Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/139

 —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 window, but the familiar drug-scented haunt where we drank our first soda and bought our first tobacco is empty and forlorn. But the deep buttercup 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 observatory 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