There the sad exile's weary search was at last rewarded; the long parted lovers were reunited, though but for a moment on the verge of the grave; and thus was ended—
"the hope and the fear and the sorrow,
All the aching of heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing,
All the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of patience,"
The city almshouse stood, we are told, at the corner of Twelfth and Spruce Streets; but the belief is quite general (and we incline decidedly to that) that our beloved poet intended by his description to portray the quaint building formerly known as the Friends' Almshouse, which stood in Walnut Place (opening off of Walnut Street below Fourth), and which was torn down in 1872 or 1873 to give place to railroad and lawyers' offices.
The entrance from the street, by "gateway and wicket", as the poem says, led through a narrow passage way; and there faced one a small, low roofed house, built of alternate red and black bricks (the latter glazed), almost entirely covered by an aged ivy which clambered over the roof. The straggling branches even nodded above the wide chimneys; at both sides of the door stood comfortable settles, inviting to rest; and the pretty garden charmed with its bloom and fragrance. The whole formed such a restful retreat, such an oasis of quiet in the very heart of the busy city, that one was tempted often to make excuses for straying into the peaceful enclosure.
In a book printed for private circulation in Philadelphia some years ago, there is an item of interest about the Acadians. The author narrates that she and a young companion, in their strolls to the suburbs, where they went to visit the Pennsylvania Hospital (Eighth and Pine Streets, now in the heart of the city), were timid because obliged to pass the place where the "French Neutrals" were located.
These people, because they were foreigners, and there was some mystery about them which the girls did not then understand, inspired them with fear; though Philadelphia residents of that time testify that the homeless and destitute strangers were in reality a very simple and inoffensive company, when, "friendless, homeless, hopeless, they wandered from city to city." Through the influence of Anthony Benezet, a member of the Society of Friends, they were provided with homes on Pine Street above Sixth, where the two little wooden houses still stand; one, when we last saw it, being painted blue.
What a picturesque company of adventurers were those French noblemen, who, turning their backs upon the luxuries and fascinations of court life, sailed away to this wild and distant land, where, in the pursuit of gain, fame, or merely adventure, they were to suffer absolute privation and hardship; consorting with savages in place of the plumed and pampered denizens of palaces.
After a probably tempestuous voyage across the bleak Atlantic, and a merciless buffeting from Fundy in the spring of 1604, the prospective Governor of the great territory known as Acadia was sailing along this coast, which presents such a forbidding aspect from the Bay, making his first haven May 16. At that time, we can readily imagine, in this northern region the weather would not be very balmy. Even now the wild rocky shore stretches along drearily—though with certain stern picturesqueness—as far as eye can reach, and then must have been even less attractive, as it showed no sign of habitation.
Champlain was somewhat familiar with these shores from former voyages, and so had been chosen as pilot; but De Poutrincourt and Pontgravé, other associates of Pierre du Guast, the Sieur de Monts, doubtless looked askance at each other, or indulged in the expressive French shrug as the cheerless panorama parsed before them. On that 16th of May, at the harbor where the little town of Liverpool is now situated, De Monts found another Frenchman engaged in hunting and fishing, ignoring, or regardless of, the rights of any one else; and without ado this interloper (so considered by De Monts) was nabbed; the only consolation he received being the honor of transmitting his name, Rossignol, to the harbor,—a name since transferred to a lake in the vicinity.
After a sojourn of two weeks at another point (St. Mary's Bay), the explorers proceeded northward; and at last a particularly inviting harbor presented itself, causing the mental vision of the new Governor and his company to assume more hopeful aspect, as they turned their course thither and pronounced it "Port Royal"!