PHILADELPHIA, _Aug. 26_.--Last night and to-night of unsurpass'd
clearness, after two days' rain; moon splendor and star splendor. Being
out toward the great Exposition building, West Philadelphia, I saw it
lit up, and thought I would go in. There was a ball, democratic but
nice; plenty of young couples waltzing and quadrilling--music by a good
string-band. To the sight and hearing of these--to moderate strolls up
and down the roomy spaces--to getting off aside, resting in an arm-chair
and looking up a long while at the grand high roof with its graceful and
multitudinous work of iron rods, angles, gray colors, plays of light and
shade, receding into dim outlines--to absorbing (in the intervals of the
string band,) some capital voluntaries and rolling caprices from the big
organ at the other end of the building--to sighting a shadow'd figure
or group or couple of lovers every now and then passing some near or
farther aisle--I abandon'd myself for over an hour.
Returning home, riding down Market street in an open summer car,
something detain'd us between Fifteenth and Broad, and I got out to view
better the new, three-fifths-built marble edifice, the City Hall,
of magnificent proportions--a majestic and lovely show there in the
moonlight--flooded all over, facades, myriad silver-white lines and
carv'd heads and mouldings, with the soft dazzle--silent, weird,
beautiful--well, I know that never when finish'd will that magnificent
pile impress one as it impress'd me those fifteen minutes.
To-night, since, I have been long on the river. I watch the C-shaped
Northern Crown, (with the star Alshacca that blazed out so suddenly,
alarmingly, one night a few years ago.) The moon in her third quarter,
and up nearly all night. And there, as I look eastward, my long-absent
Pleiades, welcome again to sight. For an hour I enjoy the soothing and
vital scene to the low splash of waves--new stars steadily, noiselessly
rising in the east.
As I cross the Delaware, one of the deck-hands, F. R., tells me how
a woman jump'd overboard and was drown'd a couple of hours since. It
happen'd in mid-channel--she leap'd from the forward part of the boat,
which went over her. He saw her rise on the other side in the swift
running water, throw her arms and closed hands high up, (white hands
and bare forearms in the moonlight like a flash,) and then she sank. (I
found out afterwards that this young fellow had promptly jump'd in, swam
after the poor creature, and made, though unsuccessfully, the bravest
efforts to rescue her; but he didn't mention that part at all in telling
me the story.)