Time and change have touched Philadelphia with gentle hand. The Friends are, in the great essentials, still its dominant class, and this fact appears not only in its asylums, its hospitals, and its practical methods of helping men to help themselves, but in a prudence of thought and action that is ever reluctant to prefer the new to the old. Thus it is that no New World city harbors more numerous or more eloquent reminders of the past, or in ancient buildings and landmarks bound up with great names and great events offers to the wayfarer a richer or more varied store of historic associations.

Not to the coming of Penn, but to the issue of a dream cherished by Gustavus Adolphus, attaches the oldest authentic legend of Philadelphia. A score of years before the Quaker leader was born the heroic and generous Swede, moved thereto by the bigotry and poverty of the age in which he lived, conceived the idea of founding in America a city “where every man should have enough to eat and toleration to worship God as he chose.” Gustavus's life ended before his dream could be fulfilled, but eleven years later the girl Queen Christina and her chancellor despatched an expedition in the dead king's name. This colony of “New Sweden,” as it was called, effected a lodging-place along the banks of the Schuylkill and Delaware, in that part of Philadelphia now known as Southwark.

The narrow strip of ground on which the Swedes made their homes is given over in these latter days to ship stores, junk-shops, and salty, tarry smells, while a long line of ships, come and to go, walls in the view of the river; but if one might be frisked by the mere magic of a wish back to the middle years of the seventeenth century, he would find instead the low huts of the Norseland pioneers dotting green banks on the edge of a gloomy, unbroken forest, with hemlocks and nut trees nodding atop. Here dwelt, in peace and plenty, and “great idleness,” if an old chronicle is to be believed, the long forgotten Swansons, Keens, Bensons, Kocks, and Rambos, some of them mighty hunters when the deer came close up to the little settlement and nightly could be heard the cry of panthers or bark of wolves. At Passajungh was the humble white-nut dwelling of Commander Sven Schute, whom Christina called her “brave and fearless lieutenant,” and at “Manajungh on the Skorkihl” there was a stout fort of logs filled in with sand and stones.

Descendants on the female side of these first settlers are still to be found in the city, but Philadelphia's only relic in stone and mortar of the men who were once lords of all the land on which it was built is Gloria Dei, better known as Old Swedes' Church. Each successive sovereign of Sweden, loyal to the favorite idea of Gustavus, kept affectionate watch over the tiny settlement on the Delaware, and when the colonists begged “that godly men might be sent to them to instruct their children, and help themselves to lead lives well pleasing to God,” two clergymen, Rudman and Bjork, were despatched by Charles XII. in answer to their prayer. These missionaries reached the colony in June, 1697, and were received, as the ancient record states, “with astonishment and tears of joy.” Soon after their arrival Gloria Dei was built in a fervor of pious zeal, carpenters and masons giving their work, and the good pastor daily carrying the hod. When it was finished Swedes, Quakers, and Indians came to wonder at its grandeur, and it long remained the most important structure in the little hamlet.

Old Swedes' Church, Philadelphia

Old Swedes' holds its original site in Southwark, banked in by the sunken graves of its early worshippers. The main body of the building is unaltered to the present day. The carvings inside, the bell, and the communion service were sent out from the motherland, given by the king “to his faithful subjects in the far western wilderness;” and from Sweden came also the chubby gilt cherubs in the choir which still sustain the open Bible, with the speaking inscription, “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” Tablets in the chancel record the sacrifices and sufferings of the early pastors of the church who sleep within its walls. The last of these was Nicholas Collin, whose period of zealous service covered the better part of fifty years, and who with his devoted wife Hannah is buried just below the little altar. Another familiar face in Gloria Dei in the opening years of the century was that of Collin's friend, Alexander Wilson, then the half-starved, ill-paid master of a little school at nearby Kingsessing. The great ornithologist is buried in the graveyard of the church in which he asked that he should be laid to rest, as it was “a silent, shady place, where the birds would be apt to come and sing over his grave.”

