Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/190



been a very hot day. 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 curious 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 litters in the world. An expanse of evil-smelling junk smokes with a thin haze of burning. Queer little wooden shacks, stables, pig-pens, sit comfortably 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 crossing where Stonehouse lane goes over the freight