Personally we much prefer John Bartram's house to any of those splendid old country-seats within Fairmount. To find Bartram's Gardens you need a guide--or a really intelligent street-car conductor. For there is not even a marking sign upon its entrance, although Philadelphia professes to maintain it as a public park. Little has been done, however, to the property, and for that he who comes to it almost as a shrine has reason to be profoundly thankful. For the old house stands, with its barns, almost exactly as it stood in the days of the great naturalist. One may see where his hands placed the great stone inscribed "John-Ann Bartram 1731" within its gable; on the side wall another tablet chiseled there forty years later, and reading:
"Tis God alone, almighty Lord, The holy one by me adored."
Neglect may have come upon the gardens but even John Bartram could not deny the wild beauty of these untrammeled things. The gentle river is still at the foot of the garden, within it, most of the shrubs and trees he planted are still growing into green old age. And next to his fine old simple house one sees the tangled yew-tree and the Jerusalem "Christ's-thorn" that his own hands placed within the ground.
Philadelphia prides herself upon her dominant Americanism--and with no small reason. She insists that by keeping the doorways to her houses sharply barred she maintains her native stock, her trained and responsible stock, if you please, dominant. She avers that she protects American institutions. New York may become truly cosmopolitan, may ape foreign manners and foreign customs. Philadelphia in her quiet, gentle way prefers to preserve those of her fathers.
One instance will suffice. She has preserved the American Sabbath--almost exactly as it existed half a century ago. As to the merits and demerits of that very thing, they have no place here. But the fact remains that Philadelphia has accomplished it. From Saturday night to Monday morning a great desolation comes upon the town. There are no theaters not even masquerading grotesquely as "sacred concerts," no open saloons, no baseball games, no moving pictures--nothing exhibiting for admission under a tight statute of Pennsylvania, in effect now for more than a century. And it is only a few years ago that the churches were permitted to stretch chains across the streets during the hours of their services. A few bad fires, however, with the fire-engines becoming entangled with the chains and this custom was abandoned. But the churches are still open, and they are well attended. It is an old-fashioned Sabbath and it seems very good indeed to old-fashioned Americans.