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• 00 - Dedication and Prefaces

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  I dedicate this book to those friends of mine in America who giving me a welcome I must ever gratefully and proudly remember left my judgment free, and who, loving their country, can bear the truth when it is told good-humouredly and in a kind spirit. Preface to the first cheap edition of American Notes. It is nearly eight years since this book was first published. I present it unaltered in

  And such of my opinions, as it expresses, are quite unaltered, too. My readers have opportunities of judging for themselves whether the influences and tendencies which I distrust in America have any existence not in my imagination. They can examine for themselves whether there has been anything in the public career of that country during these past eight years, or whether there is anything in its present position, at home or abroad, which suggests

  that those influences and tendencies really do exist. As they find the fact, they will judge me. If they discern any evidences of wrong-going in any direction that I have indicated, they will acknowledge that I had reason in what I wrote. If they discern no such thing, they will consider me altogether mistaken. Prejudiced, I never have been otherwise than of the United States. No visitor can ever have set foot on those shores with a stronger

  faith in the Republic than I had when I landed in America. I purposely abstain from extending these observations to any length. I have nothing to defend or to explain away. The truth is the truth, and neither childish absurdities nor unscrupulous contradictions can make it otherwise. The earth would still move round the sun, though the whole Catholic Church said no. I have many friends in America, and feel a grateful interest in the country. To

  represent me as viewing it with ill-nature, animosity, or partisanship is merely to do a very foolish thing, which is always a very easy one, and which I have disregarded for eight years, and could disregard for eighty more. London June 22, 1850. Preface to the Charles Dickens edition of American Notes.

  My readers have opportunities of judging for themselves whether the influences and tendencies which I distrust in America had at that time any existence but in my imagination. They can examine for themselves whether there has been anything in the public career of that country since at home or abroad, which suggests that those influences and tendencies really did exist. As they find the fact they will judge me. If they discern any evidences of

  wrong-going in any direction that I have indicated, they will acknowledge that I had reason in what I wrote. If they discern no such indications, they will consider me altogether mistaken, but not willfully. Prejudiced I am not, and never have been, otherwise, than in favour of the United States. I have many friends in America. I feel a grateful interest in the country. I hope and believe it will successfully work out a problem of the highest importance

  to the whole human race. To represent me as viewing America with ill nature, coldness, or animosity, is merely to do a very foolish thing, which is always a very easy one.

• 01- Going Away

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  CHAPTER I. GOING AWAY I shall never forget the one-fourth serious and three-fourths comical astonishment with which on the morning of the 3rd of January, 1842, I opened the door of and put my head into a stateroom on board the Britannia steam-packet, twelve hundred tons burden per register, bound

  for Halifax and Boston, and carrying Her Majesty's mails. That this stateroom had been specially engaged for Charles Dickens' esquire and lady, was rendered sufficiently clear even to my scared intellect by a very small manuscript announcing the fact, which was pinned on a very flat quilt covering a very thin mattress spread like a surgical plaster on a most inaccessible shelf. But that this was the stateroom concerning which Charles Dickens' esquire and lady had

  held daily and nightly conferences for at least four months preceding, that this could by any possibility be that small, snug chamber of the imagination which Charles Dickens' esquire, with a spirit of prophecy strong upon him, had always foretold would contain at least one little sofa, and which his lady, with a modest yet magnificent sense of its limited dimensions, had from the first opined would not hold more than two enormous portmanteaus

  in some odd quarter out of sight, portmanteaus which could now no more be gut in at the door, not to say stowed away, that a giraffe could be persuaded or forced into a flower-pot, that this utterly impracticable, thoroughly hopeless, and profoundly preposterous box had the remotest reference to or connection with those chaste and pretty, not to say gorgeous, little bowers sketched by a masterly hand in the highly varnished lithographic plan

  hanging up in the agent's counting-house in the city of London, that this room of state in short could be anything but a pleasant fiction and cheerful jest of the captains, invented and put in practice for the better relish and enjoyment of the real state-room presently to be disclosed. These were truths which I really could not for the moment bring my mind at all to bear upon or comprehend. And I sat down upon a kind of horse-hair slab

  or perch, of which there were two within, and looked without any expression of countenance whatever at some friends who had come on board with us, and who were crushing their faces into all manner of shapes by endeavouring to squeeze them through the small doorway. We had experienced a pretty smart shock before coming below, which, but that we were the most sanguine people living, might have prepared us for the worst. The imaginative artist to

  whom I have already made allusion has depicted in the same great work a chamber of almost interminable perspective furnished, as Mr. Robbins would say, in a style of more than eastern splendour, and filled, but not inconveniently so, with groups of ladies and gentlemen in the very highest state of enjoyment and vivacity. Before descending into the bowels of the ship we had passed from the deck into a long, narrow apartment, not unlike a gigantic hearse with

  windows in the sides, having at the upper end a melancholy stove, at which three or four chilly stewards were warming their hands, while on either side extending down its whole dreary length was a long, long table, over each of which a rack, fixed to the low roof and stuck full of drinking glasses and cruet stands, hidden dismally at rolling seas and heavy weather. I had not at that time seen the ideal presentment of this chamber, which

  has since gratified me so much, but I observed that one of our friends who had made the arrangements for our voyage, turning pale on entering, retreated on the friend behind him, smote his forehead involuntarily and said below his breath, impossible, it cannot be or worse to that effect. He recovered himself, however, by a great effort, and after a preparatory cough or two, cried with a ghastly smile which is still before me, looking at the same time

  round the walls, ha, the breakfast-room stood, eh? We all foresaw what the answer must be. We knew the agony he suffered. He had often spoken of the saloon, had taken in and lived upon the pictorial idea, had usually given us to understand at home that to form a just conception of it, it would be necessary to multiply the size and furniture of an ordinary drawing-room by seven and then fall short of the reality. When the man in reply avowed

  the truth, the blunt remorseless naked truth, this is the saloon, sir, he actually reeled beneath the blow. In persons who were so soon to part and interpose between their else daily communication the formidable barrier of many thousand miles of stormy space, and who were for that reason anxious to cast no other cloud, not even the passing shadow of a moment's disappointment or discomfiture upon the short interval of happy companionship that yet remained

  to them, in persons so situated, the natural transition from these first surprises was obviously into peals of hearty laughter, and I can report that I, for one, being still seated upon the slab or perch before mentioned, roared outright until the vessel rang again. Thus, in less than two minutes after coming upon it for the first time, we all by common consent agreed that this stateroom was the pleasantest and most facetious and capital

  contrivance possible, and that to have headed one inch larger would have been quite a disagreeable and deplorable state of things. And with this, and with showing how, by very nearly closing the door and twining in and out like serpents, and by counting the little washing-slab as a standing room, we could manage to insinuate four people into it all at one time, and in treating each other to observe how very airy it was in dock, and how there was a beautiful porthole which could be kept open

  all day, weather permitting, and how there was quite a large bull's-eye just over the looking glass which would render shaving a perfectly easy and delightful process when the ship didn't roll too much, we arrived, at last, at the unanimous conclusion that it was rather spacious than otherwise, though I do verily believe that deducting the two berths, one above the other, than which nothing smaller for sleeping in was ever made except coffins, it was no bigger than

  one of those hackney cabrelettes which have the door behind and shoot their fares out like sacks of coals upon the pavement. Having settled this point to the perfect satisfaction of all parties, concerned and unconcerned, we sat down round the fire in the lady's cabin just to try the effect. It was rather dark, certainly, but somebody said, of course it would be light at sea, a proposition to which we all assented, echoing, of course, of course, though it would be exceedingly

  difficult to say why we thought so. I remember, too, when we had discovered and exhausted another topic of consolation in the circumstance of this lady's cabin adjoining our stateroom, and the consequently immense feasibility of sitting there at all times and seasons, and had fallen into a momentary silence, leaning our faces on our hands and looking at the fire, one of our parties said, with the solemn air of a man who had made a discovery,

  what a relish malt-cleret would have down here, which appeared to strike us all most forcibly, as though there were something spicy and high-flavoured in cabins which essentially improved that composition and rendered it quite incapable of perfection anywhere else. There was a stewardess, too, actively engaged in producing clean sheets and tablecloths from the very end-trails of the sofas, and from unexpected lockers of such artful mechanism that it made

  one's head ache to see them opened one after another, and rendered it quite a distracting circumstance to follow her proceedings and to find that every nook and corner and individual piece of furniture was something else besides what it pretended to be, and was a mere trap and deception and place of secret stowage whose ostensible purpose was its least useful one. God bless that stewardess for her piously fraudulent account of January voyages!

  God bless her for her clear recollection of the companion passage of last year, when nobody was ill and everybody dancing from morning to night, and it was a run of twelve days and a piece of the purest frolic and delight and jollity. All happiness be with her for her bright face and her pleasant scotch tongue, which had sounds of old hominid for my fellow traveller, and for her predictions of fair winds

  and fine weather—all wrong, or I shouldn't be half so fond of her—and for the ten thousand small fragments of genuine womanly tact by which, without piecing them elaborately together and patching them up into shape and form in case and pointed application, she nevertheless did plainly show that all young mothers on one side of the Atlantic were near and close at hand to their little children left upon the other,

  and that what seemed to the uninitiated a serious journey was to those who were in the secret a mere frolic to be sung about and whistled at, light be her heart and gay her merry eyes for years. The stateroom had grown pretty fast, but by this time it had expanded into something quite bulky, and almost boasted a bay window to view the sea from. So we went upon deck again in high spirits, and there everything was in such a state of bustle and active preparation that the blood

  quickened its pace and whirled through one's veins on that clear, frosty morning with involuntary mirthfulness. For every gallon ship was riding slowly up and down, and every little boat was splashing noisily in the water, and knots of people stood upon the wharf, gazing with a kind of dread delight on the far-famed, fast American steamer, and one party of men were taking in the milk—or, in other words, getting the cow on board—and another were filling the ice-houses

  to the very throat with fresh provisions, with butcher's meat and garden stuff, pale sucking pigs, calf's heads in scores, beef veal and pork and poultry out of all proportion, and others were coiling ropes and busy with oakum yarns, and others were lowering heavy packages into the hold, and the purser's head was barely visible as it loomed in a state of exquisite perplexity from the midst of a vast pile of passengers' luggage, and there seemed to be nothing going on anywhere or

  uppermost in the mind of anybody but preparations for this mighty voyage. This, with the bright, cold sun, the bracing air, the crispy, curling water, the thin white crust of morning ice upon the decks which cracked with a sharp and cheerful sound beneath the lightest tread, was irresistible. And when, again upon the shore, we turned and saw from the vessel's mast her name signalled in flags of joyous colours and fluttering by their side the beautiful American banner with its stars

  and stripes, the long three thousand miles and more, and longer still, the six whole months of absence so dwindled and faded that the ship had gone out and come home again, and it was broad spring already, in the Coburg dock at Liverpool. I have not inquired among my medical acquaintance turtle and cold punch and hawk champagne and claret and all the slight etc. usually included in an unlimited order for a good dinner, especially when it is left to the liberal

  construction of my faultless friends Mr. Radley of the Adelphi Hotel, are peculiarly calculated to suffer a sea change, or whether a plain mutton chop and a glass or two of sherry would be less likely of conversion into fora and disconcerting material. My own opinion is that whether one is discreet or indiscreet in these particulars on the eve of a sea voyage is a matter of little consequence, and that, to use a common phrase, it comes to very much the same thing in the end.

