Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/353

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the mire that never quite left his garments, the lots of the Market Street home where his better years were passed, his pew at Christ's Church, the State House he entered for a half-century in so many capacities—King's officer, contractor, colonial legislator, rebellious congressman, signer of the Declaration and Constitution,—his eye through all the years on the gilded sun one can yet trace on the back of the President's chair—and last, when his own sun was at its setting, as member of the Constitutional Convention of his own State, and his modest grave at Fifth and Arch, where one may still uncover at the last memory of the most human of all Americans. Most of us, least of other lands, prefiguring in life, work, and character our invincible patience, our good humor, our quenchless curiosity, our careless disorder in trifles, our easy success in serious affairs, our sluttish phrase, our high spirit, the even equality of our manners, our perpetual relish for the simple environment and the homelier joys of our life, our neglect of means and detail, our perseverance and achievement in the final end, our self-consciousness and our easy conviction that neither fate itself, nor our own careless