House & Garden 
68 
E. G1MPEL 
WILDENSTEIN 
Secretaire, French XVI11. Century Marquetrie 
HIGH CLASS OLD. PAINTINGS 
TAPESTRIES 
"WORKS OF ART 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FURNITURE 
647 Fifth Avenue NEW YORK CITY 
Paris—57 Ruae La B&etie . 
An Early Philadelphia 
(Continued from page 20) 
Christmas 
handleless cups from China. Cakes were 
there, homemade, with raisins, almonds 
and figs from the warehouses on Dock 
and Front Streets, that stored all the 
spices and all the romantic things the 
ships brought in from the Orient. 
A GREAT spray of mistletoe hung 
in brazen evidence and was not 
ignored. A strange medley of stiff 
courtliness and romping informality pre¬ 
vailed, or would have seemed to prevail 
to our eyes, could we have stood on the 
stairs above those curled and powdered 
heads and watched the gay crowd shift 
and change. The rooms furnished a 
perfect background, as our rooms of to¬ 
day so seldom do, for the colorful lustre 
of beautiful costumes, the fresh pink 
tints of smiling faces and the rounded 
whiteness of bare arms and fair necks. 
A thin mist of flying powder, sifting 
through the candle light, perfume and 
the fragrance of crushed flowers, rose 
and mingled with the heady steam of 
the punch. The constant roar of laugh¬ 
ing chatter, clink of gold lost or won, 
and the tap, tapping of little hurrying 
heels on the wooden floor, created quite 
a maddening din. 
The gathering broke up in time for 
early supper, five being the hour in many 
of the homes. Some would attend danc¬ 
ing parties or balls in the evening, where 
it was customary in many houses of 
fashion to commence dancing at nine. 
At eleven an elaborate supper of such 
meats as turkey, fowls, pheasant and 
tongues with desserts of every sort imag¬ 
inable would be indulged in, at elabo¬ 
rately decked, large tables set in the 
dining room. It is to be mildly won¬ 
dered when these well-fed guests could 
find an opportunity to take part in the 
dancing, which frequently went on until 
twelve o’clock or later. 
I N its minor points, Christmas of to¬ 
day in Philadelphia might be quite 
different from Christmas in Phila¬ 
delphia one hundred and twenty-five 
years ago, but in essentials they are quite 
alike. In those days the houses were 
without heat, without the softly flooding 
light of electricity that eliminates the 
enveloping shadows, and without water 
and gas. What endless hard work en¬ 
tertaining must have been, when the 
servant problem, though perhaps less 
knotty than we find it today, still ex¬ 
isted, as the letters and diaries of the 
times clearly tell us. 
The City of Brotherly Love, like its 
sister cities of the times, wore a more 
beautiful air than it does today. Ah, 
hold not up your hands in pious horror, 
you to whom progress means beauty 
everywhere! Can it be that that colos¬ 
sal, restless heap of building material 
called the Public Buildings, seems to 
possess to you more charm and gives 
to your eye more pleasure than the de¬ 
lightful spreading wings of the Pennsyl¬ 
vania Hospital? Is there any church 
lovelier than old Christ Church, or any 
recent notable building half as compell¬ 
ing in fineness as those built in the 
earlier days? A little red brick city of 
quiet, consistent charm, a city whose 
older streets • have one dominating note 
of color and the slight irregularity of 
form that gives variety. It remains even 
today one of the few great cities where 
it is not hard, on some of the little side 
streets, to conjure up the shapes of long 
ago. The setting is all there. Remove 
the restless trolleys that shriek so re¬ 
lentlessly up one street and down an¬ 
other, and you have it much as it was 
and has been for the past century or 
more. A blessing upon its sleepiness; 
may it never wake up to the constant 
upheaval of perpetual change! 
The residence of Robert Morris, which still stands, 
preserves the atmosphere of the old days in its 
simple Georgian architecture 
