Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/39

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WILD WORDS WE HAVE KNOWN
25

"Whenever it's a Saturday and all my work is through,
I take a walk on Chestnut street to see what news is new."


Every Jack and Jill has his or her own ideas of a Saturday afternoon adventure. Our stenographer hastens off with a laughing group to the Automat and the movies. Our friend with the shell-rimmed spectacles, tethered by a broad silk ribbon, is bound to the Academy of the Fine Arts to censure the way Mr. Sargent has creased John D. Rockefeller's trousers, and will come back bursting with indignation to denounce the portrait "a mere chromo." We ourself hasten to the Reading Terminal to meet a certain pair of brown eyes that are sparkling in from Marathon for lunch and a mobilization of spring millinery. And others are off to breast the roaring gusts of March on the golf meads or trundle baby carriages on the sunny side of suburban streets.

But there is another diversion for Saturday afternoon that is very dear to us, and sometimes we are able to coax B——— W——— to agree. That is to spend two or three glorious hours in the library mulling over the dictionaries. Talk about chasing a golfball over the links or following Theda Bara serpentining through a mile of celluloid, or stalking Tom and Jerry, mystic affinities, from bar to bar along Chestnut street—what can these excitements offer compared to a breathless word-hunt in the dictionaries! Words—the