Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/148

 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 varnishing 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 shining 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 hydroplane 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 characteristically 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