Page:Our Philadelphia (Pennell, 1914).djvu/349

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PHILADELPHIA AND LITERATURE
329

Uncle the wooden figure of an Indian at the door, for which he professed a great admiration as an example of the art of the people before they were trained in the Minor Arts.

These chance meetings were always the best, and he told us that he thought them so, that he loved his accidental meetings with friends—there were many he prized among his most valued reminiscences. And I remember his story of Longfellow having gone over to Camden purposely to call on him, and not finding him at home, and their running into each other on the ferry-boat to Market Street, and Longfellow saying that he had come from the house deeply disappointed, regretting the long quiet talk he had hoped for, but deciding that perhaps the strange chance of the meeting on the water was better. My Uncle, had he been hurrying to catch a train, would still have managed to talk philosophy and art education. But I remember Walt Whitman also saying that the ferry and the corner of Market Street and the Market Street car were hardly places for abstract discussion, though the few things said there were the less easily forgotten for being snatched joyfully by the way.

It was one day in the Market Street car that he and my Uncle had the talk which left with me the profoundest impression. As a rule I was too engrossed in thinking what a great person I was, when in such company, to shine as a reporter. But on this occasion the subject was the