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,—*

Be

"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. 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.

demolished cottage was a part of the place described in the last scene of the poem."

The almshouse on Spruce Street and the quaint little building on Walnut Place having been destroyed prior to Mr. Longfellow's visit to Philadelphia in 1876, the only individual who could speak authoritatively upon the subject was unable to decide the matter. Consequently, the readers of the poem are perfectly free to form their own opinions and locate for themselves the pathetic scene when Evangeline, after her long quest in search of her lover, enters the hospital ward with flowers in her hands, the bloom of the morning in her face, to see Gabriel lying there, " motionless, senseless, dying." The Quaker Almshouse, covered with ivy and trumpet-flowers, and surrounded by its beds of herbs and flowers, certainly furnished a more picturesque setting for the last and most dramatic scene in the poem than did the Spruce Street building; yet Mr. Longfellow's description seems to apply better to the more spacious grounds of the latter, as he speaks of entering through the gates, of wandering

through the grounds and sitting under the large trees with the poor, listening to their stories of the life within. These expressions were used in after-years in speaking to Mr. Burr of his visit to Philadelphia in 1824, when the almshouse and its surroundings so impressed themselves upon his mind that they recurred to him later when he wrote his poem, and led him to place the final scene

"In that delightful land which is washed by the Delaware's waters."

Dr. Charles K. Mills, in his history of the Philadelphia Almshouse, says that there is no question in his mind that this was the spot visited by Mr. Longfellow in 1824.

"As it was in 1755 that the French Acadians of Grand Pré-nineteen hundred peaceful, happy souls-were dispossessed of their homes and began their wanderings, the event idealized by the poet can probably be referred to the epidemic of yellow fever in 1793, and to the almshouse building at Tenth and Spruce Streets, first occupied in 1767."

As there is no proof to bring forward,