The new Philadelphian may be a finer creature far than in my hopes for him, finer far than the old Philadelphian I have known—but then he will not be that old Philadelphian whom I do not want to lose and whom it would be a pity to lose in a country for which, ever since Penn pointed the way to the constitution of the United States, he has probably accomplished more than any other citizen.
Personally, I might as well say that I do not believe he will be a finer creature. It seems to me that he is doing away with the old American idea of levelling up and is bent on the levelling down process that is going on all over Europe. And so foreign is he making us, that I would not think J. very far wrong in declaring himself the only real American left, if only he would include me with him.
THE NARROW STREET
CHAPTER XIX: PHILADELPHIA AFTER A QUARTER OF A CENTURY—CONTINUED
I
It was not only the change that oppressed me those first days of my return. As bewildering, as discouraging, were the signs everywhere of the horrible haste with which it has been brought about: a haste foreign to the Philadelphia habit. But the aliens pouring into Philadelphia have increased its population at such a prodigious rate that it has been obliged to grow too prodigiously fast to meet or to adapt itself to the new conditions without the speed that does not belong to it.
I had left it a big, prosperous, industrial town—Baldwin's, Cramp's, Kensington and Germantown mills all in full swing—but it carried off its bigness, prosperity, and industry with its old demure and restful airs of a country town. The old-fashioned, hard-working, Philadelphia business man could still dine at four o'clock and spend the rest of the afternoon looking out of the window for the people who rarely passed and the things that never happened—nobody would be free to dine at four now-a-days, nobody would have the leisure to sit at any hour looking out of the window, except perhaps the Philadelphia clubman who clings to that amiable pastime, as he does, so far successfully, to his Club house, threatened on every side as it is by the advance of the sky-scraper. The old-fashioned busy Philadelphia crowds, as I remember them, could still take their time in the streets, so that I remember, too, my friend, George Steevens' astonishment because a passer-by he thanked for information could linger to say "You are very welcome." The old-fashioned Philadelphia business, going on at a pace that only New York and Chicago could beat, was still accomplished with so little fuss that the rest of America laughed at Philadelphia for its slowness and sleepiness, and told those old time-worn stories that have passed into folk-lore. It was just this that gave Philadelphia such a distinct character of its own—that it could be laughed at for slowness and sleepiness by the other towns, and all the while be sleepy and slow to such good purpose as to make itself into one of the most prosperous and influential in the country: to be able to work at the American pace and yet preserve its dignity and sedateness.