Our Philadelphia . e-strained ornament of the State House,—none with sonoble a background of stately rooms for those statelyfigures who were the makers of history in the old churches came as a new revelation. I ques-tioned if I ever could have thought an English Cathedralin its close lovelier than red brick St. Peters in its walledgraveyard on a spring day, with the green in its firstfreshness and the great wide-spreading trees throwingsoft shadows over the grassy spaces and the grey crum-bling gravestones. The pleasure it gave me positively hurtwhen—after walking in the filth
Our Philadelphia . e-strained ornament of the State House,—none with sonoble a background of stately rooms for those statelyfigures who were the makers of history in the old churches came as a new revelation. I ques-tioned if I ever could have thought an English Cathedralin its close lovelier than red brick St. Peters in its walledgraveyard on a spring day, with the green in its firstfreshness and the great wide-spreading trees throwingsoft shadows over the grassy spaces and the grey crum-bling gravestones. The pleasure it gave me positively hurtwhen—after walking in the filth of Front Street, wherethe old houses are going to rack and ruin and where a Jew-in his praying shawl at the door of a small, shabby syna-gogue seemed the explanation of the filth—I came uponthe little green garden of a graveyard round the OldSwedes Church, sweet and still and fragrant in the Maysunshine, though the windows of a factory looked downupon it to one side, and out in front, on the railroad tracks,. TWELFTH STREET MEETING HOUSE AFTER A QUARTER OF A CENTURY 517 huge heavy freight cars rattled and rumbled and slu-iekedby, and beyond them rose the steam stacks of steamersfrom Antwerp and Liverpool that unload at its door thehordes of aliens who not only degrade, but impoverish Philadelphia, as the Irish porter in my hotel said to what pleasure again, after the walk full of memoriesalong Front and Second Streets, with the familiar odoursand Philadelphia here quiet as of yore, to come uponChrist Church a part of the street like any French Cathe-dral and not in its own little green, but with a greaterarchitectural pretension to make up for it, and with agravestone near the sanctuary to testify that John Penn,one at least of the Penn family, lies buried in what greater pleasure in the old Meeting Houses—why had I not known, in youth as in age, their tranquilloveliness?—^What rej^ose there, down Arch Street, in thatsmall simple brick buildin
Size: 1364px × 1832px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectlithographyamerican
