Ethel Morton at Sweetbriar Lodge Part 20

Almost on the river, toward the southern end of the town, was the church which the chauffeur called "Old Swedes Church," and whose correct name, Mrs. Morton said, was "Gloria Dei."

"How old is it?" asked d.i.c.ky who was beginning to understand that they were on a historical pilgrimage. They all laughed at his seriousness, and his mother answered.

"This building is only a little over two centuries old--but it's on the site of an old wooden church that was built in 1646. It was a Swedish church, originally, and then the whole congregation turned Episcopal."

"It doesn't look as if they lived around the church in any great numbers," said Tom, gazing about him.

"Most of the paris.h.i.+oners live now a long way from here," said the chauffeur, "but they love the church because they are the descendants of the original founders, and they come from great distances to the morning services and stay to Sunday School, old people and young ones, too, and cook their dinner in the Parish House."

"That sounds like a New England village church to which all the farmers from around about come for the day," said Margaret Hanc.o.c.k. "I used to see them when I was a little girl and we went to New Hamps.h.i.+re for the summer. They bring their lunch and eat it under the trees between services."

"Since we seem to be doing churches, we ought to go to a Quaker Meeting House," suggested Mrs. Morton, turning to the chauffeur for information.

"There is one up on 12th Street, madam," he responded. "There's a boys'

school connected with it that is very well known--the Penn Charter School. Lots of the old Quaker families send their boys there still."

"I don't suppose there would be a meeting to-day," inquired Helen.

The chauffeur shook his head.

"You wouldn't like it, any way," he said. "I'm a Quaker myself, and I know when I was your age it was awfully hard work to keep still so long."

"Is it worse than any other kind of church?" asked d.i.c.ky.

The driver nodded again, dexterously avoiding a big truck as he answered.

"The congregation just sits there until the Spirit moves someone to speak. I've been there many a time when they sat for two hours and nothing happened at all."

"Dear me," exclaimed Ethel Blue, shaking her head gravely; "I don't believe I could keep still as long as that."

"I dare say it's just as well that there is no meeting to-day," said Mrs.

Morton. "Any way, I don't know that I should approve of your going to a religious service out of curiosity."

Tom nodded in agreement with Mrs. Morton.

"I'm sure Father wouldn't like it," he said.

Tom's father was a clergyman in New York.

"He doesn't object to our going to other churches," he went on, "but he has seen so much of tourists who come to New York and go around the city, taking in three or four churches on Sunday morning merely to hear the music or some celebrated speaker, that he has always warned us children against being 'religious rubber-necks.'"

They all laughed and contented themselves with looking at the outside of the severely plain meeting-house.

The tour over the Mint was filled with interest for all of them.

"This is the oldest Mint in the United States," the guide explained to them.

"What's the date?" Helen could not resist asking, although Roger shook his head at her and Tom visibly smothered a smile.

"1792" the man replied. "We turn out gold and silver and copper here and we've done a great deal of minting for South America, and, of late years, for the Philippines."

The boys were most interested in the processes by which the discs were cut out of plain sheets of metal and were then fed into tubes of just the right size to hold them, until they reached the stamping machine which gave them the impress they were to wear through life.

"Those new gold pieces are certainly beauties," said Roger, looking at the eagle flying through the air on one coin and then at the same majestic bird standing with dignity on another.

"I don't think this Indian has a very handsome nose," said Ethel Blue, critically, as she examined a five-cent piece.

"But think how appropriate it is,--the n.o.ble red-man on one side of the nickel, and the buffalo of the plains on the other," returned James.

The girls were more interested in the coin collection in the Mint's museum. Here they saw not only American coins, from the earliest to the most recent, but coins of other countries. One of them was the tiny bit of metal known as the "Widow's Mite."

"The Widow didn't have to be very muscular to carry that around,"

commented Roger.

"But she must have had a separate bag to put it in or it would have been lost," returned practical Ethel Brown.

"There's nothing doing in the Academy of Fine Arts now, ma'am," the chauffeur told Mrs. Morton, when she got into the car again. "It has a grand exhibition every winter but it's closed for the summer. Would you like to see the collections?"

The question was put to the party and they agreed that they would prefer to stay out of doors in this brilliant summer weather.

"We'll make an expedition to the Metropolitan Museum some day before long," promised Mrs. Morton.

"I wish we might do it soon," said Dorothy. "Miss Graham said she'd go with us, and I think we should learn a lot from her because she's half an artist."

"Let's ask her to take us as soon as we get back," said Ethel Blue. "I'm crazy about her, and this would be a good chance for us to be with her for almost all day."

"I'll see that you have your opportunity soon," her Aunt Marion promised her.

"We have time to run out to Mt. Airy this morning," suggested the chauffeur. "Then after luncheon, you could go to the Park and the Zoo in the afternoon."

"What is Mt. Airy?" asked Della.

"One of the finest deaf and dumb asylums in America," replied the young man proudly.

Della shook her head and the rest of them pulled such long faces Mrs.

Morton could not resist smiling.

"I rather think these young people care more for human beings who can talk and hear," she said to the chauffeur. "At any rate," she went on, looking at her watch, "I must meet my business appointment now, so I suggest, Roger, that you take our party to Wanamaker's. You can see a lot of interesting things there, and can have your luncheon, and I'll meet you there when I am through with my business."

So it was arranged, and the chauffeur was ordered for three o'clock to take them to Fairmount Park.

At the appointed hour his cheerful face greeted them once again. Because of the Mortons' interest in the Navy, they first ran south to the League Island Navy Yard. Even their familiarity with many Navy Yards did not lessen their interest in this one, with its rows of officers' houses and its barracks and mess-room. Just because they were so familiar with similar places, however, they did not stay long, and the car was soon whirling northwards to the opposite end of the city. They went through miles and miles of streets lined with small houses.

"These are the houses which have given Philadelphia the nick-name of the 'City of Homes,'" exclaimed Mrs. Morton. "You see, in New York people are crowded on to a small tongue of land, between two rivers. Here there are two rivers also, but the s.p.a.ce between them is wider. There's nothing to prevent the city's crossing the Schuylkill and running westward, as it began to do many long years ago."

"These houses aren't very beautiful," commented Ethel Blue.

"They are very neat," said Ethel Brown. "But don't you get tired of these red bricks and white shutters, and the little flights of white marble steps, all alike? I don't see how anybody knows when he has come home. I should think people would all the time be getting into their neighbors'