Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/209

 was just the kind of road to see spread before one at the cool outset of a long summer day.

"This," said the Caliph, "is the headwater of Darby creek."

Little did the Caliph, douce man, know what that simple statement meant to us. The headwaters of Darby! Darby creek, and its younger brother, Cobb's creek, were the Abana and Pharpar of our youth. We were nourished first of all on Cobb's, where we had our first swim and caught our first tadpoles and conducted our first search for buried treasure (and also smelt our first skunk cabbage). Then, in our teens, we ranged farther afield and learned the way to Darby, by whose crystal waters we used to fry bacon and read R. L. S. There will never be any other stream quite as dear to our heart.

Until the other evening at the Caliph's we had not seen the water of Darby creek for ten years; not such a long time, perhaps, as some reckon these matters, but quite long enough. And our mind runs back with unrestrained enthusiasm to the days when we lived only two miles away from that delicious stream. Darby creek is associated in our mind with a saw and cider mill that used to stand—and very likely still stands—where the creek crosses the West Chester pike. To that admirable spot, in the warm blue haze of an October afternoon, certain young men used to tramp. While the whirling blades of the sawmill screamed through green logs, these care-free innocents used