now forming the State of Delaware came into Penn's possession until the present hour, the at

WILMINGTON IIIGH SCHOOL.

be still more puzzled. In fact a Philadelphian, though he locate in Wilmington, may hardly dare hope that he will ever get himself exactly square with the polar star in his adopted city. Leaving Philadelphia for the South, with the Delaware River to the left of you and keeping it to the left, and yourself seemingly going due south. all the while on reaching Wilmington and stepping out the right-hand side of the cars, the Christiana River to the left of you, and apparently the Delaware a little further to the left, and on your right the numbered streets running parallel to the river, Front street, Second street, etc., just as in the city of Penn, and the very faces of the houses the same, only pinched and dwarfed a little, you naturally im

first borough and then City of Wilmington has | agine that Front street and all the numbered seemed as much like him as the great City of streets run north and south as in the larger Philadelphia, and as to general appearances, tone and sister city; but it is all a provoking blunof life, and business industry, the two towns, though differing so much in size, resemble each other more to-day than any other two cities in the country.

Wilmington is really the only city of any note in Delaware. Most of the energies of the State flow into it, and a good deal of talent from other States finds itself building ships, railway cars, car wheels, carriages, and pushing the general industries of our times, gathering fortunes and making homes there in these days. It apparently took a good while to find out that Wilmington, not New Castle or Dover, or other place, was the favored spot of nature for the leading industries of Delaware. On entering Wilmington the traveller from Philadelphia, by way of the Philadelphia, Wilmington. and Baltimore Railroad, will be sadly bewildered. if he attempts to determine the points of the compass by the lay of the streets. If accustomed to Philadelphia, where the numbered streets run

HARKNESS'S ACADEMY.

due north and south, and the named streets, with der. Before reaching Wilmington the Delaware few exceptions, run east and west, he will probably veers to the west considerably, and the railroad

as it approaches the city follows the inclination are now laid out from the city reservoirs, at Clayton and Eighth streets, clear to the edge of the Delaware River, and to-day Eighth and Market, the neighborhood of the new Masonic Temple, and only about a half mile from the Old Swedes' Church and graveyard, may be considered. the centre of the present city, and probably the

of the river; in fact, after passing the graveyard of the Old Swedes' Church, a part of which sacred spot said railroad cuts off in its practical determination for a good roadway to the city at the least possible expenditure, the trains run about due west for four or five blocks, then a little northwest

centre of the future city for the next fifty years, the numbered streets running right into the Delaware, and Market street running parallel to the same. But you must follow them without any regard to where the sun sets or rises. The streets are cut through, and the mills all run without the slightest reference to these things. The Old Swedes' Church and graveyard is the only human arrangement in Wilmington that regards the poles or the courses of the sun. It was evidently laid out and built by the compass. It backs to the east and faces the west, as if confidently waiting for and expecting the glories of the future years. In the second period, what might be called Penn's period-not that he lived through it but shaped it-from 1700 to 1800, Wilmington got itself built into a respectable English-American Quaker village, the landmarks of which are now rapidly passing away; settled on a name for itself and its charming, romantic stream; became packed with little legends of romance and mystery, built its first mills on the Brandywine, started its bank accounts, and really got well on that line of industry and economy which have made it a city of a few rich and many humble but cosy and comfortable homes.

FAUKLAND, OLIVER EVANS'S OLD MILL.

for half a mile, then, on leaving the city, in the neighborhood of the depot of the Wilmington and Reading Railroad, the engineer is steering southwest again.

In passing through Wilmington, after crossing the Brandywine, the railroad follows pretty nearly the line of the Christiana river, the course of which within the corporate limits of the city of Wilmington alone, is at least toward the fortyeight cardinal points of the compass. The ways of the Brandywine are scarcely less tortuous and whimsical. And instead of the numbered streets running north and south and parallel to the rivers, one or the other, they really run parallel to nothing at all; but, taking the Delaware River as the boundary, and it will really be within a few years the commercial wharfage front of the city, the numbered streets run at right angles to it, and

It was first called Willingstown from a settler, and then Wilmington from an English Earl of that name, a change which was not difficult to make, and which still tends to keep the memory of Earl and settler green. The Brandywine, called by the Dutch Brand-wijn, gets its name, it

is said, from the circumstance of a ship loaded the credited possessor of a large part of New with brandy having foundered at its mouth. Not Orleans. many years ago there were people living in Wilmington who are said to have remembered seeing the tops of the masts of the ship that was made immortal by this little accident, and forever associated with one of the most romantic rivers in the world.

