CHAPTER II.
“THE FUEL.”... What the women did.
Nature always provides for emergencies. The world required steamboats and locomotives, and, lo! a Fulton and a Stephenson appeared to supply the demand. We craved a means of rapid intercommunication, and Mr. Morse sat down and invented his telegraph. We experienced a soaring desire to sail through the air, and George Francis Train stepped forward to inflate our balloons. So, when a lady competent to organize and superintend the workings of her sisters, became requisite to the success of the Centennial project, nature did not desert us. Uprose, as the poet sweetly remarks,LOVELY
WOMAN.
“A perfect woman, nobly planned
To boss an army or a peanut stand,”
and grasping the banner, Mrs. Emma D.E.N. Gillespie became the special partner of the Board of Finance.
Were we about writing a work in twenty quarto volumes, the kind we have been in the habit of producing, we might faintly hope to do justice to the prodigies accomplished by the noble women of America, and especially by our own Philadelphia ladies. What we do write, however, is the result of personal observation. Blessed with female relatives in esse and in posse, who have been active members of ward committees since the first trumpet tone, we write advisedly; having been snubbed, sacrificed, and made secondary to centennial enthusiasm for three long years, we write with a proper appreciation of the solemn duty in hand.
The dear creatures travelled up to the State-House steeple; they glanced around upon the situation; they rolled up their sleeves, metaphorically, and swooped down upon the city. They canvassed stores and factories from turret to foundation stone; they invaded dingy counting-houses, and sauntered like sunbeams into dusty offices, collecting subscriptions to centennial stock, peddling centennial medals, and doing irreparable damage to the peace of simpering clerks, blushing salesmen, and susceptible employers. A single case will serve for illustration. Listen to the story of
A POOR YOUNG MAN.
“NOT WISELY
BUT TOO WELL.”He was an innocent youth, undergoing initiation into the mysteries of compounding and weighing out sugars, teas, and spices at a West-End grocery. A Spruce Street damsel did the cruel deed. She visited the establishment several times in reference to some shares of stock, and her passing glance sank into his soul. His deep, poetic nature demanded an outlet for the sacred fire. Ætna will burst; Vesuvius will explode. Ætna and Vesuvius were but parlor matches compared to him.