Papa, during the whole of the morning, had been most
wonderfully obtuse in his geography, and was altogether perplexed when,
before reaching Philadelphia, we came to the margin of the river we had
to cross to reach that town. He had been quite mystified all the morning
at Harrisburg, and at fault as to the direction in which the river was
running, and as to whether the streets we were in were at right angles
or parallel to it. This state of confusion became still worse when we
got into the carriage, as he had miscalculated on which side, after
leaving the town, we should first see the river, and had placed me on
the left side of the car, when it suddenly appeared, in all its glory,
on the right. He almost lost his temper, we all know how irritable he
_can_ become, and exclaimed impatiently,--"Well, are we now on this side
of the river or the other?" but his puzzle at Philadelphia was from the
river which we then came upon, being the Schuylkill, while he thought
we had got, in some mysterious way, to the Delaware, on the _west_ bank
of which the town is situated, as well as on the _east_ of the
Schuylkill. The discovery of the river it really was of course solved
the puzzle; but for a long time he insisted that the steamboat we were
to embark upon, later in the day, on the Delaware, must be the one we
now saw, and it was all the passengers could do to persuade him to sit
still.
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