ITS first name was Coaquenaque. I am glad they changed it to Philadelphia, because it is easier to pronounce; but I like Indian names. I went to Philadelphia once with my uncle. I think Broad Street is one of the nicest places in the world. I went to Germantown to see where Charlie Ross used to live, but I was so small I don’t remember very much about anything, only Broad Street. I’m going again next year, and I’ll look around and write you what I see.

John T. Robinson.

I went with father to Philadelphia three years ago; we staid near Washington Square; it is beautiful there. The trees are just splendid. Father told me it used to be a great burying-ground. I could not make it seem possible. A great many unknown soldiers, father said, were buried there; it was in Revolutionary times. How sad it must have been to live then! I like the little parks in Philadelphia that they call “squares.” I saw the place where they held the Sanitary Fair, when they roofed over the entire square, and let the trees stand as pillars.

Laura Creedmore.

One of the most interesting places I visited in Philadelphia was Mr. Wanamaker’s store. I did not know a store could be so large. It takes a hundred miles of steam pipes to heat it.

My uncle has a fruit farm of ten acres, and I used to think when I walked around it that ten acres was pretty big; but there are over fourteen acres of floor to walk around in Mr. Wanamaker’s store! The different departments are fixed up beautifully. They have lovely parlors and dining-rooms and bedrooms all rigged up with beautiful furniture, to show people how to furnish their rooms, and every few days they change and give you another style. But the most interesting part of the store, to me, was the way the money is sent to the cashiers. There are eighty-one pay-stations in the store; then there is a central cash desk where twenty-five cashiers are busy all day long receiving the money that is brought to them through the tubes. The clerk at a pay-station takes the money you give him, and starts it in one of the pneumatic tubes, and away it shoots to the central desk on the second floor; a cashier there looks at it, sees what change is needed, and shoots it back. I don’t understand it very well, but I mean to. I am going to study the principles of pneumatic tubing, and Chris and I are going to have one to reach from my window to his. We are only about fifty feet apart. In Wanamaker’s they have seven miles of tubing to carry their money around. We took dinner at the Wanamaker Dairy, right in the store; it was jam full, and it will seat eight hundred people at once. Chris and I are going into partnership when we get to be men, and are going to have a store just exactly like it.

Henry W. Gilmore.

I went to Philadelphia last winter and attended Mr. Conwell’s church on Broad Street. It is very big—the biggest in the world, I guess—or maybe I mean in this country. It will hold thousands of people. Mother says she thinks Dr. Talmage’s church is bigger, but I don’t see how it could be. The people can’t all get in; they have to have tickets and be let in by a door-keeper. The singing sounds just grand. There is a very large choir, and the organ rolls and rolls. I liked Mr. Conwell almost better than any minister I ever heard, except my own, of course. Then I went to Sunday-school; hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of children! I never saw so many together before. Of course I saw other things in Philadelphia, but what I liked the best was that church. It seemed so funny to see folks crowding into church on Sunday morning, and to have a big overflow meeting for those who couldn’t get in. Where I live they have to coax the people to come to church, and there’s lots of room always.

Fanny Pierce.

Once I went to “Old Swede’s” Church in Philadelphia. It is very old. There used to be a log church on the place where it stands; sometimes it was used for a fort. That was in 1677, but about three years afterwards the brick church was built, and that is the one I went to. In the churchyard are many very old graves, and some new ones. Some of the names on the grave-stones are so old I could not make them out. It seemed very strange to be in a church which was built almost two hundred years ago. Then we went to the queer little old house on Letitia Street where William Penn used to live. Great big buildings have grown up around it, and they make it look very odd. Then we went to the old London Coffee House; I had studied about that in my history, and I was disgusted to find it turned into a cigar store. It is a very queer old building. I saw the house where the first American flag was made; that is on Arch Street.

Helen Stuart Campbell.

My sister Helen has written all about old places and never mentioned Carpenter’s Hall! She says that is because she knew I would. I went there with father and Helen. I think it is one of the grandest places in Philadelphia. It is the “Cradle of American Independence.” That was where the first prayer in Congress was made the morning after Boston was bombarded. Before that some of the people had objected to having Congress opened with prayer, but after that morning nobody ever objected again. The inscription on the wall says it was here that “Henry, Hancock and Adams inspired the Delegates of the Colonies with Nerve and Sinew for the toils of war.”

Then of course we went to Independence Hall, where the second Continental Congress gathered, and saw the old cracked bell which rung on the first Fourth of July. Helen says there was a Fourth of July every year before that time; but I mean the first one which was worth having.

Robert Stuart Campbell.

I think the prettiest place in all Philadelphia is Fairmount Park. If I lived there I should want to stay in the park all summer. The drive out is just as lovely as it can be. We crossed the Girard Avenue bridge, which is a thousand feet long. You can walk or ride across, just as you please. There is a sidewalk on each side of the carriage drive sixteen feet wide, and beautifully paved. The railing around this bridge is trimmed with flowers, vines and birds, made in bronze. We saw the old house which was built by William Penn’s son. And we went to the ZoÖlogical Gardens and saw the bear-pits and everything; then there is a part called the “Children’s Playground,” which is lovely.

James Hurst.