Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/160

 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 quality about its merchandising. "Eat Cornell's Sauer Kraut and Grow Fat," says a legend painted aross [sic] the flank of a pickle factory. "Packey McFarland Recommends Make-Man Tablets," is the message of a lively cardboard "cutout" in a druggist's window. Odd little streets run off the avenue at oblique 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:

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.