  Be this as it may, I know that the dinner of the day was undeniably perfect, that it comprehended all these items and a great many more, and that we all did ample justice to it. And I know, too, that baiting a certain tacit avoidance of any allusion to tomorrow, such as may be supposed to prevail between delicate-minded turnkeys and a sensitive prisoner who is to be hanged next morning, we got on very well, and all things considered, were merry enough. When the morning, the morning,

  came, and we met at breakfast, it was curious to see how eager we all were to prevent a moment's pause in the conversation, and how astoundingly gay everybody was, the forced spirits of each member of the little party having as much likeness to his natural mirth as hot-host peas at five guineas the court resemble in flavour the growth of the dews and air and rain of heaven. But as one o'clock the hour foregoing aboard drew near, this volubility dwindled away by little and little,

  despite the most persevering efforts to the contrary, until at last, the matter being now quite desperate, we threw off all disguise, openly speculated upon where we should be this time to-morrow, this time next day, and so forth, and entrusted a vast number of messages to those who intended returning to town that night, which were to be delivered at home and elsewhere without fail, within the very shortest possible space of time after the arrival of the railway train at Houston

  Square. And commissions and remembrance do so crowd upon one at such a time that we were still busied with this employment when we found ourselves fused, as it were, into a dense conglomeration of passengers' and passengers' friends' and passengers' luggage, all jumbled together on the deck of a small steamboat, and panting and snorting off to the packet which had worked out of dock yesterday afternoon and was now lying at her moorings in the river. And there she is. All eyes are turned

  to where she lies, dimly discernible to the gathering fog of the early winter afternoon. Every finger is pointed in the same direction, and murmurs of interest and admiration as how beautiful she looks, how trim she is, are heard on every side. Even the lazy gentleman with his hat on one side and his hands in his pockets, who has dispensed so much consolation by inquiring with a yawn of a nether gentleman whether he is going across as if it were a ferry, even if he

  condescends to look that way and not his head as who should say, no mistake about that, and not even the sage Lord Burley it is not included half so much as this lazy gentleman of might who has made the passage, as everybody on board has found out already, it's impossible to say how, 13 times without a single accident. There is another passenger very much wrapped up who has been frowned down by the rest and morally trampled upon and crushed for presuming to inquire with a timid

  interest how long it is since the poor president went down. He is standing close to the lazy gentleman and says with a faint smile that he believes she is a very strong ship to which the lazy gentleman, looking first in his questioner's eye and then very hard in the winds, answers unexpectedly and ominously that she need be. Upon this the lazy gentleman instantly falls very low in the popular estimation and the passengers, with looks of defiance, whisper to each other that he

  is an ass and an impostor and clearly don't know anything about it at all. But we are made fast alongside the packet whose huge red funnel is smoking bravely, giving rich promise of serious intentions. Packing cases, portmanteaus, carpet bags and boxes are already passed from hand to hand and hauled on board with breathless rapidity. The officers, smartly dressed, are at the gangway, handing the passengers up the side and hurrying them in. In five minutes' time the little steamer

  is utterly deserted and the packet is beset and overrun by its late freight, who instantly pervade the whole ship, and are to be met with by the dozen in every nook and corner, swarming down below with their own baggage and stumbling over other people's, disposing themselves comfortably in wrong cabins and creating a most horrible confusion by having to turn out again, madly bent upon opening locked doors and unforcing a passage into all kinds of out-of-the-way places where there

  is no thoroughfare, sending wild stirrups with elfin hair to and fro upon the breezy decks on unintelligible errands impossible at execution, and in short creating the most extraordinary and bewildering tumult. In the midst of all this, the lazy gentleman, who seems to have no luggage of any kind, not so much as a friend even, lounges up and down the hurricane deck, coolly puffing a cigar, and as this unconcerned demeanor again exalts him in the opinion of those who have

  leisure to observe his proceedings every time he looks up at the masts, or down at the decks, or over the side, they look thereto, as wondering whether he sees anything wrong anywhere, and hoping that, in case he should, he will have the goodness to mention it. What have we here? The captain's boat, and yonder the captain himself. Now, by all our hopes and wishes, the very man he ought to be. A well-made, tight-built, dapper little fellow, with a ruddy face which is a letter of invitation

  to shake him by both hands at once, and with a clear blue honest eye, that it does one good to see one's sparkling image in. Ring the bell, ding, ding, ding, the very bell is in a hurry. Now for the shore, who's for the shore? These gentlemen, I am sorry to say, they're away and never said good-bye. Ah, now they wave it from the little boat. Good-bye, good-bye. Three tears from them, three more from us, three more from them, and they are gone. To and fro, to and fro, to and

  fro again a hundred times. This waiting for the latest mail-bags is worse than all. If we could have gone off in the midst of that last burst we should have started triumphantly, but to lie here, two hours and more in the damp fog, neither staying at home nor going abroad, is letting one gradually down into the very depths of dullness and low spirits. A speck in the mist at last, that's something. It's the boat we wait for, that's more to the purpose. The captain appears on the

  paddle-box with his speaking-trumpet, the officers take their stations, all hands are on the alert, the flagging hopes of the passengers revive, the cooks pause in their savoury work and look out with faces full of interest, the boat comes alongside, the bags are dragged in anyhow and flung down for the moment anywhere. Three cheers more, and as the first one rings upon our ears, the vessel throbs like a strong giant that has just received the breath of life, the two great

  wheels turn fiercely round for the first time, and the noble ship, with wind and tide astern, breaks proudly through the lashed and roaming water. End of chapter 1

• 02 - The Passage Out

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  CHAPTER II. THE PASSAGE OUT. We all dined together that day. At a rather formidable party we were, no fewer than eighty-six strong. The vessel being pretty deep in the water, with all her coals on board and so many passengers, and the weather being calm and quiet, there was but little motion, so

  that before the dinner was half over even those passengers who were most distrustful of themselves plucked up amazingly. And those who in the morning had returned to the universal question, Are you a good sailor, a very decided negative, now either parried the inquiry with the evasive reply, Oh, I suppose I'm no worse than anybody else, or reckless of all moral obligations, answered broadly, Yes, and with some irritation too, as though they would

  add, I should like to know what you see in me, sir, particularly, to justify suspicion. Notwithstanding this high tone of courage and confidence, I could not but observe that very few remained long over their wine, and that everybody had an unusual love of the open air, and that the favourite and most coveted seats were invariably those nearest the door. The tea-table too was by no means as well attended as the dinner-table, and

  there was less wist-playing than there might have been expected. Still, with the exception of one lady who had retired with some precipitation at dinner-time, immediately after being assisted to the finest cut of a very yellow boiled leg of mutton with very green capers, there were no invalids as yet, and walking and smoking and drinking of brandy and water, but always in the open air, went on with unabated spirit until eleven o'clock or thereabouts when turning

  in, no satyr of seven hours' experience talks of going to bed, became the order of the night. The perpetual tramp of boot-heels on the decks gave place to a heavy silence, and the whole human freight was stowed away below, excepting a very few stragglers like myself, who were probably like me afraid to go there. To one unaccustomed to such scenes this is a very striking time on shipboard. Afterwards, and when its novelty had long worn off, it

  never ceased to have a peculiar interest and charm for me. The gloom through which the great black mass holds its direct and certain course, the rushing water plainly heard but dimly seen, the broad white glistening track that follows in the vessel's wake, the men on the lookout forward, who would be scarcely visible against the dark sky but for their blotting out some score of glistening stars, the helmsman at the wheel with the illuminated

  card before him shining, a speck of light amidst the darkness like something sentient and of divine intelligence, the melancholy sighing of the wind through block and rope and chain, the gleaming forth of light from every crevice nook and tiny piece of glass about the decks, as though the ship were filled with fire and hiding, ready to burst through any oaklet, wind with its resistless power of death and ruin. At first, too, and even

  when the hour and all the objects it exalts have come to be familiar, it is difficult, alone and thoughtful, to hold them to the proper shapes and forms. They change with a wandering fancy, assume the semblance of things left far away, put on the well-remembered aspects of favourite places dearly loved and even people them with shadows. Streets, houses, rooms, figures so like their usual occupants that they have startled me by their reality,

  which far exceeded as it seemed to me all power of mine to conjure up the absent, have many and many a time at such an hour grown suddenly out of objects with whose real look and use and purpose I was as well acquainted as with my own two hands. My own two hands and feet likewise being very cold, however, on this particular occasion I crept below at midnight. It was not exactly comfortable below. It was decidedly close, and it was

  impossible to be unconscious of the presence of that extraordinary compound of strange smells which is to be found nowhere but on board ship, and which is such a subtle perfume that it seems to enter at every pore of the skin and whisper of the hold. Two passengers' wives, one of them my own, lay already in silent agonies on the sofa, and one lady's maid, my lady's, was a mere bundle on the floor, execrating her destiny and pounding

  her curl-papers among the stray boxes. Everything sloped the wrong way, which in itself was an aggravation scarcely to be borne. I had left the door open a moment before in the bosom of a gentle declivity, and when I turned to shut it it was on the summit of a lofty eminence. Now every plank and timber creaked as if the ship were made of wicker-work, and now crackled like an enormous fire of the driest possible twigs. There was nothing for

  it but bed, so I went to bed. It was pretty much the same for the next two days, with a tolerably fair wind and dry weather. I read in bed, but to this hour I don't know what, a good deal, and reeled on deck a little, drank cold brandy and water with an unspeakable disgust, and ate hard biscuit perseveringly, not ill, but going to be. It is the third morning. I am awakened out of my sleep by a dismal shriek from my wife,

  who demands to know whether there is any danger. I rouse myself and look out of bed. The water-jug is plunging and leaping like a lively dolphin. All the smaller articles are afloat except my shoes, which are stranded on a carpet-bag, high and dry like a couple of coal-barges. Suddenly I see them spring into the air, and behold the looking-glass which is nailed to the wall, sticking fast upon the ceiling. At the same time the door entirely disappears,

  and a new one is opened to the floor. Then I begin to comprehend that the stateroom is standing on its head. Before it is possible to make any arrangement at all compatible with this novel state of things, the ship writes, Before one can say, Thank Heaven, she wrongs again. Before one can say she is wrong, she seems to have started forward, and to be a creature

  actually running of its own accord with broken knees and failing legs, through every variety of hole and pitfall and stumbling constantly. Before one can so much as wonder, she takes a high leap into the air. Before she has well done that, she takes a deep dive into the water. Before she has gained the surface, she throws a somerset. The instant she is on her legs she rushes backward, and so she goes, staggering, heaving, wrestling, leaping,

  diving, jumping, pitching, throbbing, rolling and rocking, and going through all these movements, sometimes by turns and sometimes altogether, until one feels disposed to roar for mercy. A steward passes. Steward, sir? What is the matter? What do you call this? Rather a heavy sea-on, sir, than a head-wind. A head-wind! Imagine a human face upon the vessel's prow, with fifteen

  thousand Samson's in one bent upon driving her back and hitting her exactly between the eyes whenever she attempts to advance an inch. Imagine the ship herself with every pulse and artery of her huge body, swollen and bursting under this maltreatment, sworn to go on or die. Imagine the wind howling, the sea roaring, the rain beating, all in furious array against her. Picture the sky both dark and wild, and the clouds in fearful sympathy with the waves,

  making another ocean in the air. Add to all this the clattering on deck and down below, the tread of hurried feet, the loud hoarse shouts of seamen, the gurgling in and out of water through the scuppers, with every now and then the striking of a heavy sea upon the planks above, with the deep, dead, heavy sound of thunder heard within a vault. And there is the head-wind of that January morning. I say nothing of what may be called the domestic

  noises of the ship, such as the breaking of glass and crockery, the tumbling down of stewards, the gambles overhead of loose casks and truant dozens of bottled porter, and the very remarkable and far-from-exhilarating sounds raised in the various staterooms by the seventy passengers who were too ill to get up to breakfast. I say nothing of them, for although I lay listening to this concert for three or four days, I don't think I heard it for more than a quarter

  of a minute at the expiration of which term, I lay down again excessively seasick. Not seasick be it understood in the ordinary acceptation of that term. I wish I had been, but in a form which I have never seen or heard described, though I have no doubt it is very common. I lay there all the day long, quite coolly and contentedly, with no sense of weariness, with no desire to get up or get better or take the air, with no curiosity or care or

  regret or any sort of degree, saving that I think I can remember in this universal indifference having a kind of lazy joy of fiendish delight if anything so lethargic can be dignified with the title and the fact of my wife being too ill to talk to me. If I may be allowed to illustrate my state of mind by such an example, I should say that I was exactly in the condition of the elder Mr. Willett after the incursion of the rioters into his bar

  at Chigwell. Nothing would have surprised me. If in the momentary illumination of any ray of intelligence that may have come upon me in the way of thoughts of home, a goblin postman with a scarlet coat and bell had come into that little kennel before me, broad awake in broad day, and, apologizing for being damp through walking in the sea, had handed me a letter directed to myself in familiar characters, I am certain I should not have felt walking