When Old Swedes' was built the only house nearby was that of Swan Swanson, from whose three sons Penn, when he came, bought the land to lay out his town of Philadelphia. That was in 1682. A small band of pioneers had preceded the Proprietor, and he was followed by three-and-twenty ships, filled with Quakers of all classes. The city, speedily laid out by Thomas Holme, extended from river to river, and appeared magnificent — on paper; but, truth to tell, most of the new-comers following the example of the Swedes, who gave them kindly welcome, built their homes in the corner by the Delaware; and for nearly a hundred years the town consisted of but three or four streets, running parallel with that stream. Back of these streets lay a gloomy forest, drained by creeks, which cut the town into three or four parts before emptying into the Delaware. As late as the opening year of the Revolution Philadelphia extended only from Christian to Callowhill Streets, north and south, and until well on in the present century Frankford, Roxborough, and Germantown were reckoned distant hamlets, being seldom visited by the people of the town.

On a “pleasant hill” overlooking the river, and with a noble sweep of forest land between, the Proprietor reserved a lot for himself, on which he had built the house, which he gave to his daughter Lætitia. The brick and other material for this house were brought from England, and within its walls Penn passed most of the busy and fruitful days of his first visit, preferring it to the costly and imposing pile he had reared at Pennsbury. The searcher after the site of the Lætitia House finds it in Lætitia Court, between Chestnut and Market, Second and Front Streets, — a narrow, dirty alley, cut off from the sunlight by the backs of the great importing houses which now cover the wooded glades where, in the Proprietor's time, deer ranged at will. Elsewhere in Philadelphia there are few traces of the reign of the Penns. One of the few is what is known as Lansdowne, now included in Fairmount Park, which was once owned and occupied by John Penn, governor of the colony in its last days of submission to the British crown.

The Lætitia House was the first brick building erected in Philadelphia. Most of the dwellings built during the earlier years of the Quaker occupancy, some of which are still standing within the precincts of the “old town,” were of black and red English brick, or of mortar mixed with broken stone and mica. They were, as a rule, small, hipped-roofed, two-storied structures, inferior in every way to those now occupied by people of moderate incomes. Gradually, however, as time went on, the more shrewd or fortunate among the Quakers acquired large means, while the steady growth of the town attracted to it a number of men, not followers of Penn, who brought with them or soon became possessed of much solid wealth. From these changed conditions resulted a division into two classes of the social life of the town, and the building of many splendid houses, the grandeur of which is reflected in more than one diary and chronicle of the period. Among these were the Wharton House, in Southwark; Wilton, the estate of Joseph Turner, in the Neck; Woodlands, Governor Hamilton's great house at Blockley Hill; the Carpenter mansion, which stood at Seventh and Chestnut Streets, surrounded by magnificent grounds; the spacious home of Isaac Norris on Third Street; the Pemberton countryseat, on the present site of the Naval Asylum; and, chief of all, Stenton, on the cityward site of Germantown.

Stenton, “a palace in its day,” according to old Watson, was built in 1731 by James II. Logan, a keen-witted Scotchman turned Quaker, who, as agent of the Proprietor, stood between Penn and his debts on one hand and an impatient, grasping colonial Assembly on the other, serving both with fidelity and to good purpose. He was generous as well as shrewd, and at his death left the residue of a large estate to the public, including the splendid bequest of the Loganian Library, a literary treasure-house at any time, but invaluable a century and a half ago, when books were luxuries only for the wealthy. Logan was also the trusted friend of the Indians, who came in large deputations to visit him, and pitched their wigwams on the great lawn at Stenton. Logan, the famous Mingo chief, was the namesake of the good Quaker, and, in youth, was often numbered among the latter's savage guests.

