Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/24

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SAUNTERING

says, with his penetrative truth?—"Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once and a half witted with the half witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit." By the time a man is thirty he should be able to see what life has to offer, and take what dishes on the menu agree with him best. That is whole wit, indeed, or wit-and-a-half. And if he finds his pleasure on a park bench in ragged trousers let him lounge then, with good heart. I welcome him to the goodly fellowship of saunterers, an acolyte of the excellent church of the agorolaters!

These meditations are incurred in the ancient and noble city of Philadelphia, which is a surprisingly large town at the confluence of the Biddle and Drexel families. It is wholly surrounded by cricket teams, fox hunters, beagle packs, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. It has a very large zoölogical garden, containing carnivora, herbivora, scrappleivora, and a man from New York who was interned here at the time of the Centennial Exposition in 1876. The principal manufactures are carpets, life insurance premiums, and souvenirs of Independence Hall. Philadelphia was the first city to foresee the advantages of a Federal constitution and oatmeal as a breakfast food.

And as one walks and speculates among all this visible panorama, beating one's brains to catch some passing snapshots of it, watching, listening,imagining, the whole hullabaloo becomes ex-