 
 tion : The bright blue laboratory of a certain dan- 
 druff nostrum; inns named ''The Tiger " and " The 
 Sorrel Horse," and a very curious flatiron-shaped 
 house that stands just behind the flagstaff. 
 
 I thought the Indian Pole was quite an adven- 
 ture for one morning, but at Fifth and Arch I met 
 
162 CLAUD JOSEPH WARLOW 
 
 another. Passing the grave of Ben and Deborah 
 Frankhn I noticed that it was being swept. 
 
 *'Do you do that every day?" I asked the sex- 
 ton. 
 
 *' Every day," he said. '^ I like to keep it clean." 
 I think that Deborah, who was a good house- 
 wife, would be glad to know that her plain Quaker- 
 ish tombstone is dusted every day. The good man 
 who does it is Jacob Schweiger and he lives at 221 
 Noble street. 
 
 CLAUD JOSEPH WARLOW 
 
 Some days ago we were passing the new office of 
 the Philadelphia Electric Company at Tenth and 
 Chestnut streets, when our eye was caught, 
 through the broad plate-glass windows, by a 
 shimmer of blue at the back of the store. Being of 
 a curious disposition, we pushed through the re- 
 volving doors to investigate. 
 
 On the rear wall of the office we found a beau- 
 tiful painting representing Philadelphia seen from 
 above in the twilight of a snowy winter evening. 
 It is a large canvas, about twenty-five feet long by 
 ten high. Now we are totally unfamiliar with the 
 technical jargon adopted by those who talk about 
 art; we could not even obey the advice given to us 
 by an artist friend, always to turn a picture upside 
 down and look at it that way before passing judg- 
 ment; but this painting seemed to us a mighty fine 
 piece of work. 
 
CLAUD JOSEPH WARLOW 163 
 
 As we said, it shows the city as seen from some 
 imaginary bird's-eye vantage, perhaps somewhere 
 above the Girard Avenue Bridge. The bending 
 course of the Schuylkill is shown in a ribbon of 
 deep blue; the broader and paler stretch of the 
 Delaware closes the canvas to the east; the whole 
 city from Cramps' shipyard down to Hog Island 
 lies under the gaze, with the brilliance of the even- 
 ing lights shining up through the soft blue dusk. 
 The prevailing tone of the painting is blue; but 
 examined closely the white of snow-covered roofs 
 and the golden glow of street lights sparkling up- 
 ward from the channels of the city, together with 
 the varied tints of the masonry, lend a delightful 
 exuberance of color, though always kept within the 
 restrained and shadowy soberness of a winter twi- 
 light. 
 
 This painting seemed to us so remarkable an 
 achievement that we were immediately interested 
 and made some inquiries to find out who had done 
 it. The story is interesting, as any story of 
 achievement is, and it also has a touch of poignant 
 tragedy. 
 
 In the bitter snowy days of the winter of 1917-18 
 — and there is no Philadelphian who does not re- 
 member what that winter was like — a young artist 
 of this city spent the daylight of almost every 
 snowy day out on the streets with his paint box. He 
 climbed to the top of high buildings, he haunted the 
 Schuylkill bridges with his sketchbook, and with 
 numbed fingers he sat on ice-crusted cornices or 
 
164 CLAUD JOSEPH WARLOW 
 
 leaned from giddy office window-sills noting down 
 colors, contours and the aspect of the city from 
 various viewpoints. Time and again watchmen 
 and policemen took him to the station house as a 
 suspected spy until his errand was explained to the 
 city authorities and he was given an authoritative 
 passport. But his passion for painting snow scenes 
 and his desire to crown handicapped years of study 
 by a really first-rate canvas spurred him on. He 
 had spent the previous summer in getting the 
 topography of the city by heart, mapping the 
 course of various streets until he knew them house 
 by house. Then, when the bitterest winter in our 
 history came along, the snow that bothered most 
 of us was just what he had yearned for. He rev- 
 elled in the serene sparkling colors of the winter 
 twilight when blazing windows cast their radiance 
 across the milky whiteness and the sky shimmers i 
 a clear gem-like emerald and blue and mother-of- | 
 pearl. 
 
 Even those who know the city through a long 
 lifetime of street wandering will admit the diffi- 
 culty of representing the vast area as it would be 
 seen from an imaginary gazing-point high in air. 
 Infinite problems of perspective, infinite details of 
 accuracy and patient verification must enter into 
 such a work. But the artist never wavered through 
 his long task. The sketches he had made through 
 that long blizzard winter were gradually put on his 
 big canvas through the hot days of last summer. 
 Undoubtedly it was a happy task, working on that 
 
CLAUD JOSEPH WARLOW 165 
 
 broad snowscape in the hot drowsy weather, with 
 the growing certainty that he was doing some- 
 thing that measured up to his dream of portraying 
 the city he loved, picturing it with the accurate 
 fidelity of a map and yet with the loving e3^e of an 
 artist who lingers over the beauty that most of us 
 only intuitively suspect. The painting was fin- 
 ished early in the autumn and the ambitious young 
 artist looked forward eagerly to the triumphant 
 day when it would be hung in the new office of the 
 Electric Company, which had encouraged the 
 work and made it possible. 
 
 Then came the influenza epidemic, and the 
 artist was among the first to be carried off by that 
 tragic pestilence. He died without seeing his paint- 
 ing put up in the place of honor it now occupies. 
 In his modesty he did not even put his name on 
 the canvas — or at least if he did it is written so 
 minutely that one hunts for it in vain. 
 
 It is good to know that the Philadelphia Electric 
 Company is going to erect a bronze tablet in his 
 memory beside the splendid painting on which he 
 worked for a year and a half. 
 
 The name of the artist was Claud Joseph War- 
 low, well remembered at the Academy of the Fine 
 Arts as one of its most promising pupils in recent 
 years. He was born in Williamstown, Pa., March 
 31, 1888, and died in this city October 6, 1918. 
 His skill as an artist was apparent even as a boy; 
 chalk drawings that he made on the blackboard at 
 school were so good that they were allowed to re- 
 
166 CLAUD JOSEPH WARLOW 
 
 main on the board for months after he had done 
 them as an incentive to other children. After leav- 
 ing school he started a sign-painting business, 
 sketching in oils in his spare time. Owing to his 
 father's death, about 1906, he had to postpone for 
 some years his ambition to enter the Academy 
 classes, finally attaining that desire in 1911. At 
 the Academy he was awarded several prizes, 
 notably the Cresson traveling fellowship, which 
 he was not able to enjoy on account of the war. 
 We hope that all lovers of Philadelphia will take 
 occasion to step into the office of the Electric Com- 
 pany to see this beautiful painting. There are no 
 words competent to express the tragedy of those 
 who have worked patiently for an ideal and yet 
 die too soon to see their dreams come to full fruit. 
 Yet it is good to remember that those pinched and 
 bitter days of last winter, when we were all be- 
 moaning Black Mondays and ways clogged with 
 snow, gave Claud Warlow his opportunity to put 
 on canvas the beauty that haunted him and 
 which made his life a triumph. And a civilization 
 that is wise enough to beautify an electrical office 
 with so fine a mural canvas, that builds railroad 
 stations like Greek temples, puts one of the world's 
 finest organs in a department store and a painting 
 of mosaic glass in a pubHshing plant, is a civiliza- 
 tion that brings endless hope to birth. 
 
AT THE MINT 167 
 
 AT THE MINT 
 
 I don't know just why it was, but all the time I 
 was in the Mint yesterday I kept on thinking 
 about Lenine and Trotsky and how much they 
 would have liked to be there. 
 
 I found my friend, the assistant assayer, in his 
 laboratory making mysterious chalk marks on a 
 long blackboard and gazing with keen gray eyes 
 at a circle of httle bottles containing pale bluish 
 fluids. At the bottom of each vessel was a white 
 sediment that looked like a mixture of cream 
 cheese and headache powder. ''Silver," said the 
 assistant assayer, in an offhand way, and I was 
 duly impressed. 
 
 You may expect to be impressed when you visit 
 the Mint on Spring Garden street. Most of us 
 know, in a vague way, that two-thirds of our coin- 
 age comes from that dignified building, wliich is 
 probably the finest mint building in the world. 
 Fewer of us know that most of South America's 
 coins come from there too, and when the citizens 
 of Lima or Buenos Aires pay out their bright 
 centavos for a movie show or a black cigar their 
 pockets jingle with small change stamped in Phila- 
 delphia. And none of us can realize, without a 
 trip to that marvelous home of wonders, the spirit 
 of devoted and delicate science that moves among 
 the men who have spent self-effacing lives in test- 
 
168 AT THE MINT . 
 
 ing precious metals and molding them into the 
 most beautiful coinage known on earth. 
 
 The assistant assayer, after a last lingering look 
 at his little blue flasks — he was testing the amount 
 of silver in deposits of ore brought in to the Mint 
 from all over the country — if you find any in your 
 back yard the Mint will pay you a dollar an ounce 
 for it — was gracious enough to give me some fleet- 
 ing glances at the fascinating work going on in the 
 building. The first thing one realizes is the pres- 
 ence of the benign and silent goddess of Science. 
 Those upper floors, where the assayers work in 
 large, quiet chambers, are like the workrooms of 
 some great university, some university happily ex- 
 empt from the turbulent and irritating presence of 
 students, where the professors are able to lose 
 themselves in the worship of their own researches. 
 Great delicate scales — only you mustn't call them 
 ''scales," but ''balances" — that tremble like a 
 lover's heart if you lay a hair on one platform, 
 shelter their gossamer workings behind glass cases. 
 My guide showed me one, a fantastic delicacy so 
 sensitive that one feels as clumsy as Gibraltar 
 when one looks at it. Each division on its ivory 
 register indicates one-tenth of a milligram, which, 
 I should say, is about as heavy as the eyelash of a 
 flea. With a pair of calipers he dropped a tiny 
 morsel of paper on one balance and the needle 
 swung over to the extreme end of the scale. With 
 his eyes shining with enthusiasm he showed how, 
 by means of a counterpoise made of a platinum 
 
AT THE MINT 169 
 
 wire as slender as a mosquito's leg, he could swing 
 the needle back toward the middle of the scale and 
 get the exact reading. 
 
 At another balance a scientist was snipping 
 shreds from a long ribbon of gold. I was allowed 
 to hold it in my hand, and though its curator ex- 
 plained deprecatingly that it was only 999.5 thou- 
 sandths pure, it seemed pure enough for all my 
 purposes. It is wonderful stuff, soft enough to 
 tie in knots and yet so tough that it is very 
 difficult to cut with heavy shears. That strip of 
 about sixty ounces was worth well over S1200 — 
 and they didn't even search me when I left the 
 building. "Proof gold," it seems, which is 1000 
 pure, is worth $40 an ounce, and all the proof gold 
 used for scientific purposes in this country is re- 
 fined in the Philadelphia Mint. The assistant 
 assayer showed me lots of nice little nuggets of 
 it in a drawer. Almost every drawer he opened 
 contained enough roots of evil to make a news- 
 paperman happy for a year. 
 
 In a neat little row of furnaces set into a tiled 
 wall I was shown some queer little cups heating to 
 1700 degrees in a rosy swirl of fire. These little 
 '^ cupels," as they call them, are made of com- 
 pressed bone-ash and are used to absorb the baser 
 metals in an alloy. Their peculiar merit is that at 
 the required temperature they absorb all the 
 copper, lead or whatever other base metal there 
 may be and leave in the cup only the gold and 
 silver. Then the gold and silver mixture is placed 
 
170 AT THE MINT 
 
 in boiling nitric acid, which takes out all the silver 
 and leaves only the globule of pure gold. The 
 matter that puzzles the lay observer is, how do 
 you find these things out in the first place? But I 
 would believe anything after one marvel my friend 
 showed me. He picked up a glass that looked like 
 an innocent tumbler of spring water. ''This," he 
 said, "is nitrate of silver; in other words, dis- 
 solved silver. Don't spill it on your clothes or it 
 will eat them right off your back." I kept off, 
 aghast. Into the tumbler he dropped a little mu- 
 riatic acid. The mixture boiled and fumed and 
 long streamers of soft, cheesy substance began to 
 hasten toward the bottom of the glass, waving like 
 trees in a gale. ''That's the silver," he said, and 
 while I was still tremulous showed me wafers of 
 gold dissolving in aqua regia. When completely 
 dissolved the liquid looks like a thin but very 
 sweet molasses. He then performed similar magic 
 upon some silver solution by unloading a pipette of 
 salt water on it and shaking it in a little machine 
 called an "agitator." After which he felt I was 
 sufficiently humble to show me the furnace 
 room. 
 
 If you have an affection for the nice old silver 
 cartwheel dollars, keep away from the furnace 
 room of the Mint, for one of the first things you 
 will see is whole truckloads of them moving silently 
 to their doom. I was told that there is a shortage 
 of silver in Europe these days, particularly since 
 troubles in Mexico have reduced that country's 
 
AT THEpIINT 171 
 
 output of ore, and in order to accommodate for- 
 eign friends Uncle Sam has recently melted 200,- 
 000,000 of our old friends into bars and 50,000,000 
 more of them are on the way to the furnace. None 
 have been coined since 1904, as apparently they 
 are not popular. 
 
 The pride of the Mint centers just now upon the 
 two new electric furnaces, the larger of which has 
 only been installed a few weeks (a Swedish inven- 
 tion, by the way), but the old gas ovens are more 
 spectacular to the visitor because the flames are 
 more visible. When the heavy door is slid aside 
 you can see the crucible (made of graphite from 
 Ceylon) with its mass of silver dollars, standing 
 patiently in the furious glow. Then, if you are 
 lucky, you will see them ladling out the liquid 
 silver into the molds. One of the workmen held a 
 slip of paper to the boiling metal: it burst into 
 flame and he calmly lit his pipe with it. In other 
 furnaces sheets of nickel from which Argentine 
 coins had been punched were being melted, sur- 
 rounded by a marvelous radiance of green and 
 golden fire. All about you are great ingots of cop- 
 per, silver, nickel and boxes of queer little nickel 
 nuggets, formed by dropping the hot liquid into 
 ice water. It is a place in which one would will- 
 ingly spend a whole day watching the wonders 
 which those accustomed to them take so calmly. 
 In the vault just outside the furnace room I was 
 shown between eighteen and nineteen million dol- 
 lars' worth of gold bars stacked up on shelves. 
 
172 AT THE MINT 
 
 Again — I don't know just why — I thought of 
 Lenine and Trotsky. 
 
 There were also more truckloads of the old silver 
 dollars on their way to the fire. Some of them, 
 though dated back in the seventies, seemed as 
 good as new; others were badly worn. They were 
 piled up in lots of 40,000, which, when new, would 
 weigh 34,375 ounces; one lot, I was told, had lost 
 208 ounces through abrasion. 
 
 In the big coining room the presses were busily 
 at work stamping out new coins, and women op- 
 erators were carefully examining the ''blanks'' for 
 imperfections before they go under the dies. To 
 one who expected to see vast quantities of shining 
 new American coinage it was odd to learn that 
 almost all the machines were busy turning out 
 small change for Peru and Argentina. Next week, 
 the foreman said, they start on a big order of the 
 queer coins of Siam, which have a hole in the 
 middle like the Chinese money. But I saw one 
 machine busy turning out Lincoln pennies at the 
 rate of 100 a minute. The one-cent piece requires 
 a pressure of forty tons to stamp the design on the 
 metal; the larger coins, of course, need a heavier 
 pressure, up to 120 tons. 
 
 The Mint's wonderful collection of coins and 
 medals of all lands would deserve an article of its 
 own. One of the rarities of which the curator is 
 most proud is a terra-cotta medallion of Franklin, 
 made by Nini at Chaumont in 1777. It is in per- 
 fect condition and was bought by the Mint from a 
 
AT THE MINT 173 
 
 New York newspaperman. A brand-new acquisi- 
 tion, only set up within the last few weeks, is a 
 case of French military decorations presented by 
 the French Government — the five grades of the 
 Legion of Honor, the four grades of the Croix de 
 Guerre and the Medaille Militaire. Near these are 
 the United States military and naval medals, a 
 sad and ugly contrast to the delicate art of the 
 French trophies. 
 
 I was unfortunate in not being lucky enough to 
 meet Superintendent Joyce, under whose adminis- 
 tration the Philadelphia Mint has become the 
 most remarkable place of coinage in the world; or 
 Mr. Eckfeldt, the assayer in chief, who has served 
 the Mint for fifty-four years and is the son of the 
 former assayer and grandson of the Mint's first 
 *' coiner," Adam Eckfeldt. These three genera- 
 tions of Eckfeldts have served the Mint for 123 
 years. But my friend Mr. Homer L. Pound, the 
 assistant assayer, who modestly speaks of his own 
 thirty years of service as a mere trifle, had by this 
 time shown me so much that my brain reeled. He 
 permitted me to change my pocket money into 
 brand new coinage of 1919 as a souvenir, and then 
 I left. And as for Lenine and Trotsky, the experi- 
 ence would have killed them! 
 
174 STONEHOUSE LANE AND THE NECK 
 
 STONEHOUSE LANE AND THE NECK 
 
 It had been a very hot daj^ At seven o'clock 
 the rich orange sunshine was still flooding straight 
 down Chestnut street. The thought occurred to 
 me that it would be a splendid evening to see the 
 sunset over the level fens of The Neck, that curi- 
 ous canal-country of South Philadelphia which so 
 few of us know. 
 
 You take the Fourth street car to Fifth and 
 Ritner. The wide space of Mifflin Square is full 
 of playing children. Here you halt to light a pipe. 
 This is advisable, as you will see in a moment. A 
 couple of blocks south brings you to one of the 
 most noxious areas of dump heaps and waste lit- 
 ters in the world. An expanse of evil-smelling 
 junk smokes with a thin haze of burning. Queer 
 little wooden shacks, stables, pig pens, sit com- 
 fortably in a desert of tin cans and sour rubbish. 
 You will need your tobacco if you are squeamish. 
 In the shadow of mountains of outcast scrap are 
 tiny homes under dusty shade, where a patient old 
 lady was sitting in a wheel chair reading a book. 
 