  in one atom of astonishment. I should have been perfectly satisfied. If Neptune himself had walked in with a toasted, charconous trident, I should have looked upon the event as one of the very commonest everyday occurrences. Once, once, I found myself on deck. I don't know how I got there or what possessed me to go there, but there I was, and completely dressed too, with a huge pea-coat on, and a pair of boots such as no weak man in his

  senses could ever have got into. I found myself standing when a gleam of consciousness came upon me holding on to something. I don't know what. I think it was the boson, or it may have been the pump, or possibly the cow. I can't say how long I had been there, whether a day or a minute. I recollect trying to think about something. About anything in the whole wide world I was not particular, without the smallest effect. I could not even make out

  which was the sea and which was the sky, for the horizon seemed drunk, and was flying wildly about in all directions. Even in that incapable state, however, I recognized the lazy gentleman standing before me, nautically clad in a suit of shaggy blue with an oil-skin hat. But I was too imbecile, although I knew it to be he, to separate him from his dress, and tried to call him, I remember, pilot. After another interval of total unconsciousness I found

  he had gone, and recognized another figure in its place. It seemed to wave and fluctuate before me as though I saw it reflected in an unsteady looking-glass, but I knew it for the captain, and such was the cheerful influence on his face that I tried to smile, yes, even then I tried to smile. I saw by his gestures that he addressed me, but it was a long time before I could make out that he remonstrated against my standing up to my knees in water

  as I was. Of course, I don't know why. I tried to thank him, but couldn't. I could only point to my boots, or wherever I supposed my boots to be, and say in a plainful voice, Quirk Souls. At the same time endeavouring, I am told to sit down in the pool. Finding that I was quite insensible, and for that time a maniac, he humanely conducted me below. There I remained until I got better, suffering whenever I was recommended to eat anything,

  an amount of anguish only second to that which is said to be endured by the apparently drowned in the process of restoration to life. One gentleman on board had a letter of introduction to me from a mutual friend in London. He sent it below with his card on the morning of the headwind, and I was long troubled with the idea that he might be up and well at a hundred times a day expecting me to call upon him in the saloon. I imagined him one of those

  I will not call the men, who ask with red faces and lusty voices what sea sickness means, and whether it really is as bad as it is represented to be. This was very torturing indeed. I don't think I ever felt such perfect gratification and gratitude of heart as I did when I heard from the ship's doctor that he had been obliged to put a large mustard on this very gentleman's stomach. I date my recovery from the receipt of that intelligence.

  It was materially assisted, though, I have no doubt, by a heavy gale of wind which came slowly up at sunset when we were about ten days out and raged with gradually increasing fury until morning, saving that it lulled for an hour a little before midnight. There was something in the unnatural repose of that hour, and in the aftergathering of the storm so inconceivably awful and tremendous that its bursting into full violence was almost

  a relief. The laboring of the ship in the troubled sea on this night I shall never forget. Would it ever be worse than this was a question I had often heard asked when everything was sliding and bumping about, and when it certainly did seem difficult to comprehend the possibility of anything afloat being more disturbed without toppling over and going down. But what the agitation of a steam vessel is on a bad winter's night in the wild Atlantic, it is impossible

  for the most vivid imagination to conceive. To say that she has flung down on her side in the waves with her mast dipping into them, and that springing up again she rolls over on the other side until a heavy sea strikes her with the noise of a hundred great guns and hurls her back, that she stops and staggers and shivers as though stunned, and then, with a violent throbbing at her heart, darts onward like a monster goaded into madness to be beaten

  down and battered and crushed and leaped on by the angry sea, that thunder, lightning, hail and rain and wind are all in fierce contention for the mastery that every plank has its groan, every nail its shriek, and every drop of water in the great ocean its howling voice is nothing. To say that all is grand and all appalling and horrible in the last degree is nothing. Thoughts cannot express it, thoughts cannot convey it, only a dream can call it up again

  in all its fury, rage and passion. And yet, in the very midst of these terrors, I was placed in a situation so exquisitely ridiculous that even then I had as strong a sense of its absurdity as I have now, and could no more help laughing than I can at any other comical incident happening under circumstances the most favourable to its enjoyment. About midnight we shipped a sea which forced its way through the skylights, burst open

  the doors above, and came raging and roaring down into the ladies' cabin to the unspeakable consternation of my wife and a little Scotch lady, who by the way had previously sent a message to the captain by the stewardess requesting him, with her compliments, to have a steel conductor immediately attached to the top of every mast and to the chimney in order that the ship might not be struck by lightning. They and the handmaid before mentioned, being

  in such ecstasies of fear that I scarcely knew what to do with them, I naturally bethought myself of some restorative or comfortable cordial, and nothing better occurring to me at that moment than hot brandy and water, I procured a tumbler full without delay. It being impossible to stand or sit without holding on, they were all heaped together in one corner of a long sofa, a fixture extending entirely across the cabin, where they clung to each

  other in momentary expectation of being drowned. When I approached this place with my specific, and was about to administer it with many consolatory expressions to the nearest sufferer, what was my dismay to see them all roll slowly down to the other end, and when I staggered to that end and held out the glass once more, how immensely baffled were my good intentions by the ship giving another lurch, and they're all rolling back again. I supposed I dodged

  them up and down this sofa for at least a quarter of an hour without reaching them once, and by the time I did catch them the brandy and water was diminished by constant spilling to a teaspoonful. To complete the group it is necessary to recognize in this disconcerted dodger an individual very pale from sea sickness, who had shaved his beard and brushed his hair last at Liverpool, and whose only article of dress, linen not included, were a pair

  of dread-knot trousers, a blue jacket formerly admired upon the Thames at Richmond, no stockings, and one slipper. Of the outrageous antics performed by the ship next morning, which made bed a practical joke in getting up by any process short of falling out an impossibility, I say nothing. But anything like the utter dreariness and desolation that met my eyes when I literally tumbled up on deck at noon I never saw. Ocean and sky were all of one

  dull heavy uniform lead colour. There was no extent of prospect even over the dreary waist that lay around us, for the sea ran high and the horizon encompassed us like a large black hoop. Viewed from the air or some tall bluff on shore, it would have been imposing and stupendous no doubt, but seeing from the wet and rolling decks it only impressed one giddily and painfully. In the gale of last night the lifeboat had been crushed by one blow of the

  sea like a walnut shell, and there it hanged, dangling in the air, a mere faggot of crazy boards. The planking and the paddle-boxes had been torn sheer away, the wheels were exposed and bare, and they whirled and dashed their spray about the decks at random. Chimney white with crusted salt, top mass struck, storm sails set, rigging all knotted, tangled, wet and drooping, a gloomier picture it would be hard to look upon.

  I was now comfortably established by courtesy in the ladies' cabin, which besides ourselves there were only four other passengers. First the little Scotch lady before mentioned on her way to join her husband at New York, who had settled there three years before. Secondly and thirdly an honest young Yorkshireman, conducted with some American house domiciled in that same city, and carrying thither his beautiful young wife to whom he had been married

  but a fortnight, and who was the fairest specimen of a comely English country girl I have ever seen. Fourthly, fifthly and lastly another couple, newly married too, if one might judge from the endearments that frequently interchanged, of whom I know no more than that they were a rather mysterious runaway kind of couple, that the lady had great personal attractions also, and that the gentleman carried more guns with him than Robinson Crusoe, wore a

  shooting-coat, had two great dogs on board. On further consideration I remember he had tried hot roast pig and bottled ale as a cure for sea sickness, and that he took these remedies usually in bed day after day with astonishing perseverance. I may add, for the information of the curious, that they decidedly failed. The weather continuing obstinately and almost unprecedentedly bad, we usually straggled into this cabin more or less faint

  and miserable about an hour before noon, and laid down on the sofas to recover, during which interval the captain would look in to communicate the state of the wind, the moral certainty of its changing to-morrow, the weather is always going to improve to-morrow at sea, the vessel's rate of sailing, and so forth. Observations there were none to tell us of, for there was no sun to take them by. But the description of one day will serve for

  all the rest. Here it is. With the captain being gone, we composed ourselves to read, if the place be light enough, and if not we doze and talk alternately. At one a bell rings, and the stewardess comes down with a steaming dish of baked potatoes, and another of roasted apples, and plates of pig's face, cold ham, salt beef, or perhaps a smoking mess of rare hot collaps. We fall upon these

  dainties, eat as much as we can, we have great appetites now, and are as long as possible about it. If the fire will burn, it will sometimes, we are pretty cheerful. If it won't, we all remark to each other that it's very cold, rub our hands, cover ourselves with coats and cloaks, and lie down again to doze, talk, and read, provided as aforesaid, until dinner-time. At five another bell rings, and the stewardess reappears with another dish of potatoes,

  boiled this time, and stored of hot meat of various kinds, not forgetting the roast pig to be taken medicinally. We set down a table again, rather more cheerfully than before, prolong the meal with a rather mouldy dessert of apples, grapes, and oranges, and drink our wine and brandy and water. The bottles and glasses are still upon the table, and the oranges and so forth are rolling about according to their fancy on the ship's way,

  when the doctor comes down by special nightly invitation to join our evening rubber, immediately on whose arrival we make a party at Whist, and as it is a rough night and the cards will not lie on the cloth, we put the tricks in our pockets as we take them. At Whist we remain with exemplary gravity, deducting a short time for tea and toast, until eleven o'clock or thereabouts, when the captain comes down again in a sow-wester hat tied under

  his chin and a pilot-coat, making the ground wet where he stands. By this time the card-playing is over, and the bottles and glasses are again upon the table, and after an hour's pleasant the ship, the passengers, and things in general, the captain, who never goes to bed and is never out of humour, turns up his coat-collar for the deck again, shakes hands all round, and goes laughing out into the weather as merrily as to a birthday party.

  As to daily news, there is no dearth of that commodity. This passenger is reported to have lost fourteen pounds at Vant-Au in the saloon yesterday, and that passenger drinks his bottle of champagne every day, and how he does it, being only a clerk, nobody knows. The head engineer has discreetly said that there never was such times, meaning weather, and four good hands are ill, and have given in dead beat. Several berths are full of water, and

  all the cabins are leaky. The ship's cook secretly swigging damaged whisky has been found drunk, and has been played upon by the fire-engine until quite sober. All the stewards have fallen down stairs at various dinnertime, and go about with plasters in various places. The baker is ill, and so is the pastry-cook. A new man, horribly indisposed, has been required to fill the place of the latter officer, and has been propped and jammed up with empty

  casks and a little house upon deck, and commanded to roll out pie-crust, which he protests, being highly bilious, it is death to him to look at. News, a dozen murders on shore, would lack the interest of these slight incidents at sea. Divided between our rubber and such topics as these, we were running, as we thought, into Halifax Harbour on the fifteenth night, with little wind and bright moon. Indeed,

  we had made the light at its outer entrance, and put the pilot in charge, when suddenly the ship struck upon a bank of mud. An immediate rush on deck took place, of course. The sides were crowded in an instant, and for a few minutes we were in as lively a state of confusion as the greatest lover of disorder would desire to see. The passengers and guns and water-casks and other heavy matters being all huddled together aft, however, to lighten her in the

  head, she was soon gut off, and after some driving on towards an uncomfortable line of objects, whose vicinity had been announced very clearly in the disaster by a loud cry of, Breakers ahead! and much backing of paddles, and heaving of the lead into a constantly decreasing depth of water, we dropped anchor in a strange, outlandish-looking nook which nobody on board could recognize, although there was land all about us, and so close

  that we could plainly see the waving branches of the trees. It was strange enough, in the silence of midnight and the dead stillness that seemed to be created by the sudden and unexpected stoppage of the engines, which had been clanking and blasting in our ears incessantly for so many days, to watch the look of blank astonishment expressed in every face, beginning with the officers, tracing through all the passengers, and descending

  to the very stokers and furnacemen, who emerged from below one by one and clustered together in a smoky group about the hatchway of the engine-room, comparing notes and whispers. After throwing up a few rockets and firing signal guns in the hope of being hailed from the land, or at least of seeing a light, but without any other sight or sound presenting itself, it was determined to send a boat on shore. It was amusing to observe how very

  kind some of the passengers were in volunteering to go ashore in the same boat, for the general good, of course, not by any means because they thought the ship in an unsafe position, or contemplated the possibility of her heeling over in case the tide were running out. Nor was it less amusing to remark how desperately unpopular the poor pilot became in one short minute. He had had his passage out from Liverpool, and during the whole voyage had been quite

  a notorious character, as a teller of anecdotes and cracker of jokes. Yet here were the very men who had laughed the loudest at his jest, now flourishing their fists in his face, loading him with imprecations and defying him to his teeth as a villain. The boat soon shoved off, with a lantern and sundry blue lights on board, and in less than an hour returned, the officer in command bringing with him a tolerably tall young tree which he had plucked up by the

  roots to satisfy certain distrustful passengers whose minds misgave them that they were to be imposed upon and shipwrecked, and who would on no other terms believe that he had been ashore, or had done anything but fraudulently row a little way into the mist specially to deceive them and compass their deaths. Our captain had foreseen from the first that we must be at a place called the Eastern Passage,

  and so we were. It was about the last place in the world which we had any business or reason to be, but a sudden fog and some error on the pilot's part were the cause. We were surrounded by banks and rocks and shoals of all kind, but had happily drifted, it seemed, upon the only safe speck that was to be found thereabouts. Eased by this report, and by the assurance that the tide was past the M, we turned in at three o'clock in the morning.

