Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/70

 young female innocent who lies, clad in a blue dress, beneath a scarlet coverlet, her golden locks spread over a white pillow. The faithfulness of the animal and the secure repose of the child may be profitably studied in the length of time necessary to light a pipe. I feel sure that no kind-hearted 's home is complete without this picture.

The Ronaldson Cemetery, laid out in 1827 at Ninth and Bainbridge streets, comes as a distinct shock to a sentimental wayfarer already unmanned by the above appeal to the emotions. Mrs. Meredith, the kindly caretaker, admitted me through the massive iron gates, surprised and pleased to find a devotee of cemeteries. In the damp chill of a February afternoon the old graveyard is not the cheeriest of spots, but I was restored to optimism by this inscription:

This, however, was carved some fifty years ago. I fear there is little lingering done in Ronaldson's Cemetery nowadays, for the stones are in ill repair, many of them fallen. According to Scharf and Westcott's history, it was once considered the finest cemetery in the country and "a popular place of burial." Just within the gateway are two little houses, in at least one of which a merry little family of children is growing up undepressed by