A suspension
bridge cobwebbed itself across the Schuylkill where that audacious arch
used to leap the river at a single bound,--an arch of greater span, as
they loved to tell us, than was ever before constructed. The Upper Ferry
Bridge was to the Schuylkill what the Colossus was to the harbor of
Rhodes. It had an air of dash about it which went far towards redeeming
the dead level of respectable average which flattens the physiognomy of
the rectangular city. Philadelphia will never be herself again until
another Robert Mills and another Lewis Wernwag have shaped her a new
palladium. She must leap the Schuylkill again, or old men will sadly
shake their heads, like the Jews at the sight of the second temple,
remembering the glories of that which it replaced.
There are times when Ethiopian minstrelsy can amuse, if it does not
charm, a weary soul, and such a vacant hour there was on this same Friday
evening. The "opera-house" was spacious and admirably ventilated. As I
was listening to the merriment of the sooty buffoons, I happened to cast
my eyes up to the ceiling, and through an open semicircular window a
bright solitary star looked me calmly in the eyes.
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