Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/98

 awe than the New Yorker's "Broadway and Forty-second," as though the words summed up the very vibration and pulse of the town's most sacred life. And yet why is it that Broad street seems to me more at ease, more itself, when it gets away from the tremendous cliffs of vast hotels and office mountains? Our Philadelphia streets do not care to be mere tunnels, like the canyon flumes of Manhattan. We have a lust for sun and air.

So when Broad street escapes from the shadow of its own magnificence it runs just a little wild. In its sun-swept airy stretches perhaps it abuses its freedom a little. It kicks up its heels and gets into its old clothes. Certainly as soon as one gets south of Lombard street one sees the sudden change. Even the vast and dignified gray façade of the Ridgway Library does not abash our highway for more than a moment. It dashes on between a vast clothing factory and the old "Southern and Western Railroad Station." It indulges itself in small clothing stores, lemonade stands and all manner of tumble-down monkey business. It seems to say, "I can look just like Spring Garden street, if I want to."

Perhaps it is because William Penn on the City Hall is looking the other way that South Broad street feels it can cut up without reserve.

The Ridgway Library ought to be able to daunt this frisking humor, for a more solemn and repressive erection was never planned. But what a