I
In the story of my life in Philadelphia, and my love for the town which
grew with my knowledge of it, my beginning to work was more than an
awakening: it was an important crisis. For work first made me know
Philadelphia as it is under the surface of calm and the beauty of age,
first made me realize how much it offers besides the social adventure.
Personally, the Centennial had left me where it found me. It had amused
me vastly, but it had inspired me with no desire to make active use of
the information and hints of which it had been so prodigal. My interest
had been stimulated, awakened, but I did not know Philadelphia any the
better for it, I did not love Philadelphia any the better. I had got no
further than I was in my scheme of existence, into which work, or
research, or interest, on my part had not yet entered, but I had reached
a point where that aimless scheme was an insufferable bore. From the
moment I began to work, I began to see everything from the standpoint of
work, and it is wonderful what a fresh and invigorating standpoint it
is. I began to see that everything was not all of course and matter of
fact, that everything was worth thinking about. Work is sometimes 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 that he could not have
written had he not felt for the town an affection strong enough to
withstand that town's easy indifference. But during the few years he
spent in Philadelphia after his return he was uncommonly successful in
hiding his affection, a fact which did not add to his popularity.
[Illustration: STATE HOUSE YARD]
From his talk, I might have been expected to borrow nothing save dislike
for Philadelphia. But his influence did not begin and end with his talk.
There never was a man--except J.--who had such a contempt for idleness
and such a talent for work. He could not endure people about him who did
not work and, as I was anxious to enjoy as much of his company as I
could, for I had found nobody in Philadelphia so entertaining, and as by
work I might earn the money to pay for the independence I wanted above
all things, I found myself working before I knew it.
I had my doubts when he set me to drawing but, my time being wholly my
own and frequently hanging drearily on my hands, my ineffectual attempts
to make spirals and curves with a pencil on a piece of paper, attempts
that could not by the wildest stretch of imagination be supposed to have
either an artistic or a financial value, did not strike me as a
disproportionate price for the pleasure and stimulus of his
companionship. Besides, he held the comfortable belief that anybody who
willed to do it, could do anything--accomplishment, talent, genius
reduced by him to a question of will. His will and mine combined,
however, could not make a decorative artist of me, but he was so kind
as not to throw me over for ruthlessly shattering his favourite theory.
He insisted that I should write if I could not draw.
I had my doubts about writing too. I have confessed that I was not given
to thinking and therefore I had nothing in particular to say, nor were
words to say it in at my ready disposal, for, there being one or two
masters of talk in the immediate home circle, I had cultivated to the
utmost my natural gift of silence. Nor could I forget two literary
ventures made immediately upon my leaving the Convent, before the
blatant conceit of the prize scholar had been knocked out of me--one, an
essay on Francois Villon, my choice of a maiden theme giving the measure
of my intelligence, the second a short story re-echoing the last love
tale I had read--both MSS., neatly tied with brown ribbon to vouch for a
masculine mind above feminine pinks and blues, confidently sent to
_Harper's_ and as confidently sent back with the Editor's thanks and no
delay. But my Uncle would not let me off. I must stick at my task of
writing or cease to be his companion, and so relapse into my old Desert
of Sahara, thrown back into the colourless life of a Philadelphia girl
who did not go out and who had waited to marry longer than her parents
thought considerate or correct. Of all my sins, of none was I more
guiltily conscious than my failure to oblige my family in this respect,
for of none was I more frequently and uncomfortably reminded by my
family. I scarcely ever went to see my Grandmother at this period that
from her favourite perch on the landing outside the dining-room, she did
not look at me anxiously and reproachfully and ask, "Any news for me, my
dear?" and she did not have to tell me there was but one piece of news
she cared to hear.
Luckily, writing, my substitute for marriage, was an occupation I was
free to take up if I chose, as the work it involved met with no
objection from my Father. It was only when work took a girl where the
world could not help seeing her at it, that the Philadelphia father
objected. To write in the privacy of a third-story front bedroom, or of
a back parlour, seemed a ladylike way of wasting hours that might more
profitably have been spent in paying calls and going to receptions. If
this waste met with financial return, it could be hushed up and the
world be none the wiser. The way in which my friends used to greet me
after I was fairly launched is characteristic of the Philadelphia
attitude in the matter--"always scribbling away, I suppose?" they would
say with amiable condescension.
