The Wissahickon Drive is the last refuge of the foot and the hoof, for motors are not allowed to follow the trail up the ravine, which still remains a haunt of ancient peace--much more so, indeed, than in former years, when there must have been many and many a smart turnout spanking up the valley for supper at the Lotus Inn. Over the ruins of this hostelry the Soothsayer becomes sadly eloquent, recalling how in his salad days he used to drive out from town in a chartered hansom and sit placidly on a honeysuckled balcony over chicken and waffles served with the proper flourish by a colored servitor named Pompey. But we must take things as we see them, and though my conductor rebuked me for thinking the scene so lovely--I should have been there not only two weeks ago to see the autumn colors, but ten years ago to see Pompey and the Lotus Inn--still, I was marvelously content with the dusky beauty of the glades. The cool air was rich with the damp, sweet smell of decaying leaves. A tiny murmur of motion rose from the green-brown pools of the creek, ruffled here and there with a milky bubble of foam below some boulder. In the feathery tops of evergreen trees, blackly outlined against the clear arch of fading blue, some birds were cheeping a lively squabble. We stopped to listen. It was plainly an argument, of the kind in which each side accuses the other of partisanship. “Bolshevism!” said the Soothsayer. It is wonderfully still in the Wissahickon ravine in a pale November twilight. Overhead the sky darkened; the sherry-brown trees began to shed something of their rich tint. The soft earth of the roadway was grateful underfoot to those too accustomed to pavement walking. Along the drive came the romantic thud of hoofs; a party of girls on horseback perhaps returning from tea at Valley Green. What a wonderful sound is the quick drumming of horses’ hoofs! To me it always suggests highwaymen and Robert Louis Stevenson. We smoked our pipes leaning over the wooden fence and looking down at the green shimmer of the Wissahickon, seeing how the pallor of sandy bottom shone up through the clear water. And then, just as one is about to sentimentalize upon the beauty of nature and how it shames the crass work of man, one comes to what is perhaps the liveliest thing along the Wissahickon--the Walnut Lane Bridge. Leaping high in air from the very domes of the trees, curving in a sheer smooth superb span that catches the last western light on its concrete flanks, it flashes across the darkened valley as nobly as an old Roman viaduct of southern France. It is a thrilling thing, and I scrambled up the bank to note down the names of the artists who planned it. The tablet is dated 1906, and bears the names of George S. Webster, chief engineer; Henry H. Quimby, assistant engineer; Reilly & Riddle, contractors. Many poets have written verses both good and bad about the Wissahickon, but Messers. Reilly & Riddle have spanned it with a poem that will long endure.