Page:Our Philadelphia (Pennell, 1914).djvu/301

Rh, fish, spice, coffee, Philadelphia smelling as strong of the romance of trade as any Eastern bazaar.

And I remember J. and I crossing the forbidden line into "up town" to find beauty, interest, picturesqueness in "Market, Arch, Race and Vine"—old houses everywhere, the old Meeting-House, Betsy Ross' house, Provost Smith's, the Christ Church Burial Ground at Fifth and Arch where Franklin is buried, narrow rambling alleys, red and black brick, and there, up on a house at the corner of Front, where it is to this day, a sign going back to the years when Race was still Sassafras Street, and so part of the original scheme of Philadelphia, to which, with Philadelphia docility, I had all my life believed South of Market alone could claim the right.

And I remember our wandering to the Schuylkill, not by the neat and well-kept roads and paths of the Park, but where tumbled-down houses faced it near Callowhill Street Bridge and works of one kind or another rose from its banks near Gray's Ferry, and Philadelphia was a town of industry, of machines, of railroads connecting it with all parts of the world,—for already to J. "the Wonder of Work" had made its irresistible appeal. And I remember our wandering farther, north and south, east and west—interest, beauty, picturesqueness never failing us—in the end Philadelphia transformed into a vast Wonderland, where in one little section people might spend their lives dancing, paying calls at noon, eating chicken salad and croquettes from Augustine's, but where in every other they