I could not dismiss my scribbling so jauntily. The record of my
struggles day by day might help to keep out of the profession of
journalism and book-making many a young aspirant as ardent as I was, and
with as little to say and as few words to say it in. Experience has
taught me to feel, much as Gissing felt, about the "heavy-laden who sit
down to the cursed travail of the pen," but nobody could have made me
feel that way then, and I am not sure I should care to have missed my
struggles, exhausting and heart-rending as they were. During my
apprenticeship when nothing, not so much as a newspaper paragraph, came
from my mountain of labour, the Philadelphia surface of calm told
gloomily on my nerves. Ready to lay the blame anywhere save on my
sluggish brain, and moved by my Uncle's vehement denunciations, I vowed
to myself a hundred times that a sleepy place, a dead place, like
Philadelphia did not give anybody the chance to do anything. I changed
my point of view when at last my "scribbling away" got into print.
III
My first appearance was with a chapter out of a larger work upon which I
had been engaged for months. My Uncle, whose ideas were big, had
insisted that I must begin straight off with a book, something
monumental, a _magnum opus_; no writer was known who had not written a
book; and to be known was half the battle. I was in the state of mind
when I would have agreed to publish a masterpiece in hieroglyphics had
he suggested it, and I arranged with him to set to work upon my book
then and there, though I was decidedly puzzled to know with what it was
to deal. I think he was too, my literary resources and tendencies not
being of the kind that revealed themselves at a glance. But he declared
that there was not a subject upon which a book could not be written if
one only went about it in the right way, and in a moment of
inspiration, seeking the particular subject suitable to my particular
needs, he suddenly, and to me to this day altogether incomprehensibly,
hit upon Mischief. There, now, was a subject to make one's reputation
on, none could be more original, no author had touched it--what did I
think of Mischief?
What did I think? Had I been truthful, I should have said that I thought
Mischief was the special attribute of the naughty child who was spanked
well for it if he got his deserts. But I was not truthful. I said it was
the subject of subjects, as I inclined to believe it was before I was
done with it, by which time I had persuaded myself to see in it the one
force that made the world go round--the incentive to evolution, the root
of the philosophies of the ages, the clue to the mystery of life.
My days were devoted to the study of Mischief and, for the purpose, more
carefully divided up and regulated than they ever had been at the
Convent. Hours were set aside for research--I see myself and my
sympathetic Uncle overhauling dusty dictionaries and encyclopaedias at
the long table in the balcony of the dusty Mercantile Library where
nobody dreamed of disturbing us; I see him at my side during shorter
visits to the Philadelphia Library where we were forever running up
against people we knew who did disturb us most unconscionably; I see him
tramping with me down South Broad Street to the Ridgway Library, that
fine mausoleum of the great collections of James Logan and Dr. Rush,
where our coming awoke the attendants and exposed their awkwardness in
waiting upon unexpected readers, and brought Mr. Lloyd Smith out of his
private room, excited and delighted actually to see somebody in the huge
and well-appointed building besides himself and his staff. Hours were
reserved for reading at home, for it turned out that I could not
possibly arrive at the definition of Mischief without a stupendous
amount of reading in a stupendous variety of books of any and all kinds
from Mother Goose to the Vedas and the Koran, from Darwin to Eliphas
Levi. Hours, and they were the longest, were consecrated to my
writing-table, putting the results of research and reading into words,
defining Mischief in its all-embracing, universe-covering aspect, hewing
the phrases from my unwilling brain as the blocks of marble are hewn out
of the quarry. As I write, my old MSS. rises before me like a ghost, a
disorderly ghost, erased, rewritten, pieces added in, pieces cut out,
every scratched and blotted line bearing testimony to the toil that
produced it. I can see now that I would have done better to begin with a
more obvious theme, coming more within my limited knowledge and
vocabulary. My task was too laborious for the fine frenzy, or the
inspired flights, reputed to be the reward of the literary life. It was
all downright hard labour, and so coloured my whole idea of the business
of writing, that I have never yet managed to sit down to my day's work
without the feeling which I imagine must be the navvy's as he starts out
for his day's digging in the streets.
In the course of time order grew out of the chaos. A chapter of my
monumental work on Mischief was finished. It was made ready in a neat
copy with hardly an erasure and, having an air of completeness in
itself, was sent as a separate article to _Lippincott's Magazine_, for I
decided magnanimously that, as I was a Philadelphian, Philadelphia
should have the first chance. I had no doubts of it as a prophetic
utterance, as a world-convulsing message, but the Editor of
_Lippincott's_ had. He refused it.
