At the appointed hour his cheerful face greeted them once again. Because of the Mortons’ interest in the Navy, they first ran south to the League Island Navy Yard. Even their familiarity with many Navy Yards did not lessen their interest in this one, with its rows of officers’ houses and its barracks and mess-room. Just because they were so familiar with similar places, however, they did not stay long, and the car was soon whirling northwards to the opposite end of the city. They went through miles and miles of streets lined with small houses.
“These are the houses which have given Philadelphia the nick-name of the ‘City of Homes,’” exclaimed Mrs. Morton. “You see, in New York people are crowded on to a small tongue of land, between two rivers. Here there are two rivers also, but the space between them is wider. There’s nothing to prevent the city’s crossing the Schuylkill and running westward, as it began to do many long years ago.”
“These houses aren’t very beautiful,” commented Ethel Blue.
“They are very neat,” said Ethel Brown. “But don’t you get tired of these red bricks and white shutters, and the little flights of white marble steps, all alike? I don’t see how anybody knows when he has come home. I should think people would all the time be getting into their neighbors’ houses by mistake.”
“It is much more wholesome for a family to have a house to itself, than for many families to be crowded into one building,” said Mrs. Morton.
“I don’t see why,” objected Tom, who had been born and reared in New York. “The large buildings are wonderfully constructed now-a-days for ventilation and sanitation. They couldn’t be better in that respect.”
“That’s true,” said Mrs. Morton, “but a family loses something of its privacy when it lives in a building with other people. The householder is responsible for his own heating, his own side-walk, and so on, for all matters whose good care makes for the happiness of his family. The apartment dweller loses that work for the well-being of his family, when he lets go its responsibility.”
“I dare say you are right, Mrs. Morton,” said Tom, “but in these days of co-operation, it seems to me you gain something by uniting, as apartment house people practically do, to hire some one to take the responsibility of the heating arrangements, the side-walks, the ashes, and so on.”
“It all depends on the conditions,” returned Mrs. Morton. “In New York, especially on Manhattan Island, where land is so valuable that buildings must go up in the air, such co-operation has become desirable, but where there is plenty of space, it seems better for every household to be separate as far as possible.”
The chauffeur called their attention, as they passed through Logan Square, to the fact that this was the fourth city square they had seen since they had been in his care.