# Travels in Philadelphia/Willow Grove

WILLOW GROVE
Speaking as a foreigner—every man is a foreigner in Philadelphia until he has lived here for three generations—I should say that no place is more typical of the Philadelphia capacity for enjoying itself in a thoroughly genteel and innocent way than Willow Grove. Cynics have ascribed the placid conduct of Willow Grove's merrymakers to the fact that eighty minutes or so standing up in a crowded trolley blunt human capacity for abandonment and furious mirth. Physiologists say that the unprecedented quantity of root beer and hard-boiled eggs consumed at the Grove account for the staid bearing of the celebrants. Be that how it may, Willow Grove has the genial and placid flavor of a French amusement park. Contrary to popular theory the French, like ourselves, are comely behaved on an outing. People to whom enjoyment is a habit do not turn their picnics into an orgy.
It takes practically as long to get to Willow Grove as it does to Atlantic City, but the sunburn does not keep one awake all night and asleep at the office the next day. That rolling watershed where the creeks run alternately into the Delaware and the Schuylkill is well hilled, watered and aired. There is no surf, it is true; but a superb panorama of the white combers of the sky, the clouds. And fields of plumed and tasseled corn, flickering in ​the wind, are no mean substitute for sand beaches. Let us be practical; no one can eat the surf! And the most important matter in a picnic is to have plenty of food.
Let me state, in passing, that the ideal picnic lunch is always packed in a shoebox; there should be included an opener for root-beer bottles, and doughnuts calculated on a basis of three for each adult. Inside the ring of each doughnut should be packed a hard-boiled egg. Each party should include one person (preferably an aunt) of prudent instincts, to whom may be entrusted the money for return carfares, Ada's knitting bag, Ada's young man's wrist watch and registration card in draft Class 4A, father's spare cigar for the home voyage, grandmother's pneumatic cushion and Cousin Janet's powder-papers and copy of Spumy Stories. This prudent person will form a headquarters and great general staff, a strong defensive position upon which the maneuvers of the excursion will be based.
The first thing that always strikes me at Willow Grove is how amazingly well dressed everybody is. The frocks, hats and ankles of the young ladies are a vision of rapture. The young men, too, are well dressed, in the best possible style, which is, of course, the uniform of Uncle Sam. The last time I was there it was a special celebration day for the marines. Several hundred of them were loping about in their cafe-au-lait khaki, fine, tall, lean chaps, with that curious tautness of the trousers ​that makes the devil dogs look stiff-kneed. Bronzed, handsome fellows, with the characteristic tilt of the Stetson that must flutter the hearts of French flappers. And as for the girls, if Willow Grove on a Saturday afternoon is a fair cross-section of Philadelphia pulchritude, I will match it against anything any other city can show.
Willow Grove, of course, is famous for its music, and at dusk the Marine Band was to play in the pavilion. That open-air auditorium, under the tremulous ceiling of tall maples and willows and sycamores, with the green and silver shimmer of the darkening lake at one side, is a cheerful place to sit and meditate. I had a volume of Thoreau with me, and began to read it, but he kept on harping upon the blisses of solitude which annoyed me when I was enjoying the mirths and moods of the crowd. Nowhere will you find a happier, more sane and contented and typically American crowd than at Willow Grove. Perhaps in wartime we take our pleasures a little more soberly than of old. Yet there seemed no shadow of sadness or misgiving on all those happy faces, and it was a good sight to see tall marines romping through the "Crazy Village" arm in arm with bright-eyed girls. Those boys in the coffee-and-milk uniform will see crazier villages than that in Champagne and Picardy.
The last arrows of sunlight were still quivering among the upmost leaves when the Marine Band began to play, and the great crowd gathered under ​the trees was generous with affectionate enthusiasm. And then, at a bugle call, the rest of the sea-soldiers charged shouting down the dusky aisles, climbed the platform, and sang their war songs with fine pride and spirit. "America, Here's My Boy"; "It's a Long, Long Way to Berlin, But We'll Get There, by Heck"; "Goodby, Broadway: Hello, France" and "There's a Long, Long, Trail" were the favorites. And then came the one song that of all others has permeated American fiber during the last year—"Over There." There is something of simple gallantry and pathos in it that I find genuinely moving. The clear, merry, audacious male voices made me think of their brothers in France who were, even at that very moment, undergoing such fiery and unspeakable trial. The great gathering under the trees seemed to feel something of this, too; there was a caught breath and a quiver of secret pain on every bench. "Over There," unassuming ditty as it is, has caught the spirit of our crusade with inspiration and truth. It is the informal anthem of our great and dedicated resolve.
As we walked back toward the station the rolling loops and webbed framework of the scenic railway were silhouetted black against a western sky which was peacock blue with a quiver of greenish crystal still eddying in it. The bullfrogs were drumming in the little ponds enameled with green scum. And from the train window, as we rattled down that airy valley, we could see the Grove's ​spangles and festoons of light. Philadelphia may take her amusements placidly, but she knows how to enjoy them.