was such a mere re-echo of Philadelphia ideas and prejudices that I know most Philadelphians were as ignorant and as heedless. But almost the first effort of the new Dames and Sons and Daughters was to protect the old architecture, the outward sign and symbol of age and the aristocracy of age, and they made so much noise in doing so that even I heard it, even I became conscious of a research as keen for a past, or a genealogy in the familiar streets and the familiar buildings as in the archives of Historical Societies.
If the Centennial had done no more for Philadelphia than to put Philadelphians to this work, it would have done enough. But it did do more. The pride of family, dismissed by many as pure snobbishness, awoke the sort of patriotism that Philadelphia, with all America, was most in need of if the real American was not to be swept away before the hordes of aliens beginning then to invade his country. In my opinion, the Colonial Dames, for all their follies, are doing far more to keep up the right American spirit than the flaunting of the stars and stripes in the alien's face and the lavishing upon him of the Government's paternal attention. The question is how long they can avoid the pitfall of exaggeration.
IV
If there was one thing in those days I knew less of than the past in Philadelphia, it was the present outside of it. Of my own country my knowledge was limited to an