  I was dressing about half-past nine next day, when the noise above hurried me on deck. When I had left it overnight, it was dark, foggy, and damp, and there were bleak hills all round us. Now we were gliding down a smooth, broad stream at the rate of eleven miles an hour, our colors flying gaily, our crew rigged out in their smartest clothes, our officers in uniform again, the sun shining as on a brilliant April day in England, the land stretched out

  on either side, streaked with light patches of snow, white wooden houses, people at their doors, telegraphs working, flags hoisted, wharfs appearing, ships, keys crowded with people, distant noises, shouts, men and boys running down steep places towards the pier, all more bright and gay and fresh to our unused eyes than words can paint them. We came to a wharf, paved with uplifted faces, got alongside and were made fast, after some shouting and

  straining of cables darted a score of us along the gangway, and almost as soon as it was thrust out to meet us and before it had reached the ship and leaped upon the firm, glad earth again. I suppose this Halifax would have appeared an Elysium, though it had been a curiosity of ugly dullness. But I carried with me a most pleasant impression of the town and its

  inhabitants, and have preserved it to this hour. Nor was it without regret that I came home without having found an opportunity of returning dither and once more shaking hands with the friends I made that day. It happened to be the opening of the Legislative Council and General Assembly, at which ceremonial the forms observed on the commencement of a new session of Parliament in England were so closely copied and so gravely presented

  on a small scale that it was like looking at Westminster through the wrong end of a telescope. The Governor, as Her Majesty's representative, delivered what may be called the speech from He said what he had to say, manfully and well. The military band outside the building struck up God save the Queen with great vigour before His Excellency had quite finished. The people shouted, The Inns rubbed their hands, the

  Oats shook their heads. The Government Party said there never was such a good speech. The Opposition declared that there never was such a bad one. The Speaker and members of the House of Assembly withdrew from the bar to say a great deal among themselves and do a short everything went on and promised to go on just as it does at home upon the like occasions. The town is built on the side of a hill, the highest point being commanded by a strong

  fortress not yet quite finished. Several streets of good breath and appearance extend from its summit to the water side and are intersected by cross streets running parallel with the river. The houses are chiefly of wood. The market is abundantly supplied and provisions are exceedingly cheap. The weather being unusually mild at that time for the season of the year, there was no slaying. But there were plenty of those vehicles in yards and buy places,

  and some of them from the gorgeous quality of their decorations might have gone on without alteration as triumphal cars in a metal drama at Astley's. The day was uncommonly fine, the air bracing and healthful, the whole aspect of the town cheerful, thriving and industrious. We lay there seven hours to deliver and exchange the mails, at length having collected all our bags and all our passengers, including two or three choice spirits who having indulged

  too freely in oysters and champagne, were found lying insensible on their backs in unfrequented streets. The engines were again put in motion, and we stood off for Boston. Encountering squally weather again in the Bay of Fundy, we tumbled and rolled about as usual all that night and all next day. On the next afternoon, that is to say on Saturday, the 22nd of January, an American pilot boat came alongside, and soon afterwards the Britannia steam packet

  from Liverpool, eighteen days out, was telegraphed at Boston. The indescribable interest with which I strained my eyes as the first patches of American soil peeped like molehills from the Green Sea and followed them as they swelled by slow and almost imperceptible degrees into a continuous line of coast can hardly be exaggerated. A sharp keen wind blew dead against us, a hard frost prevailed on shore, and the cold was most severe. Yet the air was so intensely

  clear and dry and bright that the temperature was not only indurable but delicious. How I remained on deck staring about me until we came alongside the dock, and how, though I had had as many eyes as Argus, I should have had them all wide open and all employed on new objects, are topics which I will not prolong this chapter to discuss. Neither will I more than hint at my foreigner-like mistake in supposing that a party of most

  active persons who scrambled on board at the peril of their lives as we approached the wharf were newsmen answering to that industrious class at home, whereas, despite the leathered wallets of news slung about the necks of some and the broad sheets in the hands of all, they were editors who boarded ships in person, as one gentleman in a worsted comforter informed me, because they liked the excitement on it.

  Suffice it in this place to say that one of these invaders, with a ready courtesy for which I thank him here most gratefully, went on before to order rooms at the hotel, and that when I followed, as I soon did, I found myself rolling through the long passages with an involuntary invitation of the gate of Mr. T. P. Cook in a new nautical melodrama. "'Dinner, if you please,' said I to the waiter.

  "'When?' said the waiter. "'As quick as possible,' said I. "'Right away,' said the waiter. After a moment's hesitation I answered, "'No,' at hazard.

  "'Not right away,' cried the waiter, with an amount of surprise that made me start. I looked at him doubtfully and returned, "'No, I would rather have it in this private room. I like it very much.' At this I really thought the waiter must have gone out of his mind, as I believed he would have done, but for the interposition of another man who whispered in his ear,

  "'Directly.' "'Well, and that's a fact,' said the waiter, looking helplessly at me. "'Right away.' I saw now that right away and directly were one and the same thing. So I reversed my previous answer and sat down to dinner in ten minutes afterwards, and a capital dinner it was. The

  hotel, a very excellent one, is called the Tremont House. It has more galleries, colonnades, piazzas, and passages than I can remember, or the reader will believe. End of chapter 2

• 03 - Boston, part one

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  CHAPTER III. BOSTON. PART I. In all the public establishments of America the utmost courtesy prevails. Most of our departments are susceptible of considerable improvement in this respect, but the Custom House above all others would do well to take example from the United States and render

  itself somewhat less odious and offensive to foreigners. The servile rapacity of the French officials is sufficiently contemptible, but there is a surly, boorish incivility about our men, alike disgusting to all persons who fall into their hands, and discreditable to the nation that keeps such ill-conditioned curves snarling about its gates. When I landed in America, I could not help being strangely impressed with the contrast their Custom House

  presented, and the attention, politeness, and good humor with which its officers discharged their duty. As we did not land in Boston in consequence of some detention at the wharf until after dark, I received my first impressions of the city in walking down to the Custom House on the morning after our arrival, which was Sunday. I am afraid to say, by the way, how many offers of pews and seats and church for that morning were made to us by formal

  note of invitation before we had finished our first dinner in America. But if I may be allowed to make a moderate guess without going into nicer calculation, I should say that at least as many sittings were proffered us as would have accommodated a score or two of grown-up families. The number of creeds and forms of religion to which the pleasure of our company was requested was in very fair proportion. Not being able, in the absence

  of any change of clothes, to go to church that day, we were compelled to decline these kindnesses one and all, and I was reluctantly obliged to forego the delight of hearing Dr. Channing, who happened to preach that morning for the first time in a very long interval. I mentioned the name of this distinguished and accomplished man, with whom I soon afterwards had the pleasure of becoming personally acquainted, that I may have the gratification of recording

  my humble tribute of admiration and respect for his high abilities and character, and for the bold philanthropy with which he has ever opposed himself to that most hideous, blot and foul disgrace, slavery. To return to Boston. When I got into the streets upon this Sunday morning, the air was so clear, the houses were so bright and gay, the signboards were painted in such gaudy colours, the gilded

  letters were so very golden, the bricks were so very red, the stone was so very white, the blinds and area railings were so very green, the knobs and plates upon the street doors so marvellously bright and twinkling, and all so slight and unsubstantial in appearance, every thoroughfare in the city looked exactly like a scene in a pantomime. It rarely happens in the business streets that a tradesman, if I may venture to call anybody a tradesman,

  where everybody is a merchant, resides above his store, that so many occupations are often carried on in one house, and the whole front is covered with boards and inscriptions. As I walked along I kept glancing up at these boards, confidently expecting to see a few of them change into something, and I never turned a quarter suddenly without looking out for the clown and pantaloon, who I had no doubt were hiding in a doorway or behind

  some pillar close at hand. As to Harlequin and Columbine, I discovered immediately that they lodged, they are always looking after lodgings in a pantomime, at a very small clockmaker's one storey high near the hotel, which in addition to various symbols and devices, almost covering the whole front, had a great deal hanging out to be jumped through, of course. The suburbs are, if possible, even more unsubstantial looking than the city. The white wooden houses,

  so white that it makes one wink to look at them, with their green, jalousy blinds, are so sprinkled and dropped about in all directions without seeming to have any roof at all in the ground, and the small churches and chapels are so prim and bright and highly varnished that I almost believe the whole affair could be taken up piecemeal like a child's toy and crammed into a little box.

  The city is a beautiful one, and cannot fail, I should imagine, to impress all strangers very favorably. The private dwelling-houses are, for the most part, large and elegant, the shops extremely good, and the public buildings handsome. The State House is built upon the summit of a hill which rises gradually at first and afterwards by a steep ascent almost from the water's edge. In front is a green enclosure called the Common. The site is beautiful,

  and from the top there is a charming panoramic view of the whole town and neighborhood. In addition to a variety of commodious offices, it contains two handsome chambers. In one the House of Representatives of the State hold their meetings, in the other the Senate. Such proceedings, as I saw here, were conducted with perfect gravity and decorum, and were certainly calculated to inspire attention and respect.

  There is no doubt that much of the intellectual refinement and superiority of Boston is referrable to the quiet influence of the University of Cambridge, which is within three or four miles of the city. The resident professors at that University are gentlemen of learning and varied attainments, and are, without one exception that I can call to mind, men who would shed a grace upon and do honor to any society in the civilized world. Many of the resident

  gentry in Boston and its neighborhood, and I think I am not mistaken in adding, a large majority of those who are attached to the liberal professions there have been educated at this same school. Whatever the defects of American universities may be, they disseminate no prejudices, rare no bigots, dig up the buried ashes of no old superstitions, never interpose between the people and their improvement, excluding no man because of his religious

  opinions, above all, in their whole course of study and instruction, recognize a world and a broad one, too, lying beyond the college walls. It was a source of inexpressible pleasure to me to observe the almost imperceptible, but not less certain effect wrought by this institution among the small community of Boston, and to note at every turn the humanizing tastes and desires it has engendered, the affectionate

  friendships to which it has given rise, the amount of vanity and prejudice it has dispelled. The golden calf they worship at Boston is a pygmy compared with the giant effigies set up in other parts of their vast counting-house, which lies beyond the Atlantic, and the almighty daughter sinks into something comparatively insignificant amidst a whole pantheon of better gods.

  Of all, I sincerely believe that the public institutions and charities of this capital of Massachusetts are as nearly perfect as the most considerate wisdom, benevolence, and humanity can make them. I never in my life was more affected by the contemplation of happiness under circumstances of privation and bereavement than in my visits to these establishments. It is a great and pleasant feature of all such institutions in America

  that they are either supported by the State or assisted by the State, or, in the event of their not needing its helping hand, that they act in concert with it and are emphatically the people's. I cannot but think, with a view to the principle and its tendency to elevate or depress the character of the industrious classes, that a public charity is immeasurably better than

  a private foundation, no matter how munificently the latter may be endowed. In our own country, there it has not, until within these later days, been a very popular fashion with government to display any extraordinary regard for the great mass of the people, or to recognize their existence as improvable creatures, private charities, unexampled in the history of the earth have arisen to do an incalculable amount of good among the destitute and afflicted.