How it hurt, that prompt refusal! All my literary hopes came toppling
over and I saw myself condemned to the old idleness and dependence. But
our spirits when we are young go up as quickly as they go down. I
recalled stories I had heard of great men hawking about their MSS. from
publisher to publisher. Carlyle, I said to myself, had suffered and
almost every writer of note--it was a sign of genius to be refused.
Therefore,--the logic of it was clear and convincing--the refusal proved
me a genius! A more substantial reassurance was the publication of the
same article, done over and patched up and with the fine title of
_Mischief in the Middle Ages_, in the _Atlantic Monthly_ a very few
months later. And when, on top of this, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the
Editor of the _Atlantic_, wrote and told me he would be pleased to have
further articles from me; when, in answer to a letter my Uncle had
insisted on my writing. Oliver Wendell Holmes promised me his interest
in Mischief as I proposed to define it. I saw the world at my feet
where, to my sorrow, I have never seen it since that first fine moment
of elation.
The spectacle of myself in print set Philadelphia dancing before my eyes
and turned the world a bit unsteady. But it did not relieve the labour
of writing. Within the next year or two seven or eight chapters did get
done and were published as articles in the _Atlantic_, but the world is
still the poorer for the _magnum opus_ that was to bring me fame. The
fact was that in the making, it brought me mighty little money. My first
cheque only whetted my appetite, but, in fairness to myself I must
explain, through no more sordid motive than my desire to become my own
bread-winner. The newspapers offered a wider scope at less expense of
time and labour, and my Uncle not only relaxed so far as to allow me
intervals from the bigger undertaking for simpler tasks, but gave me the
benefit of his experience as a newspaper man. In the old days, before he
had gone to live in London, he had had the run of almost every newspaper
office in town, and he opened their doors for me. Thanks to his
introduction, Philadelphia, at this stage of my progress, conspired to
put work into my hands, and writing for Philadelphia papers taught me in
a winter more about Philadelphia than I had learned in all the years I
had already spent there. I marvelled that I could have thought it dead
when it was so alive. I seemed to feel it quiver under my feet at every
step, shaking me into speed, and filling me with pity for the sedate
pace at which my Father and the Philadelphians of his generation walked
through its pulsating streets.
IV
My first newspaper commissions came from the _Press_ and adventure
accompanied them--the adventure of business letters in my morning's
mail, of proofs, of visits to the office--adventures that far too soon
became the commonplaces of my busy days as journalist. But my outlook
upon life in Philadelphia had, up till then, been bounded by the brick
walls of a Spruce Street house, and the editorial office, that holds no
surprise for me now, held nothing save surprise when I was first
summoned to it. I was bewildered by the disorder, stunned by the
noise--boys coming and going, letters and telegrams pouring in, piles of
proofs mounting up on the desk, baskets overflowing with MSS., floors
strewn with papers, machinery throbbing close by, a heavy smell of
tobacco over everything, and in the midst of the confusion--lounging,
working, answering questions, tearing open letters and telegrams,
correcting proof, and yet managing to talk with me,--Moses P. Handy, the
editor, a red man in my memory of him, red hair, red beard, red cheeks,
whose cordiality I could not flatter myself was due to his eagerness for
my contributions, so engrossed was he in talking of the Eastern Shore of
Maryland from which he came and in which my family had made their
prolonged stay on the way from Virginia to Philadelphia. The Eastern
Shore may be a good place to come away from, but the native never
forgets that he did come from it and he never fails to hail his fellow
exile as brother.
My next commission I owed to the _Evening Telegraph_, for which I made a
remarkable journey to Atlantic City: a voyage of discovery, though the
report of it did not paralyse the Philadelphia public. I was deeply
impressed by my exercise of my faculty of observation thus tested on
familiar ground, but I am afraid it left the Editor indifferent, and, as
in his case the Eastern Shore was not a friendly link between us, he
expressed no desire for a second article or for a second visit. I have
regretted it since, the Editor being Clarke Davis, whom not to know was,
I believe, not to have arrived so far in Philadelphia journalism as I
liked to think I had.
[Illustration: THE PENITENTIARY]
A more remarkable journey followed to New York for I wish I could
remember what paper; or perhaps it is just as well I cannot, the
adventure adding to the reputation neither of the paper nor of myself.