 A winding track, inconceivably sordid, leads 
 through fields of rank burdock, ashes, broken 
 brick, rusty barrel hoops. Two ancient horses 
 were grazing there, and there seemed a certain 
 pathos in a white van I encountered at the cross- 
 ing where Stonehouse lane goes over the freight 
 
STONEHOUSE LANE AND THE NECK 175 
 
 tracks. The Brown Company, it said, Removers of 
 Dead Animals. 
 
 But once across the railway you step into a new 
 world, a country undreamed of by the uptown citi- 
 zen. Green meadows lie under the pink sunset 
 light. One-story white houses, very small, but 
 with yards swept clean and neat whitewashed 
 fences, stand under poplars and willows. It is 
 almost an incredible experience to come upon that 
 odd little village as one crosses a wooden bridge 
 and sees boys fishing hopefully in a stagnant canal. 
 At the bend in the lane is a trim white house with 
 vivid flowers in the garden, beds patterned with 
 whited shells, an old figurehead — or is it a cigar- 
 store sign? — of a colored boy in a blue coat, 
 freshly painted in the yard. It is like a country 
 hamlet, full of dogs, hens, ducks and children. In 
 the stable yards horses stand munching at the 
 barn doors. Some of the little houses are painted 
 red, brown and green. A girl in a faded blue pina- 
 fore comes up the road leading two white horses, 
 a solitary cow trails along behind. 
 
 Like every country village, Stonehouse lane has 
 its own grocery store, a fascinating little place 
 where one can sit on the porch and drink a bottle 
 of lemon soda. This tiny shop is stuffed with all 
 manner of provisioning; it has one of the old-fash- 
 ioned coffee grinders with two enormous fly- 
 wheels. In the dusk, when the two oil lamps are 
 lit and turned low on account of the heat, it shines 
 with a fine tawny light that would speak to the eye 
 
176 STONEHOUSE LANE AND THE NECK 
 
 of a painter. A lamplighter comes along kindling 
 the gas burners, which twinkle down the long 
 white lane. A rich essence of pig steeps in the air, 
 but it is not unpalatable to one accustomed to the 
 country. As one sits on the porch of the store 
 friendly dogs nose about one, and the village chil- 
 dren come with baskets to do the evening pur- 
 chasing. 
 
 A map of the city gives one little help in explor- 
 ing this odd region of The Neck. According to the 
 map one might believe that it is all laid out and 
 built up in rectilinear streets. As a matter of fact 
 it is a spread of meadows, marshes and scummy 
 canals, with winding lanes and paths stepping off 
 among clumps of trees and quaint white cottages 
 half hidden among rushes, lilies and honeysuckle 
 matting. Off to the east rise the masts and wire- 
 less aerials of League Island. It is a strange land, 
 with customs of its own, not to be discerned at 
 sight. Like all small communities sharply con- 
 scious of their own identity, it is proud and re- 
 served. It is a native American settlement: the 
 children are flaxen and sturdy, their skin gilded 
 with that amazing richness and beauty of color 
 that comes to small urchins who play all day long 
 in the sun in scant garmenting. 
 
 Over another railway siding one passes into the 
 fens proper, and away from the village of Stone- 
 house lane. (I wonder, by the way, what was the 
 stone house which gave it the name? All the pre- 
 sent cottages are plainly wood.) Now one is in a 
 
STONEHOUSE LANE AND THE NECK 177 
 
 country almost Dutch in aspect. It is seamed 
 with canals and was probably an island originally, 
 for it is still spoken of as Greenwich Island. Along 
 the canals are paths, white and dusty in the sum- 
 mer drought, very soft to walk upon. Great 
 clumps of thick old willows stand up against the 
 low^ horizon. The hght grows less steep as the sun 
 sinks in a powdery haze of rose and orange. In 
 one of the canals, below a high embankment, half 
 a dozen naked boys were bathing, attended by a 
 joyous white dog. In that evening pinkness of 
 light their bodies gleamed beautifully. Through 
 masses of flowering sumac, past thick copses and 
 masses of reeds, over broad fields of bird-song, 
 narrow paths lead down to the river. In the warm 
 savor of summer air it all seemed as deserted and 
 refreshing as some Adirondack pasture. Then one 
 stands at the top of a little sandy bank and sees 
 the great bend of the Delaware. Opposite is the 
 mouth of Timber Creek, Walt Whitman's favorite 
 pleasure haunt. A little lower down is League 
 Island. 
 
 One of the most fascinating dreams one could 
 have is of all this broad fen-land as a great city 
 playground. It is strange that Philadelphia has 
 made so little use of the Delaware for purposes of 
 pubhc beauty. A landscape architect would go 
 mad with joy if given the deHghtful task of plan- 
 ning The Neck as a park. It would take com- 
 paratively little effort to drain it properly and 
 make it one of the noblest pleasure grounds in the 
 
178 VALLEY FORGE 
 
 world. Will this wonderful strip of river-bank be 
 allowed to pass into slime and smoke as the lower 
 Schuylkill has done? 
 
 The stream lap-laps against a narrow shelf of 
 sandy beach, where there are a number of logs for 
 comfortable sitting. A water rat ran quietly up 
 the bank as I slid down it. A steamer passed up 
 the river, her windows aflame with the last of the 
 sunlight. Birds were merry in the scrub willows, 
 and big dragon flies flittering about. The light 
 grew softer and grayer, while a concave moon 
 swung high over the water. Motorboats chugged 
 gently by, while a big dredge further upstream 
 continued to clang and grind. By and by the 
 river was empty. It had been a very hot day, and 
 a great idea occurred to me. In the gooii old 
 brownish water of the Delaware I had what my 
 friend Mifflin McGill used to call a ^'surreptious" 
 swim. 
 
 VALLEY FORGE 
 A CURIOUS magic moves in the air of Valley 
 Forge. There is the same subtle plucking at heart 
 and nerves that one feels when coming home from 
 abroad, passing up some salty harbor on a ship, he 
 sees his own flag rippling from a home staff. It is 
 a sudden inner vision of the meaning of America. 
 It is a realization of the continuity of history, a 
 sense of the imperishable quality of human virtue. 
 And today, when this nation stands on the sill of a 
 new era, ready to surrender for the sake of human- 
 
VALLEY FORGE 179 
 
 ity some of the proud traditions ingrained by 
 years of bitter struggle, what place could be a more 
 fitting haunt of dreams and nursery of imagina- 
 tion? Here, on these wind-swept slopes where now 
 the summer air carries the sweetness of fresh-cut 
 hay, here in this vale of humiliation men met the 
 arrows of despair. There is an old belief that it is 
 the second summer that is the danger time in a 
 baby's life. It was the second winter that was the 
 cradle-crisis of the young republic — the winter of 
 1777-78. It was then that began the long road 
 that carries us from Valley Forge to Versailles. 
 
 Few of us realize, I think, what a vast national 
 shrine Valley Forge has become under the careful 
 hands of a few devoted people. There is little of 
 winter and dearth in that spreading park as one 
 views it on a July afternoon. In the great valley 
 of the Schuylkill green acres of young corn ripple 
 in the breeze. Sunlight and shadow drift across 
 the hillsides as great rafts of cloud swim down un- 
 seen channels of the wind. There is no country in 
 America lovelier than those quiet hills and vales of 
 Montgomery and Chester counties, with their 
 shadowed creeks, their plump orchards and old 
 stone farmhouses. My idea of jovial destiny 
 would be to be turned loose (about the beginning 
 of the scrapple season) somewhere in the neighbor- 
 hood of the King of Prussia — no one but an idiot 
 will ever call him by his new name of Ye Old King! 
 — with a knapsack of tobacco, a knobby stick and 
 a volume of R. L. S. 
 
180 VALLEY FORGE 
 
 Coming down the road from Devon, the first 
 thing one sees is the great equestrian statue of 
 Anthony Wayne on its pink pedestal. It stands on 
 a naked ridge, which was formerly groved with 
 fine oaks. The Caliph who had me in charge told 
 me with blood in his eye that the trees had been 
 slaughtered in order to give a wider view of the 
 statue. It seems a serious pity. Beyond this one 
 comes to the National Arch, designed by Paul 
 Cret, of the University of Pennsylvania, who has 
 since so gallantly served his native France on fields 
 of battle far more terrible than Valley Forge. 
 From this arch, with its fine inscription by Henry 
 Armitt Brown, there is a serene view across yellow 
 fields of stubble where a big hay wagon was piled 
 high with its fragrant load. 
 
 Mr. Weikel, the friendly guard on duty at this 
 spot, a Civil War veteran, was kind enough to 
 show us the hut which is his headquarters. It is 
 one of the many scattered through the park, rep- 
 licas of the original soldiers' huts, built of logs and 
 chinked with clay. With its little smoke-stained 
 fireplace and weathered roof, sitting on that hill- 
 top in the sweet quick air, it seemed a pleasant 
 place for meditation. Over the rough-hewn mantel 
 was an old picture of George Washington and a 
 badge belonging to some member of the American 
 Press Humorists, dropped by one of these mad 
 wags on their recent visit to the park. 
 
 But the chief glory of Valley Forge is the Wash- 
 ington Memorial Chapel, a place so startling in its 
 
VALLEY FORGE 181 
 
 beauty that it takes the breath away. Through 
 a humble arched door — as lowly as the doorway of 
 suffering through which the nation came to birth — 
 one enters a shrine of color where the history of the 
 republic is carved in stone. The tall windows 
 blaze with blue and scarlet. A silk Stars and 
 Stripes, hanging by the stone pulpit, waves gently 
 in the cool wind that draws up from the valley and 
 through the open door. The archway into the 
 cloister frames a glimpse of green. In every detail 
 this marvelous little Westminster Abbey of Amer- 
 ica shows the devoted thought of Dr. Herbert 
 Burk, the man who has lavished his heart upon 
 this noble symbol of our national life. With his 
 brown eyes glowing with enthusiasm he will ex- 
 plain how the religion, the romance, the pathos 
 and humor of a century and a half are woven into 
 every line and tint of the fabric. The magnificent 
 stained windows — windows that recall nothing less 
 fine than the most splendid cathedrals of the mid- 
 dle ages — were planned by Doctor Burk and exe- 
 cuted by Nicola D'Ascenzo. The marvelous oak 
 carvings of the choir stalls and pews, the carved 
 lead lamps, the organ, all were done here in Phila- 
 delphia. 
 
 This amazing poem in stone, endless in lovingly 
 elaborated beauty, can no more be described than 
 any great poem can be described. It is as perfect, 
 as unique, as '^The Eve of Saint Agnes"; as rich 
 in color and as thrilling in meaning. On these hill- 
 sides, where men "tramped the snow to coral," 
 
182 VALLEY FORGE 
 
 hungry, shivering and unshod; where a great art- 
 ist, wanting to paint the commander-in-chief, had 
 to do it on bedticking; and where this same com- 
 mander, worshiper as well as warrior, stole from 
 the campfire to pray; on this field of doubt and 
 suffering there has risen this monument of religious 
 art, devised as a focus of patriotic inspiration for 
 the whole republic. It is an altar of national wor- 
 ship, as though expressly conceived to give out- 
 ward shape to the words uttered only j^esterdaj^ 
 by another commander-in-chief: 
 
 The stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It has come 
 about by no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of 
 God, who led us into this way. We cannot turn back. ^Ye 
 can only go forward, with lifted eyes and freshened spirit, 
 to follow the vision. It was of this that we dreamed at our 
 birth. 
 
 Of the dreams of America's birth the Washing- 
 ton Memorial Chapel is the noble and fitting 
 symbol. It is both a thanksgiving and a prophecy . 
 
 From no other lips than those of Doctor Burk 
 himself can the storj^ of this place be told. He will 
 tell 3^ou how the chapel grew out of humility and 
 discouragement. He will show you the plain little 
 wooden chapel which he built first of all, before 
 money could be raised for the present building. He 
 will show you the gargoyle — the Imp of Valley 
 Forge — which he says is emblematic of the spirit of 
 the place because he can smile even in winter when 
 his mouth is full of ice. The chapel goes back to 
 the truest tradition of medieval art, when so much 
 humor was carved into the stone ornaments of 
 
VALLEY FORGE 183 
 
 cathedrals. When the cornerstone was laid in 1903 
 Doctor Burk had only enough money on hand to 
 pay for two loads of stone; he had only a piece of 
 hemlock board to shelter the copper box that con- 
 tained the relics to be inclosed in the foundations, 
 and after the ceremony had to smuggle the box 
 back to his home for safe-keeping. Standing in the 
 beautiful little cloister where the open-air pulpit 
 looks out into the woodland cathedral (with 
 Mount Vernon elms planted in the form of a cross), 
 he says: '^If the park were left alone it would be 
 merely a picnic ground. It's the most spiritual 
 spot in America: we must maintain its spiritual 
 heritage." 
 
 It is one of the rector's regrets that only one 
 President has ever visited Valley Forge. As one 
 stands in the open-air pulpit looking out through 
 the grove of elms and over the blue and green 
 valley, one wishes that Mr. Wilson might visit the 
 spot. There is no place in America of such peculiar 
 significance just now, there would be no man so 
 quick as Mr. Wilson to catch its spiritual echoes. 
 Even the humblest of us hears secret whispers in 
 the rustle of those trees. 
 
184 THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY 
 
 THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY 
 
 There is a legend of an old booklover who was 
 pasturing among his folios one evening by candle 
 light. Perhaps he sat (as Charles Lamb used to) 
 with a tumbler of mild grog at his elbow. Perhaps 
 he was in that curious hypnotic trance induced by 
 utter silence, long reading and insufficient air. In 
 the musty fragrance of his library the tapers cast 
 their mellow gush of gold about him, burning up 
 the oxygen from under his very nose. At any rate, 
 in a shadowy alcove something stirred. A book- 
 worm peeped out from a tall vellum binding. It 
 flapped its wings and crew with a clear lively note. 
 Startled, the aged bibliophile looked up and just 
 glimpsed the vanishing flutter of its wings. It was 
 only a ghmpse, but it was enough. He ran to his 
 shelves, his ancient heart pounding like an anvil 
 chorus. The old promise had come true. For if 
 any man shall live to see a bookworm, all the 
 volumes on his shelves immediately turn to first 
 editions, signed by the author. But the joyous 
 spasm was too much for the poor scholar. The 
 next morning he was found lying palsied at the foot 
 of his bookcase. The fact that at least two fingers 
 of grog remained in his glass, undrunk, led his fel- 
 low booklovers to suspect that something strange 
 had happened. As he lay dying he told the story 
 of his vision. He was the only man who ever saw 
 a bookworm. 
 
THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY 185 
 
 But if a bookworm should ever flap its wings 
 and crow in Philadelphia, certainly the place where 
 it would do so would be the Mercantile Library. 
 I imagine that when Mr. Hedley, the delightful 
 Ubrarian, shuts up at night, turns off the green- 
 shaded lamps and rings the bell to thrust out the 
 last lingering reader from the long dark tables, he 
 treads hopefully through those enchanted alcoves. 
 The thick sweet savor of old calf and the dainty 
 bouquet of honest rag paper, the subtle exhalation 
 of rows and rows of books (sweeter to the nostril of 
 the bibliosoph than any mountain air that ever 
 rustled in green treetops) is just the medium in 
 which the fabled bookworm would crow like chan- 
 ticleer. It is fifty years this month since the Mer- 
 cantile Library moved into the old market build- 
 ing on Tenth street, and while fifty years is a mere 
 wink of the eyelash to any bookworm, still it is 
 long enough for a few eggs to hatch. For that 
 matter, some of the library's books have been in 
 its possession nigh a hundred years, for it will cele- 
 brate its centennial in 1922. 
 
 The Mercantile is everything that a library 
 ought to be. It has the still and reverent solemnity 
 that a true home of learning ought to have, com- 
 bined with an undercurrent of genial fellowship. 
 It is not only a library but a club. Through the 
 glass panels at the back one may see the chess 
 players at their meditative rites, and the last inner 
 fane where smoking is permitted and the votaries 
 puff well-blackened briars and brood round the 
 
186 THE MERCANTILE IJBRARY 
 
 boards of combat in immortal silence. The ciuaint 
 old stained windows at the western end of the long 
 hall look down on the magazine tables where one 
 may be reading the Cosmopolitan and the next the 
 Hibbert Journal. From these colored panes Frank- 
 lin, Milton, Beethoven and Clovio gaze approv- 
 ingly. They are surmounted by four symbolic fig- 
 ures, representing (I suppose) their respective arts 
 of Science, Poetry, Music and Art. Of Clovio the 
 miniaturist one does not often hear, and I may as 
 well be honest and admit I had to look him up in 
 the encyclopedia. 
 
 To the heart of the booklover the Mercantile 
 speaks with a magical appeal. One wishes there 
 were a little cloister attached to it where the 
 true saints of the bookworld might be buried. It 
 seems hard that those who have so long trodden 
 the alcoves of peace should be interred elsewhere. 
 To many devout souls libraries are the greatest 
 churches of humanity. Even the casual dropper-in 
 realizes that the Mercantile is more than a mere 
 gathering of books. It is a guild, a sort of monas- 
 tery. The members have secret raptures and side- 
 long glances whereby they recognize one another. 
 As thej^ walk down the long entrance passage they 
 are purged of the world and the world's passions. 
 As they pass through the little swinging gates that 
 shut out the mere visitor, as they bury themselves 
 in shadowy corners and aisles pungent with book- 
 perfume, they have the grateful bearing of those 
 secure in a strong fortress where the devil cannot 
 
THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY 187 
 
 penetrate. For my own part, I have only one test 
 of a good library, which I always employ when I 
 get anywhere near a card catalogue. There is a 
 certain work, in three volumes, famous chiefly be- 
 cause Robert Louis Stevenson took the second vol- 
 ume with him on his immortal Travels With a 
 Donkey. It is called Pastors of the Desert, by 
 Peyrat, a history of the Huguenots. If you will 
 turn again to R. L. S.'s chapter called A Camp in 
 the Dark you will see that he says: 
 
 I had felt no other inconvenience, except when 
 my feet encountered the lantern or the second vol- 
 ume of Peyrat's Pastors of the Desert among the 
 mixed contents of my sleeping bag. 
 
 I am happy to assert that the Mercantile has a 
 set of these volumes, and therefore one may pro- 
 nounce it an A-1 library. 
 
