ABSTRACT
Proper Philadelphia has never produced great political families such as the Adamses and Lodges of Boston, the Tafts of Cincinnati, or the Roosevelts of New York. Since the days of John Clifford Pemberton, George Gordon Meade, and Montgomery Cunningham Meigs, few Proper Philadelphians have followed professional military careers. These few careers have usually been in the Navy. General Meade's nephew, Richard Worsam Meade, for example, was a dashingly handsome naval officer. The Proper Philadelphian's traditional avoidance of abstractions has been mentioned here at some length. Far from being characteristic of its lawyers alone, it must also be seen as a clue to values and attitudes of the upper class as a whole. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, with men like Henry Charles Lea, S. Weir Mitchell, Horace Howard Furness, Owen Wister, and the artist Thomas Eakins, and women like Agnes Repplier, Mary Cassatt, and Agnes Irwin, Philadelphia went through its most recent renaissance.
