Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/158

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142
ANNE GILCHRIST'S HOUSE

the skip-stops of these two vagabonds. Camac street has tried to concentrate attention on itself between Walnut and Spruce, calling itself arrogantly the Greatest Little Street in the World. But it leads a multiple life. I have found it popping up around Race street, at Wallace, and even north of that most poetically named of all Philadelphia's thoroughfares, Rising Sun avenue.

The greenery of Ontario Park is likely to lure the wayfarer from Master street for a detour. There is a large public school there, and an exceedingly pretty young teacher in a pink dress and shell spectacles was gravely leading a procession of thirty small urchins for their morning recess in the open air. Two by two, with decent gravity, they crossed the street, and demobilized in the park for hair ribbons, shoe-laces and blouse strings to be retied.

As it approaches Broad street, Master goes steadily up grade, both physically and in the spirit. At the corner of Broad it reaches its grand historic climax in the vast ornate brown pile where Edwin Forrest died in 1872. A tablet says, "This house was the residence of Edwin Forrest, the greatest tragedian of his time." It is interesting to remember (with the aid of an encyclopedia) that one of Forrest's favorite rôles was Spartacus. Until the arrival of Liebknecht he was supreme in that accomplishment.

At the top of the hill, at Fifteenth street, Master street becomes almost suburban and frisky. It