 Of course the Mercantile has many more ortho- 
 dox treasures than Peyrat, though its function is 
 not to collect incunabula or rare editions, but to 
 keep its members supplied with the standard 
 things, and the important books and periodicals of 
 the day. Mr. Hedley was gracious enough to take 
 me into the locked section of the gallery, where 
 there are alcoves teeming with old volumes and 
 rich in the dust that is so delightful to the lover of 
 these things. He showed me, for instance, a first 
 edition of the Authorized or King James Bible, im- 
 printed at London by Robert Barker in 1611. In- 
 side the front cover some one has written in pencil 
 13 
 
188 THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY 
 
 ''Charge 5£." I am no expert on these matters, 
 but I wonder if many a collector would not pay a 
 hundred times as much for it nowadays? On 
 another shelf I saw a beautiful edition of Euse- 
 bius's Chronicles, printed at Venice in 1483, the 
 paper as fresh and the rubrication as bright as 
 when it was new. Opening it at random, I found 
 the following note, which seemed quaintly topical : 
 
 Anno salutis 811, Anno mundi 6010, Locustes 
 gregatim ex Affrica volantes Italiam infestant. 
 
 (Year of grace 811, Year of the earth 6010. The 
 locusts fljdng in swarms from Africa, infest Italy.) 
 
 In this book some former owner has written, 
 with the honorable candor of the true booklover: 
 
 De isto pretioso volumino animadvertere libet, 
 quod non est ''edition premiere" sicut opus De- 
 burii falso ostendit. 
 
 W. H. Black, 4 Feb., 1831. 
 
 (Concerning this precious volume it is permitted 
 to remark that it is not the first edition, as the 
 work of Deburius falsely maintains.) 
 
 Ignoble Deburius, shame upon him! 
 
 Mr. Hedley also showed me the famous Atlas 
 Major of John Blaeu, the Dutch pubhsher, issued 
 (in Spanish) in Amsterdam in 1662, eleven huge 
 tomes in white vellum, stamped in gold. These 
 marvelous large-scale maps, magnificently colored 
 by hand, with every town marked by a tiny dot of 
 gleaming gold, set the lover of^fine work in a tingle 
 of amazement. Lucky indeed the bibhophile who 
 finds his way to that sacred corner. One would 
 
THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY 189 
 
 not blame any bookworm for crowing with a shrill 
 cry of exultation if he were hatched in that treas- 
 ury. There was not time to find out whether John 
 Blaeu's atlas contained plates of American geogra- 
 phy, but I hope to go again and study these fas- 
 cinating volumes more at leisure, by Mr. Hedley's 
 kindness. 
 
 Perhaps the most curious feature of the Mer- 
 cantile is the huge vaulted cellar which underlies 
 the length of the whole building. Constructed 
 originally for storage of market produce, before the 
 days of modern refrigeration, it is now a dark and 
 mysterious crypt extending under the adjoining 
 streets, where the rumble of wheels sound over- 
 head. The Hbrary's stamping press, used to incise 
 the covers of books, gives one of the chambers a 
 medieval monldsh air, and the equally medieval 
 spelling of the janitor in some memoranda of his 
 own posted upon a door do not detract from the 
 fascinating spell. With a flashlight Mr. Hedley 
 showed me the great extent of these underground 
 corridors, and I imagined that if so friendly a libra- 
 rian should ever hold a grudge against an author 
 it would be an admirable place to lure him and 
 leave him lost in the dark. He would never find 
 his way out and his copyrights would expire long 
 before his bones would be found. Joan Gutenberg, 
 the library cat, dwells in that solemn maze of 
 heavy brick arches, and she finds it depressing 
 that the only literature stored down there is the 
 overplus of old government documents. 
 
 If 
 
190 MEDITATIONS ON OYSTERS 
 
 MEDITATIONS ON OYSTERS 
 
 Sansom street, below Ninth, runs a modest 
 course through the middle of the afternoon, 
 scooped between high and rather grimy walls so 
 that a coolness and a shadow are upon it. It is a 
 homely little channel, frequented by laundry 
 wagons taking away great piles of soiled linen from 
 the rear of the Continental Hotel, and Httle barefoot 
 urchins pushing carts full of kindUng wood picked 
 up from the Utter of splintered packing cases. On 
 one side of the street is a big power-house where the 
 drone and murmur of vast dynamos croon a soft 
 undertone to the distant clang and zooming of the 
 trolleys. Beyond that is the stage door of a bur- 
 lesque theatre, and a faint sweetness of grease 
 paint drifts to the nose down a dark, mysterious 
 passageway. 
 
 We walked down this little street, noticing the 
 For Rent sign on a saloon at the corner and the 
 pyramided boxes of green and yellow apples on a 
 fruit stand, and it seemed to us that there was an 
 unmistakable breath of autumn in the air. Out 
 beyond, where the street widens and floods itself 
 again with sun, there was heat and shimmer and 
 the glittering plate-glass windows of jewelry deal- 
 ers, but in the narrower strip of alley we felt a 
 premonitory tang of future frost. At the end of 
 August the sunlight gets yellower, more obHque; 
 it loses the pale and deadly glare of earlier days. 
 
MEDITATIONS ON OYSTERS 191 
 
 It is shallower, more colorful, but weaker of im- 
 pact. Shall we say it has lost its punch? 
 
 And then we saw a little oyster cafe, well known 
 to many lovers of good cheer, that has been fur- 
 bishing itself for the jolly days to come. No one 
 knows yet whether the U-boats have frightened 
 the oysters, whether the fat bivalves will be leaner 
 and scarcer than in the good old days; no one 
 knows whether there will even be enough of them 
 to last out until next Easter; but in the meantime 
 we all live in hope. And one thing is certain — the 
 oyster season begins on Monday. The little cafe 
 has repainted its white front so that it shines hos- 
 pitably; and the sill and the cellar trapdoor where 
 the barrels go in, and the shutters and the awning 
 poles in front, are all a sticky, gUstening green. 
 The white marble step, hollowed by thousands of 
 eager feet in a million lunch-time forays, has been 
 scrubbed and sandsoaped. And next Monday 
 morning, bright and early, out goes the traditional 
 red and green sign of the R. 
 
 The ''poor patient oyster," as Keats calls him 
 (or her, for there are lady oysters, too, did you 
 know?) is not only a sessile bivalve mollusk, but a 
 traditional symbol of autumn and winter cheer. 
 Even if Mr. Hoover counts out the little round 
 crackers in twos and threes, we hope there will be 
 enough of the thoughtful and innocent shellfish to 
 go around. When the cold winds begin to harp 
 and whinney at street corners and wives go seek- 
 ing among camphor balls for our last year's over- 
 
192 DARBY CREEK 
 
 coats, you will be glad to resume your acquain- 
 tance with a bowl of steaming bivalves, swimming 
 in milk with little clots of yellow butter twirling on 
 the surface of the broth. An oyster stew, a glass 
 of light beer and a corncob pipe will keep your 
 blue eyes blue to any weather, as a young poet of 
 our acquaintance puts it. 
 
 DARBY CREEK 
 
 The other day we had an adventure that gave 
 us great joy, and, like all great adventures, it was 
 wholly unexpected. 
 
 We went out to spend an evening with a certain 
 Caliph who lives at Daylesford — how many Main 
 Line commuters, by the way, know that it is 
 named for Daylesford in Gloucestershire, the home 
 of Warren Hastings? — and after supper the Cahph 
 took us for a stroll round the twihght. In a green 
 hollow below the house, only a few paragraphs 
 away from the room where this Caliph sits and 
 writes essays (he is the only author in Philadelphia 
 who has never received a rejection slip) he showed 
 us a delicious pool, fed by several springs and lying 
 under great willows. From this pool tinkled a 
 modest brook, splashing over a dam and winding 
 away down an alluring valley. A white road ran 
 beside it, through agreeable thickets and shrub- 
 bery, starting off with a twist that suggested all 
 manner of pleasant surprises for the wayfarer. It 
 
DARBY CREEK 193 
 
 was just the kind of road to see spread before one 
 at the cool outset of a long summer day. 
 
 '^This," said the Caliph, "is the headwater of 
 Darby creek." 
 
 Little did the Caliph, douce man, know what 
 that simple statement meant to us. The head- 
 waters of Darby! Darby creek, and its younger 
 brother Cobb's creek, were the Abana and Phar- 
 par of our youth. We were nourished first of all 
 on Cobb's, where we had our first swim and 
 caught our first tadpoles and conducted our first 
 search for buried treasure (and also smelt our first 
 skunk cabbage). Then, in our teens, we ranged 
 farther afield and learned the way to Darby, by 
 whose crystal waters we used to fry bacon and 
 read R. L. S. There will never be any other stream 
 quite as dear to our heart. 
 
 Until the other evening at the Cahph's we had 
 not seen the water of Darby creek for ten years; 
 not such a long time, perhaps, as some reckon 
 these matters, but quite long enough. And our 
 mind runs back with unrestrained enthusiasm to 
 the days when we lived only two miles away from 
 that delicious stream. Darby creek is associated 
 in our mind with a saw and cider mill that used 
 to stand — and very likely still stands — where the 
 creek crosses the West Chester pike. To that ad- 
 mirable spot, in the warm blue haze of an October 
 afternoon, certain young men used to tramp. 
 While the whirling blades of the sawmill screamed 
 through green logs, these care-free innocents used 
 
194 DARBY CREEK 
 
 to sit round a large vat where the juice of fresh 
 apples came trickling through some sort of burlap 
 squeezing coils, and where fat and groggy wasps 
 buzzed and tottered and expired in rapture. These 
 youths (who should not be blamed, for indeed they 
 had few responsibilities and cares) would ply the 
 flagon with diligence, merrily toasting the trolleys 
 that hummed by on the way to West Chester. 
 We will not give away their names, for they are 
 now demure and respected merchants and lawyers 
 and members of Rotary clubs and stock exchanges. 
 But we remember one of these who was notably 
 susceptible to cider. On the homeward path, as he 
 flourished his intellect broadcast and quoted 
 Maeterlinck and Bliss Carman, he was induced by 
 his comrades to crawl inside a large terra-cotta 
 pipe that lay by the roadside. Just how this act 
 of cozening was accomplished we forget; perhaps 
 it was a wager to see whether he, being proud of 
 his slender figure, was slim enough to eel through 
 the tube. At any rate, he vanished inside. The 
 pipe lay at the top of a gentle hill, and for his 
 companions it was the work of an inspired moment 
 to seize the cylinder and set it rolling down the 
 grade. Merrily it revolved for a hundred feet or 
 more, at high velocity, and culbutted into a ditch. 
 The dizzied victim emerged at length, quoting 
 Rabelais. 
 
 The mile and a half along the creek above this 
 sawmill — up to where an odd Uttle branch railroad 
 crosses the stream on a tottery trestle and Ithan 
 
DARBY CREEK 195 
 
 creek runs in — was the pleasure haunt best known 
 to us. It was approached through Coopertown, 
 that rustic settlement which the Bryn Mawr squire 
 has recently turned into a Tom Tiddler's ground. 
 Across stubble fields and down an enchanting 
 valley carpeted with moss we scoured on many and 
 many an afternoon, laden with the rudiments of a 
 meal. There was said to be a choleric farmer with 
 a shotgun and an angry collie on the western marge 
 of the stream, and it was always a matter of cour- 
 age to send over an envoy (chosen by lot) to bag 
 a few ears of corn for roasting. But for our own 
 part we never encountered this enemy, though 
 MifRin once came throbbing back empty-handed 
 and pale-faced, reporting that a charge of lead 
 had sung past his ears. Above a small dam the 
 creek backed up to a decent depth, five feet or so 
 of cool green water, and here bathing was con- 
 ducted in the ancient Greek manner. There were 
 sun-warmed fence rails nearby for basking, and 
 then a fire would be built and vittles mobiUzed. 
 Tobacco pouches wei*e emptied out into one com- 
 mon store, and by the time this was smoked out 
 a white moonhght would be spiUing over the 
 autumn fields. 
 
 We grew so fond of this section of our Abana 
 that we never explored the full length of the 
 stream. It would be a lovely day's jaunt, we 
 imagine, to set out from Darby (where Cobb's 
 creek joins Darby Creek) and walk up the little 
 river to its source at Daylesford. (The original 
 
196 DAUBY CKEEK 
 
 Daylesford, by the way, is also made lovely by 
 the only other stripling stream that competes 
 with Darby in our heart. This is the delicious 
 Evenlode, an upper twig of the Thames.) It would 
 be about twenty miles, which is a just distance for 
 a walker who likes to study the scenery as he goes. 
 Through the greater part of the trail the stream 
 trots through open farming country, with old 
 mills here and there — paper mills, flour mills and 
 our famous shrine of sawdust and cider. The lower 
 waters, from Darby down to Tinicum Island and 
 the mouth at Essington, would probably be less 
 walkable. We suspect them of being marshy, 
 though we speak only by the map. Mr. Browning, 
 we remember, wrote a poem about a bishop who 
 ordered his tomb at Saint Praxed's. We, if we had 
 a chance to lay out any blue-prints of our final 
 rolltop, would like to be the Colyumist who ordered 
 his tomb by Darby creek, and not too far away 
 from that cider mill. And let no one think that it 
 is a stream of merely sentimental interest. Hog 
 Island, as all will grant, is a place of national im- 
 portance. And what is Hog Island, after all? 
 Only the delta of Darby creek. 
 
DARBY REVISITED 197 
 
 DARBY REVISITED 
 
 The Soothsayer owns a car, and tools passion- 
 ately about the country, revisiting the vistas and 
 glimpses that he thinks particularly lovely. But 
 he is a stubborn partisan of such beauty spots as 
 he has himself discovered, and bitterly reluctant 
 to concede any glamour to places he hasn't visited. 
 For a long time he has heard us raving about 
 Darby creek, and always asserted furiously that 
 we had never seen a certain road up Norristown 
 way that was (he said) a far, far better thing than 
 any place we would be likely to know about. But 
 the other evening, somewhat stirred by our piteous 
 babble about the old cider mill we hadn't visited 
 for ten years, he got out his 'bus and we set forth. 
 
 We went out along the West Chester pike, and 
 the manner of the Soothsayer was subtly super- 
 ciHous. All the way out from Sixty-ninth street 
 the road is in bad condition, and as he nursed his 
 handsome vehicle over the bumps we could see 
 that the Soothsayer thought (though too polite to 
 say so) that we were leading him into a very be- 
 draggled and ill-assorted region. Another very 
 sinister rebuke was that he had left up the canopy 
 top over the car, although it was a serene and lucid 
 evening, flushed with quiet sunset. This seemed 
 to imply that any tract of country we would lead 
 him to would hardly be worth examining carefully. 
 As we passed by the university astronomical obser- 
 
198 DARBY REVISITED 
 
 vatory he made a last attempt to divert us from 
 the haven of our desire. He suggested that we 
 both go in and have a look at the moon through 
 the big telescope. As it was then broad and sunny 
 daylight we treated this absurd project with con- 
 tempt. 
 
 Down a steep winding hill, and we came upon 
 the historic spot with delightful suddenness. Our 
 heart was uplifted. There it was, unchanged, the 
 old gray building standing among trees, with the 
 clank and grind of the water-wheels, the yellow 
 dapple of level sun upon the western wall. 
 
 But what was this? Under the porch-roof was a 
 man bending over iron plates, surrounded by a 
 dazzle of pale blue light. He was using an electric 
 welder, and the groan of a dynamo sounded from 
 the interior of the old mill. ''It's probably a 
 garage now," said the Soothsayer, ''most of these 
 old places are." 
 
 But that was the Soothsayer's last flash of 
 cynicism, for in another moment the spell of the 
 place had disarmed him. We approached, and it 
 seemed to us there was something familiar in the 
 face of the man operating the welder, as he watched 
 his dazzling blue flame through a screen. It was 
 Mr. Flounders, who has run the old mill for going 
 on thirty years, and who used to preside at the 
 cider press in days gone by, when we had many a 
 pull at his noble juices. But he hasn't made any 
 cider for several years he told us; the sawmill shed 
 is unused, and the old mill itself is being fitted up 
 
DARBY REVISITED 199 
 
 with ice-making machinery. He says he went out 
 West for a while, but he came back to Darby 
 creek in the end. We don't blame him. The spell 
 of that enchanting spot may well keep its hold on 
 all who have ever loved it. 
 
 The Soothsayer and his passenger got out their 
 pipes and brooded a while, watching the green 
 swift water of the mill race; the sunny flicker of 
 the creek below as it darts on its way through the 
 meadows; the great oak tree steeped in sunlight, 
 and the old millstones that still lie about by the 
 front door. Inside the building the wooden 
 beams and levers and grooved wheels are just as 
 they were when the place was built as a flour and 
 feed mill, in 1837. The woodwork still has that 
 clean, dusty gloss that is characteristic of a flour 
 mill. By the sawing shed lie a number of great 
 logs, admirable site for a quiet smoke. The Sooth- 
 sayer, tremendously impressed by this time, wan- 
 dered about with us and listened kindly to all our 
 spasms of reminiscence. We both agreed that the 
 old mill, dozing in the sunlight, with the pale and 
 tremulous shimmer of blue light in the porch 
 where Mr. Flounders was working, was a fit sub- 
 ject for some artist's brush. 
 
 We did not fail to admire the remarkable old 
 house across the road, where Mr. Flounders lives. 
 It is built in three portions: a wooden lean-to, a 
 very ancient section of whitewashed logs (which 
 must be some 200 years old) and then the largest 
 part of the dappled stone of various colors so 
 
200 THE HAPPY VALLEY 
 
 familiar to Pennsylvania ramblers. Nothing can 
 be more delightful in the rich tint of afternoon 
 light than that medley of brown, gray, yellow and 
 ochre stonework. We pointed out the little side 
 road that we were to follow, running up the valley 
 of che creek, past reddening apple orchards and 
 along the meadows past the swimming pool. And 
 then the Soothsayer paid us a genuine compliment. 
 ''Let's take down the top," said he. ''Then we 
 can really see something!" 
 
