I do not know the date of some lovely
white marble palazzetti scattered about the Rittenhouse Square region;
but the Art Club on Broad Street, and the Houston Club for Students of
the University of Pennsylvania, are both quite recent buildings, and
both very beautiful. I could mention several other buildings that are,
as they say here, "pretty good" (a phrase of high commendation); but I
had better get safely out of New York before I enlarge on the merits of
Philadelphia. There is only one city the New Yorker despises more than
Philadelphia, and that is Brooklyn. The New York schoolboy speaks of
Philadelphia as "the place the chestnuts go to when they die;" and to
the most popular wit in New York at this moment (an Americanised
Englishman, by the way) is attributed the saying, "Mr. So-and-so has
three daughters--two alive, and one in Philadelphia." Six different
people have related this gibe to me; it is only less admired than the
same gentleman's observation as he alighted from an electric car at the
further end of the Suspension Bridge, when he heaved a deep sigh, and
remarked, "In the midst of life we are in Brooklyn." Another favourite
anecdote in New York is that of the Philadelphian who went to a doctor
and complained of insomnia.
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