which, while he showed me his prints and drawings, he began to talk about Philadelphia and its beauty. It was unusual for Philadelphians to talk about their town at all; if they did, it was more unusual for them to talk with enthusiasm; and the interest in it forced upon them by the Centennial had been for every quality rather than its beauty. Even my Uncle—though later, in his Memoirs, he wrote charmingly of the charm of Philadelphia—at that time affected to admire nothing in it except the unsightly arches of the Pennsylvania Railroad, bridging the streets between the Schuylkill and the Station, and if he made the exception in their favour, it was because they reminded him of London. Thanks to the Centennial and the stimulus of hard work, I was not as ignorant of Philadelphia as I had been, but I was not rid of the old popular fallacy that the American in search of beauty must cross the Atlantic and go to Europe. And here was J., in five minutes telling me more about Philadelphia than I had learned in a lifetime, revealing to me in his drawings the beauty of streets and houses I had not had the wit to find out for myself, firing me with sudden enthusiasm in my turn, convincing me that nothing in the world counted but Philadelphia, opening my eyes to its unsuspected resources, so that after this I could walk nowhere without visions of romance where all before had been everyday commonplace, leaving me eager and impatient to start on my next journey of discovery which was to be in his company.
