Being out toward the great Exposition building, West Philadelphia, I
saw it lit up, and thought I would go in. There was a ball, democratic
but nice; plenty of young couples waltzing and quadrilling--music by
a good string-band. To the sight and hearing of these--to moderate
strolls up and down the roomy spaces--to getting off aside, resting in
an arm-chair and looking up a long while at the grand high roof with
its graceful and multitudinous work of iron rods, angles, gray colors,
plays of light and shade, receding into dim outlines--to absorbing
(in the intervals of the string band,) some capital voluntaries
and rolling caprices from the big organ at the other end of the
building--to sighting a shadow'd figure or group or couple of lovers
every now and then passing some near or farther aisle--I abandon'd
myself for over an hour.
Returning home, riding down Market street in an open summer car,
something detain'd us between Fifteenth and Broad, and I got out to
view better the new, three-fifths-built marble edifice, the City Hall,
of magnificent proportions--a majestic and lovely show there in the
moonlight--flooded all over, facades, myriad silver-white lines and
carv'd heads and mouldings, with the soft dazzle--silent, weird,
beautiful--well, I know that never when finish'd will that magnificent
pile impress one as it impress'd me those fifteen minutes.
To-night, since, I have been long on the river. I watch the C-shaped
Northern Crown, (with the star Alshacca that blazed out so suddenly,
alarmingly, one night a few years ago.
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