This etching proves that my love of the Wonder of Work is no new thing, for it was done in 1881, out of my studio window in Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, on the hot morning that Garfield was shot. Even then I knew what I wanted to do, but I had no idea that—with certain breaks—all my life would be given to the Wonder of Work—the work that is all about us, the most wonderful thing in the world.
II THE NEW HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA
I can remember the bed of mortar in the street, the hod-carrier toiling up the ladder, the bricklayers above on the scaffold, and I have drawn such things; but to find during one's lifetime such a development of building in my own city is amazing, but it is well worth recording—this phase of the Wonder of Work.
III THE MANUFACTURERS' CLUB AND STOCK EXCHANGE, PHILADELPHIA
One hot summer evening I was asked to dine at the University Club, and this drawing is the result. I had no idea that I would get anything but—as one always does in Philadelphia—a good dinner. I have forgotten the good dinner and the doubtless good talk, but I shall never forget the towering buildings, in the coming night, grouped round the low houses, and the dark hole from which the steel skeleton was emerging, soon to become higher and mightier than the grim masses amid which it was growing. So I came back the next day and drew it.