Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-02-04
Sleet on Grays Ferry Road
TT WAS a bitter cold afternoon, the ST.

olCet OH arrays TSIIy noau
TT WAS a bitter cold afternoon, the streets
were like glass but in the brotherhood of
a common peril nearly everybody dared to
smile Teamsters and motormen and demure
young ladies all passed with the CLINT of
laughter in their eyes. Your calm, sunshiny
day is a notorious minister to self satisfac-
tion and, by the same token, great bar to
social freedom of the country town sort that
is so much wanting in these big city streets
A sudden shower of rain will do wonders
to make people think well of one another
under a chance awning, and in a heavy
snowfall the man is hardly human who can
pass other folk by without a CLEAN of fell
lowship in the common memory of snow
balls and seighing parties; but slippery
streets afford universal social t1uX. The
very fact that the next moment you may be
sprawling on all fours or sitting on your hat
makes it impossible not to think feeingIy
of your fellow sprawlers. The more perni-
cious parts of dignity are lightly laid aside,
as among strangers who thaw out in the
jostlings of a haycart, and the most in
credible people will answer your cheerful
mutterings with breezy calls and smiles, and
often will clasp you suddenly by the arm
and bring you down with them in an in
glorious clutter of loose hats and hysterical
laughter.
GO IT was last Monday when ! took my
- acrobatic way toward the Grays Ferry
bridge, following, | suppose, much the same
path that Tom jefferson took in his famous
democratic horseback ride into Philadelphia.
At the corner of Woodland avenue and Forty
seventh street is the old Darby road freight
station of the Pennsylvania Railroad There
in most unpromising surroundings one may
see what ] believe is that great corporations
only tribute TO the power of lyric form as an
aid in transportation. Flanked by a tall
yellow oxygen tank, half a dozen monde
script trunks and n pile of motor tires, like
great yellow teething rings, is stencied on
q large gray board a curious poetic exhorta
ton beginning:
Save a shipment every day,
Save claim in the old fashioned way;
concluding with other grave admonitions
from some anonymous bard of the freight
she'd We predict a bright future for that
young man, but one shudders to think what
consequences may attend his rise in the serv-
| ice of the rairoad-what dithyrambics down
| the columns of the time tables what new
| strange measures from the dusky lips OF the
| train callers
| A s | crcpt cautiously up the hill to the
| n bridge approaches grocery wagon came
champing down. The driver yanked at his
| reins to turn into a street by little negro
church whose windows are providently
| stacked up with pile of palmleaf fans At
| that point on the hill, perhaps in contempt
| of the palmleaf fans, the ice took on a sur
face of abominabe smoothness, and though
the wagon and horse came round at the rens
| they came round with all the verve of a
| razzle dazzle, charging past the palmeaf
fans in whirl of yellow and brown, the
agonzed horse, with distended nostrils and
braced legs, speeding sideways downhll like
| q smoking stove.
| "Donno where Is bound" yelled the
dark skinned driver las he slid by me, "but
/ amt skeered Of sleddn'." He was hold
| ing the horses head up with both hands
but on his face was broad grin of boyish
delight. Luckily there was a bit of rough
snow below him aud the outfit brought up
on it with n great rasping of wheels. Then
the reeking horse, after a moment of wild
snorting, proceeded, so to speak, under his
| own steam.
| CRAYS FERRY BRIDGE, as everybody
| ~ knows, is not architecturally remark
able structure, even as SchuYlkill bridges 90.
but it spans what was once the most lovely
part of the river. On this particular after
noon, under the duh gray sky. the distant
banks TO the nOrthward rose in ,slopc of
cleaning snow, up among the tall gray tomb
stones TO the broad wings of the old Colonial