 THE HAPPY VALLEY 
 Two FRIENDS, who may be called for present pur- 
 poses Messrs. Madrigal and Doggerel, dismounted 
 from the West Chester trolley at the crossing of 
 Darby creek. Madrigal rolled a cigarette. Dog- 
 gerel filled a pipe. They paid their respects to the 
 old sawmill and Mr. Flounders, its presiding deity. 
 Then they set off for a tramp up the valley. 
 
 It was a genial afternoon, after a night of thrash- 
 ing rain and gale. The air was meek and placid; 
 the sky a riotous blue. After the tumultuous wash- 
 ing of the storm all the heavenly linen was hung 
 out to dry, bulging and ballooning in snowy clots 
 along the upper dome. The tents of creekside 
 campers were sodden, and great branches lay 
 scattered on the meadows, wrenched down by the 
 wind. By Mr. Sanderson's farm at Brookthorpe a 
 scoutmaster was breaking camp, preparing to take 
 his boys home. They had only been there four 
 
THE HAPPY VALLEY 201 
 
 days and the grieved urchins stood in miserable 
 silence. The hurricane of the night before had 
 nearly washed them away, and as everything was 
 so wet their leader feared to let them sleep on the 
 ground. The boys were heartbroken, but the 
 scoutmaster said sagely: ''I'd rather have the 
 boys mad at me than their mothers.'' 
 
 In spite of the recent downpour, the walking 
 was admirable. Roads were damp, easy under- 
 foot, free from dust. Madrigal and Doggerel were 
 gay at heart. They scrambled up the embank- 
 ment of the deserted Delaware County Railroad, 
 which is the most direct pathway toward the head- 
 waters of Darby. It is possible to go along the 
 bank of the creek, but underbrush was still 
 drenched, and Mr. Sanderson uttered cryptic 
 warning of a certain bull. On the grass-grown 
 track of the antique railroad, treading gingerly 
 over worm-eaten wooden trestles, the explorer en- 
 joys perfect sunny tranquillity. It is only five 
 miles from the city limits, but one moves in the 
 heart of bird-song and ancient solitude. One 
 freight train a day is the traffic of the forgotten 
 line, and probably the director general of railroads 
 never heard of it. It would not be surprising to 
 meet Rip Van Winkle pacing thoughtfully along 
 the mouldering ties. And as it is raised high above 
 the valley, the walker gains a fair prospect over 
 the green country of Darbyland. The creek, swol- 
 len with rain, brawled rapidly along its winding 
 shallows. Cattle munched in the meadows. Gold- 
 
202 THE HAPPY VALLEY 
 
 enrod was minting its gold, and a first faint sug- 
 gestion of autumn breathed in the sleepy air. 
 Madrigal tore off his linen collar, stuffed it in his 
 pocket, and fell to quoting Keats. Doggerel, hav- 
 ing uttered some painful words about the old cider 
 traffic, now evaporated. Madrigal bestirred his 
 memory of the Ode to Autumn. "Or by a cider 
 press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last 
 oozings, hours by hours." Madrigal is a man of 
 well-stored mind, and as the wayfarers tripped 
 nimbly along the ties, where wild flowers em- 
 broider the old cuttings and deserted farms stand 
 crumbling along knotted apple trees, he beguiled 
 the journey with varied speculation and discourse. 
 At a long-abandoned station known as Foxcroft 
 — which is now only a quarry, and has the air of 
 some mining settlement of the far West — the walk- 
 ers began to understand something of the secret of 
 this region. It is a fox-hunting country (according 
 to the map, the next station on this mystic line was 
 called The Hunt) and from here on they caught 
 glimpses of the life of that picturesque person 
 known as the "country gentleman." There were 
 jumping barriers for horses erected in the mea- 
 dows; rows of kennels, and a red-cheeked squire 
 with a riding crop and gaiters striding along the 
 road. Along that rolUng valley, with whispering 
 cornfields and fair white mansions fingering among 
 trees, is the tint and contour of rural England, 
 long-settled, opulent and serene. In one thing 
 only does it lack Engfish charm : there are no old 
 
THE HAPPY VALLEY 203 
 
 ale-houses along the way. No King's Arms or 
 Waggon and Horses or Jolly Ploughhoy where one 
 may sit on a bench well-polished by generations of 
 corduroyed hindquarters and shut out the smiling 
 horizon with a tankard's rim. "Oh land of free- 
 dom.!" cried Madrigal, ironically, clucking his 
 tongue upon a drouthy palate. 
 
 From Foxcroft there is a tempting blue vista up 
 a tributary valley toward Newtown Square, which 
 would be well worth exploring; but Madrigal and 
 Doggerel turned away through another covered 
 bridge in order to keep along the trend of Darby. 
 A detour along the road brought them back to the 
 creek at a magnificent stone bridge of three arches. 
 The man who designed that bridge was a true 
 artist, and had studied the old English bridges. 
 And at this corner stands a curious old house bear- 
 ing the inscription Ludwig's Lust (Ludwig's Pleas- 
 ure) Built 1774, Remodelled 1910. As the pedes- 
 trians stood admiring, a car drove up to the door, 
 and the hapless Doggerel created some irritation 
 by hopefully asldng one of the motorists if the 
 place were an inn. 
 
 After Ludwig's Lust came the most enchanting 
 stretch of the journey. The road runs close by the 
 creek, which foams along a stony course under an 
 aisle of trees. Where Wigwam Run joins the creek 
 is a group of farm buildings and a wayside spring 
 of perfect water. It was sorry to see a beautiful 
 old outhouse of dappled stonework being pickaxed 
 into rubble. At this point is the fork of Darby and 
 14 
 
Little Darby. An old deserted mill is buried in 
 greenery, the stones furred with moss. Just be- 
 yond, a little road dips off to the left, crossing both 
 branches of the stream. Here, where Little Darby 
 churns cascading among great boulders and tiny 
 shelves of sand, one might well be in some moun- 
 tain elbow of the Poconos. Madrigal and Doggerel 
 gazed tenderly on this shady cavern of wood and 
 water. If it had been an hour earlier, with the sun- 
 light strong upon these private grottoes, a bathe 
 would have been in order. But it was already 
 drawing late. 
 
 The Berwyn road, on which the travelers now 
 proceeded, is full of surprises. Great houses crown 
 the hilltops, with rows of slender poplars silhou- 
 etted against the sky. Here and there a field of 
 tawny grain lifts a smooth shoulder against blue 
 heaven. A little drinking fountain on a downward 
 grade drops a tinkling dribble of cold water from a 
 carved lion's mouth. Among old willows and but- 
 tonwoods stand comely farmhouses — one beside 
 the road is tinted a rich salmon pink. A real estate 
 agent's sign at the entrance to a fine tract says, 
 ''For Sale, 47 Acres, with Runing Water." The 
 walkers thought they discerned a message in that. 
 For a rune means a mark of magic significance, a 
 whisper, a secret counsel. And the chiming water 
 of Darby has its own whispers of secret counsel as 
 it runs its merry way, a laughing little river that 
 preaches sermons unawares. 
 
 In the meadows near Old St. David's Church — 
 
THE HAPPY VALLEY 205 
 
 built when Philadelphia itself was hardly more 
 than a village — are Guernsey calves, soft as a plush 
 cushion, with bright topaz eyes. Madrigal told 
 how he had written a poem about Old St. David's 
 when he was sixteen, in which he describeii the 
 ''kine" grazing by the stream, and in which (after 
 the manner of poets in their teens) he besought 
 merciful Death to come and take him. Death, one 
 supposes, was sorely tempted, but happily re- 
 frained from reaping the tender bardling. 
 
 In the quiet graveyard of Old St. David's the 
 travelers halted a while, to see the grave of An- 
 thony Wayne and admire the thin trailers of the 
 larches swinging in the golden flood of late sun- 
 hght that slanted down the valley. It was 6 
 o'clock, and they were beginning to doubt their 
 abihty to reach their destination on time. A party 
 of motorists were just leaving the church, and 
 both Madrigal and Doggerel loitered pointedly by 
 the gate in hopes of a lift. But no such fortune. 
 So they set valiantly upon the last leg of the after- 
 noon. In a shady bend of the road came a merry 
 motor zooming along and Doggerel's friend, Jarden 
 Guenther, at the wheel. Mr. Guenther was doubt- 
 less amazed to see Doggerel in this remote spot, 
 but he was going the other way, and passed with 
 a cheerful halloo. Then, by the old Defense Signal 
 tree on the Paoli road, came a flivver, which res- 
 cued the two plodders and took them two miles or 
 so on their way. By the Tredyffrin golf course 
 they were set down before a winding byway, 
 
206 OUR OLD DESK 
 
 which they followed with tingling shanks and 
 hearts full of achievement. 
 
 A shady lane by the now stripling Darby 
 brought them to a quiet pool under leaning wil- 
 lows, and a silver gush of water over a small dam 
 beneath which a bronze Venus bathes herself 
 thoughtfully. Madrigal wore the face of one en- 
 tering into joy rarely vouchsafed to battered 
 poets. Doggerel, in his paltry way, was likewise 
 of blithe cheer. Through a gap in the hedge they 
 scaled a knoll and reached their haven. And here 
 they found what virtuous walkers have ever found 
 at the end of an innocent journey — a bath, a beer, 
 and a blessing. 
 
 OUR OLD DESK 
 
 We see that there has been a fire at a second- 
 hand furniture warehouse on Arch street. We 
 think we can offer an explanation for the blaze. 
 Our old desk was there. 
 
 That desk was always a hoodoo. Last autumn, 
 when we gave up commuting and moved into 
 town, we had to get rid of some of our goods in 
 order to squeeze ourselves into an apartment. The 
 very first thing we parted with was our old desk. 
 We did not tell genial Mr. P., the dealer in second- 
 hand furniture, that the piece was a Jonah, for we 
 were afraid it would knock fifty cents or so off his 
 offer, but now we feel rather shamefaced for not 
 having warned him. 
 
OUR OLD DESK 207 
 
 We bought the desk before we were married, at 
 a department store in New York. It was almost 
 the last article that store, a famous one in its day, 
 got paid for. Soon after selling it the house failed. 
 
 We moved the desk out to a cottage in the coun- 
 try. We sat down in front of it. We didn't know 
 it then, but we are convinced now there was some 
 evil genius in it. It must have been built of slip- 
 pery elm, full of knots, cut in the dark of the moon 
 while a brindle cat was mewing. The drawers 
 stuck once a week and had to be pared down with 
 a jack-knife. We sat at that desk night after night, 
 with burning visions of literary immortality. We 
 wrote poems that no one would buy. We wrote 
 stories that gradually became soiled and wrinkled 
 around the folds of the manuscript. We wrote 
 pamphlets eulogizing hotels and tried to palm 
 them off on the managers as advertising booklets. 
 The hotels accepted the booklets and went out of 
 business before paying for them. Sitting at that 
 desk we composed sparkling essays for a news- 
 paper in Toledo, and after the paper had printed a 
 bunch of them we wrote to the editor and asked 
 him how about a check. He replied that he did not 
 understand we were writing that stuff for actual 
 money. He was quite grieved to have misunder- 
 stood us so. He thought we were merely writing 
 them for the pleasure of uplifting the hearts of 
 Toledo. 
 
 There was another odd thing about that desk. 
 There was some drowsy sirup in its veins. Perhaps 
 
208 OUR OLD DESK 
 
 the wood hadn't been properly seasoned. Anyway, 
 we couldn't keep awake while sitting at it. Night 
 after night, assiduously, while the jolly old Long 
 Island mosquitoes hummed in through the open 
 windows like Liberty motors, we would begin tc 
 scribe. After an hour or so we would always fall 
 asleep over the tawny keys of our ancient type- 
 writer. It may be that the trouble lay partly in 
 the typing bus, for we were so inexpert that we 
 couldn't pound rapidly enough to keep ourself 
 awake. We remember memorizing the letters on 
 the first row of keys in a vain hope that if we 
 could say qwertyuiop off by heart it would help us 
 to move along faster, but it did no good. Wej 
 started a novel, but after six months of wrestUng 
 we decided that as long as we worked at that desk 
 we would never get it done. We tried writing on 
 the kitchen table, in front of the stove — it was 
 winter by that time — and we got the novel done 
 in no time. 
 
 When we moved to Marathon, the van contain- 
 ing that desk broke down near a novelty factory 
 in Trenton. Probably that novelty factory was its 
 home and the old flat-top had nostalgia. In order 
 to get the desk into the Marathon house its top 
 had to be unscrewed and the screws were lost. 
 After that, whenever we were trying to write a 
 poem in the small hours of the night, when we got 
 aroused in the heat of composition and shifted 
 round on our chair, the whole top of the desk 
 
OUR OLD DESK 209 
 
 would slide off and the inkwell would cascade on 
 to the floor. 
 
 There was one drawer in that desk that we look 
 back on with particular affection. We had been 
 asked by a publisher in Chicago to contribute the 
 section on Etiquette for a Household Encyclo- 
 pedia that was to be issued. That was about 1914, 
 if we remember rightly. We knew nothing what- 
 ever about Etiquette. The article was to deal 
 with the origin and history of social usages, coming 
 down to the very latest thing in table manners, 
 accepting and declining invitations, specimen let- 
 ters dealing with every social emergency, such as 
 being invited to go to a clambake, a wedding or 
 the dedication of a sanitary dog-pound. We had 
 an uproarious time compiling the essay. It was 
 to contain at least fifteen thousand words and we 
 were to get fifty dollars for it. In the chapter on 
 specimen letters we let ourself go without restraint. 
 In these specimen letters we amused ourself by 
 using the names of all our friends. We chuckled to 
 think of their amazement on finding themselves 
 enshrined in this Household Encyclopedia, writing 
 demure and stilted little regrets or acceptances for 
 imaginary functions. 
 
 The manuscript of this article had to be mailed 
 to Chicago on a certain date or the fifty dollars 
 would be forfeit. Late the night before we toiled 
 at our desk putting the final touches on The Eti- 
 quette of Courtship and Etiquette for Young 
 Girls at Boarding School. Never having been a 
 
210 OUR OLD DESK 
 
 young girl at boarding school, our ideas were 
 largely theoretical, but still we thought they were 
 based on sound sense and a winsome instinct as to 
 comely demeanor. We threw our heart into the 
 task and felt that Louisa Alcott herself could not 
 have counseled more becoming decorum. It was 
 long after midnight when we finished the last reply 
 of a young girl to the young man who had called 
 her by her first name three months before we felt 
 he had any right to do so. We put these last two 
 sections of the manuscript into a drawer of the 
 desk, to give them a final reading the next morn- 
 ing. 
 
 Late that night there came a damp fog, one of 
 those pearly Long Island fogs. The desk drawer 
 swelled up and retired from active life. Contain- 
 ing its precious freight, it was immovable. We 
 stood the desk upside down, we tugged frantically 
 at it, we hammered and chiseled and strove but in 
 vain. The hour for mailing the copy approached. 
 At last baffied, we had to speed to a mail-box and 
 post the treatise on Etiquette without those two 
 chapters. The publisher, we knew, would not 
 miss them, though to us they contained the cream 
 of our whole philosophy of politeness, containing 
 our prized aphorisms on Consideration for Others 
 The Basis of Good Manners. 
 
 We were never able to get that drawer open 
 again. When we sold the desk to Mr. P. it was 
 still tightly stuck. Some months ago we were 
 passing along Arch street, just under the Reading 
 
CALLING ON WILLIAM PENN 211 
 
 Railway viaduct, and we saw a familiar sight on 
 the pavement. It was our old desk, covered with 
 dust and displayed for sale, but unmistakable to 
 our recognitory eye. Furtively we approached it 
 and gave the well-known bottom drawer a yank. 
 It was still jammed, and presumably the manu- 
 script was still within. We thought for a moment 
 of buying the old thing again, splitting it open with 
 an ax and getting out our literary offspring. But 
 we didn't. And now this fire has come along and 
 undoubtedly the desk perished in the flames. If 
 only that chapter on Young Girls at Boarding 
 School could have been rescued .... We 
 have a daughter of our own now, and it might 
 have given us some hints on how to bring her up. 
 
 CALLING ON WILLIAM PENN 
 It would be a seemly thing, perhaps, if candi- 
 dates for political office were to take a private trip 
 up the tower of the City Hall and spend an hour 
 or so in solitary musing. Looking out over the 
 great expanse of men and buildings they might 
 get a vision of Philadelphia that would be more 
 valuable to them than the brisk bickering business 
 of ''showing each other up." 
 
 Under the kindly guidance of Mr. Kellett, the 
 superintendent of elevators in the City Hall, I was 
 permitted to go up to the little gallery at the base 
 of the statue. A special elevator runs up inside the 
 tower, starting from the seventh floor. Through 
 
212 CALLING ON WILLIAM PENN 
 
 great echoing spaces, crossed with girders and lit- 
 tered with iron work which the steeplejacks have 
 taken down from the summit for painting and re- 
 pairs, the small car rises slowly into the top of the 
 dome, over 500 feet above the street. Then you 
 step out onto the platform. Along the raiUng are 
 the big arc lights that illuminate the pinnacle at 
 night. Over your head is the projecting square toe 
 of William Penn, his sturdy stockinged legs, his 
 coat-tails and outstretched right hand as he stands 
 looking toward the treaty ground. He loved the 
 ''fruits of solitude," and he has them here. He is 
 not often disturbed, save by the nimble acrobats 
 who swing in a bosun's chair at their unenvied 
 tasks. A bosun's chair, let one add, is only a plank, 
 not much bigger than a shingle, noosed in midair 
 in the loop of a rope. 
 
 The street-dweller knows curiously little of the 
 atmospheric conditions. The groundling would 
 have said that yesterday was a day of crystal 
 clearness. Yet from the top of the tower, even in 
 the frank morning sunlight, the view was strangely 
 restricted. The distances were veiled in summer 
 haze. Camden, beyond the shorehne, was a bluish 
 blur; even League Island was not visible. On the 
 west the view faded away into the greenery of 
 Overbrook, and northward the eye did not reach 
 to the suburbs at all. Enclosed by this softened 
 dimness, the city seemed even vaster than it is. 
 
