3 Adelphi Terrace House, London May, 1914...

I might hope that my affection alone for Philadelphia would give me the right, were I not Philadelphian enough to know that Philadelphia is, as it always was and always will be, cheerfully indifferent to whatever love its citizens may have to offer it. I can hardly suppose my claim for gratitude greater than that of its Founder or the long succession of Philadelphians between his time and mine who have loved it and been snubbed or bullied in return. Indeed, in the face of this Philadelphia indif

If I made my first friendships from my perambulator, or trundling my hoop and skipping my rope, in Rittenhouse Square, as every Philadelphian should, they were interrupted and broken so soon that I have no memory of them. It was my fate to be sent to boarding-school before I had time to lay in a store of the associations that are the common property of happier Philadelphians of my generation. I do not know if I was ever taken, as J. and other privileged children were, to the Pennsylvania Hospita

Naturally, I could not live in Spruce Street and not believe, as every Philadelphian should and once did, that no other kind of a house except the Spruce Street house was fit for a Philadelphian to live in. The Philadelphian, from infancy, was convinced by his surroundings and bringing-up that there was but one way of doing things decently and respectably and that was the Philadelphia way, nor can my prolonged exile relieve me from the sense of crime at times when I catch myself doing things not

The Philadelphian who did not live in the Convent would have seen it the other way round, for the Convent was unlike enough to Philadelphia to suggest the romance of the unusual. Only in one or two respects did it provide me with facts that every proper Philadelphian was brought up to know, and let me say again that because I had to find out the others—the more characteristically Philadelphia facts—for myself, I think they probably made a stronger impression upon me than upon the Philadelphian g

It added to the danger that sin could wear so peaceful an aspect and temptation keep so comfortably out of sight. During an interval, longer than I cared to have it, for I did not "come out" at once as a Philadelphia girl should and at the Convent I had made few Philadelphia friends, my personal knowledge of Philadelphia did not go much deeper than its house fronts. For the most part they bore the closest family resemblance to those of Eleventh and Spruce, with the same suggestion of order and r

Let me say at once that I know no adventure is more important for the Philadelphian, and that mine was scarcely worth the name as these things go in Philadelphia. The most serious of these discomforts arose from the question of clothes, a terrifying question under the existing conditions in the Third Street house, involving more industrious dress-making upstairs in the third story front bedroom than I cared about, and a waste of energies that should have been directed into more profitable channe

I am too good a Philadelphian to begin to talk about the Assembly in the middle of a chapter. It holds a place apart in the social life of Philadelphia of which annually it is the supreme moment, and in my record of my experiences of this life, however imperfect, I can treat it with no less consideration. It must have a chapter apart. To go to the Assembly was the one thing of all others I wanted to do, not only on the general principle that the thing one wants most is the thing one cannot have,

I may not have understood at the time, but I must have been vaguely conscious that if so often I felt myself a stranger in my native town, it was not only because of the long years I had been shut up in boarding-school, but because that boarding-school happened to be a Convent. There were schools in Philadelphia and schools out of it as useful as Rittenhouse Square in laying the foundation for profitable friendships. Miss Irwin's furnished almost as good social credentials as a Colonial Governor

I had been out, I do not remember how long, but long enough to confirm my belief in the Philadelphia way of doing things as the only way, when I found that Philadelphia was involved in an enterprise for which its history might give the reason but could furnish no precedent. To Philadelphians who were older than I, or who had been in Philadelphia while I was getting through the business of education at the Convent, the Centennial Exposition probably did not come as so great a surprise. Having sin

Personally, the Centennial had left me where it found me. It had amused me vastly, but it had inspired me with no desire to make active use of the information and hints of which it had been so prodigal. My interest had been stimulated, awakened, but I did not know Philadelphia any the better for it, I did not love Philadelphia any the better. I had got no further than I was in my scheme of existence, into which work, or research, or interest, on my part had not yet entered, but I had reached a p

I was still in the stage of wonder and joy at seeing myself in print, when work and Philadelphia joined in the most unlooked for manner to help me tell my Grandmother that "something" she was so anxiously waiting to hear. An article on Philadelphia which an intelligent Editor asked me to write was my introduction to J. The town that we both love first brought us together, as it now brings us back to it together after the many years that have passed since it laid the foundation of our long partne

On the principle that nothing interests a man—or a woman—so much as shop, I had no sooner begun to write than I saw Philadelphia divided not between the people who could and could not go to the Assembly and the Dancing Class, but between the people who could and could not write; and, after I began to write for illustration, between the people who could and could not paint and draw. It had never before occurred to me to look for art and literature in Philadelphia. At that time, you had, literally

I had glimpses into other literary vistas, but mostly from a respectful and highly appreciative distance. How I wish I could recapture even as much as the shadow of the old rapturous awe with which any man or woman who had ever made a book inspired me! Mrs. Wister was another Philadelphia literary celebrity whose work had made her known to all America by name, the only way she was known to me. It was my loss, for they say she was more charming than her work. But to Philadelphia no charm of perso

Ignorance of art and all relating to it could not have been greater than mine when I paid that first eventful visit to J.'s studio on Chestnut Street. I lay the blame only partly on my natural capacity for ignorance. It was a good deal the fault of the sort of education I received and the influences among which I lived—the fault of the place and the period in which I grew up. Nominally, art was not neglected at the Convent. A drawing-class was conducted by an old bear of a German, who also gave

By the time I grew up years had passed since Philadelphia had ceased to be the Capital, and during these years its atmosphere had not been especially congenial to art. But the general conditions had not been more stimulating anywhere in America. The Hudson River School is about all that came of a period which, for that matter, owed its chief good to revolt in countries where more was to be expected of it: in France, to first the Romanticists and then the Impressionists who had revolted against t

If interest in the art of eating called for justification, I could show that I come by mine legitimately. My family took care of that when the sensible ancestor who made me an American settled in Accomac, where most things worth eating were to be had for the fishing or the shooting or the digging, so that Accomac feasted while the rest of Virginia still starved, and when my Grandfather, in his day, moved to Philadelphia which is as well provided as Accomac and more conscientious in cultivating i

So much of Philadelphia is in Miss Leslie that her silence on one or two matters essentially Philadelphian is the greater disappointment. I have said that when I was young it was the business of the man of the house to market and to make the Mayonnaise for the dinner's salad, and I have searched for the reason in vain. His appropriation of the marketing seems to be comparatively modern. If the chronicles are to be trusted, it was the woman's business as late as Mrs. Washington's day. But by mine

I confess to a good deal of emotion as the train slowed up in the Pennsylvania Station, and I think I had a right to it. It is not every day one comes home after a quarter of a century's absence, and at the first glance everything was so bewilderingly home-like. Not that I had not had my misgivings as the train neared Philadelphia. From the car windows I had seen my old Convent at Torresdale transformed beyond recognition, many new stations with new names by the way, rows and rows of houses wher

It was not only the change that oppressed me those first days of my return. As bewildering, as discouraging, were the signs everywhere of the horrible haste with which it has been brought about: a haste foreign to the Philadelphia habit. But the aliens pouring into Philadelphia have increased its population at such a prodigious rate that it has been obliged to grow too prodigiously fast to meet or to adapt itself to the new conditions without the speed that does not belong to it. But the old sto

Of course I resented all the changes and, equally of course, it was unreasonable that I should. I had not stood stock still for a quarter of a century, why should I expect Philadelphia to? And little by little, as I got my breath again after my first indignant surprise, as I pulled myself together after my first series of shocks, I began to understand that the wonder was that anything should be left, and to see that Philadelphia has held on to enough of its character and beauty to impress the st