Stenton, in its builder's time, was the seat of a sober but large hospitality, and the centre of the social life of the Quakers. Here gathered the grave, mild-mannered men and the quiet, sweet-faced women, who look down upon us from old family portraits, and whose rare and admirable traits included a perfect simplicity and that repose which can belong only to people who have never doubted their own social position. “The men and women who met at Stenton,” writes one of Logan's descendants, “talked no scandal and spoke not of money.” Logan's home was the resort of the colonial governors, not only of Pennsylvania but other of the provinces; and among his frequent guests were William Allen, Isaac Norris, the three Pembertons, and that Nicholas Waln who, educated for the bar, after long practice in the courts, so took to heart the moral short-comings of his fellow-lawyers that he fell into a dangerous illness. He rose from his bed a changed man, went into the meeting and became a weighty and powerful preacher.

However, not all of the guests at Stenton were as serious-minded as Waln. The men could laugh and jest on occasion; and their wives and daughters were pretty sure to display a woman's love of finery, setting off their beauty by white satin petticoats, worked in flowers, pearl satin gowns, gold chains, and seals engraven with their arms. Nor are lacking stray hints of love and courtship which lend a winsome interest to the old house, for pretty Hannah Logan's lover, returning with her from a summer day's fishing in the Wissahickon, writes in his diary that when they “came home there was so large a company for tea, that Hannah and I were set at a side table, and there we supped — on nectar and ambrosia.” Another of Stenton's daughters was Deborah Logan, a fair and gracious woman in youth and old age, who in the “Penn and Logan Correspondence,” compiled by her and by her given to the world, has given us a faithful and winning picture of the age in which she lived, an age marked by a lack of self-assertion and an inborn hatred of brag, whose influence abides in the Philadelphia of to-day.

Different in religion, tastes, and habits from the Friends were the men of wealth and their families who constituted a not inconsiderable portion of Philadelphia's polite society during its first century of existence. These were the merchants and ship-owners, who, though not followers of Penn, had been attracted to his town by its successful growth, and who, opening a trade to the West Indies and England, from small ventures quickly amassed colossal fortunes. The wives and daughters of these merchant princes, most of whom could show ancestral bearings, followed afar off the reports of English fashions. They rode on horseback or went in sedan-chairs to pay visits; their kitchens swarmed with slaves and white redemptionists; they dined and danced, and — gambled; and they worshipped of a Sunday in a church dedicated to the Anglican creed.

The parish of Christ Church was thirty-two years old when the present building was commenced in 1727. William of Orange was an active promoter of the parish, and the service of plate now in use in the church was a gift from Anne. Designed by the architect of Independence Hall, Christ Church presents many points of similarity to that historic structure, and is likewise closely identified with the struggle for independence. Here worshipped General and Lady Washington, Samuel and John Adams, Patrick Henry, James Madison, John Hancock, and Richard Henry Lee. Under its roof the Episcopal Church in America was organized, in 1785, and within its walls is now housed a rare and interesting collection of ancient volumes, furniture, pictures, and tablets, each of interest to the student and lover of the past.

One of the first rectors of Christ Church was a Rev. Mr. Coombe. He was a Loyalist, and during the early days of the Revolution returned to England, where lie finally became chaplain to George III. It is probably from him or one of his family that an alley, a short distance above Christ Church, and running eastward, takes its name. Here it was that the namesake and heir of William Penn, when he came over to play the prince in the colony, once got into a brawl. He was spending an evening in Enoch Story's inn, when he fell to quarrelling with some of his fellow-citizens who were acting as the watch. The sober Friends, who had little patience with princely debauchees, arrested the young fellow for this affray, whereupon he incontinently forsook the Society for the Church of England, in which faith the descendants of Penn have ever since remained.

Coombe's Alley, in the younger Penn's time, was a prosperous quarter, and it still bears traces of better days. In 1795 it had a very large population for such narrow limits, — boasting its half-dozen boarding-houses, its merchants and laborers, its soldiers and mariners, its bakers and hucksters. Nor was it without its cares and troubles; for during the famous epidemic of 1793 thirty-two people died in the course of a year in this one small street. The old houses still standing in it are built of the red and black bricks so plentiful in the city's youth. In most cases curious wooden projections, like unfinished roofs, divide the first story from the second, making the latter look as though they had been an after-thought.

