lit a cigarette and watched them disperse, "they're a great bunch. But if you want to hear noise, you should listen to the girls when they go out."
UP TO VALLEY GREEN
Madrigal had a bad cold, and I was trumpeting with hay fever; and we set off for consolation in a tramp along the Wissahickon. In the drowsy stillness of a late August afternoon, with a foreboding of autumn chill already in the air, we sneezed and coughed our way along the lovely ravine. Those lonely glades, that once echoed to the brisk drumming of horses' hoofs, rang with our miserable sternutations. The rocky gullies and pine-scented hillsides became for one afternoon the Vallombrosa of two valetudinarians. Thoughts of mortal perishment lay darkly upon us. We had lunched gorgeously with a charming host who was suffering with sciatica, and had described this affliction to us as a toothache as long as your leg. Then the Ridge avenue car carried us between two populous cities of the dead—Laurel Hill and Mount Vernon Cemeteries. Was this (we thought) the beginning of the end?
The Ridge avenue car set us down at the mouth of Wissahickon creek. We each got out a clean handkerchief from a hip pocket and determined to make a brave fight against the dark angel. Under the huge brown arches of the Reading Railway, which have all the cheering gayety of an old