The object was to attend the press view of an important exhibition of
paintings, and at that stage of my education I doubt if I could have
told a Rembrandt from a Rubens, much less a Kenyon Cox from a Church, a
Chase from a Blum, which was more immediately to the point. I had my
punishment on the spot, for my hours in the Gallery may be counted the
most humiliating of my life. My ignorance would not let me lose sight of
it for one little second. J. had gone with me--how I came to know him I
mean to tell further on--but he had no press ticket, a stern man at the
door refused to admit him without one, and I was alone in my
incompetency to wrestle with it as I could. Had he not returned with me
to Philadelphia in the afternoon and devoted the interval in the train
to throwing light upon my obscure and agonised notes, my copy could not
have been delivered that evening as agreed. I know now that the paper
would have come out all the same the next morning, but in my misery it
did not seem possible that it could, and besides I was from the first,
as through my many years of journalism, scrupulous to be on time with my
copy and to keep to my agreements. That was my first experience in art
criticism. I have tried to atone for it by years of conscientious work,
but few Philadelphia papers can say as much for themselves. In those I
see from time to time, the art criticism usually reads as if
Philadelphia editors had lost nothing of their old amiability in handing
it over to young ladies to get their journalistic training on.
I was given also my chance in two newspaper ventures Philadelphia made
in the early Eighteen-Eighties. One was the _American_, a weekly on the
lines of the New York _Nation_. Mr. Howard Jenkins, the editor, sent me
books for review, and not the first baby, not the first baby's first
tooth, could be as extraordinary a phenomenon as the first book sent for
the purpose from the editorial office. Mine, as I have never forgotten,
as I never could forget, was Howard Pyle's _Robin Hood_, and when Mr.
Jenkins wrote me that "Mr. Pyle's folks" were pleased with what I had
written, I thought I had got to the very top of the tree of journalism.
That I had got no further than a step from the bottom, and upon that had
none too secure a foothold, I was reminded when the second book for
review lay open before me.
The other venture was _Our Continent_, also a weekly, but illustrated,
edited by Judge Tourgee. Of my contributions, I remember chiefly an
article on Shop Windows, which suggests that I was busy with what I
might call a more pretentious kind of reporting. My subjects and my
manner of treating them may have been what they were,--of no special
value to anybody but myself. But to myself I cannot exaggerate their
value. I was learning from them all the time.
[Illustration: ON THE READING AT SIXTEENTH STREET]
It was an education just to learn what a newspaper was. Heretofore I had
accepted it as a thing that came of itself, arriving in the morning with
the milk and the rolls for breakfast. I knew as little of its origin as
the town boy knew of where the milk comes from in the _Punch_ story that
I do not doubt was old when _Punch_ was young. Milk he had always seen
poured from a can, our newspaper we had always had from the nearest
news-agent. It was very simple. A newspaper appeared on the
breakfast-table of a well-regulated Philadelphia house just as the water
ran when the tap was turned on in the bath-room, or the gas burned when
lit by a match. But after one article, after one visit to a newspaper
office, after one journey to Atlantic City or New York, the newspaper
did not seem so simple. I began to understand that it would not have
got as far as Spruce Street had it not been for an army of people
writing, printing, correcting proof, tearing from one end of the
town--of the world--to the other; without colossal machinery throbbing
night and day, without an immeasurable consumption of tobacco. I began
to understand the organization required to bring the army of people and
the colossal machines into such perfect harmony that the daily miracle
of the newspaper on the breakfast-table might be worked--to understand
too that the miracle-working organization had not been created in a day,
that behind the daily paper was not merely the toiling of its staff and
its machines but a long history of striving, experiment, development.
I cannot say I went profoundly into the history, I was too engrossed in
contributing my delightful share to the newspaper as it was, but to go
superficially sufficed to show me in Philadelphia a spirit of enterprise
altogether new to me. I had discovered only shortly before Philadelphia
as the scene of the first Colonial Congress, and the Declaration of
Independence, and the first big International Exposition in America, and
now I added to these other discoveries the fact that Philadelphia had
been the first American town to publish a daily paper, the last
discovery bringing me face to face with Benjamin Franklin who, it
appeared, besides flying that tiresome kite and being the ancestor of
Mrs. Gillespie, was the first printer and publisher of the paper that
set an example for all America. Tranquil the Philadelphian was by
repute, but he rolled up his sleeves and pitched in when the moment
came. Philadelphia's famous calm was but skin deep over its seething
mass of workers, its energy, its toiling, its triumph. When I reflected
on what was going on at night in every newspaper office in town, it
seemed to me as unbelievable that, on the verge of this volcano of work,
Philadelphians could keep on dancing at parties, at the Dancing Class,
at the Assembly, as that men and women should have danced at Brussels on
the eve of Waterloo. And newspaper-making was one only of Philadelphia's
innumerable industries. That thought gave me the scale of the labour
that goes to keep the machinery of life running.
