Miscalled hotels, and of dovecotes denominate cottages;
A confusion of ugly girls, of sand, and of health-bearing breezes,
With one unending plank-walk for a true Philadelphia “attraction.”
City ambitiously named, why, with inducements delusive,
Is the un-Philadelphian stranger lured to thy desert pretentious?
’Tis not alone that thy avenues, broad and unpaved and unending,
Reecho yet with the obsolete music of “Pinafore,”
Whistled in various keys by the rather too numerous negro;
’Tis not alone that Propriety—Propriety too Philadelphian—
Over thee stretches an ægis of wholly superfluous virtue;