Travels in Philadelphia/The Parkway, Henry Ford and Billy the Bean Man
THE PARKWAY, HENRY FORD AND BILLY THE BEAN MAN
I walked down the Parkway yesterday morning visualizing that splendid emptiness of sunshine as it will appear five or ten years hence, lined with art galleries, museums and libraries, shaded with growing trees, leading from the majestic pinnacle of the City Hall to the finest public estate in America. It is a long way from those open fields of splintered brick and gravel pits, where workmen are now warming their hands over bonfires, to the Peace Conference in Paris. But the hope occurred to me that the League of Nations will not tie itself down too closely to the spot where its archives are kept. It will be a fine thing if the annual meetings of the League can be held in different cities all over the world, visiting the nations in turn. This process would do much to educate public sentiment to the reality and importance of our new international commission. And in the course of time it is to be supposed that the league might meet in Philadelphia, where, in a sense, it was founded. The world is rich in lovely cities—Rio, Athens, Edinburgh, Rome, Tokio and the rest. But the Philadelphia of the future, as some citizens have dreamed it, will be able to hold up its head with the greatest. I like to think of a Philadelphia in which the lower Schuylkill would be something more than a canal of oily ooze; in which the wonderful Dutch meadows of the Neck would be reclaimed into one of the world's loveliest riverside parks, and in which the Parkway will stretch its airy vista from the heart of the city, between stately buildings of public profit, out to the sparkling waters of Fairmount.
The city shows a curiously assorted silhouette as one walks down the Parkway from Twenty-fifth street. There is the plain dark dome of the Cathedral, with its golden cross flashing in the sun and the tall cocoa-colored pillars. No one would guess from the drab exterior the splendor of color and fragrance within. There is, of course, the outline of William Penn on his windy vantage, the long, dingy line of Broad Street Station's train-shed and the tall but unpretentious building of the Bell Telephone Company, where the flag swims against the sky on its slender staff. As one walks on, past the Medico-Chirurgical Hospital, with its memorable inscription (Think not the beautiful doings of thy soul shall perish unremembered; they abide with thee forever), the thin white spire of the Arch Street Methodist Episcopal Church and the monstrous oddity of the Masonic Temple spring into view. In an optimistic mood, under a riot of sunlight and a radiant sky, one is tempted to claim a certain beauty for this incongruous panorama. Yet if there is beauty no one can claim a premeditated scheme for it. Granite, marble, brick and chocolate stone jostle one another. Let us hope that the excellent ruthlessness with which the paths of the Parkway have been made straight will be equaled by diligent harmony in the new structures to come.
The great churches of the Roman communion are always an inspiration to visit. At almost all hours of the day or night you will find worshipers slipping quietly in and out, generally of the humblest classes. I slipped into the Cathedral for a few minutes and sat there watching the shimmer of color and blended shadows as the vivid sunlight streamed through the semicircular windows above the nave. The body of the church is steeped in that soft dusk described once for all as "a dim religious light," but the great cream-colored pillars with their heavy gold ornaments lift the eyes upward to the arched ceiling with its small tablets of blue and shining knots of gold. In the dome hung a faint lilac haze of intermingled gentle hues, sifting through the ring of stained windows. The eastern window over the high altar shows one brilliant note of rich blue in the folds of the Madonna's gown. Over the gleaming terrace of white marble steps hangs a great golden lamp with a small ruby spark glowing through the twilight. Below these steps a plainly dressed little man knelt in prayer all the time I was in the church. The air was faintly fragrant with incense, having almost the aroma of burning cedar wood. A constant patter of hushed footfalls on the marble floor was due to the entrance and exit of stealthy worshipers coming in for a few minutes of silence in the noon recess.
Just around the corner from the Cathedral one looks across the broad playground of the Friends' Select School on to the bright, cheerful face of Race street. In that 1600 block Race is a typical Philadelphia street of the old sort—plain brick houses with slanted roofs and dormer windows, white and green shutters and scoured marble steps. I was surprised to notice the number of signs displayed calling attention to "Apartments," "Vacancies" and "Furnished Rooms." Certainly I can imagine no pleasanter place to lodge, with the sunny windows looking over the school ground to the soaring figure of Penn and the high cliffs behind him. Romance seems to linger along that sun-warmed brick pavement, and I peered curiously at the windows so discreetly curtained with lace and muslin, wondering what quaint tales the landladies of Race street might have to impart if one could muster up courage enough to question them. In the news-stand and cigar store at the corner of Sixteenth I made a notable discovery—a copy of Henry Ford's new Sunday school paper, the Dearborn Independent—the Ford International Weekly, he proudly subtitles it. I bought a copy and took it to lunch with me. I cannot say it left me much richer; nor, I fear, will it leave Henry that way. Much can be forgiven Henry for the honest simplicity of his soul, but the lad who's palming off those editorial page mottoes on him, in black-face type, ought to face a firing squad. This is the way they run:
- "Where buy we sleep?" inquired the royal shirk;
- The sweetest rest on earth is bought with work.
And this:
- The truth of equal opportunity is this:
- Life, death; love, hope and strife, no man may miss.
Or again:
- When profit is won at the cost of a principle,
- The winner has lost—this law is invincible.
Henry, Henry—didn't that cruise on the Oskar teach you anything? It seems too bad that Henry should go to the expense of founding a new humorous journal when Life is doing so well.
Coming back along Arch street I fell in with Billy the Bean Man. You may have seen Billy selling necklaces of white and scarlet beans on Broad street, clad in his well-known sombrero, magenta shirt and canvas trousers. Billy is a first-class medicine man, and he hits this town about once a year. He wore the cleanest shave I ever saw, but his dark William J. Bryan eyes were mournful. He tried to lure me into buying a necklace by showing me how you can walk on the beans without breaking them. "Picked and strung by the aboriginal Indians of the Staked Plain," he assured me; "and brought by me to this home of eastern culture. A sovereign remedy for seasickness and gout."
"Billy," I said, "you amaze me. Last year those same necklaces were curing mumps and metaphysical error."
He looked at me keenly. "Oh, it's you, is it? Say, this is a bum town. Business is rotten. I'm going on to Washington tomorrow."
"Sell one to Senator Sherman," I said; and passing by the allurements of Dumont's matinee—"The Devil in Jersey: He Terrified Woodbury, but He Couldn't Scare Us"—I gained the safety of the office.