  But the government of the country, having neither act nor part in them, is not in the any portion of the gratitude they inspire, and offering very little shelter to relief beyond that which is to be found in the work-house and the jail, has come, not unnaturally, to be looked upon by the poor, rather as a stern master, quick to correct and punish, than a kind protector, merciful and vigilant in their hour of need.

  The maxim that out of evil cometh good is strongly illustrated by these establishments home, as the records of the prerogative office in Doctor's Commons can abundantly prove. Some immensely rich old gentleman or lady, surrounded by needy relatives, mix upon a low average a will a week. The old gentleman or lady, never very remarkable in the best of times for good temper, is full of aches and pains from head to foot, full of fancies

  and caprices, full of spleen, distrust, suspicion and dislike. To cancel old wills and invent new ones is at last the sole business of such a testator's existence, and relations and friends, some of whom have been bred up distinctly to inherit a large share of the property, and have been, from their cradle, specially disqualified from devoting themselves to any useful pursuit on that account, are so often and so unexpectedly and summarily cut off

  and reinstated and cut off again, that the whole family, down to the remotest cousin, is kept in a perpetual fever. At length it becomes plain that the old lady or gentleman has not long to live, and the plainer this becomes the more clearly the old lady or gentleman perceives that everybody is in a conspiracy against their poor old dying relative, wherefore the old lady or gentleman mix another last will, positively the last this time, conceals

  the same in a china teapot and expires next day. Then it turns out that the whole of the real and personal estate is divided between half a dozen charities, and that the dead and gone testator has in pure spite helped to do a great deal of good at the cost of an immense amount of evil passion and misery. The Perkins Institute and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind at Boston is superintended by

  a body of trustees who make an annual report to the corporation. The indigent blind of that state are admitted gratuitously. Those from the adjoining state of Connecticut, or from the states of Maine, Vermont or New Hampshire, are admitted by a warrant from the state to which they respectively belong, or failing that, must find security among their friends for the payment of about twenty pounds English for their first year's board and instruction,

  and ten for the second. After the first year, say the trustees, an account current will be opened with each pupil. He will be charged with the actual cost of his board, which will not exceed two dollars per week, a trifle more than eight shillings English, and he will be credited with the amount paid for him by the state or by his friends, also with his earnings over and above the cost of the stock which he uses, so that all his earnings

  over one dollar per week will be his own. By the third year it will be known whether his earnings will more than pay the actual cost of his board. If they should, he will have it at his option to remain and receive his earnings or not. Those who prove unable to earn their own livelihood will not be retained, as it is not desirable to convert the establishment into an almshouse, or to retain any but working bees in the hive. Those who by physical or

  mental imbecility are disqualified from work are thereby disqualified from being members of an industrious community, and they can be better provided for in establishments fitted for the infirm. I went to see this place one very fine winter morning, an Italian sky above, and the air so clear and bright on every side that even my eyes, which are none of the best, could

  follow the minute lines and scrapes of tracery in distant buildings. Like most other public institutions in America of the same class, it stands a mile or two without the town, in a cheerful, healthy spot, and is an airy, spacious, handsome edifice. It is built upon a height commanding the harbour. When I paused for a moment at the door and marked how fresh and free the whole scene was, what sparkling bubbles glanced upon the waves and welled

  up every moment to the surface, as though the world below, like that above, were radiant with the bright day and gushing over in its fullness of light, when I gazed from sail a sail away upon a ship at sea, a tiny speck of shining white, the only cloud upon the still deep distant blue, and turning saw a blind boy with his sightless face addressed that way, as though he too had some sense within him of the glorious distance. I felt

  a kind of sorrow that the place should be so very light, and a strange wish that for his sake it were darker. It was but momentary, of course, and a mere fancy, but I felt it keenly for all that. The children were at their daily tasks in different rooms, except a few who were already dismissed and were at play. Here, as in many institutions, no uniform is worn, and I was

  very glad of it for two reasons. Firstly, because I am sure that nothing but senseless custom and want of thought would reconcile us to the liveries and badges we are so fond of at home. Secondly, because the absence of these things presents each child to the or her own proper character, with its individuality unimpaired, not lost in a dull, ugly, monotonous repetition of the same unmeaning garb, which is really an important consideration. The

  wisdom of encouraging a little harmless pride in personal appearance even among the blind, or the whimsical absurdity of considering charity and leather-britches inseparable companions, as we do, requires no comment. Good order, cleanliness, and comfort pervaded every corner of the building. The various classes who were gathered round their teachers answered the questions put to them with readiness

  and intelligence, and in a spirit of cheerful contest for precedence which pleased me very much. Those who were at play were gleeful and noisy as other children. More spiritual and affectionate friendships appeared to exist among them than would be found among other young persons suffering under no deprivation. But this I expected, and was prepared to find. It is part of the great scheme of Heaven's merciful consideration for the afflicted.

  In a portion of the building set apart for that purpose are workshops for blind persons whose education is finished and who have acquired a trade but who cannot pursue it in an ordinary manner factory because of their deprivation. Several people were at work here, making brushes, and so forth, and the cheerfulness, industry, and good order discernible in every other part of the building extended to this department also. On the ringing of a bell the pupils

  all repaired without any guide or leader to a spacious music hall where they took their seats in an orchestra erected for that purpose and listened with manifest delight to a voluntary on the organ played by one of themselves. At its conclusion the performer, a boy of nineteen or twenty, gave place to a girl, and to her accompaniment they all sang a hymn, and afterwards a sort of chorus. It was very sad to look upon and hear them, happy though

  their condition unquestionably was, and I saw that one blind girl who, being for the time deprived of the use of her limbs by illness, sat close beside me with her face towards them wept silently the while while she listened. It is strange to watch the faces of the blind and see how free they are from all concealment of what is passing in their thoughts, observing which a man with eyes may blush to contemplate the mask he wears. Allowing for one shade

  of anxious expression which is never absent from their countenances, and the like of which we may readily detect in our own faces if we try to feel our way in the dark, every idea as it rises within them is expressed with the lightning speed and nature's truth. If the company at a rout or drawing-room at court could only for one time be as unconscious of the eyes upon them as blind men and women are, what secrets would come out, and what

  a worker of hypocrisy this sight, the loss of which we so much pity, would appear to be? The thought occurred to me as I sat down in another room before a girl, blind, deaf and dumb, destitute of smell and nearly so of taste, before a very young creature with every human faculty and hope and power of goodness and affection, enclosed within her delicate frame, and but one outward sense, the sense of touch. There she was before me,

  built up as it were in a marble cell, impervious to any ray of light or particle of sound, with her poor white hand peeping through a chink in the wall, beckoning to some good man for help that an immortal soul might be awakened. Some time before I looked upon her the help had come. Her face was radiant with intelligence and pleasure. Her hair, braided by her own hands, was bound about a head, whose intellectual

  capacity and development were beautifully expressed in its graceful outline, and its broad open brow, her dress arranged by herself, was a pattern of neatness and simplicity. The work she had knitted lay beside her, her writing-book was on the desk she leaned upon. From the mournful ruin of such bereavement there had slowly risen up this gentle, tender, guileless, grateful-hearted being. Like other inmates of that house, she had a green ribbon

  bound round her eyelids, a doll she had dressed lay near upon the ground. I took it up and saw that she had made a green fillet such as she wore herself, and fastened it about its mimic eyes. She was seated in a little enclosure made by school desks and forms writing her daily journal. But soon finishing this pursuit she engaged in an animated conversation with a teacher who sat beside her. This was a favourite mistress with the poor pupil.

  If she could see the face of her fair instructus she would not love her less, I am sure. I have extracted a few disjointed fragments of her history from an account written by that one man who has made her what she is. It is a very beautiful and touching narrative, and I wish I could present it in tire. Her name is Laura Bridgman. She was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, on the 21st of December,

  1829. She is described as having been a very sprightly and pretty infant with bright blue eyes. She was, however, so puny and feeble until she was a year and a half old that her parents hardly hoped to rear her. She was subject to severe fits which seemed to rack her frame almost beyond her power of endurance, and life was held by the feeblest tenure, but within a year and a half old she seemed to rally. The dangerous symptoms subsided,

  and at twenty months old she was perfectly well. Then her mental powers, hitherto stinted in their growth, rapidly developed themselves, and during the four months of health which she enjoyed she appears, making due allowance for a fond mother's account, to have displayed a considerable degree of intelligence. But suddenly she sickened again. Her disease raged with great violence during five weeks when her eyes and ears were inflamed, separated,

  and their contents were discharged. But though sight and hearing were gone forever, the poor child's sufferings were not ended. The fever raged during seven weeks. For five months was kept in bed in a darkened room. It was a year before she could walk unsupported, and two years before she could set up all day. It was now observed that her sense of smell was almost entirely destroyed, and consequently that her taste was much blunted. It was not

  until four years of age that the poor child's bodily health seemed restored, and that she was able to enter upon her apprenticeship of life and the world. But what a situation was hers! The darkness and the silence of the tomb were around her. No mother's smile called forth her answering smile. No father's voice taught her to imitate his sounds. They, brothers and sisters, were but forms of matter which resisted her touch,

  but which differed not from the furniture of the house, save in warmth, and in the power of locomotion, and not even in these respects from the dog and the cat. But the immortal spirit which had been implanted within her could not die, nor be maimed nor mutilated. And though most of its avenues of communication with the world were cut off, it began to manifest itself through the others. As soon as she could walk she began to explore the room and

  then the house. She became familiar with the form, density, weight, and heat of every article she could lay her hands upon. She followed her mother and felt her hands and arms as she was occupied about the house, and her disposition to imitate led her to repeat everything herself. She even learned to sew a little and to knit. The reader was scarcely need to be told, however, that the opportunities of communicating with her were very, very

  limited, and that the moral effects of her wretched state soon began to appear. Those who cannot be enlightened by reason can only be controlled by force, and this, coupled with her great privations, must soon have reduced her to a worse condition than that of the beasts that perish but for timely and unhopeful aid. At this time I was so fortunate as to hear of the child and immediately hasten to Hanover

  to see her. I found her with a well-formed figure, a strongly marked, nervous, sanguine temperament, a large and beautifully shaped head, and the whole system in healthy action. The parents were easily induced to consent to her coming to Boston, and on the 4th of October 1837 they brought her to the institution. For a while she was much bewildered, and after waiting about two weeks until she became acquainted with her new locality and somewhat

  familiar with the inmates, the attempt was made to give her knowledge of arbitrary signs by which she could interchange thoughts with others. There was one of two ways to be adopted, either to go on to build up a language of signs on the basis of the natural language which she had already commenced herself, or to teach her the purely arbitrary language in common use, that is, to give her a sign for every individual thing, or to give her

  a knowledge of letters by combination of which she might express her idea of the existence and the mode and condition of existence of anything. The former would have been easy, but very ineffectual. The latter seemed very difficult, but if accomplished, very effectual. I determined, therefore, to try the latter. The first experiments were made by taking articles in common use, such as knives, forks, spoons, keys, etc., and pasting upon them

  labels with their names printed in raised letters. These she felt very carefully, and soon, of course, distinguished that the crooked line's spoon differed as much from the crooked line's key as the spoon differed from the key in form. These small detached labels, with the same words printed upon them, were put into her hands, and she soon observed that they were similar to the ones pasted on the articles. She showed her perception

  of this similarity by laying the label key upon the key, and the label spoon upon the spoon. She was encouraged here by the natural sign of approbation patting on the head. The same process was then repeated with all the articles which she could handle, and she very easily learned to place the proper labels upon them. It was evident, however, that the only intellectual exercise was that of imitation in memory.

