Christopher Morley

“ As one walks on, past the Medico-Chirurgical Hospital, with its memorable inscription (Think not the beautiful doings of thy soul shall perish unremembered; they abide with thee forever) , the thin white spire of the Arch Street Methodist Episcopal Church and the monstrous oddity of the Masonic Temple spring into view. In an optimistic mood, under a riot of sunlight and a radiant sky, one is tempted to claim a certain beauty for this incongruous panorama. Yet if there is beauty no one can claim a premeditated scheme for it. Granite, marble, brick and chocolate stone jostle one another. ”

“ I can be as solitary in a city street as ever Thoreau was in Walden.
And no Walden sky was ever more blue than the roof of Washington square this morning. Sitting here reading Thoreau I am entranced by the mellow flavor of the young summer. The sun is just goodly enough to set the being in a gentle toasting muse. The trees confer together in a sleepy whisper. I have had buckwheat cakes and syrup for breakfast, and eggs fried both recto and verso; good foundation for speculation. I puff cigarettes and am at peace with myself. Many a worthy waif comes to lounge beside me ”

“ It is a calm sea, one would have said looking down from the dunes, but to the swimmer, elbowing his way under their leaning hollows, their stature seems tremendous. The sunlight strikes into the hills of moving water, filling them with a bluish spangle and tremor of brightness. It is worth while to duck underneath and look up at the sun from under the surface, to see how the light seems to spread and clot and split in the water like sour cream poured into a cup of tea. The sun, which is so ruddy in the evening air, is a pale milky white when seen from under water. ”

“ A shady lane by the now stripling Darby brought them to a quiet pool under leaning willows, and a silver gush of water over a small dam beneath which a bronze Venus bathes herself thoughtfully. Madrigal wore the face of one entering into joy rarely vouchsafed to battered poets. Doggerel, in his paltry way, was likewise of blithe cheer. Through a gap in the hedge they scaled a knoll and reached their haven. And here they found what virtuous walkers have ever found at the end of an innocent journey—a bath, a beer, and a blessing. ”

“ The woodwork still has that clean, dusty gloss that is characteristic of a flour mill. By the sawing shed lie a number of great logs, admirable site for a quiet smoke. The Soothsayer, tremendously impressed by this time, wandered about with us and listened kindly to all our spasms of reminiscence. We both agreed that the old mill, dozing in the sunlight, with the pale and tremulous shimmer of blue light in the porch where Mr. Flounders was working, was a fit subject for some artist's brush.
We did not fail to admire the remarkable old house across the road, where Mr. Flounders lives. ”

“ Something of that baffled exultation seizes one in certain moments of strolling, when the afternoon sun streams down Chestnut street on the homeward pressing crowd, or in clear crisp mornings as one walks through Washington Square. Emily utters her prodigious parables in flashing rockets, that stream for an instant in the dusk, then break and sink in colored balls. Most of us cannot ejaculate such dazzles of flame. We pick and poke and stumble our thoughts together, catching at a truth and losing it again. ”

“ THE INDIAN POLE
Every street has a soul of its own. Somewhere in its course it will betray its secret ideals and preferences. I like to imagine that the soul of Callowhill street has something to do with beer. Like a battered citizen who has fallen upon doleful days, Callowhill street solaces itself with the amber.
Between Tenth and Fourth streets Callowhill numbers at least a dozen pubs, not to enumerate a score of "cider saloons." A soft breath of hops seems to haunt the air, and the trucks unloading kegs into cellars give promise of quenchers to come. ”

“ When did we learn to cut ourselves apart from earth's miracles of refreshment? To wall ourselves in from the sun's great laughter, to forget the flamboyant pageantry of the world? Earth has wisdom for all our follies, healing for all our wounds, dusk and music for all our peevishness. Who taught us that we could do without her? Can you hear the skylark through a telephone or catch that husky whisper of the pines in a dictograph? Can you keep your heart young in a row of pigeonholes? Will you forego the surf of ocean rollers to be serf to a rolltop desk? ”

“ Fewer of us know that most of South America's coins come from there too, and when the citizens of Lima or Buenos Aires pay out their bright centavos for a movie show or a black cigar their pockets jingle with small change stamped in Philadelphia. And none of us can realize, without a trip to that marvelous home of wonders, the spirit of devoted and delicate science that moves among the men who have spent self-effacing lives in testing precious metals and molding them into the most beautiful coinage known on earth. ”