The chimes of Christ Church, which on July 4, 1776, proclaimed the tidings of independence, were paid for by the proceeds of a lottery conducted by Benjamin Franklin. The printer-patriot takes his rest under a flat marble slab in the crowded burial-ground at the corner of Fifth and Arch Streets, but his life and works are still vital influences in the city of his adoption. In truth, his advent into the town at the age of seventeen marks the date of the birth of the intellectual life of Philadelphia. Blending shrewd common sense with keen, fine humor, and a capacity for winning and holding friends, the young printer, in a space of time signally brief, gained recognition as a leader in the town. Its old respectabilities eyed him askance, but following where he led, made him clerk of Assembly, postmaster, and agent to England, or looked on with grudging assent as, out of the unlikely material of his fellow-workmen, he established his Junto, or philosophic club, and founded the first subscription library in the country, the first fire and military companies in the colony, and the first academy in the town, just as, in after-years, they held aloof while he, with two or three other Philadelphia radicals, united with Southerners and New Englanders in signing the papers which gave freedom to the country and immortality to its makers.

Though every effort for the improvement of colonial Philadelphia can be traced to Franklin, one comes closest to him, perhaps, in the old library which grew out of his Junto club, and which, guarded by an effigy of its founder, long stood close beside the State-House, just out of Chestnut Street, but has now been removed to Park Avenue and Locust Street. Inside are dusky recesses filled with dusty time-worn folios, and from one of the galleries the great Minerva which presided over the deliberations of the Continental Congress looks down upon a desk and clock once owned and used by William Penn. The noise and hurry of the modern world never reach this cloistered recess, crowded with the shades of scholars dead generations ago, and an hour spent therein is a page from the past that will linger long in the memory.

A quaint hipped-roofed house standing on Front Street, a few doors above Dock, recalls another significant incident in the life of Franklin. To this house, erstwhile occupied by one generation after another of Quakers, he was conducted upon his return from England, just before the opening of the Revolution. Philadelphia had for some time presented the spectacle of an exceptionally temperate and prudent community slowly rousing to temperate, prudent resistance to injustice. The Friends, prompted by motives for which we can scarcely blame them, were opposed to armed rebellion; so were the great merchants, to whom a war with England threatened financial ruin. Facing the other way were a numerous body of citizens eager for the moment of conflict. Loyalist and patriot alike waited anxiously for Franklin and his first words of counsel. The Friends in a body met him as he landed, and without a word, in solemn procession, escorted him to the Front Street house. Entering, they all seated themselves, still silent, waiting for the Spirit of God first to speak through some of them, when, as we are told, Franklin stood up and cried out with power, “To arms, my friends, to arms!” That his warning fell on reluctant if unheeding ears is known to all. The sudden influx of the leaders of the Revolution, in the stormy days that followed, pushed the Quaker class and the Tory families for the moment to the wall; and during the most glorious period of the city's history her old rulers, with few exceptions, yielded their places to strangers.

Still another reminder of the Philadelphia that Franklin knew is the house of his longtime friend, John Bartram, which yet stands near the Schuylkill, on the Gray's Ferry Road. The former home of the Quaker botanist is of graystone, hewn from the solid rock and put in place in 1734 by Bartram's own hands; for among his other accomplishments he reckoned that of practical stonemason. A dense mat of ivy, out of which peep two windows, cover its northern end. The south end, nearly free from vines, is also pierced with two large windows, the sills thereof curiously carved in stone-work. Between these two windows, upper and lower, a smooth, square block of stone has been carved with this inscription:

'Tis God alone, Almighty Lord,

The Holy One by me adored.

                                    John Bartram, 1770.

