Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-02-04
TRAVELS IN PHILADELPHIA
By ROY HELTON

house of Woodlands. The frame Of far off
gas tank on Chestnut street hung in dim
tracery above the housetops, and to the
south the yellow lanterned dome of st. Fran
els church peered up above clump of hazy
trees.
TNHESE winter mists along the Schuylkill
- can do wonders in showing one things,
for as l turned to cross over the railroad
tracks, where dozen engines stood waiting
in bovine meditation, with great clouds of
steam growing from their tunnels, I noticed
with peculiar emphasis little squat monu-
ment, an obelisk on block of stone, that rose
on slice of hill in the very heart of the
railroad tracks. 1t was not an unfamiliar
sight, but in the emphasis of winters haze
1t was not to be evaded. | wondered idly for
lazy minute or two what battle or scene of
historic moment had come to commemoration
in this rather ungrateful spot; and again,
what freak of railroad sentiment had spared
that plot of ground from tracks or sidings.
10 reach the obelisk required long detour
back toward the tall trees of Bartram's Gar
dens and then scramble up the lev slopes
of the little hill, where the winter wind
struck into ones vitals with a merciless
blast. After liberal muttering of certain
imprecations not unknown to the wizards of
old, succeeded in making my way to the
very point of this wedge of waste ground
All around me lay web of tracks, with now
and then train charging by in n hoot of
steam. Behind me the triangle of raised
earth stretched back in its liberal icing of
snow like stupendous slice of lemon pie.
| was prepared, after all my trouble, to
find at least the commemoration of major
battle, but it was no such thing:
The Newkirk Viaduct
Commenced July fourth 1887
Completed December tpenty- fifth 1888
From Philadelphia to Wilmington
And on another side of the blackened stone:
Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore
RdilrOdd
Formed 1888
BIZ q Union of the Several Charters
Obtained from Pehna., HaryIqnd, and
Deldtoare
MIELL, it was not major battle. in
~ sense, and then again it was. this first
great railway merger, forming the first ring
in the interminable web of interstate trans
portation by steam. / could understand now
why this unseemly old ice glazed monument
had been spared from the desecratiop of IFS
children.
The clouds of steam rose round me from
the herd of bovine engines and heard the
hootings and janglings and the clash of
coupling cars and the rumble of long freight
train over the old steel bridge. Around me
the battle was still raging j will confess
that / was satisfied
AS l turned to go I noticed at nv feet
another set of broad foot tracks. I foilowed
them. They had come UP the hill. had
tramped about the monument, had paused
and tramped around it again. There was q
new match on the ice covered snow. Tben
the tracks had turned back down the hill
and l followed them but my guide was a
more wary walker than ] for without warn
ing my feet lost their purchase and 7 slid
ipto the railway cutting. am still wonder
ing what sort of a fellow this was. who
look the trouble to come up here through
the snow and then read and pondered SO LONG
at the foot of the old black obelisk.
I TOOK my bruised way down Forty ninth
street, which runs hastily down info tbo
river, just at the point where a little boat-
yard strews its broken hulls along the shore
There amid the little pumpkin seed hulls NJ
decayed motorboats / stood and watched The
river.
1t drifted sullenly along. ugly and blscs
with few broken casks and bits of drift
wood as its only navy. but beyond il tbere
rose tall, hazy STACKS and huge clouds of
\ drifting steam. Further up the shore be-
yond the boatyard lay a beached dismasted
schooner Haunting the breezy name Hello