Page:Our Philadelphia (Pennell, 1914).djvu/509

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AFTER A QUARTER OF A CENTURY
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a hurry—carts and cars going at snail's pace, the whole place looking as if time did not count—the old town business quarter deserted for Market Street and Broad Street round the City Hall.

And the crowds do not get about in the same way—no slow, leisurely ride in the horse-car to a Depot in the wilds of Frankford, or at Ninth and Green, on the way to the suburbs, but a leap on a trolley, or a rush through thronged streets to the Terminal at Twelfth and Market, to the Station at Broad and Market. And it was another sign of how Philadelphia had "moved" since the old days when, in place of the old horse-car, which I could rely upon to go in a straight line from one end of the long street to the other, I took the new trolley and it twisted and turned with me until the exception was to arrive just where I expected to, or, if I only stayed in it long enough, not to be landed in some remote country town where I had no intention of going. I have been told the story of the stay-at-home Philadelphian as puzzled as I, who was promised by a motorman, as uncertain as she where he was going, that at least he could give her a "nice ride through a handsome part of the town." Worse still, the trolley did not stop at the corners where the car used to stop so that I, a native Philadelphian, had to be told where to wait for it by an interloper with a foreign accent. Nor was it crowded at the same hours as the car used to be, so that going out to dinner in a Walnut Street trolley I could sit comfortably and not be obliged to hang on to a strap, with everybody