V
Of some of the other industries I got to know a little. My Uncle who, as
I have said, was a man of ideas and who had his fair proportion of
Philadelphia energy, included among his many interests the subject of
education. He deplored existing systems and methods. My belief is that
the systems and methods might be of the best and education would still
be a mistake, vulgarizing the multitude to whom it does not belong and
encouraging in them a prejudice against honest work. My Uncle did not
think as I do,--that I do not think now as he did frightens me as a
disloyalty to his memory. But he could not overlook the distaste for
manual work that had grown out of too much attention to books and as he
never let his theories exhaust themselves in words, he lost no time in
persuading the Board of Education to put this particular one to a
practical test. Doubts of their methods had assailed the Board, but no
way out of the difficulty had been suggested until he came and said,
"Set your children, your boys and girls, who are forgetting how to use
their hands, to work at the Minor Arts." It struck them as a suggestion
that warranted the experiment anyway, especially as the cost would be
comparatively small. My Uncle had been back in Philadelphia not much
more than a year when classes were put in his charge and a
schoolroom--the school-house at Broad and Locust--at his disposal, and
he inaugurated the study of the Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia with the
Industrial Art School, as he had in London with the Home Arts. His sole
payment was the pleasure of the experiment, a pleasure which few
theorists succeed in securing. I, however, was paid by the City in solid
dollars and cents for the fine amateurish inefficiency with which I
helped him to manage the classes, recommended by him, whose
consideration was as practical for my pockets which the _Atlantic_,
backed by newspapers, had not filled to repletion.
[Illustration: LOCUST STREET EAST FROM BROAD STREET]
This is not the place for the history of his experiment. It is known.
The school has passed from the experimental stage into a permanent
institution, though in the passing my Uncle has been virtually
forgotten,--often the fate of the man who sets a ball of reform rolling.
Of all this I have elsewhere made the record. I am at present concerned
with the influence the school had upon me and the unexpected extent to
which it widened my knowledge of Philadelphia and Philadelphia
activities.
How Philadelphia was educated was not a question that had kept me awake
at nights. The Philadelphia girl of my acquaintance, if a day scholar,
went naturally to Miss Irwin's or to Miss Annabel's in town; if a
boarder perhaps to Miss Chapman's at Holmesburg or Mrs. Comegys at
Chestnut Hill; unless her parents were converts or Catholics by birth
when she went instead to the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Torresdale
or in Walnut Street. The Philadelphia boy began with the Episcopal
Academy and finished with the University of Pennsylvania. Friends went
to the Friends' School in Germantown, and to Swarthmore and Haverford.
What others did, did not matter. I had heard there were public or free
schools where children could go for nothing, but nobody to my knowledge
went to them. With what insolence we each of us, in our own little
fraction of the world, think everybody outside of it nobody! But up in
the top story rooms of the school-house at Broad and Locust, where my
work took me two afternoons in the week, I found myself the centre of a
vast network of schools! High Schools, Grammar Schools, Primary Schools,
Scholarships, more divisions and subdivisions than I could count; with
teachers--for there was a class for teachers--and pupils coming from
every ward and suburb, every street and alley of the town; a School
Board keeping a watchful eye upon schools and teachers, not leaving me
out; and all about me a vast population without one idea or interest
except the education of Philadelphia. And this implied, like the
newspaper, a perfect organization of its own to keep the whole thing
going--an organization that never could have been born in a day. The
education of Philadelphia had absorbed a vast population since
Philadelphia was: the first Philadelphia children hardly escaping from
their cave dwellings before they were hurried into school to have their
poor little minds trained and disciplined. Really, in my first days of
work, life was a succession of startling discoveries about Philadelphia.
I could not get paid for my afternoons at the school, which I ought to
have paid for considering the education they were to me, without making
another discovery. The pay came monthly from the City in the form of a
warrant, or so I believe it is called. As I have explained that I had
never been possessed of money of my own, some allowance will be made for
my stupidity in thinking it necessary to cash the warrant in person. It
never occurred to me to open a bank account or to ask my Father to
exchange the warrant for money. I went myself to the office in the big,
new, unfinished City Hall--how well I remember, when I was kept waiting
which was always, my conscientiousness in jotting down elaborate notes
of windows and doors and upholstery and decoration: Zola in France and
Howells at home having made Realism the literary fashion, and Realism,
I gathered, being achieved only by way of jotting down endless notes in
every situation in which I found myself; especially as J. had brought
back from Italy exemplary and inspiring tales of Vernon Lee (Violet
Paget) and Mary Robinson (Mme. Duclaux), with whom he had worked and
travelled, filling blank books with memoranda collected from the windows
of every train they took and every hotel in which they stayed.