Dormer-windows jut out from the roof of the old house, and between its two projecting wings runs a wooden porch, supported by a massive stone pillar, the front covered by an aged but still lusty Virginia creeper. Time has worked small change in the ancient structure. The great fireplace in its central room has been filled up, and the old Franklin stove, a present, mayhap, from Benjamin himself, has been removed from the sitting-room, but beyond this everything stands as it did in its first owner's time. Back of the sitting-room, in the wing looking towards the south, is an airy apartment that once did duty as a conservatory. Beside this room is the botanist's study, with windows facing the south and east. It was here in later years that Alexander Wilson wrote the opening pages of his great work on ornithology, under the patronage and aided by the suggestions of William Bartram, the successor of his father John, and himself a naturalist of learning and repute.

Against the front of the house grows a Jerusalem “Christ's-thorn,” and on one side of it a gnarled and tangled yew-tree, both planted by the elder Bartram's hands. Thence the famous botanic garden, the first one on this continent, which the good Quaker constructed untaught, planting it with trees and shrubs gathered by himself in countless journeys through the wilderness, slopes gently downward to the banks of the Schuylkill. When Charles Kingsley visited Philadelphia, some years ago, his first request was to be taken to this old garden, which has now become a grove of trees, rare and various, of native and foreign growth, — deciduous trees and evergreens of many varieties, blossoming shrubs, white and red cedars, spruce, pines, and firs, thick with shade and spicy with odor. At the garden's lower edge and close to the river once stood a cider-mill, of which all that remains is a great embedded rock, hewn flat, with a circular groove in it, in which a stone dragged by horses revolved, crushing the apples to pulp. A channel cut through the rock leading from the groove served to convey the juice from the mill. It was a piece of Bartram's own handiwork, another example of the combining of the practical and ideal in his sturdy nature. Not far from this old cider-mill stands a stone marking the grave of one of Bartram's servants, an aged black, one time a slave, for even the Quakers held slaves in colony times. At the time of the old negro's death, however, he was a freeman, and had been for years, for Bartram was one of the earliest emancipators of slaves in America.

All that Bartram, whom Linnæus pronounced “the greatest of living botanists,” was enabled to achieve he owed, in the main, to his own efforts. His life was of the simplest character; and to the last he retained the habits and customs of the plain farmer folk, of whom he accounted himself one. Touching also in its modesty and simplicity is his own account of how he became a botanist. “One day,” he wrote in his later years, “I was busy in holding my plough, and being aweary I sat me beneath the shade of a tree to rest myself. I cast mine eyes upon a daisy. I plucked the pretty flower, and viewing it with more closeness than common farmers are wont to bestow upon a weed, I observed therein many curious and distinct parts, each perfect in itself, and each in its way tending to enhance the beauty of the flower. ‘What a shame,’ said something within my mind, ‘that thou hast spent so many years in the ruthless destroying of that which the Lord in His infinite goodness hath made so perfect in its humble place without thy trying to understand one of the simplest leaves!’ This thought awakened my curiosity, for these are not the thoughts to which I had been accustomed. I returned to my plough once more; but this new desire for inquiry into the perfections the Lord hath granted to all about us did not quit my mind; nor hath it since.”

The path upon which he thus set forth made the Quaker farmer the peer and fellow of the greatest naturalists of his time, and in his later days royal botanist for the provinces. Bartram lived to the age of eighty, hale and strong to the last, his only trouble being his dread that the ravages of the Revolution might reach his peaceful garden. His fear was groundless, for all alike reverenced and loved the gentle old man. His death occurred on the morrow of the battle of Brandywine.

Philadelphia, in 1774, had grown to be a thriving, well-conditioned, prosperous city of thirty thousand inhabitants, the largest in the colonies, and, thanks to the genius of Franklin, paved, lighted, and ordered in a way almost unknown in any other town of that period. It was, also, as nearly as possible, the central point of the colonies. Thus both its position and its condition drew to it the strangers from the North and the South, who began to appear in the streets and public places in the late summer of 1774. Few of these strangers were commonplace; most of them gave evidence of distinction, and all were prompt in setting about the work that had brought them from their widely-scattered homes.

