han the large boats, and scarcely any
"stage" of water is too low for them. Often as we had admired the
four-horse pedlers' wagons of New England, with their plated harness and
gorgeous paint, we resolved that, when we turned pedler, it should be in
such a snug little steamboat upon the rivers of the West. Other
steamboats, as probably the reader is aware, are fitted up as theatres,
museums, circuses, and moral menageries, and go from town to town,
announcing their arrival by that terrific combination of steam-whistles
which is called in the West a Cally-_ope_. What an advance upon the old
system of strolling players and the barn! "Then came each actor on his
ass." On the Ohio he comes in a comfortable stateroom, to which when the
performance is over he retires, waking the next morning at the scene of
new triumphs.

Along the summit of the steep levee, close to the line of stores, there
is a row of massive posts--three feet thick and twenty high--which
puzzle the stranger. The swelling of the river brings the steamboats up
to the very doors of the houses facing the river, and to these huge
posts they are fastened to keep them from being swept away by the
rushing flood. From the summit of the levee we advance into the town,
always going up hill, unless we turn to the right or left.

Here is Philadelphia again, with its numbered streets parallel to the
river, and the cross-streets named after the trees which William Penn
found growing upon the banks of the Delaware,--"Walnut," "Locust,"
"Sycamore." Here are long blocks of wholesale stores in the streets near
the river, of Philadelphian plainness and solidity; and as we ascend, we
reach the showier retail streets, all in the modern style of subdued
Philadelphian elegance. It is a solid, handsome town,--the newer
buildings of light-colored stone, very lofty, and well built; the
streets paved with the small pebbles ground smooth by the rushing Ohio,
and as clean as Boston. In Fourth Street there is a dry-goods store
nearly as large, and five times as handsome, as Stewart's in New York,
and several other establishments on the greatest scale, equal in every
respect to those of the Atlantic cities. The only difference is, that in
New York we have more of them. By the time we have passed Fifth Street,
which is about half a mile from the river, we have reached the end of
the elegant and splendid part of the city; all beyond and around is
shabby Philadelphia, begrimed with soot,