 At that height the clamor of the city is dulled to 
 a gentle mumble, pierced by the groan of trolleys 
 
CALLING ON WILLIAM PENN 213 
 
 and the sharp yelps of motorcars trundling round 
 the Hall. On the glittering pathway of the river 
 ferries and tugs were sliding, kicking up a riffle of 
 white foam behind them. One curious and ap- 
 plaudable feature is the absence of smoke. All over 
 the roofs of the city float little plumes and wisps 
 of steam, detaching and drifting away in the warm 
 blue shimmer Hke dissolving feathers. A cool 
 breeze was moving in from over the Park, where 
 the tall columns of the Smith Memorial were rising 
 over a sea of green. The Parkway seen from above 
 stands out as the most notable feature of Phila- 
 delphia topography. From there, too, one sees 
 how the northeastern corner of Broad Street Sta- 
 tion cuts into the Hne of the Parkway, and wonders 
 just how this will be rectified. 
 
 It is fascinating to lean over that sunny parapet 
 and watch the city at its work. Down at the cor- 
 ner of Broad and Chestnut I could see a truck 
 loaded with rolls of paper, drawn by three horses, 
 turning into Chestnut street. On the roof of 
 the Wanamaker store was a party of sightseers, 
 mostly ladies, going round with a guide. Mr. 
 Kellett and I got out our kerchiefs and gave them 
 a wave. In a moment they saw us, and all fluttered 
 enthusiastic response. We were amused to notice 
 one lady who detached herself from the party and 
 went darting about the roof in a most original and 
 random fashion. From our eyrie it looked rather 
 as though she was going to take a canter round the 
 running track on the top of the store, and we 
 
^14 CALLING ON WILLIAM PENN 
 
 waited patiently to see what she was up to. Then 
 she disappeared. As one looks over the flat bare 
 roofs of skyscrapers it seems curious that so few 
 of them are put to any use. Only on one of the 
 cliffs of offices could I see any attempt at beauty. 
 This was on the roof of the Finance Building, 
 where there are three tiny grass plots and a little 
 white bench. 
 
 It is possible to climb up through William 
 Penn's left leg by a narrow ladder, dodging among 
 beams and girders and through a trap-door, and so 
 up to the brim of his beaver. I was keen to essay it, 
 but Mr. Kellett discouraged me by saying a suit 
 of overalls was necessary. I am no respecter of 
 garments, but I did not press the point, as I feared 
 that my friendly guide might still think I had a 
 grenade about my person, and was yearning for 
 immortahty by blowing Wilham's head off. So 
 we compromised by going down to see the inside 
 of the huge clock dials, and the ingenious com- 
 pressed air devices by which the hands are moved 
 every thirty seconds. A minute space on each 
 clock face is an arc of about fourteen inches, so 
 the minute hand jumps about seven inches every 
 half minute. In a quiet room at the base of the 
 tower are the two master clocks that control the 
 whole mechanism. They are very beautiful to 
 watch, and it is interesting to see that they were 
 made in Germany, by Strasser and Rohde, Glass- 
 hutte, Saxony. Exact noon is telegraphed from 
 
CALLING ON WILLIAM PENN 215 
 
 Washington every day so that these clocks can be 
 kept strictly on the tick. 
 
 If we were a city of mystics, instead of a city 
 of hustling and perturbed business men, we would 
 elect a soothsayer to dwell on the little gallery 
 below William Penn. The pleasantest job in the 
 world has always been that of an oracle. This 
 soothsayer would be wholly aloof from the passion 
 of the streets. (Passion, said William Penn, is a 
 sort of fever in the mind, which always leaves us 
 weaker than it found us.) He would spend his 
 time reading the "Fruits of Solitude" and would 
 occasionally scribble messages on slips of paper, 
 which he would weight with marbles and throw 
 overboard. Those who found these precious say- 
 ings would read them reverently, and go on about 
 their folly undismayed. Baskets of victuals and 
 raiment would occasionally be conveyed to this 
 lofty dreamer by humble admirers. On his windy 
 perch he would brood lovingly upon the great city 
 of his choice. When election time came round he 
 would throw down shps telling people whom to 
 vote for. If he thought (not mincing words) that 
 none of the proposed candidates was worth a 
 damn, he would frown down forbiddingly, and the 
 balloting would have to be postponed until can- 
 didates satisfactory to his vision had been put for- 
 ward. When they told him that John Jones had 
 hosts of friends, scraps of paper would be found 
 in the City Hall courtyard saying " It is the friends 
 of mayors who make all the trouble." And the 
 
216 CALLING ON WILLIAM PENN 
 
 people would marvel greatly. He would be the 
 only completely blissful prophet in the world, as 
 the only way for an oracle to be happy is to put 
 him so far away from the market-place that he 
 can't see that the people pay no attention to his 
 utterances. What William Penn used to call his 
 "natural candle/' that is the light of his spirit, 
 would burn with a cheerful and unguttered radi- 
 ance. Just inside the door that leads to the tower 
 gallery there is a comfortable meditative armchair 
 of the kind usually found in police stations. So 
 perhaps they are planning to have just such an 
 oracle. 
 
 I wandered for some time in the broad corridors 
 of the City Hall, which smell faintly of musky dis- 
 infectant. I peered into the district attorney's in- 
 dictment department, where a number of people 
 were gathered. Occasionally a clerk would call out 
 names, and some would disappear into inner 
 rooms. Whether they were plaintiffs or defendants 
 I could not conjecture. In the calf-Hned alcoves of 
 the law library, learned men were reading under 
 green lamps. I looked uncomprehendingly at the 
 signs on the doors — Court of Common Pleas, Court 
 of Oyer and Terminer, Orphans^ Court, Delinquent 
 Tax Bureau, Inspector of Nuisances. All this com- 
 plex machinery that keeps the city in order makes 
 the layman marvel at its efficiency and its appar- 
 ent kindliness. He wants to do something horrible 
 in order to see how the wheels go round. He feels 
 a little guilty not to have committed some crime. 
 
MADONNAS OF THE CURB 217 
 
 MADONNAS OF THE CURB 
 
 A LITTLE girl — she can't have been more than 
 twelve years old — stood up gravely and said: 
 " The meeting will please come to order. The secre- 
 tary will read the minutes of the last meeting." 
 
 The gathering of small females — some ragged, 
 some very trim, ranging in age from eight to four- 
 teen — sat expectant. A child in a clean pink dress 
 with neatly braided blonde hair advanced seriously 
 and read the minutes of the previous meeting. 
 
 '^ Are there any corrections? " said the president. 
 
 There were none and the meeting proceeded to 
 business. On a long table in the schoolroom was a 
 large laundry basket, a small quilted mattress, 
 sheets, blankets and other accessories. There was 
 a baby there, a life-size doll, amazingly realistic. 
 The business of the meeting was the discussion, 
 under the guidance of Miss Matilda Needle, the 
 teacher, of the proper way of making a baby's bed, 
 putting him to sleep in the basket and ventilating 
 the room. It was the Little Mothers' League of 
 the Vare School, on Morris street, holding its 
 weekly meeting. 
 
 Miss Needle took the chair. ^^I saw something 
 the other day," she said to the children, "that 
 pleased me very much. I was coming down the 
 street and I saw Elsie Pulaski holding a baby like 
 this. (She illustrated by picking up the doll, let- 
 ting its head sag, and all the Little Mothers looked 
 
218 MADUJNMAS UJ^^ THE CURB 
 
 very grave.) "I was about to speak to her when 
 Bertha Fitz ran across the street and said to her: 
 ' You mustn't hold the baby hke that. You'll hurt 
 him.' And Bertha showed her the right way to 
 hold him. Now can any of you show me the way 
 Bertha did it?" 
 
 Thirty small arms waved frantically in the air. 
 There was a furious eagerness to show how the 
 luckless Elsie should have held her baby brother. 
 
 "Well, Mary," said the teacher, "you show us 
 how the baby should be picked up." 
 
 Blushing with pride, Mary advanced to the 
 table and with infinite care inserted one arm under 
 the large doll. But in her excitement she made a 
 false start. She used the right arm where the posi- 
 tion of the artificial infant demanded the left. 
 This meant that her other arm had to pass diag- 
 onally across the baby in an awkward way. Imme- 
 diately several of the juvenile audience showed 
 signs of professional disgust. Hands vibrated in 
 air. Another member of the Little Mothers' 
 League was called upon, and poor Mary took her 
 seat in discomfiture. 
 
 They passed to another topic. One of the mem- 
 bers demonstrated the correct way of making the 
 baby's bed. With proud correctness she disposed 
 the mattress, the rubber sheeting, the sheets and 
 blankets, showing how each should be tucked in, 
 how the upper sheet should be turned down over 
 the top of the blanket, so that the wool would not 
 
MADONNAS OF THE CURB 219 
 
 irritate the baby's chin. The others watched her 
 with the severity of judges on the bench. 
 
 The teacher began to ask questions. 
 
 ''Who should the baby sleep with?" she said. 
 
 One very small girl, carried away by the form 
 of the question, cried out, "His mother!" The 
 others waved their hands. 
 
 ''Well, who should he sleep with?" said Miss 
 Needle. 
 
 "Himself!" cried several triumphantly. 
 
 "Why should he sleep by himself? Rosa, you 
 tell us." 
 
 Rosa stood up. She was a dark-eyed little crea- 
 ture, with hair cropped short — we will not ask 
 why. Her face worked with the excitement of 
 putting her thoughts into language. 
 
 "If he sleeps with his mother she might lay on 
 him and smother him." 
 
 They all seemed to shudder. It was as though 
 the unfortunate infant was perishing before their 
 very eyes. 
 
 The Little Mothers' Leagues are groups of 
 small girls, ranging in age from eight to fourteen, 
 who are being taught the essentials of caring for 
 babies, under the direction of the Child Federa- 
 tion. By the kindness of the Federation, and Miss 
 O'Neill, the supervisor of public school play- 
 grounds, I was privileged to visit four of these 
 classes the other afternoon. In three of the 
 schools the children were learning how to put the 
 baby to bed; in one they were sitting around a 
 
 IS 
 
mo MADONNAS OF THE CURB 
 
 small bathtub studying the technique of the 
 baby's bath. Some of the girls had brought babies 
 with them, for almost all of them are at least partly 
 responsible for the care of one or more children. 
 There was a moving pathos in the gravity with 
 which these matrons before their time discussed 
 the problems of their craft; and yet it was also 
 the finest kind of a game and they evidently en- 
 joyed it heartily. Many of them come from 
 ignorant homes where the parents know next to 
 nothing of hygiene. Their teachers tell of the 
 valiant efforts of these children to convert their 
 mothers to more sanitary ways — efforts which are 
 happily often successful. In one home, where the 
 father was a tailor, the baby was kept in a room 
 where the pressing was done, the air was hot and 
 heavy with steam. The small daughter, who was a 
 member of the Little Mothers' League, insisted 
 on the baby being removed to another room. Two 
 children in another school, who had been told of 
 the importance of keeping the baby's milk on ice, 
 tried to make home-made ice-boxes, which their 
 fathers, becoming interested, promised to finish 
 for them. 
 
 One wishes that all this might be only an en- 
 chanting game for these children, and that it 
 would not be necessary for them to put it into 
 practice every day, with tired little arms and 
 aching backs. He must be stiff-hearted indeed 
 who can watch these gatherings, their tousled 
 little heads and bare legs, their passionate intent- 
 
MADONNAS OF THE CURB 221 
 
 ness, their professional enthusiasm, without some- 
 thing of a pang. They know so much of the prob- 
 lems, and they are so pathetically small. There is 
 a touching truth in the comment of one teacher in 
 her report: '' The girls who had no babies at home 
 seemed to take greater interest than those that did 
 have." But this is not always so, for nothing 
 could be more enthusiastic than the little essays 
 written by the children themselves, describing 
 what they have learnt. I cannot resist a few 
 quotations : 
 
 No one can be healthy unless she is extremely 
 clean. Baby will want his bath daily, with soap 
 and warmish water. You should not put to much 
 soap on the baby's face as it get in the baby's 
 eyes. They likes to kick the water as long as sup- 
 port his head. Before starting on this swimming 
 expedition, you should have all, her or him clothes, 
 warm, by you, and he expects a warm flannel on 
 your knees to lie on. You must carefully dry all 
 the creases in his fat body for him, with a soft 
 towel. (Ruth Higgins, Fifth Grade.) 
 
 The Little Mothers' League has helped me a 
 good bit in dressing my little baby sister and I 
 have enjoyed it verj^ much and I think it is a very 
 sencible society. I have learnt how to dress the 
 baby in winter and summer. And after it is done 
 with the bottle it should be boiled. (Helen Potter.) 
 
 A baby is not to be made to walk to soon be- 
 cause he might become bollegged. Some mothers 
 think it is nice to see the baby walk soon. You 
 should never listen to what your neighbor says 
 when your baby is sick, but take him to a doctor. 
 (Anna Mack, Sixth Grade.) 
 
222 THE PARADISE SPECIAL 
 
 In washing a baby you should have a httle tub 
 to bath it in and when you hear the doorbell ring 
 you should never let your baby in the tub while 
 you go because many of them get drowned, and 
 you should use castial soap because that is the 
 best. (Marie Donahue, Seventh Grade, age 12.) 
 
 But perhaps most eloquent of all is what little 
 Mary Roberts says. Mary is in the Sixth Grade 
 at the Boker School : 
 
 "The melancholy days are come 
 The saddest of the year," 
 
 Is what we all think when the time comes when 
 The Little Mothers' League has to break up for the 
 year. For seven weeks we have listened eagerly 
 to what Miss Ford has told us. We all hope Miss 
 Ford will come back to Boker School next fall 
 and teach us how to care for infants. 
 
 THE PARADISE SPECIAL 
 
 The big bus known to thousands of Philadelphia 
 children as the Paradise Special was standing 
 ready at 1621 Cherry street. Inside, in one of the 
 large classrooms of the Friends' Select School, 
 twenty small boys, each carefully tagged and 
 carrying his bundle, were waiting impatiently. 
 It was half-past eight in the morning, and the bus 
 was about to leave for Paradise Farm with the 
 Tuesday morning consignment of urchins for the 
 summer camp run by the Children's Country 
 Week Association. The doctor was looking over 
 
THE PARADISE SPECIAL 223 
 
 them and one poor youngster was trying to con- 
 ceal his tears from the rest. The doctor had 
 found a spot in his throat and he had a high 
 temperature. He was not to be allowed to go this 
 week; his turn would have to come later. They 
 were all a bit impatient by this time. Most of 
 them had been up since half-past five, counting 
 every minute. 
 
 If you enjoy a shrill treble upoar, and find it 
 amusing to watch a busload of small boys enjoying 
 themselves at the top of their versatile powers, I 
 recommend a trip on the Paradise Special. 
 Throughout the week the bus is busy taking chil- 
 dren and mothers to the various farms and camps 
 run by the Association, but Tuesday morning is 
 boys' day. Not the least amusing feature of the 
 trip is to watch the expressions of those the bus 
 passes on the road. It creates a broad grin 
 wherever it goes. That shouting caravan of juve- 
 nile glee is indeed an entertaining sight. 
 
 There were nineteen boys on board when we left 
 Cherry street — an unusually small load for the 
 Paradise Special. Others were going out by train. 
 But nineteen boys, aged from seven to thirteen, 
 comprise a considerable amount of energy. Three 
 or four of them had been to Paradise Farm before, 
 and immediately took the lead in commenting on 
 all that befell. Mickey Coyle was one of these, 
 lamenting that as he would be thirteen in Septem- 
 ber this would probably be his last visit. "But 
 Fm lucky I ain't dead," he said philosophically. 
 
224 THE PARADISE SPECIAL 
 
 'Tve a brother twenty years old who's dead. He 
 died on my birthday. He had bronnical pneu- 
 monia and typhoid and flu." 
 
 We passed along the Parkway. ^' This is a Bolly- 
 vard, ain't it?" said one. Entering the Park, 
 another cried, ''Is this the country?" ''Sure, 
 them's the Rocky Mountains," said Mickey in 
 scorn. 
 
 The first question in the minds of all the passen- 
 gers was to know exactly how soon, and at what 
 precise point they would be " in the country." The 
 Park, though splendid enough, was not "the coun- 
 try." As we sped along City Line road there was 
 intense argument as to whether those on one side 
 of the bus were in the country while those of us on 
 the other side were still in the city. Another game 
 that seemed to underlie all their thoughts was that 
 this expedition was in some way connected with 
 misfortune for Germany. Every time we over- 
 hauled another car or truck — which happened not 
 infrequently, for the Paradise Special travels at a 
 good clip — that car was set down as German. 
 Every time a swift vehicle passed us we were said 
 to be in danger of being torpedoed. For some 
 period of time we were conceived to be a load of 
 German prisoners who had been captured by the 
 Yanks. Then again one small enthusiast shouted 
 out that we were ''bullsheviks" who had been 
 arrested. 
 
 Once satisfied that we were really in the country 
 — and they were not quite at ease on this point 
 
THE PARADISE SPECIAL 225 
 
 until the last of the suburban movies had been left 
 behind — their attention focused itself on the ques- 
 tion of apple trees. Even so experienced a Coun- 
 try Weeker as Mickey (this was his fifth visit to 
 the Farm) was vague on this point. To a city 
 youngster almost every tree seems to be an apple 
 tree. And everything that looks in the least red- 
 dish is a strawberry. Unripe blackberries along the 
 hedges were hailed with tumult and shouting as 
 strawberries. Every cow with horns was regarded 
 a little fearfully as a bull. And a cow in the un- 
 familiar posture of lying down on top of a hill was 
 pointed out (from a distance) as a "statue." 
 
 After we passed Daylesford and Green Tree and 
 the blue hills along the Schuylkill came into view, 
 the cry, '^Look at that scenery!" became inces- 
 sant. Any view containing hills is known as 
 '^ scenery" to the Country- Weekers. When the 
 scenery began eleven-3^ear-old Charley Franklin 
 could contain himself no longer. He began to tear 
 off the clean shirt and new shoes in which his 
 mother had sent him from home, and, digging in 
 his bundle, hauled out a blouse and tattered pair 
 of sneakers that satisfied his idea of fitness for the 
 great adventure. He proudly showed me his small 
 bathing suit, carefully wrapped up in a Sunday 
 comic supplement. His paper bag of cookies had 
 long since been devoured, and the question of how 
 soon another meal would come his way was begin- 
 ning to worry him. Then we turned off the high 
 road, past a signpost saying Paradise Farm, and 
 
226 THE PARADISE SPECIAL 
 
 they were all on their toes. The long, echoing tun- 
 nel under the high railway embankment was 
 greeted with resounding cheers. More cheers for 
 the swimming hole just beyond. We drew up at 
 the foot of a steep flight of wooden steps leading 
 up the hill. All piled out with yells. At the top of 
 the stairs stood a rather glum group of forty 
 similar urchins. These responded without much 
 acclaim to the applause of the newcomers. They 
 were the batch going home on the bus. Their week 
 at Paradise was over. 
 