The members of the first colonial Congress having found, on reaching Philadelphia, that the State-House was already occupied by the Provincial Assembly, determined to hold their meetings in the hall, on Chestnut Street above Third, built by the Honorable Society of Carpenters, and still used by them. Accordingly, on the morning of September 5 they assembled at the City Tavern, where most of them were quartered, and went thence together to this little hall. We are told that the Quakers watched the little procession gloomily, but it was made up of men who have assumed for us heroic proportions. There were John and Samuel Adams, of Massachusetts, the latter with stern, set face of the Puritan type; the venerable Stephen Hopkins, of Rhode Island; Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, tall and grave; John Jay, of New York, with birth and breeding written in his clean-cut features; Thomas McKean, of Pennsylvania, an Anak among patriots, and lank Cæsar Rodney, of Delaware. There, too, were Christopher Gadsden and the two Rutledges, from South Carolina, while Peyton Randolph, full of years and honors, headed a delegation from Virginia which included Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and another better known than any of them, with his soldier's fame won on hard-fought fields, — George Washington, of Mount Vernon. What the grave, silent Virginia colonel had done was known to every onlooker. What he was yet to do no one dreamed, but we may easily believe that the people who lined the streets that sunny September morning felt dumbly what Henry said for those who met him in the Congress, “Washington is unquestionably the greatest of them all.”

The work done in the assembly-room of the hall of the Carpenters in the autumn days of 1774 cleared the way for the call to arms. When the Congress met again, in May of the following year, it held its deliberations in the State-House, and thenceforward the history of the country takes this long, old-fashioned structure of red brick, with its white marble facings and thick window-sashes, as its central point of interest. In the little square before it gathered excited groups of patriots and Loyalists on the memorable days and still more memorable nights when within its walls, behind closed doors, the delegates of thirteen colonies were debating a resolution to declare them independent. On July 2, 1776, the resolution was passed. “A greater question,” says Adams, “perhaps never was decided among men.”

The Declaration was signed by John Hancock and Charles Thomson, president and secretary of the Congress, on the Fourth of July, this act taking place in the east room of the State-House on the lower floor, where during the next four weeks the other members of the Congress also affixed their signatures. The Declaration had been written by Thomas Jefferson in his lodging-house, which stood until recently at the southwest corner of Market and Seventh Streets. It was made public on the morrow of the Fourth, but was not officially given to the people until noonday on the 8th of July, when it was read to a great crowd in the State-House yard. The stage on which the reader stood was a rough platform, built some years before by David Rittenhouse, the astronomer, as an observatory from which to note certain important movements of the planets.

The use to which its builder had put it had resulted in the first determination of the dimensions of the solar system; and now serving a not less noble purpose, it heralded a platform of human rights broad enough for the whole world to stand upon. Cheers rent the welkin when the reading of the Declaration was finished; bonfires were lighted; the chimes of Christ Church rang until nightfall, and the old bell in the State-House tower gave a new and noisy meaning to the words inscribed on its side a quarter of a century before, — “Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof.”

Thus the Republic was born. The story of the days of storm and stress that followed has been written again and again, and ever finds new chroniclers; but over one act of the great Congress that adopted the Declaration the pen must always linger with affectionate touch. On June 14, 1777, it was resolved by the Congress “that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes alternately red and white, and that the union be thirteen white stars, in a blue field, representing a new constellation.” The first flag was modelled under the personal supervision of Washington, who was then in Philadelphia, and a committee from the Congress. They called upon Mrs. Elizabeth Ross, who conducted an upholstery shop in the little house yet standing at 239 Arch Street; and from a rough draft which Washington had made she prepared the first flag. The general's design contained stars of six points, but Mrs. Ross thought that five points would make them more symmetrical. She completed the flag in twenty-four hours, and at Fort Schuyler, New York, a few weeks later, it received its baptism of fire. “Betsy” Ross was appointed by Congress to be the manufacturer of the government flags, and she followed this occupation for many years, being succeeded by her children.