  She recollected that the label book was placed upon a book, and she repeated the process first from imitation, next from memory, with only the motive of love of approbation, but apparently without the intellectual perception of any relation between the things. After instead of labels, the individual letters were given to her on detached bits of paper. They were arranged side by side so as to spell book, key, etc., and then they were mixed

  up in a heap, and a sign was made for her to arrange them herself so as to express the words book, key, etc., and she did so. Hitherto the process had been mechanical, and the success about as great as teaching a very knowing dog a variety of tricks. The poor child had sat in mute amazement and patiently imitated everything her teacher did, but now the truth began to flash upon her. Her intellect

  began to work. She perceived that here was a way by which she could herself make up a sign of anything that was in her own mind, and show it to another mind, and at once her countenance lighted up with a human expression. It was no longer a dog or parrot. It was an immortal spirit, eagerly seizing upon a new link of union with other spirits. I could almost fix upon the moment when this truth dawned upon her mind and spread its light

  to her countenance. I saw that the great obstacle was overcome, and that henceforward nothing but patient and persevering, but plain and straightforward efforts were to be used. The result thus far is quickly related, and easily conceived, but not so was the process, for many weeks of apparently unprofitable labor were passed before it was effected. When it was said above that a sign was made, it was intended to say that the action was

  performed by her teacher, she feeling his hands, then imitating the motion. The next step was to procure a set of metal types, with the different letters of the alphabet upon their ends, also a board in which were square holes into which holes she could set the types, so that the letters on their ends could alone be felt above the surface. Then, on any article being handed to her, for instance a pencil or a watch, she would select the

  component letters and arrange them on her board and read them with apparent pleasure. She was exercised for several weeks in this way until her vocabulary became extensive, and then the important step was taken of teaching her how to represent the different letters by the position of her fingers instead of the cumbreous apparatus of the board and types. She accomplished this speedily and easily, for her intellect had begun to work in aid

  of her teacher, and her progress was rapid. This was the period about three months after she had commenced that the first report of her case was made, in which it was stated that she has just learned the manual alphabet as used by the deaf mutes, and it is a subject of delight and wonder to see how rapidly, correctly, and eagerly she goes on with her labors. Her teacher gives her a new object, for instance a pencil, first lets her examine

  it and get an idea of its use, then teaches her how to spell it by making the signs for the letters with her own fingers. The child grasps her hand and feels her fingers as the different letters are formed. She turns her head a little on one side, like a person listening her lips are apart, she seems scarcely to breathe, and her countenance at first anxious, gradually changes to a smile as she comprehends the lesson. She then holds up her tiny fingers

  and spells the word in the manual alphabet. Next she takes her types and arranges her letters, and last, to make sure that she is right, she takes the whole of the types composing the word, and places them upon or in contact with the pencil or whatever the object may be. The whole of the succeeding year was past in gratifying her eager inquiries for the

  names of every object which she could possibly handle, in exercising her in the use of the manual alphabet, in extending in every possible way her knowledge of the physical relations of things and in proper care of her health. At the end of the year a report of her case was made from which the following is an extract. It has been ascertained beyond the possibility of doubt that she cannot see a ray of light,

  cannot hear the least sound, and never exercises her sense of smell if she have any. Thus her mind dwells in darkness and stillness, as profound as that of a closed tomb at midnight. Of beautiful sights and sweet sounds and pleasant odours she has no conception. Nevertheless she seems as happy and playful as a bird or a lamb, and the employment of her intellectual faculties or the acquirement of a new idea gives her a vivid pleasure which is plainly

  marked in her expressive features. She never seems to repine, but has all the buoyancy and gaiety of childhood. She is fond of fun and frolic, and when playing with the rest of the children her shrill laugh sounds loudest of the group. When left alone she seems very happy if she have her knitting or sewing, and will busy herself for hours. If she have no occupation she evidently amuses herself by imaginary dialogues or by recalling past

  impressions. She counts with her fingers, or spells out names of things which she has recently learned in the manual alphabet of the deaf mutes. In this lonely self-communion she seems to reason, reflect, and argue. If she spell a word wrong with the fingers of her right hand she instantly strikes it with her left as her teacher does, in sign of disapprobation. If right then she pats herself upon the head and looks pleased. She sometimes purposely

  spells a word wrong with the left hand, looks roguish for a moment and laughs, and then with the right hand strikes the left as if to correct it. During the year she has attained great dexterity in the use of the manual alphabet of the deaf mutes, and she spells out the words and sentences which she knows so fast and so deftly that only those accustomed to this language can follow with the eye the rapid motions of her fingers. But wonderful

  as the rapidity with which she writes her thoughts upon the air, still more so is the ease and accuracy with which she reads the words thus written by another, grasping their hands in hers, and following every movement of their fingers as letter after letter conveys their meaning to her mind. It is in this way that she converses with her blind playmates, and nothing can more forcibly show the power of mind in forcing matter to its purpose than

  a meeting between them. For if great talent and skill are necessary for two pantomimes to paint their thoughts and feelings by the movement of the body and the expression of the countenance, how much greater the difficulty when darkness shrouds them both and the one can hear no sound. When Laura is walking through a passageway with her hands spread before her, she knows instantly every one she meets and passes them with a sign of recognition,

  but if it be a girl of her own age, and especially if it be one of her favorites, there is instantly a bright smile of recognition, a twining of arms, a grasping of hands, and a swift telegraphing the tiny fingers, whose rapid evolutions convey the thoughts and feelings from the outposts of one mind to those of the other. There are questions and answers, exchanges of joy or sorrow. There are kissings and partings, just as between little children with all their

  senses. During this year, and six months after she had left home, her mother came to visit her, and the scene of their meeting was an interesting one. The mother stood some time, gazing with overflowing eyes upon her unfortunate child, who, all unconscious of her presence, was playing about the room. Presently Laura ran against her, and at once began feeling her hands, examining her dress, and trying to find out if she knew her, but not succeeding

  in this, she turned away as from a stranger, and the poor woman could not conceal the pangs she felt at finding that her beloved child did not know her. She then gave Laura a string of beads which she used to wear at home, which were recognized by the child at once, who with much joy put them round her neck, and sought me eagerly to say she understood the string was from her home. The mother now sought to caress her, but poor Laura repelled her,

  preferring to be with her acquaintances. Another article from home was now given her, and she began to look much interested. She examined the stranger much closer, and gave me to understand that she knew she came from heaven. She even endured her caresses, but would leave her with indifference at the slightest signal. The distress of the mother was now painful to behold, for although she had feared

  that she should not be recognized, the painful reality of being treated with cold indifference by a darling child was too much for women's nature to bear. After a while, on the mother taking hold of her again, a vague idea seemed to flit across Laura's mind that she could not be a stranger. She therefore felt her hands very eagerly, while her countenance assumed an expression of intense interest. She became very pale,

  and then suddenly red, hoped seen struggling with doubt and anxiety, and never were contending emotions more strongly painted upon the human face. At this moment of painful uncertainty the mother drew her close to her side, and kissed her fondly, when at once the truth flashed upon the child, and all mistrust and anxiety disappeared from her face, as with an expression of exceeding joy she eagerly nestled to the bosom of her parent, and yielded

  herself to her fond embraces. After this the beads were all unheeded. The playthings which were offered to her were utterly disregarded. Her playmates, for whom but a moment before she gladly left the stranger, now vainly strove to pull her from her mother. And though she yielded her usual instantaneous obedience to my signal to follow me, it was evidently with painful reluctance. She clung

  close to me, as if bewildered and fearful, and when after a moment I took her to her mother she sprang to her arms and clung to her with eager joy. The subsequent parting between them showed alike the affection, the intelligence, and the resolution of the child. Laura accompanied her mother to the door, clinging close to her all the way, until they threshold, where she paused, and felt around to ascertain who was near her. Perceiving

  the matron, of whom she is very fond, she grasped her with one hand, holding on convulsively to her mother with the other, and thus she stood for a moment. Then she dropped her mother's hand, put her handkerchief to her eyes, and turning round clung sobbing to the matron, while her mother departed with emotions as deep as those of her child. It has been remarked in former reports that she can distinguish different degrees of intellect

  in others, and that she soon regarded almost with contempt a newcomer when, after a few days, she discovered her weakness of mind. This unamiable part of her character has been more strongly developed during the past year. She chooses for her friends and companions, those children who are intelligent and can talk best with her, and she evidently dislikes to be with those who are deficient in intellect unless she can make them serve her purposes,

  which she is evidently inclined to do. She takes advantage of them and makes them wait upon her in a manner that she knows she could not exact of others, and in various ways shows her sacks and blood. She is fond of having other children noticed and caressed by the teachers and those whom she respects. But this must not be carried too far, or she becomes jealous. She wants to have her share, which, if not the lion's, is the greater part, and

  if she does not get it she says, My mother will love me. Her tendency to imitation is so strong that it leads her to actions which must be entirely incomprehensible to her, and which can give her no other pleasure than the gratification of an internal faculty. She has been known to sit for half an hour holding a book before her sightless eyes and moving her lips as she has observed seeing people do when reading. She one day pretended

  that her doll was sick, and went through all the motions of tending it and giving it medicine. She then put it carefully to bed and placed a bottle of hot water to its feet, laughing all the time most heartily. When I came home she insisted upon my going to see it and to feel its pulse, and when I told her to put a blister on its back she seemed to enjoy it amazingly, and almost scream with delight. Her social feelings and her affections are

  very strong, and when she is sitting at work or at her studies by the side of one of her little friends she will break off from her task every few minutes to hug and kiss them with an earnestness and warmth that is touching to behold. When left alone she occupies and apparently amuses herself and seems quite contented, and so strong seems to be the natural tendency of thought to put on the garb of language

  that she often soliloquizes in the finger language slow and tedious as it is. But it is only when alone that she is quiet, for if she becomes sensible of the presence of anyone near her she is restless until she can sit close beside them, holding their hand and conversing with them by signs. In her intellectual character it is pleasing to observe an insatiable thirst for knowledge and a quick perception of the relations of things. In

  her moral character it is beautiful to behold her continual gladness, her keen enjoyment of existence, her expanse of love, her unhesitating confidence, her sympathy with suffering, her conscientiousness, truthfulness and hopefulness. Such are a few fragments from the simple but most interesting and instructive history of Laura Bridgman. The name of her great benefactor and friend who writes it is Dr. Howe. There

  are not many persons, I hope and believe, who after reading these passages can ever hear that name with indifference. A further report has been published by Dr. Howe since the report from which I have just quoted. It describes her rapid mental growth and improvement during twelve months more, and brings her little history down to the end of last year. It is very remarkable that

  as we dream in words and carry on imaginary conversations in which we speak both for ourselves and for the shadows who appear to us in those visions of the night, so she, having no words, uses her finger alphabet in her sleep. And it has been ascertained that when her slumber is broken and is much disturbed by dreams, she expresses her thoughts in an irregular and confused manner on her fingers, just as we should murmur and mutter them indistinctly

  in the like circumstances. I turned over the leaves of her diary, and found it written in a fair legible square hand, and expressed in terms which were quite intelligible without any explanation. On my saying that I should like to see her write again, the teacher who sat beside her bade her in their language sign her name upon a slip of paper twice or thrice. In doing so

  I observed that she kept her left hand always touching and following up her write in which, of course, she held the pen. No line was indicated by any contrivance, but she wrote straight and freely. She had until now been quite unconscious of the presence of visitors, but having her hand placed in that of the gentleman who accompanied me, she immediately expressed his name upon

  her teacher's palm. Indeed, her sense of touch is now so exquisite that having been acquainted with a person once, she could recognize him or her after almost any interval. This gentleman had been in her company, I believe, but very seldom, and certainly had not seen her for many months. My hand she rejected at once, as she does that of any man who is a stranger to her. But she retained my wife's with evident pleasure, kissed her, and examined her dress

  with a girl's curiosity and interest. She was merry and cheerful, and showed much innocent playfulness in her intercourse with her teacher. Her delight on recognizing a favorite playfellow companion, herself a blind girl, who silently and with an equal enjoyment of the coming surprise took a seat beside her was beautiful to witness. It elicited from her at first, as other slight circumstances did twice or thrice during my visit, an uncouth noise which

  was rather painful to hear. But of her teacher touching her lips, she immediately desisted and embraced her laughingly and affectionately. I had previously been into another chamber, where a number of blind boys were swinging and climbing and engaged in various sports. They all clamored as we entered to the assistant master who accompanied us. Look at me, Mr. Hart, please, Mr. Hart, look at me! Evincing,

  I thought even in this an anxiety peculiar to their condition, that their little fears of agility should be seen. Among them was a small laughing fellow who stood aloof, entertaining himself with a gymnastic exercise for bringing the arms and chest into play, which he enjoyed mightily, especially when, in thrusting out his right arm, he brought it into contact with another boy. Like Laura Bridgman, this young child was deaf and dumb and blind. Dr.

