Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/232

 people would marvel greatly. He would be the only completely blissful prophet in the world, as the only way for an oracle to be happy is to put him so far away from the marketplace that he can't see that the people pay no attention to his utterances. What William Penn used to call his "natural candle," that is, the light of his spirit, would burn with a cheerful and unguttered radiance. Just inside the door that leads to the tower gallery there is a comfortable meditative armchair of the kind usually found in police stations. So perhaps they are planning to have just such an oracle.

I wandered for some time in the broad corridors of the City Hall, which smell faintly of musky disinfectant. I peered into the district attorney's indictment department, where a number of people were gathered. Occasionally a clerk would call out names, and some would disappear into inner rooms. Whether they were plaintiffs or defendants I could not conjecture. In the calf-lined alcoves of the law library, learned men were reading under green lamps. I looked uncomprehendingly at the signs on the doors—Court of Common Pleas, Court of Oyer and Terminer, Orphans' Court, Delinquent Tax Bureau, Inspector of Nuisances. All this complex machinery that keeps the city in order makes the layman marvel at its efficiency and its apparent kindliness. He wants to do something horrible in order to see how the wheels go round. He feels a little guilty not to have committed some crime.