Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/227

  Railway viaduct, and we saw a familiar sight on the pavement. It was our old desk, covered with dust and displayed for sale, but unmistakable to our recognitory eye. Furtively we approached it and gave the well-known bottom drawer a yank. It was still jammed, and presumably the manuscript was still within. We thought for a moment of buying the old thing again, splitting it open with an ax and getting out our literary offspring. But we didn't. And now this fire has come along and undoubtedly the desk perished in the flames. If only that chapter on Young Girls at Boarding School could have been rescued. . . . We have a daughter of our own now, and it might have given us some hints on how to bring her up.

would be a seemly thing, perhaps, if candidates for political office were to take a private trip up the tower of the City Hall and spend an hour or so in solitary musing. Looking out over the great expanse of men and buildings they might get a vision of Philadelphia that would be more valuable to them than the brisk bickering business of "showing each other up."

Under the kindly guidance of Mr. Kellett, the superintendent of elevators in the City Hall, I was permitted to go up to the little gallery at the base of the statue. A special elevator runs up inside the tower, starting from the seventh floor. Through