  Howe's account of this pupil's first instruction is so very striking and so intimately connected with Laura herself that I cannot refrain from a short extract. I may premise that the poor boy's name is Oliver Caswell, that he is thirteen years of age, and that he was in full possession of all his faculties until three years and four months old. He was then attacked by scarlet fever, in four weeks became deaf, in a few weeks more blind, in six months

  dumb. He showed his anxious sense of this last deprivation by often feeling the lips of other persons when they were talking, and then putting his hand upon his own, as if to assure himself that he had them in the right position. His thirst for knowledge, says Dr. Howe, proclaimed itself as soon as he entered the house by his eager examination of everything he could feel or smell in his new location. For instance,

  treading upon the register of a furnace, he instantly stooped down and began to feel it, and soon discovered the way in which the upper plate moved upon the lower one. But this was not enough for him, so lying down upon his face, he applied his tongue first to one, then to the other, and seemed to discover that they were different kinds of metal. His signs were expressive, and the strictly natural language, laughing, crying, sighing, kissing,

  embracing, etc., was perfect. Some of the analogical signs, which, guided by his faculty of imitation, he had contrived, were comprehensible, such as the waving motion of his hand for the motion of a boat, the circular one for a wheel, etc. The first object was to break up the use of these signs, and to substitute for them the use of purely arbitrary ones. Profiting by the experience I had gained in the other cases,

  I omitted several steps of the process before employed, and commenced at once with the finger language. Taking, therefore, several articles having short names such as key, cup, mug, and with Laura for an auxiliary, I sat down and, taking his hand, placed it upon one of them, and then with my own, made the letters key. He felt my hands eagerly with both of his, and on my repeating the process, he evidently tried to imitate the motions of my fingers.

  In a few minutes he contrived to feel the motions of my fingers with one hand, and holding the other he tried to imitate them, laughing most heartily when he succeeded. Laura was interested even to agitation, and the two presented a singular sight. Her face was flushed and anxious, and her fingers twining in among ours so closely as to follow every motion, but so slightly as not to embarrass them. While Oliver stood attentive, his head a little

  aside, his face turned up, his left hand grasping mine, and his right held out at every motion of my fingers his countenance betoken to keen attention. There was an expression of anxiety as he tried to imitate the motions, then a smile came stealing out as he thought he could do so, and spread into a joyous laugh the moment he succeeded, and felt me pat his head and Laura clap him heartily on the back and jump up and down in her joy. He learned more

  than a half dozen letters in half an hour, and seemed delighted with his success, at least in gaining approbation. His attention then began to flag, and I commenced playing with him. It was evident that in all this he had merely been imitating the motions of my fingers and placing his hand upon the key, cup, etc., as part of the process, without any perception of the relation between the sign and the object. When he was tired with

  play I took him back to the table, and he was quite ready to begin again his process of imitation. He soon learned to make the letters for key, pen, pin, and by having the object repeatedly placed in his hand he at last perceived the relation I wished to establish between them. This was evident because when I made the letters pin or pen or cup he would select the article. The perception of this relation was not accompanied by that radiant

  flash of intelligence and that glow of joy which marked the delightful moment when Laura first perceived it. I then placed all the articles on the table, and going away a little distance with the children, placed Oliver's fingers in the positions to spell key, on which Laura went and brought the article. The little fellow seemed much amused by this and looked very attentive and smiling. I then caused him to make the letters bread, and

  in an instant Laura went and brought him a piece, he smelled at it, and put it to his lips, caulked up his head with a most knowing look, seemed to reflect a moment, and then laughed out right as much as to say, Aha! I understand now how something may be made out of this. It was now clear that he had the capacity and inclination to learn, that he was a proper subject for instruction and needed only persevering attention. I therefore

  put him in the hands of an intelligent teacher, nothing doubting of his rapid progress. Well may this gentleman call that a delightful moment in which some distant promise of her present state first gleaned upon the darkened mind of Laura Bridgman. Throughout his life the recollection of that moment will be to him a source of pure, unfading happiness, nor would it shine less brightly on the evening of his days of noble usefulness. The affection

  which exists between these two, the master and the pupil, is as far removed from all ordinary care and regard as the circumstances in which it has had its growth are apart from the common occurrences of life. He is occupied now in devising means of imparting to her higher knowledge, and of conveying to her some adequate idea of the great Creator of that universe in which dark and silent saintless know it be to her she has such deep delight

  and glad enjoyment. Ye who have eyes and see not, and have ears and hear not, ye who are as the hypocrites of sad countenances, and disfigure your faces that ye may seem unto men to fast, learn healthy cheerfulness and mild contentment from the deaf and dumb and blind. Self-elected saints with gloomy brows, this sightless, earless, voiceless child may teach you lessons you

  will do well to follow. Let that poor hand of hers lie gently on your heart, for there may be something in its healing touch akin to that of the great master, whose precepts you misconstrue, whose lessons you pervert, of whose charity and sympathy with all the world not one among you in his daily practice knows as much as many of the worst among those fallen sinners to whom you are as liberal in nothing but the preachment of perditioned.

  As I rose to quit the room, a pretty little child of one of the attendants came running in to greet its father. For the moment a child with eyes among the sightless crowd impressed me almost as painfully as the blind boy in the porch had done two hours ago. Ah, how much brighter and more deeply blue, glowing and rich though it had been before, was the scene without, contrasting with the darkness of so many useful lives within.

• 04 - Boston, part two

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  CHAPTER III. BOSTON. At South Boston, as it is called, in a situation excellently adapted for the purpose, several charitable institutions are clustered together. One of these is the State Hospital for the Insane, admirably conducted on those enlightened principles of conciliation and kindness, which twenty years ago would have been worse than heretical, and which have been acted upon

  with so much success in our own pauper asylum at Hanwell. "'Evince a desire to show some confidence and repose some trust even in mad people,' said the resident physician as we walked along the galleries, his patients flocking round us unrestrained. Of those who deny or doubt the wisdom of this maxim after witnessing its effects, if there be such people still alive, I can only say that I hope I may never

  be summoned as a juryman on a commission of lunacy whereof they are the subjects, for I should certainly find them out of their senses on such evidence alone. Each ward in this institution is shaped like a long gallery or hall, with the dormitories of the patients opening from it on either hand. Here they work, read, play at skittles and other games, and when the weather does not admit it they're taking exercise out of

  doors, pass the day together. In one of these rooms, seated calmly and quite as a matter of course, among a throng of mad women, black and white, were the physician's wife and another lady with a couple of children. These ladies were graceful and handsome, and it was not difficult to perceive at a glance that even their presence there had a highly beneficial influence on the patients who were grouped about them.

  Leaning her head against the chimney-piece with a great assumption of dignity and refinement of matter, sat an elderly female in as many scraps of finery as mad wild-fire herself. Her head in particular was so strewn with scrapes of gauze and cotton and bits of paper, and had so many queer odds and ends stuck all about it that it looked like a bird's nest. She was radiant, with imaginary jewels, wore a rich pair of undoubted gold spectacles,

  and gracefully dropped upon her lap as we approached a very old, greasy newspaper in which I dare say she had been reading an account of her own presentation at some foreign court. I have been thus particular in describing her, because she will serve to exemplify the physician's manner of acquiring and retaining the confidence of his patients. This, he said aloud, taking me by the hand, and advancing to the fantastic figure with

  great politeness, not raising her suspicions by the slightest look or whisper, or any kind of aside to me, this lady is the hostess of this mansion, sir. It belongs to her. Nobody else has anything whatever to do with it. It is a large establishment, as you see, and requires a great number of attendants. She lives, you observe, in the very first style. She is kind enough to receive my visits, and to permit my wife and family to reside here,

  for which it is hardly necessary to say we are much indebted to her. She is exceedingly courteous, you perceive. On this hint she bowed condescendingly, and will permit me to have the pleasure of introducing you a gentleman from England, ma'am, newly arrived from England after a very tempestuous passage, Mr. Dickens, the lady of the house. We exchange the most dignified salutations with profound gravity and respect, and so went on. The rest

  of the madwomen seem to understand the joke perfectly, not only in this case, but in all the others except their own, and be highly amused by it. The nature of their several kinds of insanity was made known to me in the same way, and we left each of them in high good humour. Not only is a thorough confidence established by those means between the position and patient in respect of the nature and extent of their hallucinations,

  but it is easy to understand that opportunities are afforded for seizing any moment of reason to startle them by placing their own delusion before them in its most incongruous and ridiculous light. Every patient in this asylum sets down to dinner every day with a knife and fork, and in the midst of them sets the gentleman whose manner of dealing with his charges I have just described. At every meal moral influence alone restrains the more violent among them

  from cutting the throats of the rest, but the effect of that influence is reduced to an absolute certainty, and it is found, even as a means of restraint, to say nothing of it as a means of cure. A hundred times more efficacious than all the straight waistcoats, fetters and handcuffs that ignorance, prejudice and cruelty have manufactured since the creation of the world. In the labour department every patient is as freely trusted with the tools

  of his trade as if he were a sane man. In the garden and on the farm they work with spades, rakes and hoes. For amusement they walk, run, fish, paint, read and ride out to take the air and carriages provided for the purpose. They have among themselves a sewing society to make clothes for the poor, which holds meetings, passes resolutions, never comes to fisticuffs or bowie knives as sane assemblies have been known to do elsewhere, and conducts all its proceedings with

  the greatest decorum. The irritability which would otherwise be expended on their own flesh, clothes and furniture is dissipated in these pursuits. They are cheerful, tranquil and healthy. Once a week they have a ball, in which the doctor and his family, with all the nurses and attendants, take an active part. Dances and marches are performed alternately to the enlivening strains of a piano, and now and then some gentleman or lady, whose proficiency has been previously

  ascertained, obliges the company with a song, nor does it ever degenerate at a tender crisis into a screech or howl wherein, I must confess, I should have thought the danger lay. At an early hour they all meet together for these festive purposes. At eight o'clock refreshments are served, and at nine they separate. Immense politeness and good breeding are observed throughout. They all take their tone from the doctor, and as he moves a very chesterfield among the company.

  Like other assemblies, these entertainments afford a fruitful topic of conversation among the ladies for some days, and the gentlemen are so anxious to shine on those occasions that they have been sometimes practicing their steps in private to cut a more distinguished figure in the dance. It is obvious that one great feature of this system is the inculcation and encouragement, even among such unhappy persons, of a decent self-respect. Something of the same

  spirit pervades all the institutions at South Boston. There is the house of industry. In that branch of it, which is devoted to the reception of old or otherwise helpless paupers, these words are painted on the walls. Worthy of notice, self-government, quietude, and peace are blessings. It is not assumed and taken for granted that being there they must be evil-disposed and wicked people, before whose vicious eyes it is necessary to flourish threats and harsh restraints.

  They are met at the very threshold with this mild appeal. All within doors is very plain and simple as it ought to be, but arranged with a view to peace and comfort. It costs no more than any other plan of arrangement, but it speaks an amount of consideration for those who are reduced to seek a shelter there, which puts them at once upon their gratitude and good behavior. Instead of being parceled out in great long rambling wards, where a certain amount of wheezing life may mope and pine

  and shiver all day long, the building is divided into separate rooms, each with its share of light and air. In these the better kind of paupers live. They have a motive for exertion and becoming pride in the desire to make these little chambers comfortable and decent. I do not remember one, but it was clean and neat, and had its plant or two upon the windowsill, or row of crockery upon the shelf, or small display of colored prints upon the whitewashed wall, or perhaps its wooden clock

  behind the door. The orphans and young children are in an adjoining building separate from this, but a part of the same institution. Some are such little creatures that the stairs are of Lilliputian measurements fitted to their tiny strides. The same consideration for their years and weaknesses expressed in their very seats, which are perfect curiosities, and look like articles of furniture for a paupers dollhouse. I can imagine the glee of our poor law commissioners

  at the notion of these seats having arms and backs, but small spines being of older dates than their occupation of the boardroom at Somerset House. I thought even this provision very merciful and kind. Here again I was greatly pleased with the inscriptions on the wall, which were scraps of plain morality, easily remembered and understood, such as love one another, God remembers the smallest creature in his creation, and straightforward advice of that nature. The books and tasks of the

  smallest of scholars were adapted in the same judicious manner to their childish powers. When we had examined these lessons, four morsels of girls, one of whom was blind, sang a little song about the merry month of May, which I thought, being extremely dismal, would have suited an English November better. That done, we went to see their sleeping rooms on the floor above, in which the arrangements were no less excellent and gentle than those we had seen below.

