CHAPTER X: THE MIRACLE OF WORK
I
In the story of my life in Philadelphia, and my love for the town which grew with my knowledge of it, my beginning to work was more than an awakening: it was an important crisis. For work first made me know Philadelphia as it is under the surface of calm and the beauty of age, first made me realize how much it offers besides the social adventure.
Personally, the Centennial had left me where it found me. It had amused me vastly, but it had inspired me with no desire to make active use of the information and hints of which it had been so prodigal. My interest had been stimulated, awakened, but I did not know Philadelphia any the better for it, I did not love Philadelphia any the better. I had got no further than I was in my scheme of existence, into which work, or research, or interest, on my part had not yet entered, but I had reached a point where that aimless scheme was an insufferable bore. From the moment I began to work, I began to see everything from the standpoint of work, and it is wonderful what a fresh and invigorating standpoint it is. I began to see that everything was not all of course and matter of fact, that everything was worth thinking about. Work is sometimes said to help people to put things out of their minds, but it helps them more when it puts things into their minds, and this is what it did for me. Through work I discovered Philadelphia and myself together.
II
It strikes me as one of the little ironies of life that for the first inducement to work, and therefore the first incentive to my knowledge and love of Philadelphia, I should have been indebted to my Uncle, Charles Godfrey Leland, who, in 1880, when the Centennial excitement was subsiding, settled again in Philadelphia after ten years abroad, chiefly in England. Philadelphia welcomed him with its usual serenity, betrayed into no expression of emotion by the home-coming of one of its most distinguished citizens who, in London, had been received with the open arms London, in expansive moments, extends to the lion from America. The contrast, no doubt, was annoying, and my Uncle, of whom patience could not be said to be the predominating virtue, was accordingly annoyed and, on his side, betrayed into anything but a serene expression of his annoyance. Many smaller slights irritated him further until he worked himself up into the belief that he detested Philadelphia, and he was apt to be so outspoken in criticism that he succeeded in convincing me, anyway, that he did. Later, when I read his Memoirs, I found in them passages that suggest the charm of Philadelphia as it has not been suggested by any other writer I know of, and that he could not have written had he not felt for the town an affection strong enough to withstand that town's easy indifference. But during the few years he spent in Philadelphia after his return he was uncommonly successful in hiding his affection, a fact which did not add to his popularity.
STATE HOUSE YARD