Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/191

 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 citizen. 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 pinafore 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-fashioned 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