Chestnut street, I have discover'd, is not without individuality, and
its own points, even when compared with the great promenade-streets
of other cities. I have never been in Europe, but acquired years'
familiar experience with New York's, (perhaps the world's) great
thoroughfare, Broadway, and possess to some extent a personal and
saunterer's knowledge of St. Charles street in New Orleans, Tremont
street in Boston, and the broad trottoirs of Pennsylvania avenue in
Washington. Of course it is a pity that Chestnut were not two or three
times wider; but the street, any fine day, shows vividness, motion,
variety, not easily to be surpass'd. (Sparkling eyes, human faces,
magnetism, well-dress'd women, ambulating to and fro--with lots o
fine things in the windows--are they not about the same, the civilized
world over?)
How fast the flitting figures come!
The mild, the fierce, the stony face;
Some bright with thoughtless smiles--and some
Where secret tears have left their trace.
A few days ago one of the six-story clothing stores along here had the
space inside its plate-glass show-window partition'd into a little
corral, and litter'd deeply with rich clover and hay, (I could smell
the odor outside,) on which reposed two magnificent fat sheep,
full-sized but young--the handsomest creatures of the kind I ever saw.
I stop's long and long, with the crowd, to view them--one lying down
chewing the cud, and one standing up, looking out, with dense-fringed
patient eyes.
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