I am glad I was stupid, such a good thing for me was this going in
person, such a suggestive lesson in City Government which I learned was
as little of an automatic arrangement as education and the newspaper,
and not necessarily something that all decent people should be ashamed
of being mixed up with, the way my Father and the old-fashioned
Philadelphian of his type looked upon it and every other variety of
Government. It was just another huge, busy, striving, toiling
organization, so huge as to fit with difficulty into the enormous ugly
new buildings, then recently set down for it in Penn Square with
complete indifference to Penn's plan for his green country town, or to
get its work done in the maze of courts and passages and offices by the
hordes of big and little officials no less preoccupied in City
Government than journalists in their newspaper, or teachers in their
school, or--outrageous as it may sound--society in the Assembly and
Dancing Class and the things which I had been brought up to believe the
beginning and end of existence on this earth.
[Illustration: BROAD STREET, LOOKING SOUTH FROM ABOVE ARCH STREET]
My new knowledge of Philadelphia was widened in various other directions
as time went on. My Uncle's experiment, when it took practical shape,
attracted attention and he was asked to lecture on it in places like the
Franklin Institute--there was no keeping away very long from Benjamin
Franklin in Philadelphia once I got to know anything about
Philadelphia--and to visit institutions like Moyamensing Prison or
Kirkbride's Insane Asylum that he might consider the advisability of
introducing his scheme of manual work for the benefit of the insane and
the criminal. I usually accompanied him on these occasions, and before
he had got through his rounds I had seen a number of different phases of
Philadelphia activity and enterprise and power of organization. I had
been given some idea of the armies of doctors and nurses and scientists
who had made Kirkbride's a model throughout the land, while Dr. Albert
Smith had helped me to an additional insight into the hospitals that set
as excellent an example. I had been given an idea of the armies of
judges and juries and police and governors and warders and visiting
inspectors,--of whom my Father was one, with a special tenderness for
murderers whom he used to take his family to visit--at Moyamensing. And
from the combination of all my new experiences I had gained further
knowledge of the energies at work beyond the limits of "Chestnut,
Walnut, Spruce and Pine" to make Philadelphia what it was.
VI
I ought to have needed no guide to the knowledge and appreciation of
these things, it may be said. I admit it. But the happy mortals who are
born observant do not picture to themselves the tortures gone through by
those who must have observation thrust upon them before they begin to
use their eyes. I had not been born to observe, I had not been trained
to observe, and to become observant I had to go through the sort of
practical course Mr. Squeers set to his boys. His method, denounce it as
you will, has its merits. The students of Dotheboys Hall could never
have forgotten what a window is or what it means to clean it. I had
grown up to accept life as a pageant for me to look on at, with no part
to play in it. After my initiation into work, I could never forget, in
the quietest, emptiest sections of the town, not even in placid little
backwaters like Clinton Street and De Lancey Place, the machinery
forever crashing and grinding and roaring to produce the pageant, to
weave for Philadelphia the beautiful serenity it wore like a garment. I
could never forget that, insignificant as my share in the machinery
might be, all the same I was contributing something to make it go. I
could never be sure that everybody I met, however calm in appearance,
might not be as mixed up in the great machine of work as I was beginning
to be.
[Illustration: CLINTON STREET, WITH THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL AT ITS
END]
I had to work to learn that Philadelphia had worked, and still worked,
and worked so well as to be the first to have given America much that
is best and most vital in the country--the first to show the right way
with its schools and hospitals and libraries and newspapers and
galleries and museums, the leader in the fight for liberty of
conscience, the scene of the first Colonial Congress and the signing of
the Declaration of Independence and the Centennial Exposition to
commemorate it, a pioneer in science and industry and manufacture--a
town upon which all the others in the land could not do better than
model themselves--while all the time it maintained its fine air of calm
that perplexes the stranger and misleads the native. But I had found it
out, found out its greatness, before age had dimmed my perceptions and
dulled my power of appreciation; and to find Philadelphia out is to love
it.