There The Sad Exile's Weary Search Was At Last Rewarded; The Long Parted
Lovers Were Reunited, Though But For A Moment On The Verge Of The Grave;
And Thus Was Ended -
"The hope and the fear and the sorrow,
All the aching of heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing,
All the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of patience,"
The city almshouse stood, we are told, at the corner of Twelfth and
Spruce Streets; but the belief is quite general (and we incline
decidedly to that) that our beloved poet intended by his description to
portray the quaint building formerly known as the Friends' Almshouse,
which stood in Walnut Place (opening off of Walnut Street below Fourth),
and which was torn down in 1872 or 1873 to give place to railroad and
lawyers' offices.
The entrance from the street, by "gateway and wicket", as the poem says,
led through a narrow passage way; and there faced one a small, low
roofed house, built of alternate red and black bricks (the latter
glazed), almost entirely covered by an aged ivy which clambered over the
roof. The straggling branches even nodded above the wide chimneys; at
both sides of the door stood comfortable settles, inviting to rest; and
the pretty garden charmed with its bloom and fragrance. The whole formed
such a restful retreat, such an oasis of quiet in the very heart of the
busy city, that one was tempted often to make excuses for straying into
the peaceful enclosure.
In a book printed for private circulation in Philadelphia some years
ago, there is an item of interest about the Acadians. The author
narrates that she and a young companion, in their strolls to the
suburbs, where they went to visit the Pennsylvania Hospital (Eighth and
Pine Streets, now in the heart of the city), were timid because obliged
to pass the place where the "French Neutrals" were located.
These people, because they were foreigners, and there was some mystery
about them which the girls did not then understand, inspired them with
fear; though Philadelphia residents of that time testify that the
homeless and destitute strangers were in reality a very simple and
inoffensive company, when, "friendless, homeless, hopeless, they
wandered from city to city." Through the influence of Anthony Benezet, a
member of the Society of Friends, they were provided with homes on Pine
Street above Sixth, where the two little wooden houses still stand; one,
when we last saw it, being painted blue.
What a picturesque company of adventurers were those French noblemen,
who, turning their backs upon the luxuries and fascinations of court
life, sailed away to this wild and distant land, where, in the pursuit
of gain, fame, or merely adventure, they were to suffer absolute
privation and hardship; consorting with savages in place of the plumed
and pampered denizens of palaces.
After a probably tempestuous voyage across the bleak Atlantic, and a
merciless buffeting from Fundy in the spring of 1604, the prospective
Governor of the great territory known as Acadia was sailing along this
coast, which presents such a forbidding aspect from the Bay, making his
first haven May 16.
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