Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/254



an afternoon it was! Sunshine and blue sky, blended warmth and crispness, the wedding of summer and autumn. Sunshine as tender as Cardinal Mercier's smile, northern breeze sober as the much-harassed lineaments of the Tomsmith. Citizens went about their business "daintily enfolded in the bright, bright air," as a poet has put it. Over the dome of the postoffice, where the little cups of Mr. Bliss's wind gauge were spinning merrily, pigeons' wings gleamed white in the serene emptiness. The sunlight twinkled on lacquered limousines in dazzles of brightness, almost as vivid as the "genuine diamonds" in Market street show windows. Phil Warner, the always lunching bookseller, was out snapping up an oyster stew. Men of girth and large equator were watching doughnuts being fried in the baker's windows on Chestnut street with painful agitation. The onward march of the doughnut is a matter for serious concern in certain circles, particularly the circle of the waist line.

Strolling up Ninth street one was privileged to observe a sign of the times. A lunch room was being picketed by labor agitators, who looked comparatively unblemished by toil. They bore large signs saying: