with its yellow wheels were let down and the bride stepped in and the groom took his place beside her, the moment was intense, thrilling; the last act in the drama of love. Are there any such weddings now? Are there any brides like those who to the children living opposite were veritable fairy princesses from Andersen's tales?

THE search after the truth concerning a personage or a place mentioned in fiction may be as fruitless in practical results as the pursuit of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; yet how fascinating is such a quest, presupposing, as it does, the power of those who enter upon it to create for themselves a world of fancy, a fool's paradise, or whatever you may choose to call it, which is in itself a rare and delight

ful faculty! That this power has not been destroyed by the serious business of living in the nineteenth century appears from the fact that hundreds of pilgrims still follow Dickens through the London haunts of his characters, or visit old Salem and wander through its historic streets in search of the "House of the Seven Gables." This latter quest is carried on with fresh interest every year, although Mr. Hawthorne has carefully explained in the preface to his romance that his characters "have a great deal more to do with the clouds overhead than with any portion of the actual soil of the County of Essex," and that "he trusts not to be considered as unpardonably offending by laying out a street that infringes upon nobody's private rights, and appropriating a lot of land which has no visible owner, and building a house of materials long in use for constructing castles in the air."

An illustration of this trait of humanity, for which no appropriate name suggests itself, is afforded by the interest shown within a few years in a controversy re

garding the Philadelphia meeting-place of the Acadian lovers in "Evangeline." Mr. Longfellow described the almshouse as it appeared in the plague-stricken town in 1793. In view of the fact that the poet visited Philadelphia thirty years after the events narrated, and doubtless saw the two almshouses then standing, it is not improbable that he so confused them in his own mind that he was able to form an harmonious picture from the more salient features of the two. This explanation would not, however, satisfy the insatiate delver after truth. Mr. Frank A. Burr opened the discussion by stating authoritatively that the scene of the meeting of Evangeline and Gabriel was the almshouse on Spruce Street, between Tenth and Eleventh, and their burialplace the yard of old Christ Church, where he speaks of visiting the grave of the lovers and pushing aside the ivy that had grown over their imaginary tombstone. A local antiquary, Mr. Esling, who had given much attention to the subject in connection with the Church of St. Joseph's,

stepped in promptly and furnished excellent arguments in favor of the Friends' Almshouse on Willing's Alley as the place where the lovers met, quoting a letter from Mr. Longfellow himself, in which, after thanking Mr. Esling for some photographs taken just before the building was destroyed, he says,-*

"I cannot quite make out from the photographs whether this is the place I had in mind when writing the last scene of the poem. I only remember brick walls, an enclosure, and large trees; a building I saw many years ago when walking the streets of your city, and whose memory came back to me as I wrote. Be this as it may, I thank you cordially for your kindness and highly appreciate this act of good will on your part. Is there not still standing in Philadelphia, in some remote street, an almshouse or hospital with brick walls and a garden with trees?

"If so, I may possibly see once more the very place I had in memory. If not, then I shall think that this

* The last buildings of the Friends' Almshouse were not removed until the spring of 1876. Another institution that has been brought into the controversy is the Friends' " 'bettering-house," near Second and Pine Streets. This is out of the question, however, as it was not used as an almshouse or hospital after 1767, and could not have been visited as such by Mr. Longfellow in 1824.