Schuylkill, beautiful at high tide, the high banks opposite once a famous
estate, now the seat of the Almshouse, where four thousand paupers
live in the winter and about fifteen hundred in the summer. So mild and
pleasant is this climate that the majority of the paupers creep out, like
the blue bottleflies, with the coming of spring, preferring to sleep in
barns or under the green trees all the summer, rather than endure the
hard beds, discipline and regular habits of the Almshouse. The rains of
summer may fill their old bones with rheumatism for winter, but there are
charms in the life of the stroller, who feeds to-day at a farm-house,
or works a few hours to-morrow for a trifle to get whisky and tobacco,
but has no notes to pay, no house to maintain, no servants to support.

[Illustration: RIDLEY PARK.]

[Illustration: CRUM LYNNE FALLS]

Gray's Ferry is an old historic name, for here Washington and the
men of the Revolution crossed again and again. The old rope ferry was
succeeded by the old horse ferry, and now there are three railroads
here--the Darby Improvement, the Junction (which goes to West
Philadelphia and makes the connection for the great Southern
Air-line), and the old line, which leads us out, through the old
Bartram Gardens, where an enthusiastic botanist made the first and
best collection of trees and plants in this country, on to the marshes
of the Delaware. The mighty river, widening into a bay, flows on to
the ocean, its bosom furrowed by thousands of keels and whitened by
myriad sails. We look over wide acres of marshes, now green with the
tender colors of spring, the corn-fields of the higher portion giving
by their brown earth beautiful contrasts of color, the rows of corn
just coming into sight. All over these meadows stand huge oak trees