The spot sparkles with instances of sentiment and history. In the early days the Christiana was five or six times its present size, and the space between the Christiana, the first bend of the Brandywine, Shelpot Creek and the Delaware, now all marked off on the map in squares, as a part of the Wilmington of the future, and formerly known as Cherry-Tree Marsh, was in the first days of the settlement entirely covered with water. In 1672 George Fox touched upon this spot. "We came to Christian River," he says, getting the name a little wrong, as enthusiasts are apt to do, their feelings leading them astray, "Where we swam over our horses;" this incident, giving Charles Reade the opportunity for that expression of caustic wit, "Hereabouts. George Fox, the first Quaker, built a fire in 1672, to dry his immortal leather breeches." Here Elizabeth Shipley, the Quaker prophetess, got herself a practical husband through the influence of a brilliant dream. And one of the oldest and wisest ladies living in Wilmington to-day, it is said, fell in love with her future husband years before she had seen him, and while the three thousand miles of the Atlantic rolled between them, simply from hearing his name,

"Nameless here, forever."

A French teacher of note, William Cobbett, lived on "Quaker Hill," now Fourth and West streets, in 1794, and later went to Philadelphia and founded Peter Porcupine's Gasette. Latrobe, the architect, lived here in the first quarter of this century.

Here, too, about fifty years ago, a pretty French girl used to play and eat peaches, maintained by funds mysteriously supplied from Louisiana, and ignorant of all connections except a peculating guardian. It was little Myra Clark (now Mrs Gaines), who woke up one day to find herself the heroine of the greatest of modern lawsuits, and

But time and space fail us to tell of the legends that centred here while Wilmington was shaping itself into a town of two or three thousand inhabitants, building its first Quaker meeting-houses, Presbyterian chapels, cloth and flour mills, and in a word starting on the road to the progress of

the last seventy-five, notably of the last twenty-
five years. More than forty years ago, or about
1833, a writer in the "Encyclopedia Americana"
declared that here at Wilmington, is the finest
collection of flour-mills in the United States,
known as the Brandywine Mills.
And though
this distinction of "finest collection in the United
States" could hardly be applied to them at this
time, other cities East and West having far out-
stripped Wilmington in rapidity of growth in
all directions, yet the Brandywine Mills are still

well-nigh as noted as the far-famed charming beauties of the stream whose rapid current keeps their swift wheels flying around. Here is a vivid glance at one of Wilmington's historic mills, with incidents worth remembering:

"The best location for such a structure, where water-power just met tide-water, and shallops drawing eight feet could load up at the shore, was selected in 1762 for mill-buildings which still stand, and which were for many years the most famous in the country, regulating the price of grain for the United States. The business soon overflowed, and necessitated the building, in 1770, of the structures represented in our engraving, the whole group, on the two sides of the stream, being under one ownership, and known as 'Lea's Brandywine Mills.'

Hither

would come the long lines of Conestoga wagons, from distant counties, such as Dauphin and Berks, with fat horses, and wagoners persuading them by means of biblical oaths jabbered in Pennsylvania Dutch. From these mills Washington removed the runners (or upper stones), lest they should be seized and used by the British, hauling them up. into Chester county. When independence was secure, the State of Delaware hastened to pass laws putting foreign trade on a more liberal footing than

The fine old mills are still in operation, manufacturing into meal about a million bushels of wheat and Indian corn every year.,

When steam was introduced to revolutionize labor, and railroads came to supplement watertransport, they found the manufacturers of this prosperous town ready to avail themselves of every improvement, and pass at once from the chrysalis state into the soaring development of modern

enterprise. If one wants to get a fair idea of the Wilmington of to-day, let him, on leaving the train at the dingy old depot -a marvel of slowness and unenterprise when compared with the average splendid condition of the Philadelphia Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, and particularly with the beautiful little stations that meet the eye all the way from Philadelphia to Wilmington-on reaching the depot let him look around for an hour or two among the mills in the immediate vicinity. Here he will find a perfect network of appropriate structures of the Harlan & Hollingsworth Company, where the various processes of American shipbuilding are successfully carried on. The buildings of the Lobdell Car-Wheel Company will command his attention; and the establishments of the Jackson & Sharp Delaware Car Works will be found to be among the most the neighbor commonwealths, thus securing for her complete and extensive works of the kind in our mills the enviable commerce with the West Indies. country; the Diamond State Works; the Plate Much shipping was thus attracted to Wilmington, Iron Rolling Mills; the Walton & Whann buildand the trade with Cuba in corn meal was particu-ings for the steam manufacture of super-phosphate, larly large. It was found, however, that the flour of maize invariably rotted in a tropical voyage, and thereupon the commodity known as kiln-dried corn was invented at the Brandywine Mills: two hundred bushels would be dried per day on brick floors, and be thought a large amount, though the 'pan-kiln' now in use dries two thousand in the same time. The dried meal was delivered at Havana perfectly fresh, and pay received, in those good old days of barter, in, Jamaica rum, sugar and coffees."

FOUNTAIN.

and various other lesser manufactories, will claim attention and repay a visit.

On reaching the corner of Water and Market streets, turn up Market to the right, and you are at once in the midst of the modern busy retail life of the town. The leading houses in the various departments of trade are too numerous to mention here.

It is the usual thoroughfare of stores for a town of forty thousand inhabitants. In the neighborhood of Fifth and Sixth and Market the live newspapers of the place have their offices of pub