language under the sun except English, and can boast, if it is a thing to boast of, more Italians than Rome, more Jews than Jerusalem; that San Francisco has its Chinatown, that the Middle West abounds in German and Swedish settlements—in a word, I know that everywhere throughout the country, the native American is retreating before this invasion of the alien. But it is with a certain difference in Philadelphia. Have I not said that one of the absurdities of my native town—I can afford to call them absurdities because I love them—is that for the Philadelphian who looks upon himself as the real Philadelphian, Philadelphia lies between the Delaware and the Schuylkill, and is bounded on the north by Market Street, on the south by Lombard; that in the ancient rhyming list of its streets he recognizes only the line:
"Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce, and Pine"?
Now, when I left home this narrow section was threatening to grow too narrow and it was with some difficulty the Philadelphian kept within it. Up till then, however, it was in no danger except from his own increasing numbers. The tragedy is that the Russian Jew should have descended upon just this section, should now, not so much dispute it with him, as oust him from it—the Russian Jew, a Jew by religion but not by race, who has been found impossible in every country on the Continent of Europe into which he has drifted, so impossible when that country is Holland that the Jews who have been there for centuries collect among themselves the money to send
