Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/74

 that makes the devil dogs look stiff-kneed. Bronzed, handsome fellows, with the characteristic tilt of the Stetson that must flutter the hearts of French flappers. And as for the girls, if Willow Grove on a Saturday afternoon is a fair cross-section of Philadelphia pulchritude, I will match it against anything any other city can show.

Willow Grove, of course, is famous for its music, and at dusk the Marine Band was to play in the pavilion. That open-air auditorium, under the tremulous ceiling of tall maples and willows and sycamores, with the green and silver shimmer of the darkening lake at one side, is a cheerful place to sit and meditate. I had a volume of Thoreau with me, and began to read it, but he kept on harping upon the blisses of solitude which annoyed me when I was enjoying the mirths and moods of the crowd. Nowhere will you find a happier, more sane and contented and typically American crowd than at Willow Grove. Perhaps in wartime we take our pleasures a little more soberly than of old. Yet there seemed no shadow of sadness or misgiving on all those happy faces, and it was a good sight to see tall marines romping through the "Crazy Village" arm in arm with bright-eyed girls. Those boys in the coffee-and-milk uniform will see crazier villages than that in Champagne and Picardy.

The last arrows of sunlight were still quivering among the upmost leaves when the Marine Band began to play, and the great crowd gathered under