Page:Our Philadelphia (Pennell, 1914).djvu/283

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE MIRACLE OF WORK
263

My new knowledge of Philadelphia was widened in various other directions as time went on. My Uncle's experiment, when it took practical shape, attracted attention and he was asked to lecture on it in places like the Franklin Institute—there was no keeping away very long from Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia once I got to know anything about Philadelphia—and to visit institutions like Moyamensing Prison or Kirkbride's Insane Asylum that he might consider the advisability of introducing his scheme of manual work for the benefit of the insane and the criminal. I usually accompanied him on these occasions, and before he had got through his rounds I had seen a number of different phases of Philadelphia activity and enterprise and power of organization. I had been given some idea of the armies of doctors and nurses and scientists who had made Kirkbride's a model throughout the land, while Dr. Albert Smith had helped me to an additional insight into the hospitals that set as excellent an example. I had been given an idea of the armies of judges and juries and police and governors and warders and visiting inspectors,—of whom my Father was one, with a special tenderness for murderers whom he used to take his family to visit—at Moyamensing. And from the combination of all my new experiences I had gained further knowledge of the energies at work beyond the limits of "Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce and Pine" to make Philadelphia what it was.