Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/136

This page has been validated.
120
THE PAOLI LOCAL

The 2:15 train is a good one to take, for it affords an interesting opportunity to observe those who may be called sub-commuters: the people who come in town in the morning, like honest working folk, but get back to the country after lunch. These, of course, are only half-breed commuters. They are the silver-chevron suburbanites, deserving not the true golden stripes of those who moil all day. They are teachers, schoolboys, golfomaniacs and damsels from the home of Athene, Bryn Mawr. They are mere cherubim and seraphim, not archangels. Stern and grizzled veterans, who go home on the Hjw6:05 ("H" Will not run New Year's, Memorial, Independence, Thanksgiving and Christmas Days; "j" will not run Saturdays June 7 to Sept. 27, both inclusive; "w" No baggage service), speak of them scornfully as "Sam Brown belt commuters."

One who was nourished along the line of the Paoli local, who knew it long before it became electrified with those spider-leg trolleys on its roof and before the Wynnewood embankments were lined with neat little garages, sometimes has an inner pang that it is getting a bit too civilized. And yet no train will ever mean to us what that does! The saying that was good enough for Queen Mary and Mr. Browning is good enough for me. When I die, you will find the words PAOLI LOCAL indelibled on my heart. When the Corsican patriot's bicentennial comes along, in 1925, I hope there will be a grand reunion of all the old travelers