Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-09-24
Making Marathon Safe for the Urchin
By CHRISTOPHER MORLEY

THE Crchin and I have been strolling
L about Marathon on Sunday mornings for
more than a year, but not until the gaso-
lineless Sabbaths supervened were we really
able to examine the village and see what 1t
is like. Previously we had been kept busy
either lodging motors or admiring them as
they sped by. Their rich dazzle of FURNISHED
enamel, the purring hum of their great tires.
evokes applause from the Urchin. He is
learning, as he watches those flashing chart
OTIS. that life truly is almost as vivid as the
advertisements in The Ladies' Home Journal,
where the simmer of earthly pageant first
was presented to him.
MARATHON is a village 80 genteel and
AV4 comedy that the Urchin and / would like
to leave some picture of it for future gener-
atoms, particularly as We see it on an
autumn morning when, as l say, the motors
are kenneled and the landscape has ceased
to vibrate. In the douce benignance of equi-
noctial sunshine We gaze about us with eyes
of inventory. Where my observation errs by
too much sentiment the Urchin checks me
by his cooler power of ratiocination.
Marathon is a suburban Nanadu gently
caressed by the train service of the Cinder
and Bloodshot. 1t may be recognized as
an aristocratic and patrician stronghold by
the fact that while luxuries are readily OBJ
tainable (for instance, banana splits, or the
latest novel by Enoch A. Bennett). neces-
saries are had only by prayer and ~advowson.
The drug store will deliver ice cream to your
very refrigerator, but it is impossible to
get your garbage collected. The cook goes
off for her Thursday evening in a taxi, but
you will have to mend the roof, stanch the
plumbing and curry the furnace with your
own hands. There are ten trains to take you
to town Of an evening, but only two to
bring you home. Yet going to town is a
luxury, coming home is a necessity. The
supply Of grape Juice seems almost unlimited,
yet coal is to be had atch-as-catch-can
proof that Marathon is patri-
n clan at heart is that nothing is known
by it's right name! The drug store is a
pharmacy" Sunday is the Sabbath" a
house is a residence" a debt is a balance
due on bill rendered" A girls school is a
young ladies' seminary" A Marathon man
is not drafted, he is 'inducted into s%elective
| service" And the railway station has a
porte cochere with the correct accent) in
stead Of a carriage entrance. A furnace is
chow enormously y called a heater" Mara
| thon people do not die-they pass away
| Even the cobbler, good fellow. has caught
the trick: he calls his shop the 'Italo-
American Shoe Hospital"
THIS is an innocent masquerade! If Mara
Il thOn prefers not 10 call u ulNNtr u TlNNer,
I shall not expostulate. And yet this quaint
subterfuge should not be carried quite so far.
Stone walls are made for sunny l%ounging /;
yet stone walls in Marathon are built with
uneven vertical projections to discourage the
sedentary parts. Nothing Is more delightful
than a dog but there are no dogs In Marathon.
They are all airedales or spantels or mas
tiffs. If an ordinary dog should wag his tail
up our street the airedales would cut him
dead. Bless me, Nature herself has taken
to the same insincerity. The landscape
round Marathon Is lovely, but 1t has itself
we'll in hand. The hills all pretend to be
gentle declivities. There is a beautiful little
sheet of water, rejecting the trailery of
willows. a green salute to the eye. In a
robuster community 1t would be a swimming
hole-but with us. an lake Only
in one spot has Nature forgotten herself and
been so brusque and rough as to jut up a
very stable cliff. This Is the loveliest thing
in Marathon: sunlight and shadow break
and angle in cubist magniicence among the
oddly veined knobs and prisms of brown
stone. Yet this cliff or quarry is by com
mon consent taboo among us. It is our in
delicacy. our indecency. Such residences
as are near modestly turn their kitchens
toward it. Only the blacksmith and the gas
tank are hardy enough to face this naked
ness of Mother Earth-they. and excellent
Pat Lemon, Marathon's humblest and black
est citizen. who contemplates that rugged
and honest beauty as he tills his garden on
the land abandoned by squeamish burghers.
liThat IL our Aceldama, our Potters Eiel1s
49, p