 When we left, a few minutes later, the arrivals 
 were already being assigned to their bunks in the 
 various camp bungalows, and were looking around 
 exultantly at the plentiful "scenery" and evi- 
 dences of plentiful food to come. But the temper 
 of the returning load was not quite so mirthful. 
 They also had been up since an early hour, but 
 play had languished as they had put on their 
 clean clothes and had carefully bundled up their 
 other stores in small newspaper wrappings. One 
 small cynic told me that he had learned the nec- 
 essary connection between green apples and castor 
 oil. Another, with flaming red hair, seemed to 
 have tears in his eyes. Whether these were due to 
 green apples or to grief I could not determine. But 
 the way they all shouted good-by to Mr. and Mrs. 
 Steel (who have charge of the camp) showed how 
 they appreciated their week's adventure. " Good- 
 by swimming hole!" they shouted, and then 
 "Good-by snakes!" explaining that they had 
 
THE PARADISE SPECIAL 227 
 
 killed four small garter snakes in the meadow. 
 They cheered up greatly when they saw a freight 
 train puffing along the railway, and it was evident 
 that we would have a fair race with that train all 
 the way in to Overbrook. Immediately the train 
 was set down as a German menace, and the cheer- 
 ful chauffeur was implored to do his best for his 
 country. It should be said that we beat the Ger- 
 man train to Overbrook by about one hundred 
 yards. 
 
 The latter part of the ride was marked by a sud- 
 den panic on the part of the passengers concerning 
 sundry nickels and dimes which seemed to have 
 disappeared, Nathan Schumpler, aged eight, 
 turned his blouse pocket inside out a dozen times 
 without finding the dime he was sure he had had. 
 This was a terrible blow, because he told me he 
 had lost a quarter through a crack in the porch the 
 day before. This started all the others exploring. 
 Knotted and far from clean handkerchiefs were 
 hastily untied to make sure of the precious coinage 
 for homeward carfare. At last Nathan found his 
 dime, in the very pocket he had been turning up- 
 side down for fifteen minutes. When they got 
 back to Cherry street they were overjoj^ed to find a 
 number of toy trains and tracks waiting on the 
 floor. My last sight of the Country- Weekers was 
 when they were playing with these while their 
 guardians checked off their lists and made sure 
 that each had carfare to take him home and knew 
 how to get there. ''Yes," said the chauffeur, as he 
 
228 UP TO VALLEY GREEN 
 
 lit a cigarette and watched them disperse, ''they're 
 a great bunch. But if you want to hear noise, you 
 should Hsten to the girls when they go out." 
 
 UP TO VALLEY GREEN 
 Madkigai. had a bad cold, and I was trumpeting 
 with hay fever; and we set off for consolation in a 
 tramp along the Wissahickon. In the drowsy still- 
 ness of a late August afternoon, with a foreboding 
 of autumn chill already in the air, we sneezed and 
 coughed our way along the lovely ravine. Those 
 lonely glades, that once echoed to the brisk drum- 
 ming of horses' hoofs, rang with our miserable 
 sternutations. The rocky gullies and pine-scented 
 hillsides became for one afternoon the Vallombrosa 
 of two valetudinarians. Thoughts of mortal per- 
 ishment lay darkly upon us. We had lunched 
 gorgeously with a charming host who was suffering 
 with sciatica, and had described this affliction to 
 us as a toothache as long as your leg. Then the 
 Ridge avenue car carried us between two populous 
 cities of the dead — Laurel Hill and Mount Vernon 
 Cemeteries. Was this (we thought) the beginning 
 of the end? 
 
 The Ridge avenue car set us down at the mouth 
 of Wissahickon creek. We each got out a clean 
 handkerchief from a hip pocket and determined to 
 make a brave fight against the dark angel. Under 
 the huge brown arches of the Reading Railway, 
 which have all the cheering gayety of an old 
 
UP TO VALLEY GREEN 229 
 
 Roman aqueduct, we entered the valley of en- 
 chantment. At this point it occurred to us that the 
 ancient Romans were really prohibitionists at 
 heart, since it was on aqueducts that they lavished 
 the fullness of their structural genius. They never 
 bothered with vinoducts. 
 
 Perhaps Philad.elphians do not quite realize how 
 famous the Wissahickon valley is. When my 
 mother was a small girl in England there stood on 
 her father's reading table a silk lampshade on 
 which were painted little scenes of the world's love- 
 liest beauty glimpses. There were vistas of Swiss 
 mountains, Italian lakes, French cathedrals, 
 Dutch canals, English gardens. And then, among 
 these fabled glories, there was a tiny sketch of a 
 scene that chiefly touched my mother's girlish 
 fanc}^ She did not ever expect to see it, but often, 
 as the evening lamplight shone through it, her eye 
 would examine its dainty charm. It was called 
 '^The Wissahickon Drive, Philadelphia, U. S. A." 
 Many years afterward she saw it for the first time, 
 and her heart jumped as hearts do when they are 
 given a chance. 
 
 The lower reach of the creek, with its placid 
 green water, the great trees leaning over it, the 
 picnic parties along the western marge, and the 
 little boats splashing about, is amazingly hke the 
 Thames at Oxford. I suppose all little rivers are 
 much the same, after all; but the likeness here is 
 so real that I cannot forbear to mention it. But 
 one has an uneasy sense, as one walks and watches 
 
230 UP TO VALLEY GREEN 
 
 the gleaming motors that flit by hke the whizz of 
 the Ancient Mariner's crossbow, that the Wissa- 
 hickon has seen better days. The days when the 
 horse was king, when all the old inns were a bustle 
 of rich food and drink, and the winter afternoons 
 were a ringle-jingle of sleigh chimes. Then one 
 turns away to the left, into the stillness of the 
 carriage drive, where motors are not allowed, and 
 the merry clop-clop of hoofs is still heard now and 
 then. Two elderly gentlemen came swiftly by in a 
 bright little gig with red wheels, drawn by a 
 spirited horse. With what a smiling cheer they 
 gazed about them, innocently happy in their life- 
 long pastime! And yet there was a certain pathos 
 in the sight. Two old cronies, they were Hving out 
 the good old days together. Only a few paces on 
 was the abandoned foundation of the Lotus Inn. 
 And I remembered the vei-ses in which Madrigal 
 himself, laureate of Philadelphia, has musicked the 
 spell of the river drive — 
 
 On winter nights ghost-music plays 
 (The bells of long-forgotten sleighs) 
 
 Along the Wissahickon. 
 And many a silver-headed wight 
 Who drove that pleasant road by night 
 Sighs now for his old appetite 
 
 For waffles hot and chicken. 
 And grandmas now, who then were belles! 
 How many a placid bosom swells 
 At thought of love's old charms and spells 
 
 Along the Wissahickon. 
 
UP TO \ allp:y green 231 
 
 "But, my dear fellow," said one of these silver- 
 headed wights to Madrigal when he had written 
 the poem — ''it wasn't chicken, it was catfish that 
 was famous in the Wissahickon suppers." ''All 
 right," said Madrigal, "will you please have the 
 name of the creek changed to Wissahatfish to fit 
 the rhyme? " The necessities of poets must be con- 
 sulted, unless we are to go over, pen, ink and 
 blotter, to the blattings of vers Hbre. 
 
 But a plague on the talk about "the good old 
 days ! " Certainly in those times the road along the 
 creek was never such a dreaming haunt of quiet- 
 ness as it is today. An occasional proud damsel, 
 cantering on horse, accompanied by a sort of Lou 
 Tellegen groom; a rambling carriage or two, a few 
 children paddling in the stream, and a bronzed fel- 
 low galloping along with eager face — just enough 
 movement to vary the sohtude. The creek pours 
 smoothly over rocky shelves, churning in a white 
 soapy triangle of foam below a cascade, or sUpping 
 in clear green channels through an aisle of button- 
 woods and incredibly slender tulip-poplars. Here 
 and there is a canoe, teetering gently in a nook of 
 shade, while Colin and Amaryllis are uttering 
 bashful pleasantries each to other — innocent pla- 
 giarisms as old as Eden, that seem to themselves 
 so gorgeously new and dehcious. The road bends 
 and slopes, under cliffs of fern and evergreen, 
 where a moist pungency of balsam and turpentine 
 breathes graciously in the nose of the sneezer. 
 Gushing springs splash on the steep bank. 
 
232 UP TO VALLEY GREEN 
 
 Already, though only the end of August, there 
 was a faint tinge of bronze upon the foliage. We 
 were at a loss to know whether this was truly a 
 sign of coming fall, or some unnatural blight with- 
 ering the trees. Can trees suffer from hay fever? 
 At any rate we saw many dead limbs, many great 
 trunks bald and gouty on the eastern cliffs and a 
 kind of pallor and palsy in the color of the leaves. 
 The forestry of the region did not seem altogether 
 healthy, even to the ignorant eye. We have seen 
 in recent years what a plague has befallen one 
 noble species of tree: it would be a sorry thing if 
 Philadelphia's dearest beauty spot were ravaged 
 by further troubles. 
 
 Talking and sneezing by turns, we came to 
 Valley Green, where a placid caravanserai sits be- 
 side the way, with a broad, white porch to invite 
 the traveler, and a very feminine barroom inno- 
 cently garnished with syphons of soda and lemons 
 balanced with ladylike neatness on the necks of 
 grape-juice bottles. Green canoes were drawn up 
 on the river bank; a grave file of six small yellow 
 ducklings was waddling toward the water; a tur- 
 ke}'' (very similar in profile to Mr. Chauncey 
 Depew) was meditating in the roadwa}^ A ban- 
 tam cock and his dame made up in strut what 
 they lacked in stature, and a very deaf gardener 
 was trimming a garden of vivid phlox. Here was a 
 setting that cried loudly for the hissing tea urn. 
 Yet to think again of refreshment seemed disre- 
 spectful to the noble lunch of a noble host, enjoyed 
 
ON THE SIGHTSEEING BUS 233 
 
 only four hours earlier, and we passed stoically by, 
 intending to go as far as Indian Rock, a mile fur- 
 ther. But at a little waterfall, by the Wises Mill 
 road, we halted with a common instinct. We 
 turned backward and sought that gracious ve- 
 randa at Valley Green. There, in a pot of tea and 
 buttered toast with marmalade, we forgot our 
 emunctory woes. 
 
 We set match to tobacco and strode upward on 
 Springfield road, through thickets where the sun- 
 light quivered in golden shafts, toward the comely 
 summits of Chestnut Hill. Let Madrigal have the 
 last word, for he has known and loved this bonniest 
 of creeks for forty years: 
 
 There earliest stirred the feet of spring, 
 There summer dreamed on drowsy wing; 
 And autumn's glories longest cling 
 Along the Wissahickon! 
 
 ON THE SIGHTSEEING BUS 
 
 A FEELING of sour depression, consequent upon 
 mailing the third installment to Ephraim Lederer, 
 led us to seek uphft and bhthe cheer. The sight- 
 seeing bus was filled except one seat by the driver, 
 and we hopped aboard. The car was generously 
 freighted with Sir Knights and their ladies, here for 
 a convention of Templars. There was also one 
 baffled gentleman from South America, who strove 
 desperately to understand what w^as happening to 
 him. From some broken remarks he let fall we 
 
234 ON THE SIGHTSEEING BUS 
 
 think he had boarded the vehicle under the im- 
 pression that he was taking a taxi to a railway 
 terminal, where he wanted to catch a train for 
 New York, At any rate, when we approached 
 Independence Hall he was heard to ask plaintively 
 if this was Broad Street Station. He kept uttering 
 this inquiry with increasing despondency through- 
 out the voyage. 
 
 It was a merry and humorous occasion. The 
 gentleman who sits on a little camp stool in the 
 prow of the bus and emits history and statistics 
 through a megaphone is a genuine wag. His infor- 
 mation is copious and uttered with amazing 
 fluency. But we were particularly interested in 
 the Sir Knight who slept peacefully through most 
 of the ride, which was a long one, as we were held 
 up by the big industrial parade on Broad street 
 and had to take a long detour up Thirteenth street 
 and Ridge avenue. During a spirited wrangle 
 between our guide and the conductor of a trolley 
 car, who asserted that we were nesting on his rails 
 and would not let him pass, the drowsy Knight 
 awoke and took a keen interest in the proceedings. 
 Otherwise he will look back on the tour in a 
 pleasantly muddled haze of memory. 
 
 The pathetic zeal and eagerness with which the 
 passengers hang upon the guide's words is worthy 
 of high praise. It is an index of our national pas- 
 sion for self -improvement. But after two hours of 
 continuous exhortation we began to wonder how 
 much of it would stick in their minds. The follow- 
 
ON THE SIGHTSEEING BUS 235 
 
 ing, we imagine, is not an unfair representation of 
 the jumbled wslj in which they will remember it: 
 
 Guide: Observation car now leaving Keith's 
 million-dollar theatre for a systematic tour of the 
 City of Brotherly Love. As soon as WiUiam Penn 
 had taken possession of the land he laid plans for a 
 large city at the junction of the Drexel and Biddle 
 famihes. On your left you see the site where Ben- 
 jamin Frankhn, the first postmaster general, dis- 
 covered the great truth that a special deUvery 
 letter does not arrive any faster than the ordinary 
 kind. Also on your left is Black's Hotel, where 
 Benedict Arnold was married. On your right is 
 Independence Hall, the office of the only Demo- 
 cratic newspaper published in the city. Further 
 down this street is the Delaware river, which sepa- 
 rates the city from Camden, the home of the 
 largest talking soup factory in the world. 
 
 We are now turning north on Fifth street, ap- 
 proaching Market street, the city's fashionable 
 residential thoroughfare. Directly underneath 
 your comfortable seats in this luxurious car pass 
 the swift conveyances of the subway, forming the 
 cheapest entrance into the great department 
 stores. By means of this superb subterranean pas- 
 sageway ocean steamers arrive and depart daily 
 from all ports of the globe. On your right observe 
 old Christ Church burial ground, all the occupants 
 of which were imported from England. Under the 
 large flat slab lies Benjamin Franklin, the first 
 
 i6 
 
236 ON THE SIGHTSEEING BUS 
 
 postmaster general, and his wife, the beautiful 
 Rebecca Gratz, the heroine of Walter Scott's 
 novel, ''Hugh Wynne." Now touring past the 
 Friends and Quakers' meeting house, the birth- 
 place of Old Glory. On your left the Betsy Ross 
 house, occupied by 1600 poor orphan boys. Not 
 far from here is the Black Horse Tavern, the fa- 
 vorite worshiping place of General George Wash- 
 ington 
 
 Touring west on Market street. Directly in 
 front is the tower of the City Hall, 36 feet in 
 height, surmounted by the statue of Russell H. 
 Con well. The building with the dome is Mr. 
 Cattell, the city statistician, the author of the 
 famous baseball poem, ''Acres of Diamonds." 
 The vast edifice on your left is Temple Universitj^ 
 founded by Stephen Girard, the originator of the 
 price "$1,98, marked down from $2." Here we 
 make an interesting detour to avoid the congestion 
 on Broad street. On your right the residence of 
 the late Doctor Munyon, the famous hair restorer, 
 the man who said that every self-respecting man 
 should have a roof garden of his own. This is the 
 city of homes: there are 375,000 single homes in 
 the city, each one equipped with the Httle instru- 
 ment you will notice attached to the second-story 
 windows. This is called a Busybody, and is a 
 reflecting mirror used to tell when the rent col- 
 lector is at the front door. On your right is the 
 North Penn Bank, where Benjamin Franklin flew 
 
ON THE SIGHTSEEING BUS 237 
 
 his famous kited check, extracting electricity from 
 the bank examiners. 
 
 We are now approaching Fairmount Park, the 
 largest pubhc playground in the world. On your 
 left is the aquarium, the local headquarters of the 
 Anti-Saloon League. It is open to the public six 
 days a week and to the fish at all times. In this 
 aquarium is held the annual regatta of the Schuyl- 
 kill Navy. The building in the distance with the 
 dome is Horticultural Hall, filled with all manner 
 of weird tropical visitors. This commodious tun- 
 nel was carved out of the solid rock of the Vare 
 organization by J. Hampton Moore, the well- 
 known sculptor of public opinion. Across the 
 river is the Zoological Garden, the summer resi- 
 dence of Robert Morris, the well-known cigarette 
 maker. On your right, carved out of sandstone, 
 are the hf elike figures of Tom Robins and the other 
 three members of the committee of 1000, im- 
 mortalized in Edgar Allan Poe's poem ''Tam o' 
 Shanter." Returning down the Parkway we pass 
 the magnificent grand stands erected at the time 
 of the Centennial Exposition and maintained ever 
 since for the resuscitation of those unable to get 
 seats on the Market street trolleys. I thank you 
 for your kind attention and have here some nice 
 postal cards — 
 
238 SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON 
 
 SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON 
 What an afternoon it was ! Sunshine and blue 
 sky, blended warmth and crispness, the wedding of 
 summer and autumn. Sunshine as tender as 
 Cardinal Mercier's smile, northern breeze sober as 
 the much-harassed lineaments of the Tomsmith. 
 Citizens went about their business ''daintily en- 
 folded in the bright, bright air," as a poet has put 
 it. Over the dome of the postoffice, where the 
 little cups of Mr. Bhss's wind gauge were spinning 
 merrily, pigeons' wings gleamed white in the serene 
 emptiness. The sunlight twinkled on lacquered 
 Umousines in dazzles of brightness, almost as vivid 
 as the ''genuine diamonds" in Market street show 
 windows. Phil Warner, the always lunching book- 
 seller, was out snapping up an oyster stew. Men of 
 girth and large equator were watching doughnuts 
 being fried in the baker's windows on Chestnut 
 street with painful agitation. The onward march of 
 the doughnut is a matter for serious concern in cer- 
 tain circles, particularly the circle of the waist hne. 
 Strolling up Ninth street one was privileged to 
 observe a sign of the times. A lunch room was 
 being picketed by labor agitators, who looked 
 comparatively unblemished by toil. They bore 
 large signs saying: 
 
 The C Restaurant 
 
 Is Unfair to 
 Organized Labor. 
 
SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON 239 
 
 Side by side with these gentry marched two 
 blonde waitresses from the lunch room, wearing an 
 air of much bitterness and oilcloth aprons em- 
 blazoned 
 
 Our Employes Are NOT on Strike 
 All Our Help Get Good Wages 
 Some of the Waiters Want Our Women 
 TO Quit So They May Take Their Places. 
 
 "We're doing this of our own free will/' said one 
 of these damsels to me. ' ' These guys never worked 
 here. Our boss gives us good money and we're 
 not going to walk out on him." She leaned a 
 blazing lamp toward one of the prowling picketers, 
 an Oriental of dubious valor. I would be sorry for 
 the envoy if the lady spreads her lunch-hooks 
 across the area by which his friends recognize him. 
 Almost next door to this campaigning ground is 
 the famous postal-card shop in which one may 
 always read the secret palpitations of the public 
 mind. The first card I noticed there said: 
 
 Many Happy Returns of the Day 
 What Day? Pay Day. 
 
 Arch street seemed to be taking a momentary 
 halt for lunch. On the sunny paths of old Christ 
 Church burying ground a few meditators strolled 
 to and fro, and one young couple were advancing 
 toward the wooing stage on a shady bench. The 
 lady was knitting a sweater, the swain arguing 
 with persuasion. The Betsy Ross House, still 
 
240 SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON 
 
 trailing its faded bunting and disheveled wreaths, 
 looked more like an old curio shop than ever. One 
 wishes the D. A. R. would give it a coat of paint 
 and remove the somewhat confused sign POUR 
 P ATRIA, A little further on one finds a sign 
 
 Select Evening Trip 
 
 Down the Delaware 
 
 On Palace Steamer Thomas Clyde 
 
 Theatrical Moonlight 
 
 This reference to nautical pleasures brought it 
 to my mind that I had never enjoyed a voyage on 
 the palace ferries of the Vine street crossing, and I 
 moved in that direction. On Front above Arch 
 one meets the terminus of the Frankford L, a 
 tangle of salmon-colored girders. Something per- 
 ilous, I could not see just what, was evidently 
 going on, for a workman in air shouted, ''Watch 
 yourself ! ' ' This terse phrase is one of the triumphs 
 of the American language, as is also the remark I 
 heard the other evening. It referred to a certain 
 publican who conducts a speak-easy at an ad- 
 dress I shall not name. This pubhcan had appar- 
 ently got into an argument solvable only by the 
 laying on of hands, and had emerged bearing an 
 eye severely pulped. ''Some one's been workin' on 
 him," was the comment of one of his customers. 
 
 Watching myself with caution, I dodged down 
 the steep stairs by which Cherry street descends 
 from Front to Delaware avenue. In the vista of 
 this narrow passage appeared the sharp gray bow 
 
SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON 241 
 
 of the United States transport Santa Teresa. The 
 wide space along the docks was a rumble of traffic, 
 as usual : wagons of golden bananas, sacks of pea- 
 nuts on the pavement. But along the waterside 
 bulwark were the customary groups of colored 
 citizens shooting dice. Crap, I surmise, is a truly 
 reverent form of worship: nowhere else does one 
 hear the presiding deities of the congregation ad- 
 dressed with such completely fervent petition. A 
 lusty snapping of fingers and an occasional cry of 
 ''Who thinks he feels some?" rose from one group 
 of happy competitors. Here again the student of 
 manners may notice a familiar phenomenon, the 
 outward thrust of the negro toe. It seems that the 
 first thing our brother does on buying a new pair of 
 shoes is cut out a section of leather so that his out- 
 most phalange may sprout through. 
 
 The tranquil upper deck of the Race street rec- 
 reation pier is a goodly place to sit and survey the 
 shining sweep of the river. The police boat Ash- 
 bridge lies there, and one may look down on her 
 burnished brasses, watch the tugs puffing up and 
 down, and the panorama of shipping from 
 Kaighn's Point to a big five-masted schooner 
 drawn up at Cramps. 
 
 Approaching the Vine street ferry a mood of 
 reckless vagabondage is hkely to seize the way- 
 farer. Posters inform that the Parisian FHtters 
 mth ''40 French Babies 40" are in town, and one 
 feels convinced that life still teems with irre- 
 sponsible gaiety. A savor of roasting peanuts 
 
£42 SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON 
 
 spreads upon the air. Buying a bag, one darts 
 aboard the antique ship Columbia, built in 1877, 
 and still making the perilous voyage to Cooper's 
 Point. 
 
 There is an air of charming leisure about the 
 Vine street ferry. Two mules, attached to a 
 wagon, waved their tall ears in a friendly manner 
 as we waited for the saihng date to arrive, and I 
 tried to feed them some peanuts. All the mules 
 I have ever been intimate with were connoisseurs 
 of goobers, but somewhat to my chagrin these 
 animals seemed suspicious of the offer. After sev- 
 eral unavailing efforts to engage their appetites 
 their amused charioteer informed me that he 
 didn't think they hardly knew what peanuts were. 
 These dehghtful mules watched me with an air of 
 embarrassing intensity throughout the crossing. 
 They had quite the air of ladies riding in a Pull- 
 man car whose gaze one has inadvertently inter- 
 rupted and who have misconstrued the accident. 
 
 These mules were so entertaining that I almost 
 forgot to study the river. On the Camden side 
 I was somewhat tempted to go exploring, but a 
 friendly seaman assured me the Columbia would 
 shortly return to her home port and entreated me 
 not to allow myself to be stranded abroad. So all J 
 have to report of Cooper's Point is a life-size 
 wooden figure of a horse near the ferry slip. Then 
 we made the return trip over the sparkling beer- 
 colored water, speaking a sister vessel of the 
 Shackamaxon route. 
 
SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON 243 
 
 There is much to catch the eye on a ramble up 
 Vine street from the river, but probably most in- 
 teresting is a very unexpected stable about num- 
 ber 120. Passing under an archway, one finds a 
 kind of rural barnyard scene; great wooden sheds 
 on each side of an elbow alley, with lines of wagons 
 laid away. There is an old drinking trough of 
 clear water, horses stand munching in the sun- 
 shine, and a queer tangle of ragged roofs and 
 small windows overhangs this old-fashioned scene. 
 A few doors further, on is an equally unexpected 
 sign in a barber shop windoAv : Cups and Leeches 
 Apphed. One also finds a horseshoeing forge in 
 full blast, with patient animals leaning their heads 
 against the wall and rosy irons glowing in the 
 darkness. With similar brightness shone a jug of 
 beer that I saw a man carrying across the street at 
 the corner of Fifth. The sunlight sparkled upon 
 the bright brown brew, and as peanuts are thirst}^ 
 fodder I pushed through the swinging doors. 
 
244 BROAD STREET STATION 
 
 BROAD STREET STATION 
 Broad street station is to me a place of ex- 
 traordinary fascination. Among the cloudy mem- 
 ories of early childhood it stands solidly, a home of 
 thunders and shouting, of gigantic engines with 
 their fiery droppings of coal and sudden jets of 
 steam. It was a place which in a dehghted sense of 
 adventure was closely mixed with fear. I remem- 
 ber being towed along, as a very small urchin, 
 among throngs of hasty feet and past the prodi- 
 gious glamour of those huge wheels and pistons. 
 (Juvenile eyes are very close to the ground.) 
 Then, arrived within, the ramping horses carved 
 opposite the head of the stairs and the great map 
 on the northern wall were a glorious excitement to 
 my wondering gaze. Nowadays, when I ramble 
 about the station its enchantment is enhanced by 
 the recollection of those early adventures. And as 
 most people, when passing through a station, are 
 severely intent upon their own problems and little 
 conscious of scrutiny, it is the best of places to 
 study the great human show. Mr. Joseph Pennell, 
 in a thrilling drawing, has given a perfect record 
 of Broad street's hghts and tones that linger in the 
 eye — the hurdling network of girders, the patter- 
 ing files of passengers, the upward eddies of smoke. 
 A sense of baffling excitement and motion keeps 
 the mind alert as one wanders about the station. 
 In the dim, dusky twilight of the trainshed this is 
 
BROAD STREET STATION 245 
 
 all the more impressive. A gray-silver haze hangs 
 in the great arches. Against the brightness of the 
 western opening the locomotives come gliding in 
 with a restful relaxation of effort, black indistin- 
 guishable profiles. The locomotives are the only 
 restful things in the scene — they and the red- 
 capped porters, who have the priestly dignity of 
 oracles who have laid aside all earthly passions. 
 Most of the human elements wear the gestures of 
 eagerness, struggle and perplexity. The Main 
 Line commuters, it is true, seem to stroll train- 
 ward like a breed apart, w4th an air of leisurely 
 conquest and assurance. They have the bearing of 
 veterans who have conquered the devils of trans- 
 portation and hold them in leash. But this superb 
 carelessness is only factitious. Some day their 
 time will come and they will fall like the rest of us. 
 They will career frantically to and fro, dash to 
 information desk and train bulletin, rummage for 
 tickets and wipe a beaded brow. What gesture, 
 incidentally, is so significantly human as that of 
 mopping the forehead? If I were a sculptor at 
 work on a symbolic statue of Man I would carve 
 him with troubled and vacant eyes, dehydrating 
 his brow with a handkerchief. 
 
 Take your stand by the train gate a few mo- 
 ments before the departure of the New York ex- 
 press. What a medley of types, and what a com- 
 mon touch of anxiety and wistfulness makes them 
 kin! Two ladies are bidding each other a pro- 
 longed farewell. ''Now, remember, 7 Rowland 
 
^46 BROAD STREET STATION 
 
 street, Cambridge," says the departer. ''Be sure 
 to write!" A feverish man rushes back from the 
 train, having forgotten something, and fights his 
 way against the Une which is fihng through the 
 gate. Another man hunts dismally through all his 
 pockets for his ticket, rocking gently and thought- 
 fully on his heels. The ticket seems to have van- 
 ished. He pushes his hat back on his forehead and 
 says something to the collector. This new posture 
 of his hat seems to aid him, for in another half 
 minute the ticket appears in a pocket that he has 
 already gone through several times. The official 
 cons his watch every five seconds. A clerk, 
 apparently from one of the ticket windows, rushes 
 up with a long strip ticket. There is some question 
 about a sailor with a furlough ticket to Providence. 
 Has he gone through? Haven't seen him. The 
 gateman claps the gate to and switches off the 
 light. Three other men come dashing up and are 
 let through by the kindness of the usher. Then 
 comes the sailor galloping along with a heavy suit- 
 case. Here he is! Plere's your ticket! Again the 
 gate is opened and the navy man tears down the 
 platform. The train is already moving, but he 
 just makes it. Far out, in the bright sunlight be- 
 yond the station, the engine can be seen pulling 
 out, ejecting a stiff spire of smoke and horizontal 
 billows of steam. 
 
 At the same time rumbles in the hourly express 
 from New York. Watch the people come out. 
 Here is the brisk little man with a brown bag, who 
 
BROAD STREET STATION 247 
 
 always leads the crowd. The men from the 
 smoker are first, puffing pipes or cigars. They all 
 seem to know exactly where they want to go and 
 push on relentlessly. After the main body of 
 travelers come the Pullman passengers, usually 
 followed by porters. Here is a girl in a very neat 
 blue suit. Her porter carries an enormous black 
 hat box painted with very swagger stripes of green. 
 She is pretty, in a rather frank way, but too dusty 
 with powder. An actress, one supposes. A tall 
 young man steps out from the crowd, something 
 very rakish about him, too. She looks surprised. 
 ''Nice of me to meet you, wasn't it?" he says. 
 They w^alk off together, and one notices the really 
 admirable hang of her blue skirt, just reaching her 
 fawn spats. Sorry she uses so much powder. Curi- 
 ous thing; the same j^oung chap was back again 
 an hour later, this time to meet a man on the next 
 New York train. They both wore brightly burn- 
 ished brown shoes and seemed to have completely 
 mastered life's perplexities. All these little dra- 
 mas were enacted to a merry undertone of con- 
 stant sound : the clear chime of bells, the murmur 
 and throb of hissing steam, the rumble of baggage 
 trucks, the slither of thousands of feet. 
 
 There is not much kissing done when people 
 arrive from New York, but if you will linger about 
 the gate when the Limited gets in from Chicago 
 you will see that humanity pays more affectionate 
 tribute to friends arriving from that strange coun- 
 try. There was one odd little group of three. A 
 
248 BROAD STREET STATION 
 
 man and a woman greeted another lady who 
 arrived on the Chicago train. The two women 
 kissed with a luxurious smacking. Then the man 
 and the arrival kissed. The Chicago lady wore an 
 enormous tilted hat with plumes. "Well, I'm 
 here/' she said, but without any great enthusiasm. 
 The man was obviously frightfully glad to see her. 
 But stand how he would, she kept the slant of her 
 hat between her face and him. He tried valiantly 
 to get a straight look at her. She would not meet 
 his gaze. He put his head on one side astonishingly 
 like a rooster, and his whole attitude expressed an 
 earnest desire to please. When he spoke to her she 
 answered to the other woman. She handed him 
 her baggage checks without looking at him. Then 
 she pointed to a very heavy package at her feet. 
 With a weary resignation he toted it, and they 
 moved away. 
 
 Inside the station the world is divided sharply 
 into two halves. On the trainward side all is bustle 
 and stir; the bright colors of news stands and 
 flower stalls, brisk consultation of timetables at 
 the information desk, little telephone booths, 
 where lights wink on and off. In one of these 
 booths, with the door open for greater coolness, a 
 buyer is reporting to his home office the results of 
 an out-of-town trip. ''How much did you sold 
 of that?" he says. ''He offered me a lot — pretty 
 nice leather — he wanted seventy-five — well, listen, 
 finally I offered him sixty-five — Oh, no, no, no, he 
 
BROAD STREET STATION 249 
 
 claims it's a dollar grade — well, I don't know, it 
 might be ninety cent maybe." 
 
 But abaft the big stairway a quiet solemnity 
 reigns. The long benches of the waiting room 
 seem a kind of Friends' meeting. Momently one 
 expects to see some one rise and begin to speak. 
 But it is not the peace of resignation; it is the 
 peace of exhaustion. These are the wounded who 
 have dragged themselves painfully from the onset, 
 stricken on the great battlefield of Travel. Here 
 one may note the passive patience of humanity, 
 and also how pathetically it hoards its little pos- 
 sessions. A lady rises to get a drink of water. 
 With what zealous care she stacks all her impedi- 
 ments in a neat pile — umbrella, satchel, handbag, 
 shawl, suitcase, tippet, raincoat and baby — and 
 confides them to her companion. A gust of that 
 characteristic railroad restaurant odor drifts out- 
 ward from the dining room — a warm, soupy blend 
 of browned chicken-skin and crisp roll-crust. On 
 one end of the bench are three tall bronzed dough- 
 boys, each with two service stripes and the red 
 chevron. They have bright blue eyes and are care- 
 fully comparing their strip tickets, which seem 
 nearly a yard long. A lady in very tight black 
 suede slippers stilts out of the dining room. Like 
 every one else in the waiting room she walks as 
 though her feet hurt her. The savor of food is 
 blown outward by electric fans. The doughboys 
 are conferring together. They have noticed two 
 lieutenants dining at one of the white-draped 
 
250 THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 
 
 tables. This seems to enrage them. Finally they 
 can stand it no longer. Their vast rawhide 
 marching boots go clumping into the dining room. 
 Every now and then the announcer comes to the 
 head of the stairway and calls out something about 
 a train to Harrisburg, Altoona, Pittsburgh and 
 Chicago. There is a note of sadness in his long- 
 drawn wail, as though it would break his heart if 
 no one should take this train, which is a favorite of 
 his. A few weary casuals hoist themselves from 
 the benches, gather their belongings anew and 
 stagger away. 
 
 THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 
 
 The sands are lonely in the fall. On those broad 
 New Jersey beaches, where the rollers sprawl in- 
 ward in ridges of crumbling snow, the ocean looks 
 almost wistfully for its former playmates. The 
 children are gone, the small brown legs, the toy 
 shovels and the red tin pails. The familiar figures of 
 the summer season have vanished : the stout ladies 
 who sat in awninged chairs and wrestled desper- 
 ately to unfurl their newspapers in the wind ; the 
 handsome mahogany-tanned lifesavers, the vam- 
 perinoes incessantly drying their tawny hair, the 
 corpulent males of dark complexion wearing 
 ladies' bathing caps, the young men playing a de- 
 generate baseball with a rubber sphere and a bit 
 of shingle. All that life and excitement, fed upon 
 hot dogs and vanilla cones, anointed with cold 
 
THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 251 
 
 cream and citronella, has vanished for another 
 year. 
 
 But how pleasant it is to see the town (it is 
 Fierceforest we have in mind) taking its own vaca- 
 tion, after laboring to amuse its visitors all summer 
 long. Here and there in the surf you will see a 
 familiar figure. That plump lady, lathered by 
 sluicing combers as she welters and wambles upon 
 Neptune's bosom, is good Frau Weintraub of the 
 delicatessen, who has been frying fish and chow- 
 dering clams over a hot stove most of July and 
 August, and now takes her earned repose. Yonder 
 is the imposing bulge of the real estate agent, who 
 has been too busy selling lots and dreaming hotel 
 sites to visit the surf hitherto. Farther up the 
 shore is the garage man, doing a little quiet fishing 
 from the taffrail of a deserted pier. The engineer 
 of the "roller coaster" smokes a cigar along the 
 deserted boardwalk and discusses the league of na- 
 tions with the gondolier-in-chief of the canals of 
 Ye Olde Mill. The hot-dog expert, whose merry 
 shout, ''Here they are, all red hot and fried in 
 butter!" was wont to echo along the crowded 
 arcade, has boarded up his stand and departed 
 none knows where. 
 
