Travels in Philadelphia/Darkness Visible
DARKNESS VISIBLE
Of all gifts to earth, the first and greatest was darkness. Darkness preceded light, you will remember, in Genesis. Perhaps that is why darkness seems to man natural and universal. It requires no explanation and no cause. We postulate it. Whereas light, being to our minds merely the cleansing vibration that dispels the black, requires some origin, some lamp whence to shine. From the appalling torch of the sun down to the pale belly of the glowworm we deem light a derivative miracle, proceeding from some conceivable source. We can conceive darkness without thought of light; but we cannot conceive light without darkness. Day is but an interval between two nights. In other words, darkness is a matter which includes light just as the conception of a joke includes that of humor. One can think (alas!) of jokes without humor; but no one can conceive of humor without jokes.
This philosophy, probably scoffable for the trained thinker, is a clumsy preface to the thought that city streets at night are the most fascinating work of man. Like all other handouts of nature, man has taken darkness and made it agreeable, trimmed and refined and made it acceptable for the very nicest people. And the suburbanite who finds himself living in town for a week or so is likely to spend his whole evenings in wandering espial, poring over the glowing caves of shop windows and rejoicing in the rich patterns of light wherewith man has made night lovely. Night by herself, naked and primitive and embracing, is embarrassing; she crowds one so; there is so much of her. So we push her up the side streets and into the movie halls and out to the suburbs, and taking her a little at a time we really learn to enjoy her company.
There is a restaurant on Arch street near Ninth where one may dine on excellent jam omelet and coffee, after which it is good to stroll along Ninth street (which with its tributary Ludlow I esteem the best street we have) to admire the different tints of light that man has set out in order to get a look at the darkness. There is the wan white glow of the alabaster inverted bowls that are favored in barbers' shops. There is the lucent gold of jewelers' windows where naked electric bulbs of great candlepower are masked in silvered reflectors along the top and bottom of the pane. There is the bleak moonshine of tiled and enameled restaurants, where they lose much lightness by having everything too white. If (for instance) the waitresses would only wear scarlet or black dresses, how much more brilliant the scene would be. There is the pale lilac and lavender of the arcs, and the vicious green glare of mercury vapor tubes in the ten minute photograph studios that are always full of sailors. Over all soars the orange disc of the City Hall clock, which has been hailed by so many romantic wastrels as the rising or setting moon. And the fierce light that is said to beat upon a throne is twilight compared to that which shimmers round our jewelled soda fountains.
The long, musty corridor of the postoffice on Ninth street is an interesting place about 8 o'clock in the evening. Particularly in these last weeks, when movies, saloons and theatres have been closed on account of the influenza epidemic, the postoffice has become a trysting place for men in uniform and young ladies. The gloomy halls at each end of the corridor are good ground for giggling colloquy; light love (curiously) approves the dusk. Through the little windows one catches glimpses of tiers of pigeonholes packed with letters, and wonders what secrets of the variable human heart are there confided to the indulgent secrecy of Uncle Sam. If a novelist of imaginative sympathy might spend a week in reading through those pigeonholes, what a book he could make of them! Or could we only peer over the shoulders of those who stand writing at the blackened, ink-stained desks, what meshes of joy and pain we might see raveled in the lives of plain men and women! The great tapestry of human life lies all round us, and we have to pluck clumsily at its patterns thread by thread.
One who is interested in bookish matters ought to make a point of going upstairs to the registered mail room on the second floor. In a corner of that room, sitting in a well-worn chair under a drop light, you may be fortunate enough to find one of the postoffice guards, an elderly philosopher who beguiles the evening vigil with a pipe and a book. He is a genial sage and a keen devourer of print. He eats books alive. Marie Corelli and Marion Crawford are among his favorites for lighter ministration, but in the past few weeks his mind has been on graver matter. He has just finished a life of Napoleon and a biography of Joan of Arc. Tonight when I went in to register a letter his chair was empty (he was having his supper of sandwiches and a little bucket of coffee at a table in the dim hallway outside), but on the shelf lay his book, pipe and tobacco pouch. I could not resist peeking to see what the volume was. Little's Life of Saint Francis of Assisi. Verily, if our government officials are taking to reading of Saint Francis, the world looks forward to happier days.