In September, 1777, the British entered Philadelphia, and it was not reoccupied by the patriot army till 1779. Meantime in its northern suburbs was fought the desperate and luckless battle of Germantown. About many of the old houses of that village hang pulse-moving legends of the one eventful day in its history. Chief among these is the Chew House, built in 1763, about which the fight raged furiously for hours. This house was held by Colonel Musgrave and six companies so long that a gallant lad, the Chevalier de Manduit, with Colonel Laurens, crept up to fire it with a wisp of straw. They escaped under a shower of balls, while a young man who had followed them fell dead at the first shot.

Another old house at the corner of Main Street and West Walnut Lane was used as a hospital and amputating-room, while the Wistar House, built in 1744, was occupied by some of the British officers, one of whom was General Agnew, “a cheerful and heart-some young man,” according to tradition. As he passed out to join his command he encountered the old servant Justinia at work in the garden, and bade her hide in the cellar until the fighting was at an end. But Justinia refused to obey, and had not finished hoeing her cabbages when Agnew was carried in wounded unto death, a decoration which he wore on his breast having offered a mark for a patriot rifleman. A quaint room of the Wistar House, now filled with relics of early times, is the one in which the heartsome young officer breathed out his life. His blood still stains the floor.

Yet another reminder of the Revolution is to be encountered in a stroll about Germantown, for in the yard of St. Michael's Lutheran Church sleeps one who played a useful if humble part in the struggle. Chris. Ludwick was a Dutch baker of Germantown, who had saved a comfortable fortune before the commencement of the seven years' war. Half of this property he offered to the service of his country, swearing at the same time never to shave until her freedom was accomplished. Washington gave him charge of the ovens of the army, and Baker-General Ludwick, with his great grizzled beard and big voice, was a familiar and not unheroic figure in the camp. He died an old man of eighty, in 1801, leaving his entire fortune for the education of the poor.

After the Revolution came the making of the Constitution and the setting afoot of the Union, with Philadelphia as the national capital. The city's condition during the years in which it was controlled by Washington's simple high-bred court is known to every reader of history. In the great house once occupied by Richard Penn, afterwards owned by Robert Morris, and gone long since from the south side of Market Street, Washington had his home from 1791 to 1797. It was deemed the fittest dwelling in the city for the President of the new nation, and must have well deserved to be called a mansion. There are many pleasing pictures of the life led there by Washington and his family, but none half so winsome and delightful as that of a girl friend of Nelly Custis, who spent a night in the President's house. “When ten o'clock came,” she tells us, “Mrs. Washington retired, and her granddaughter accompanied her, and read a chapter and psalm from the old family Bible. All then knelt together in prayer, and when Mrs. Washington's maid had prepared her for bed Nelly sang a soothing hymn, and, leaning over her, received from her some words of counsel and her kiss and blessing.”

One other picture, and the last, of the Philadelphia of a century ago. The time was March 4, 1797, and a vast crowd had assembled in the State-House to witness the inauguration of John Adams as Washington's successor. Few in the throng, however, gave heed to the entrance of the new chief executive. Instead, every eye was bent upon Washington, for the people knew it was to be the last public appearance of their idol. “He wore,” writes an eye-witness, “a full suit of black velvet, his hair powdered and in a bag, diamond knee-buckles, and a light sword with gray scabbard.” Beside him was the new Vice-President, Jefferson, awkward and ungainly; and nearby was the boyish Madison and the burly Knox. When Adams had read his inaugural and left the room the crowd cheered, but did not move. Jefferson, after some courteous parley, took precedence of Washington, and went out. Still the people remained motionless, watching the noble figure in black; nor did any one stir until Washington descended from the platform and left the hall to follow and pay his respects to the new President. Then they and all the crowd in the streets moved after him, but in silence. Upon the threshold of the President's lodgings he turned and faced this multitude of nameless friends. “No man ever saw him so moved.” The tears rolled unchecked down his cheeks. Then he bowed slowly and low and went within. After he had gone a smothered sound, not unlike a sob, went up from the crowd, for they knew that their hero had passed away to be seen of them no more.