e lying in the now unused ferry slip
at the foot of Market Street, alongside the great Victor Talking Machine
works. Picking my way through an empty yard where some carpentering was
going on, I found a deserted pier that overlooked the two old vessels
and gave a fair prospect on to the river and the profile of
Philadelphia. Sitting there on a pile of pebbles, I lit a pipe and
watched the busy panorama of the river. I made no effort to disturb the
normal and congenial lassitude that is the highest function of the human
being: no Hindoo philosopher could have been more pleasantly at ease.
(O. Henry, one remembers, used to insist that what some of his friends
called laziness was really "dignified repose.") Two elderly colored men
were loading gravel onto a cart not far away. I was a little worried as
to what I could say if they asked what I was doing. In these days casual
loungers along docksides may be suspected of depth bombs and high
treason. The only truthful reply to any question would have been that I
was thinking about Walt Whitman. Such a remark, if uttered in
Philadelphia, would undoubtedly have been answered by a direction to the
chocolate factory on Race Street. But in Camden every one knows about
Walt. Still, the colored men said nothing beyond returning my greeting.
Their race, wise in simplicity, knows that loafing needs no explanation
and is its own excuse.

If Walt could revisit the ferries he loved so well, in New York and
Philadelphia, he would find the former strangely altered in aspect. The
New York skyline wears a very different silhouette against the sky,
with its marvelous peaks and summits drawing the eye aloft. But
Philadelphia's profile is (I imagine) not much changed. I do not know
just when the City Hall tower was finished: Walt speaks of it as
"three-fifths built" in 1879. That, of course, is the dominant unit in
the view from Camden. Otherwise there are few outstanding elements. The
gradual rise in height of the buildings, from Front Street gently
ascending up to Broad, gives no startling contrast of elevation to catch
the gaze. The spires of the older churches stand up like soft blue
pencils, and the massive cornices of the Curtis and Drexel buildings
catch the sunlight. Otherwise the outline is even and well-massed in a
smooth ascending curve.

It is curious how a man can stamp his personality upon earthly things.
There will always be pilgrims to whom Camden and the Delaware ferries
are fu