The Secretary of the Treasury says in a notice "Loitering about this building is prohibited," but I fear I have committed what Don Marquis used to call lèse-McAdoo in often halting to scrutinize the bulletin board in the north hall of the postoffice. Here are posted statements of stores and materials needed by the Federal departments. One finds such notices as this: Sealed proposals will be received by the undersigned until 2 o'clock p. m., October 80, for supplying this building with three dozen scrubbing brushes. And the Navy Yard's bulletin board, near by, always has interesting requirements: Wanted, for United States naval training camp, seventy-five bubbling heads sanitary drinking fountains. (Imagine how amazed seamen of the tarry pigtail era would be at the idea of drinking from a sanitary drinking fountain!) The Inspector of Engineering Material, U. S. N., Cleveland, O., announces that he desires space for storing one five-passenger Ford touring car and washing it at least once each week for the period ending June 30, 1919. It would be a bit inconvenient, we think, to store the flivver here in Philadelphia. The Navy Yard desires bids for supplying submarines with copper-jacketed gaskets, which has a business-like sound. The Public Works Department admits that one dozen mouse traps, revolving, are needed, to be delivered and inspected at Building No. 4, Navy Yard. Wanted for overseas vessels (here our heart leaps up at the prospect of something exciting) eleven revolving office chairs, oak finish, and eleven dozen pencils. The Naval Hospital at League Island asks bids on 100 poinsettias, 50 cyclamens, 100 primroses, 100 carnations, 12 hydrangeas, all in pots. And there are requisitions posted for wires and shackles, for anchors and propellers, for chemicals and talcum powder and vast radio towers to be erected at a naval base in France. War, you see, is not all a matter of powder and shot. If you are ever tempted to wonder what the Government does with the Liberty Loans, go up to the Federal Building and look over a few of those invitations for bids posted on the bulletin boards.
Ninth street, as I said, often seems to me the most alluring street in town. Perhaps it is because of certain bookshops; perhaps it is because at a table d'hôte restaurant above Market street I first learned the pleasant combustion of cheap claret and cigarettes ignited by the spark of youthful converse. To these discoveries of a dozen years ago I am happy to add others; for example, that the best spaghetti I have ever eaten is served on Ninth street; and that there is a second-hand bookstore which is open at night. Nor am I likely to forget a set-to with sausages and corncakes and sirup that I enjoyed on Ninth street the other evening with the Soothsayer. We had been motoring in the suburbs, a crisp and bravely tinted October afternoon, and getting back to town after 8 o'clock as hungry as bolshevik commissars, we entered into the joy of the flesh in a Ninth street hash cathedral. Here and now let me pay tribute to those blissful lunch rooms that stay open late at night to sustain and replenish the toiler whose business it is to pass along the lonely pavements of midnight. Waiters and waitresses of the all-night shift, we who are about to eat salute you! Let it be a double portion of corned-beef hash and "coffee with plenty." And many a midnight luncher has blessed you for your unfailing good humor. Is it not true, admit it, that most of the happy recollections of mankind deal with food we have enjoyed?
You will find it well worth while to take a stroll up Ninth street some evening. You will usually find a roasted chestnut cart at the southeast corner of Market street. The noble savor of cooking chestnuts is alone worth the effort of the walk. Then you can pass on northward, by the animal shop, where the dogs sleep uneasily in the window, agitated by the panorama outside; past the cuckoo clock shop and the old Dime Museum. As the street leads on to less exalted faubourgs you will notice that it grows more luxurious. Windows glow with gold watches, diamond studs, cut glass carafes. Haberdashers set out $8 silk shirts, striped with the rainbow, infinitely more glorious than anything to be found on Chestnut street. And then, at Race street, you can turn off into the queer sights of Chinatown.