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234 said to help people to put things out of their minds, but it helps them more when it puts things into their minds, and this is what it did for me. Through work I discovered Philadelphia and myself together.

II

It strikes me as one of the little ironies of life that for the first inducement to work, and therefore the first incentive to my knowledge and love of Philadelphia, I should have been indebted to my Uncle, Charles Godfrey Leland, who, in 1880, when the Centennial excitement was subsiding, settled again in Philadelphia after ten years abroad, chiefly in England. Philadelphia welcomed him with its usual serenity, betrayed into no expression of emotion by the home-coming of one of its most distinguished citizens who, in London, had been received with the open arms London, in expansive moments, extends to the lion from America. The contrast, no doubt, was annoying, and my Uncle, of whom patience could not be said to be the predominating virtue, was accordingly annoyed and, on his side, betrayed into anything but a serene expression of his annoyance. Many smaller slights irritated him further until he worked himself up into the belief that he detested Philadelphia, and he was apt to be so outspoken in criticism that he succeeded in convincing me, anyway, that he did. Later, when I read his Memoirs, I found in them passages that suggest the charm of Philadelphia as it has not been suggested by any other writer I know of, and