Winter relaxing its hold, has already allow'd us a foretaste of spring.
As I write, yesterday afternoon's softness and brightness, (after
the morning fog, which gave it a better setting, by contrast,) show'd
Chestnut street--say between Broad and Fourth--to more advantage in its
various asides, and all its stores, and gay-dress'd crowds generally,
than for three months past. I took a walk there between one and two.
Doubtless, there were plenty of hard-up folks along the pavements, but
nine-tenths of the myriad-moving human panorama to all appearance seem'd
flush, well-fed, and fully-provided. At all events it was good
to be on Chestnut street yesterday. The peddlers on the
sidewalk--("sleeve-buttons, three for five cents")--the handsome little
fellow with canary-bird whistles--the cane men, toy men, toothpick
men--the old woman squatted in a heap on the cold stone flags, with
her basket of matches, pins and tape--the young negro mother, sitting,
begging, with her two little coffee-color'd twins on her lap--the beauty
of the cramm'd conservatory of rare flowers, flaunting reds, yellows,
snowy lilies, incredible orchids, at the Baldwin mansion near Twelfth
street--the show of fine poultry, beef, fish, at the restaurants--the
china stores, with glass and statuettes--the luscious tropical
fruits--the street cars plodding along, with their tintinnabulating
bells--the fat, cab-looking, rapidly driven one-horse vehicles of
the post-office, squeez'd full of coming or going letter-carriers, so
healthy and handsome and manly-looking, in their gray uniforms--the
costly books, pictures, curiosities, in the windows--the gigantic
policemen at most of the corners will all be readily remember'd and
recognized as features of this principal avenue of Philadelphia.
Chestnut street, I have discover'd, is not without individuality, and
its own points, even when compared with the great promenade-streets of
other cities. I have never been in Europe, but acquired years' familiar
experience with New York's, (perhaps the world's) great thoroughfare,
Broadway, and possess to some extent a personal and saunterer's
knowledge of St. Charles street in New Orleans, Tremont street in
Boston, and the broad trottoirs of Pennsylvania avenue in Washington. Of
course it is a pity that Chestnut were not two or three times wider; but
the street, any fine day, shows vividness, motion, variety, not easily
to be surpass'd. (Sparkling eyes, human faces, magnetism, well-dress'd
women, ambulating to and fro--with lots o fine things in the
windows--are they not about the same, the civilized world over?)
How fast the flitting figures come!
The mild, the fierce, the stony face;
Some bright with thoughtless smiles--and some
Where secret tears have left their trace.
A few days ago one of the six-story clothing stores along here had
the space inside its plate-glass show-window partition'd into a little
corral, and litter'd deeply with rich clover and hay, (I could smell the
odor outside,) on which reposed two magnificent fat sheep, full-sized
but young--the handsomest creatures of the kind I ever saw. I stop's
long and long, with the crowd, to view them--one lying down chewing the
cud, and one standing up, looking out, with dense-fringed patient
eyes. Their wool, of a clear tawny color, with streaks of glistening
black--altogether a queer sight amidst that crowded promenade of
dandies, dollars and dry-goods.