Page:Our Philadelphia (Pennell, 1914).djvu/226

206 people from the four quarters of the globe, and, more astounding, giving itself up to these innovations with zest.

I looked on at the preparations,—as at most things, to my infinite boredom,—from outside: a perspective from which they appeared to me little more than a new form of social diversion. For they kept my gayer friends, who were well on the inside, busy going to Centennial balls at the Academy of Music in the Colonial dress which was as essential for admission as a Colonial name or a Colonial family tree, while I stayed at home and, seeing what lovely creatures powder and patches and paniers made of Philadelphia girls with no more pretence to good looks than I, felt a little as I did when the coloured dignitary rang at our front door with the Assembly card that was not for me. And between the balls, the same friends were immersed in Centennial Societies and Centennial Committees and Centennial Meetings and Centennial Subscriptions and Centennial Petitions, Philadelphia women for the first time admitted, and pining for admission, into public affairs; while I was so far apart from it all that I remember but one incident in connection with the Centennial orgy of work, and this as trivial as could be. When we moved into the Third Street house we had found in possession a cat who left us in no doubt of her disapproval of our intrusion, but who tolerated us because of the convenience of the ground floor windows from which to watch for her enemies among the dogs of the neighbourhood, and for the comfort of certain cupboards upstairs during the infancy