“ Almost every house has its little garden, often outlined with whitened shells. It seems like a New England fishing village in the heart of the city. An occasional huckster's wagon rumbles smoothly along the asphalt paving; an occasional tinkle of a piano in some cool, darkened parlor. That is all. I can imagine no haunt of ancient peace more drowsy with stillness and the treble chirp of birds than the tangled and overgrown cemetery at Thompson street and Columbia avenue, in the hush of a hot summer siesta. ”

“ Over the rough-hewn mantel was an old picture of George Washington and a badge belonging to some member of the American Press Humorists, dropped by one of these mad wags on their recent visit to the park.
But the chief glory of Valley Forge is the Washington Memorial Chapel, a place so startling in its beauty that it takes the breath away. Through a humble arched door—as lowly as the doorway of suffering through which the nation came to birth—one enters a shrine of color where the history of the republic is carved in stone. The tall windows blaze with blue and scarlet. ”

“ Franklin Square is a jolly place on a warm day. There are red and pink geraniums round the pool in the middle. There is the drowsy whirr and hum of lawn mowers. There is a sweet, dull air moving gently across the wide grass plots; the flag waves heavily on the tall staff. There is a whole posse of baby carriages gathered together in a shady patch of pavement, with usually one small girl left to "mind" them while the other little guardians are sprinkling themselves with water at the stand-pipe, or playing hopscotch in the sun. ”

“ The public is long suffering, and seems fairly well pleased at almost anything that appears on the screen. But the extraordinary thing at a movie is hardly ever what is on the screen, but rather the audience itself. Observe the mute, expectant, almost reverent attention. The darkened house crowded with people prayerfully and humbly anxious to be amused or thrilled! One wonders what their evenings must have been like when there were no movies if their present reaction is so passionately devout. A movie audience is a more moving spectacle than any of the flashing shadows that beam before it. ”

“ A few blocks further on one abuts upon Ridge avenue, the Sam Brown belt of Philadelphia. In its long diagonal course from Ninth and Vine up to Strawberry Mansion, Ridge avenue is full of unceasing life and interest. It and South street are perhaps the two most entertaining of the city's humbler highways. Master street crosses it at a dramatic spot. There is a great cool lumber yard, where the piled-up wood exhales a fragrant breath under the hot sun, and lilac-breasted pigeons flap about among the stained rafters. ”

“ We hope that all lovers of Philadelphia will take occasion to step into the office of the Electric Company to see this beautiful painting. There are no words competent to express the tragedy of those who have worked patiently for an ideal and yet die too soon to see their dreams come to full fruit. Yet it is good to remember that those pinched and bitter days of last winter, when we were all bemoaning Black Mondays and ways clogged with snow, gave Claud Warlow his opportunity to put on canvas the beauty that haunted him and which made his life a triumph. ”

“ I presume that every man in the world takes any opportunity he can to wallow in a running brook. It is an old tradition, and there cannot be too much of it.
The little rivers are excellent friends of man. They are brisk, cheerful and full of quiet corners of sun. They are clear and clean, the terror of dark unknown waters is not in them. I have known and loved many such, and I hope to make friends with more. When I look back and reckon up the matters that are cause for regret there will not stand among them my private and pagan sluice in the bright water of Neshaminy. ”

“ One curious and applaudable feature is the absence of smoke. All over the roofs of the city float little plumes and wisps of steam, detaching and drifting away in the warm blue shimmer like dissolving feathers. A cool breeze was moving in from over the Park, where the tall columns of the Smith Memorial were rising over a sea of green. The Parkway seen from above stands out as the most notable feature of Philadelphia topography. ”

“ Even those who know the city through a long lifetime of street wandering will admit the difficulty of representing the vast area as it would be seen from an imaginary gazing-point high in air. Infinite problems of perspective, infinite details of accuracy and patient verification must enter into such a work. But the artist never wavered through his long task. The sketches he had made through that long blizzard winter were gradually put on his big canvas through the hot days of last summer. ”

“ He was the only man who ever saw a bookworm.
But if a bookworm should ever flap its wings and crow in Philadelphia, certainly the place where it would do so would be the Mercantile Library. I imagine that when Mr. Hedley, the delightful librarian, shuts up at night, turns off the green-shaded lamps and rings the bell to thrust out the last lingering reader from the long dark tables, he treads hopefully through those enchanted alcoves. ”

“ Best of all are the wet days when the rain drums on the little shelter-roof and drips down the back of the fanatic. But what true fanatic heeds a chilled spine when his head is warmed by all the fires of Olympus?
Ludlow street has quiet sorrows of its own, however. At the end of the ten-cent shelves, redeemed and exalted, even intoxicated by these draughts of elixir, it staggers a little in its gait. It takes a wild reeling twist round behind Leary's, clinging to that fortress of the Muses as long as it may. ”