 There is a tincture of grief in the survey of all 
 this liveliness coflaned and nailed down. Even the 
 gambols of Fierceforest's citizens, taking their 
 ease at last in the warm September surf, cannot 
 wholly dispel the mournfulness of the observer. 
 There is something dreadfully glum in the merry- 
 17 
 
252 THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 
 
 go-round seen through its locked glass doors. All 
 those gayly caparisoned horses, with their bright 
 Arabian housings, their flowing manes and tossing 
 heads and scarlet-painted nostrils, stand stilled in 
 the very gesture of glorious rotation. One remem- 
 bers what a jolly sight that carrousel was on a 
 warm evening, the groaning pipes of the steam- 
 organ chanting an adorable ditty (w^e don't know 
 what it is, but it's the tune they always play at 
 the movies when our favorite Dorothy Gish comes 
 on the screen), children laughing and holding tight 
 to the wooden manes of the horses, and flappers 
 with their pink dresses swirling, clutching for the 
 brass ring that means a free ride. All this is 
 frozen into silence and sleep, like a scene in a 
 fairy tale. It is very sad, and we dare not contem- 
 plate the poor little silent horses too long. 
 
 Bitterly does one lament the closing of the 
 Boardwalk auction rooms, which were a perpetual 
 free show to those who could not find a seat in 
 the movies. There was one auctioneer who looked 
 so like Mr. Wilson that when we saw his earnest 
 gestures we always expected that the league of 
 nations would be the subject of his harangue. But 
 on entering and taking a seat (endeavoring to 
 avoid his eye when he became too persuasive, for 
 fear some involuntary gesture or the contortions of 
 an approaching sneeze would be construed as a bid 
 for a Chinese umbrella stand) we always found 
 that it was a little black box full of teacups that 
 was under discussion. He would hold one up 
 
THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 253 
 
 against an electric bulb to show its transparency. 
 When he found his audience unresponsive he 
 would always say, ''You know I don't have to do 
 this for a living. If you people don't appreciate 
 goods that have quality, I'm going to pack up 
 and go to Ocean City." But he never went. Al- 
 most every evening, chagrined by some one's 
 failure to bid properly for a cut-glass lady-finger 
 container or a porcelain toothbrush-rack, he 
 would ask the attendant to set it aside. "I'll buy 
 it myself," he would cry, and as he kept on buying 
 these curious tidbits for himself throughout the 
 summer, we used to wonder what his wife would 
 say when they all arrived. 
 
 Along the quiet Boardwalk we saunter, as the 
 crisp breeze comes off the wide ocean spaces. 
 Bang! bang! bang! sound the hammers, as the 
 shutters go up on the beauty parlor, the toy shop, 
 the shop where sweet-grass baskets were woven, 
 and the stall where the little smiling doll known as 
 Helene, the Endearing Beach Vamp, was to be won 
 by knocking down two tenpins with a swinging 
 pendulum. How easy it was to cozen the public 
 with that! A bright red star was painted at the 
 back of the pendulum's swing, and the natural 
 assumption of the simple competitor was that by 
 aiming at that star he would win the smiling 
 Helene. Of course, as long as one aimed at the 
 star success was im^possible. The Japanese dealers, 
 with the pertinacity of their race, are almost the 
 last to linger. Their innocent little gaming boards, 
 
254 THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 
 
 their fishponds where one angles for counterfeit 
 fish and draws an eggcup or a china cat, according 
 to the number inscribed on the catch, their rou- 
 lette wheels ("Ten Cents a Chance — No Blanks") 
 — all are still in operation, but one of the shrewd 
 orientals is packing up some china at the back of 
 the shop. He knows that trade is pretty well done 
 for this season. We wondered whether he would go 
 down to the beach for a swim before he left. He 
 has stuck so close to business all summer that per- 
 haps he does not know the ocean is there. There 
 is another thrifty merchant, too, whose strategy 
 comes to our attention. This is the rolling-chair 
 baron, who has closed his little kiosque, but has 
 taken care to paint out the prices per hour of his 
 vehicles, and has not marked any new rates. 
 Cautious man, he is waiting until next summer to 
 see what the trend of prices will be then. 
 
 Across the fields toward the inlet, where the 
 grasses have turned rusty bronze and pink, where 
 goldenrod is minting its butter-yellow sprays and 
 riotous magenta portulaccas seed themselves over 
 the sandy patches, the rowboats are being dragged 
 out of the canal and laid up for the winter. The 
 sunburned sailorman who rents them says he has 
 had a good season — and he "can't complain." He 
 comes chugging in with his tiny motorboat, towing 
 a string of tender-feet who have been out tossing 
 on the crabbing grounds for a couple of hours, 
 patiently lowering the fishheads tied on a cord and 
 weighted with rusty bolts. His patient and ener- 
 
THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 255 
 
 getic wife who runs the Uttle candy and sarsa- 
 parilla counter on the dock has ended her labors. 
 She is glad to get back to her kitchen: during the 
 long, busy summer days she did her family cooking 
 on an oil stove behind the counter. The captain, 
 as he likes to be called, is about to make his annual 
 change from mariner to roofer, the latter being 
 his winter trade. ''It's blowing up for rain,'' he 
 says, looking over his shoulder at the eastern sky. 
 ''I guess the season's pretty near over. I'll get 
 up the rest of them boats next week." 
 
 In September the bathing is at its best. Par- 
 ticularly at sunset, when every one is at supper. 
 To cross those wide fields of wiry grass that 
 stretch down to the sand, is an amazement to the 
 eye. Ahead of you the sea gleams purple as an 
 Easter violet. The fields are a kind of rich palette 
 on which every tint of pink, russet and bronze 
 are laid in glowing variation. The softly wavering 
 breeze, moving among the coarse stalks, gives the 
 view a ripple and shimmer of color like shot silk. 
 A naturalist could find hundreds of species of 
 flowers and grasses on those sandy meadows. 
 There are great clumps of some bushy herb that 
 has already turned a vivid copper color, and 
 catches the declining sunlight like burnished 
 metal. There are flecks of yellow, pink and laven- 
 der. A cool, strong odor rises from the harsh, 
 knife-edged grasses — a curiously dry, brittle scent, 
 familiar to all who have poked about sand 
 dunes. 
 
^56 THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 
 
 The beach itself, colored in the last flush of the 
 level sun, is still faintly warm to the naked foot, 
 after the long shining of the day; but it cools 
 rapidly. The tide is coming in, with long, seething 
 ridges of foam, each flake and clot of crumbled 
 water tinged with a rose-petal pink by the red sun- 
 set. All this glory of color, of movement, of un- 
 speakable exhilaration and serenity, is utterly 
 lonely. The long curve of the beach stretches 
 away northward, where a solitary orange-colored 
 dory is lying on the sand. The air is full of a 
 plaintive piping of sea-birds. A gull flashes along 
 the beach, with a pink glow on its snowy under- 
 plumage. 
 
 At that hour the water is likely to be warmer 
 than the air. It may be only the curiously magical 
 effect of the horizontal light, but it seems more 
 foamy, more full of suds, than earlier in the day. 
 Over the green top of the waves, laced and marbled 
 with froth, slides a layer of iridescent bubble-wash 
 that seems quite a different substance from the 
 water itself — like the meringue on top of a lemon 
 pie. One can scoop it up and see it winking in 
 points of sparkling light. 
 
 The waves come marching in. It is a calm sea, 
 one would have said looking down from the dunes, 
 but to the swimmer, elbowing his way under their 
 leaning hollows, their stature seems tremendous. 
 The sunlight strikes into the hills of moving water, 
 filling them with a bluish spangle and tremor of 
 brightness. It is worth while to duck underneath 
 
THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 257 
 
 and look up at the sun from under the surface, to 
 see how the hght seems to spread and clot and 
 split in the water like sour cream poured into a cup 
 of tea. The sun, which is so ruddy in the evening 
 air, is a pale milky white when seen from under 
 water. 
 
 A kind of madness of pleasure fills the heart of 
 the solitary sunset swimmer. To splash and riot in 
 that miraculous color and tumult of breaking 
 water seems an effective answer to all the griev- 
 ances of earth. To float, feeling the poise and en- 
 circling support of those lapsing pillows of liquid, 
 is mirth beyond words. To swim just beyond the 
 line of the big breakers, dropping a foot now and 
 then to feel that bottom is not too far away — to 
 sprawl inward with a swashing comber while the 
 froth boils about his shoulders — to watch the light 
 and color prismed in the curl and slant of every 
 wave, and the quick vanishing of brightness and 
 glory once the sun is off the sea — all this is the 
 matter of poems that no one can write. 
 
 The sun drops over the flat glitter of the inland 
 lagoons; the violet and silver and rose-flushed 
 foam are gone from the ocean; the sand is gray 
 and damp and chilly. Down the line of the shore 
 comes an airplane roaring through the upper 
 regions of dazzling sunlight, with brightness on its 
 varnished wings. The lighthouse at the Inlet has 
 begun to twinkle its golden flash, and supper will 
 soon be on the table. The solitary swimmer takes 
 one last regretful plunge through a sluicing hill of 
 
258 THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 
 
 green, and hunts out his pipe. He had left it, as 
 the true smoker does, carefully filled, with a 
 match-box beside it, in a dry hollow on the sand. 
 Trailing a thread of blue reek, he plods cheerfully 
 across the fields, taking care not to tread upon the 
 small hoptoads that have come out to hail the 
 evening. Behind him the swelling moon floats like 
 a dim white lantern, penciling the darkening water 
 with faint scribbles of light. 
 
 But there are still a few oldtimers in Fierce- 
 forest, cottagers who cling on until the first of 
 October, and whose fraternal password (one ma}^ 
 hear them saying it every time they meet) is 
 '' Sure ! Best time of the year ! " Through the pink 
 flush of sunrise you may see the husbands moving 
 soberly toward the early commuters' train, the 
 6 : 55, which is no longer crowded. (A month ago 
 one had to reach it half an hour early in order to 
 get a seat in the smoker.) Each one transports his 
 satchel, and also curious bundles, for at this time 
 of year it is the custom to make the husband carry 
 home each week an instalment of the family bag- 
 gage, to save excess when moving day comes. One 
 totes an oilstove; another, a scales for weighing 
 the baby. They trudge somewhat grimly through 
 the thin morning twilight, going back for another 
 week at office and empty house or apartment. 
 Leaving behind them the warm bed, the little cot- 
 tage full of life and affection, they taste for a 
 moment the nostalgic pang that sailors know so 
 well when the ship's bow cuts the vacant horizon. 
 
PUTTING THE CITY TO BED 259 
 
 Over the purple rim of sea the sun juts its scarlet 
 disk. You may see these solitary husbands halt a 
 moment to scan the beauty of the scene. They 
 stand there thoughtful in the immortal loneliness 
 of dawn. Then they climb the smoker and 
 pinochle has its sway. 
 
 PUTTING THE CITY TO BED 
 
 It was a delicious cool evening when I stroUed 
 abroad to observe the town composing itself for 
 slumber. The caustic Mrs. Trollope, who visited 
 Philadelphia in 1830, complained bitterly that 
 there was no carousal or cheer of any kind pro- 
 ceeding in the highways after sunset : " The streets 
 are entirely dark, scarcely a step is heard, and for 
 a note of music, or the sound of mirth, I listened 
 in vain." But the lady would find us much more 
 volatile now. 
 
 The Weather Man tries to set us a good example 
 by pulling down the front of his little booth at 
 Ninth and Chestnut soon after 10 o'clock, but 
 there are few who take the hint. It was a night 
 almost chilly — 67 degrees — a black velvety sky to 
 the northward, diluted to a deep purple and blue 
 where the moon was shining in the south. At 10.45 
 letter writing was in full scratch along the counters 
 of the main postoffice. Every desk was busy, the 
 little stamp windows were lively caves of light. 
 Hotel signs — the old signs that used to say 
 ROOMS $1 UP, and now just say ROOMS— were 
 
260 PUTTING THE CITY TO BED 
 
 beaconing along the street. Crowds were piling out 
 of movies. The colored man who letters cards 
 with delicate twirls of penmanship was setting up 
 his little table on Market street. In spite of the 
 cool air every soda fountain was lined with the 
 customary gobs. The first morning papers were 
 beginning to be screamed about the streets, with 
 that hoarse urgency of yelling that always makes 
 the simple-minded think that something fearful 
 has happened. 
 
 A crowd gathered hastily in front of a big office 
 building on Chestnut street. Policemen sprang 
 from nowhere. A Jefferson ambulance clanged up. 
 Great agitation, and prolonged ringing of the bell 
 at the huge iron-grilled front door. What's up? 
 Finally appeared a man with blood spattered over 
 his shirt and was escorted to the ambulance. The 
 engineer had walked too near an electric fan and 
 got his head cut. Lucky he didn't lose it alto- 
 gether, said one watcher. 
 
 Eleven o'clock. In a cigar store served by a 
 smiling damsel, two attractive ladies were asking 
 her if it would be safe for them to visit a Chinese 
 restaurant a little farther up the street. '^ We're 
 from out of town," they explained, "and all alone. 
 We want some chop suey. Is that the kind of 
 place ladies can go to?" The cigar saleslady ap- 
 pealed to me, and I assured the visitors they would 
 be perfectly serene. Perhaps if I had been more 
 gallant I should have escorted them thither. Off 
 they went, a little timorous. 
 
PUTTING THE CITY TO BED ^61 
 
 Eleven fifteen. The first of the typical night- 
 hawk motors begin to appear; huge runabouts, 
 with very long bonnets and an air of great power. 
 One of them, a vivid scarlet with white wheels, 
 spins briskly round the City Hall. Trills and tink- 
 lings of jazz clatter from second-story restaurants. 
 But Chestnut street is beginning to calm down. 
 Lights in shop windows are going off. The old 
 veteran takes his seat on a camp-stool near Juniper 
 street and begins to tingle his little bell merrily. 
 If you drop something in his box he will tell you 
 the sign of the zodiac under which you were born, 
 prognosticate your lucky days and planetary hours 
 and advise you when to take a journey. He ex- 
 plained to me that this happened to be the night 
 of Venus. I had been sure of it already after some 
 scrutiny of the pavements. As the lights are 
 dimmed along the street, the large goldfish in a 
 Chestnut street cafe window grow more placid and 
 begin to think of a little watery repose. 
 
 Half-past eleven. The airy spaces round the 
 City Hall are full of a mellow tissue of light and 
 shadow. The tall lamp standards are like trees of 
 great pale oranges. The white wagons of the 
 birchbeer fleet are on their rounds. The seats 
 where the band concerts are held are deserted save 
 for one meditative vagrant, drooping with un- 
 known woes. Swiftly flowing cars flit mysteriously 
 round the curve and bend into the long expanse of 
 North Broad street where their little red stern- 
 lights twinkle beneath the row of silver arcs 
 
262 PUTTING THE CITY TO BED 
 
 stretching away into the distance. Broad Street 
 Station is comparatively quiet, though there is the 
 usual person gazing up at the window lettered 
 SCRIP CLERGY STOPOVERS COMMUTA- 
 TION. He wonders what it means. I do not 
 know, any more than he. Standing at the corner 
 of the station the lights of the sky are splendid and 
 serene. Over the Finance Building a light wispy 
 plume of steam hovers and detaches itself, gleam- 
 ing in the moonshine like a floating swan's feather. 
 The light catches the curves of the trolley rails Hke 
 ribbons of silver. 
 
 Midnight. The population seems to have sorted 
 itself into couples. Almost all the ladies in sight 
 wear silk sports skirts, and walk with their escorts 
 in a curiously slow swishing swing. Some of them 
 may have been dancing all evening, and still pace 
 with some of the rhythm of the waxed floor. In 
 darkened banks are little gleams of orange light be- 
 hind trellises of bars, where watchmen sit and 
 grind away the long hours. Down the dark narrow 
 channel of Sansom street it is very silent. The 
 rear of a ten-cent store shows a gush of brightness, 
 where some overhauling of stock is going on. The 
 back door is open, and looking in I can see a riotous 
 mouse darting about under the counters,, warily 
 watching the men who are rearranging some dis- 
 play. The Jefferson Hospital is silent, with occa- 
 sional oblongs of light in windows. I seem to de- 
 tect a whiff of disinfectants, and wonder how the 
 engineer is getting on. 
 
PUTTING THE CITY TO BED 263 
 
 Market street is still lively. A '^ dance orchard" 
 emits its patrons down a long stair to the street. 
 Down they come, gaily laughing. The male part- 
 ners are all either gobs, who love dancing even 
 more than ice cream soda; or youths with tilted 
 straw hats of coarse weave, with legs that bend 
 backward most oddly below the knee, very tightly 
 and briefly trousered. Two doughboys with ace of 
 spades shoulder insignia greet the emerging 
 throng, showing little booklets for sale. They urge 
 the girls to buy, with various arts of cajolery and 
 bright-eyed persuasion. "Who'll buy a book?" 
 they say, "forty short stories, put out by a 
 wounded soldier." The girls all wear very exten- 
 sive hats, and are notably pretty. "Which way 
 do we go?" is the first question on reaching the 
 street. It is usually the way to the nearest soda 
 fountain. 
 
 Twelve forty. The watering tank roars down 
 Chestnut street, shedding a hissing tide from curb 
 to curb. The fleet of To Hire night taxis wheel off 
 one by one as fares leap in to escape from the de- 
 luge, which can be heard approachmg far up the 
 silent street. It is getting quiet, save in the all- 
 night lunch rooms, where the fresh baking of 
 doughnuts and cinnamon buns is being set out, 
 and the workers of the night shift are streaming in 
 for their varied and substantial meals. They eat 
 leisurely, with loud talk, or reading the morning 
 papers. 
 
 One fifteen. The population consists mostly of 
 
PUTTING THE CITY TO BED 
 
 small groups on corners waiting patiently for cars, 
 which are rare after one o'clock. Chauffeurs sit in 
 twos, gossipping over the fares of the evening. 
 Along the curb of the Federal Building on Ninth 
 street Unger a few resolute loungers, enjoying the 
 calm of the night. A fruit stall man is wondering 
 whether to trundle home. The pile of fresh dough- 
 nuts in the lunch room is rapidly diminishing. 
 Street cleaning trucks are on their nightly rounds. 
 It's time to go to bed. 
 
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