“ A naturalist could find hundreds of species of flowers and grasses on those sandy meadows. There are great clumps of some bushy herb that has already turned a vivid copper color, and catches the declining sunlight like burnished metal. There are flecks of yellow, pink and lavender. A cool, strong odor rises from the harsh, knife-edged grasses—a curiously dry, brittle scent, familiar to all who have poked about sand dunes.
The beach itself, colored in the last flush of the level sun, is still faintly warm to the naked foot, after the long shining of the day; but it cools rapidly. ”

“ Sixty freight cars can be loaded there at one time. One thinks what emotions that glass-roofed shed must have seen in Civil War times. I suppose many a train of men in blue said good-by to mothers and sweethearts along those platforms. That thought was with me as I stood inside the old station, which in spite of its bustle of freight is filled with the haunting sadness of all places that are old and decayed and echoing with the whispers of long ago. Does it seem absurd to sentimentalize over a railway station less than seventy years old? ”

“ Was towed upstream, and, to be sold for junk,
Was moored beside the Stokley. Where her bow,
All scarred and singed with flame and red with rust,
Must almost overhang the very bench
Of love and happy dreams, the Roald lay.
And Mary, coming down to that old haunt
Where all her bliss and heartbreak were most near,
Found the dead ship, approached, and read the name.
Well, such a tale one cannot tell in full;
Heart's inmost anguish is the heart's alone. ”

“ There is an old belief that it is the second summer that is the danger time in a baby's life. It was the second winter that was the cradle-crisis of the young republic—the winter of 1777-78. It was then that began the long road that carries us from Valley Forge to Versailles.
Few of us realize, I think, what a vast national shrine Valley Forge has become under the careful hands of a few devoted people. There is little of winter and dearth in that spreading park as one views it on a July afternoon. ”

“ To swim just beyond the line of the big breakers, dropping a foot now and then to feel that bottom is not too far away—to sprawl inward with a swashing comber while the froth boils about his shoulders—to watch the light and color prismed in the curl and slant of every wave, and the quick vanishing of brightness and glory once the sun is off the sea—all this is the matter of poems that no one can write. ”

“ Until the other evening at the Caliph's we had not seen the water of Darby creek for ten years; not such a long time, perhaps, as some reckon these matters, but quite long enough. And our mind runs back with unrestrained enthusiasm to the days when we lived only two miles away from that delicious stream. Darby creek is associated in our mind with a saw and cider mill that used to stand—and very likely still stands—where the creek crosses the West Chester pike. To that admirable spot, in the warm blue haze of an October afternoon, certain young men used to tramp. ”

“ One saw a secret pathos in the effort to reproduce in the flat dull streets of a foreign city something of the color and mirth of Mediterranean soil. One often wonders what fantastic dream or illusion—was it only a steamship poster?—led so many citizens of the loveliest land on earth to forsake their blue hills and opal valleys to people the cheerless byways of American towns? What does Little Italy think of us and our climate in the raw, bitter days of a western winter? ”

“ Madrigal had a bad cold, and I was trumpeting with hay fever; and we set off for consolation in a tramp along the Wissahickon. In the drowsy stillness of a late August afternoon, with a foreboding of autumn chill already in the air, we sneezed and coughed our way along the lovely ravine. Those lonely glades, that once echoed to the brisk drumming of horses' hoofs, rang with our miserable sternutations. The rocky gullies and pine-scented hillsides became for one afternoon the Vallombrosa of two valetudinarians. Thoughts of mortal perishment lay darkly upon us. ”

“ Roads were damp, easy underfoot, free from dust. Madrigal and Doggerel were gay at heart. They scrambled up the embankment of the deserted Delaware County Railroad, which is the most direct pathway toward the headwaters of Darby. It is possible to go along the bank of the creek, but underbrush was still drenched, and Mr. Sanderson uttered cryptic warning of a certain bull. On the grass-grown track of the antique railroad, treading gingerly over worm-eaten wooden trestles, the explorer enjoys perfect sunny tranquillity. ”

“ One-story white houses, very small, but with yards swept clean and neat whitewashed fences, stand under poplars and willows. It is almost an incredible experience to come upon that odd little village as one crosses a wooden bridge and sees boys fishing hopefully in a stagnant canal. At the bend in the lane is a trim white house with vivid flowers in the garden, beds patterned with whited shells, an old figurehead—or is it a cigar-store sign?—of a colored boy in a blue coat, freshly painted in the yard. ”