  And after observing that the teachers were of a class and character well suited to the spirit of the place, I took leave of the infants with a lighter heart than ever I had taken leave of proper infants yet. Connected with the House of Industry there is also a hospital, which was in the best order, and had, I am glad to say, many beds unoccupied. It had one fault, however, which is common to all American interiors, the presence of the eternal, accursed, suffocating, red-hot

  demon of a stove whose breath would blight the purest air under heaven. There are two establishments for boys in the same neighborhood. One is called the Boylston School, and is an asylum for neglected and indigent boys who have committed no crime, but who in the ordinary course of things would very soon be purged of that distinction if they were not taken from the hungry streets and sent here. The other is a house of reformation for juvenile offenders.

  They are both under the same roof, but the two classes of boys never come in contact. The Boylston boys, as may be readily supposed, have very much the advantage of the others in point of personal appearance. They were in their school-room when I came upon them, and answered correctly without book such questions as where was England, how far was it, what was its population, its capital city, its form of government, and so forth. They sang a song, too, about a farmer

  sowing his seed with corresponding action as such parts as, "'Tis thus he sows, he turns him round, he claps his hand," which gave it a greater interest for them and accustomed them to act together in an orderly manner. They appeared exceedingly well-taught and not better-taught than fed for a more chubby-looking, full-waist-coated set of boys I never saw. The juvenile offenders had not such pleasant faces, by a great deal, and in this establishment there were many boys of color.

  I saw them first at their work, basket-making and the manufacture of palm-leaf hats, afterwards in their school, where they sang a chorus in praise of liberty, an odd and one would think rather aggravating theme for prisoners. These boys are divided into four classes, each denoted by a numeral worn on a badge upon the arm. On the arrival of a newcomer, he is put into the fourth or lowest class and left by good behavior

  to work his way up into the first. The design and object of this institution is to reclaim the youthful criminal by firm but kind and judicious treatment, to make his prison a place of purification and improvement, not of demoralization and corruption, to oppress upon him that there is but one path and that one sober industry which can ever lead him to happiness, to teach him how it must be trodden if his footsteps have never yet been led that way, and to lure him back to it

  if they have strayed. In a word, to snatch him from destruction and restore him to society a penitent and useful member. The importance of such an establishment in every point of view, and with reverence to every consideration of humanity and social policy, requires no comment. One other establishment closes the catalogue. It is the House of Corrections for the State, in which silence is strictly maintained but where the prisoners have the comfort and mental relief

  of seeing each other and of working together. This is the improved system of prison discipline which we have imported into England and which has been in successful operation among us for some years past. America, as a new and not overpopulated country, has in all her prisons the one great advantage of being enabled to find useful and profitable work for the inmates, whereas with us the prejudice against prison labor is naturally very strong and almost insurmountable when honest

  men who have not offended against the laws are frequently doomed to seek employment in vain. Even in the United States the principle of bringing convict labor and free labor into a competition which must obviously be to the disadvantage of the latter has already found many opponents whose number is not likely to diminish with excessive years. For this very reason though, our best prisons would seem at the first glance to be better conducted than those of

  America. The treadmill is conducted with little or no noise. Five hundred men may pick oakum in the same room without a sound, and both kinds of labor admit of such keen and vigilant superintendents as will render even a word of personal communication amongst the prisoners almost impossible. On the other hand, the noise of the loom, the forge, the carpenter's hammer, or the stone mason's saw greatly favor those opportunities of intercourse, hurried and brief no doubt but opportunities still

  which these several kinds of work, by rendering it necessary for men to be employed or very near to each other, and often side by side, without any barrier or partition between them, in their very nature present. A visitor, too, requires to reason and reflect a little before the sight of a number of men engaged in ordinary labor, such as he is accustomed to out of doors, would impress him half as strongly as the contemplation of the same persons in the same place and garb would if they

  were occupied in some task marked and degraded everywhere as belonging only to felons in jails. In an American state of prison or house of correction I found it difficult at first to persuade myself that I was really in a jail, a place of ignominious punishment and endurance, and to this hour I very much question whether the humane boast that it is not like one has its root in the true wisdom or philosophy of the matter. I hope I may not be misunderstood on this subject,

  for it is one in which I take a strong and deep interest. I incline as little to the sickly feeling which makes every canting lie or maudlin speech of a notorious criminal a subject of newspaper report and general sympathy, as I do to those good old customs of the good old times which made England even so recently as in the reign of the third King George in respect of her criminal code and her prison regulations one of the most bloody-minded and barbarous countries on the

  earth. If I thought it would do any good to the rising generation, I would cheerfully give my consent to the disinterment of the bones of any genteel highwaymen, the more genteel, the more cheerfully, and to their exposure, piecemeal, and any signpost, gate, or gibbet that might be deemed a good elevation for the purpose. My reason is as well convinced that these gentry were as utterly worthless and debauched villains as it is that the laws and jails hardened them in their evil courses,

  or that their wonderful escapes were affected by the prison turnkeys in those admirable days had always been felons themselves and were to the last their bosom friends and pot companions. At the same time I know, as all men do or should, that the subject of prison discipline is one of the highest important to any community, and that in her sweeping reform and bright example to other countries on this head, America has shown great wisdom, great benevolence, and exalted policy.

  In contrasting her system with that which we have modeled upon it, I merely seek to show that with all its drawbacks, ours has some advantages of its own. The House of Correction, which has led to these remarks, is not walled like other prisons, but is palisaded round about with tall rough stakes, something after the manner of an enclosure for keeping elephants in, as we see it represented in eastern prints and pictures. The prisoners wear a party-coloured dress, and those who are

  sentenced to hard labour work at nail-making or stone-cutting. When I was there the latter class of labourers were employed upon the stone for a new custom house in course of erection at Boston. They appeared to shape it skilfully and with expedition, though there were very few among them if any who had not acquired the art within the prison gates. The women, all in one large room, were employed in making light clothing, for New Orleans and the southern states. They did their

  work in silence like the men, and like them were overlooked by the person contracting for their labour or by some agent of his appointment. In addition to this, they are every moment liable to be visited by the prison officers appointed for that purpose. The arrangement for cooking, washing of clothes and so forth, are much upon the plan of those I have seen at home. Their mode of bestowing the prisoners at night, which is of general adoption,

  differs from ours and is both simple and effective. In the centre of a lofty area, lighted by windows and the four walls, are five tiers of cells, one above the other, each tier having before it a light iron gallery, attainable by stairs of the same construction and material excepting the lower one which is on the ground. Behind these, back to back with them, and facing the opposite wall, are five corresponding rows of cells

  accessible by similar means, so that, supposing the prisoners locked up in their cells, an officer stationed on the ground with his back to the wall has half their number under his eye at once, the remaining half being equally under the observation of another officer on the opposite side and all in one great apartment. Unless this watch be corrupted or sleeping on his post, it is impossible for a man to escape, for even in the event of his forcing the iron door of his cell

  without noise, which is exceedingly improbable, the moment he appears outside and steps into that one of the five galleries on which it is situated, he must be plainly and fully visible to the officer below. Each of these cells holds a small truckle bed in which one prisoner sleeps nevermore. It is small, of course, and the door being not solid but grated and without blind or curtain, the prisoner within is at all times exposed to the observation and inspection of any guard who may pass along

  that tier at any hour or minute of the night. Every day the prisoners receive their dinner, singly, through a trap in the kitchen wall, and each man carries his to his sleeping cell to eat where he is locked up alone for that purpose one hour. The whole of this arrangement struck me as being admirable, and I hope that the next new prison we erect in England may be built on this plan. I was given to understand that in this prison no swords or firearms or even cudgels are kept,

  nor is it probable that so long as its present excellent management continues, any weapon, offensive or defensive, will ever be required within its bounds. Such are the institutions at South Boston. In all of them the unfortunate or degenerate citizens of the State are carefully instructed in their duties both to God and man, are surrounded by all reasonable means of comfort and happiness that their condition will admit of, are appealed to

  as members of the great human family, however afflicted, indigent or fallen, are ruled by the strong heart and not by the strong though immensely weaker hand. I have described them at some length firstly because their worth demanded it, and second because I mean to take them for a model, and to content myself with saying of others we may come to, whose design and purposes are the same, that in this or that respect they practically fail or differ. I wish by this account of them,

  imperfect in its execution, but in its just intention honest, I could hope to convey to my readers one hundredth part of the gratification the sights I have described afforded me. To an Englishman, accustomed to the paraphernalia of Westminster Hall, an American court of law is as odd a sight as, I suppose, an English court of law would be to an American. Except in the Supreme Court at Washington, where the judges wear a plain black robe, there is

  no such thing as a wig or gown connected with the administration of justice. The gentlemen of the bar, being barristers and attorneys too, for there is no division of those functions as in England, are no more removed from their clients than attorneys in our court for the relief of insolvent debtors are from theirs. The jury are quite at home, and make themselves as comfortable as circumstances will permit. The witness is so little elevated above, or put aloof from,

  the crowd in the court, that a stranger entering during a pause in the proceedings would find it difficult to pick him out from the rest. And if a chance to be a criminal trial, his eyes, in nine cases out of ten, would wander to the dock in search of the prisoner in vain, for that gentleman would most likely be lounging among the most distinguished ornaments of the legal profession, whispering suggestions in his counsel's ear, or making a toothpick out of an

  old quill with his penknife. I could not but notice these differences when I visited the courts at Boston. I was much surprised at first too to observe that the counsel who interrogated the witness under examination at the time did so sitting. But seeing that he was also occupied in writing down the answers, and remembering that he was alone and had no junior, I quickly consoled myself with the reflection that law was not quite so expensive an article gear as at home,

  and that the absence of sundry formalities which we regard as indispensable had doubtless a very favorable influence upon the bill of costs. In every court, ample and commodious provision is made for the accommodation of the citizens. This is the case all through America. In every public institution the right of the people to attend and to have an interest in the proceedings is most fully and distinctly recognized. There are no grim doorkeepers to dole out their tardy

  civility by the Sixpennyworth, nor is there, I sincerely believe, any insolence of office of any kind. Nothing national is exhibited for money, and no public officer is a showman. We have begun of late years to imitate this good example. I hope we shall continue to do so, and that in the fullness of time even deans and chapters may be converted. In the civil court an action was trying for damages sustained in some accident upon a railway. The witnesses had been examined, and counsel was

  addressing the jury. The learned gentleman, like a few of his English brethren, was desperately long-winded and had a remarkable capacity of saying the same thing over and over again. His great theme was Warren the Engine Driver, whom he pressed into the service of every sentence he uttered. I listened to him for about a quarter of an hour, and coming out of court at the expiration of that time, without the faintest ray of enlightenment as to the merits of the case,

  felt as if I were at home again. In the prisoner's cell waiting to be examined by the magistrate on a charge of theft was a boy. This lad, instead of being committed to a common jail, would be sent to the asylum at South Boston and there taught a trade, and in the course of time he would be bound apprentice to some respectable master. Thus his detection in this offense, instead of being the prelude to a life of infamy and a miserable death, would lead, there was reasonable hope,

  to his being reclaimed from vice and becoming a worthy member of society. I am by no means a wholesale admirer of our legal solemnities, many of which impress me as being exceedingly ludicrous. Strange as it may seem, too, there is undoubtedly a degree of protection in the wig and gown, a dismissal of individual responsibility and dressing for the part which encourages that insolent bearing and language, and that gross perversion of the office of a pleader for the

  truth so frequent in our courts of law. Still I cannot help doubting whether America, in her desire to shake off the absurdities and abuses of the old system, may not have gone too far into the opposite extreme, and whether it is not desirable, especially in the small community of a city like this, where each man knows the other, to surround the administration of justice with some artificial barriers against the hail fellow well-met deportment of everyday life. All the aid it can have in the

  very high character and ability of the bench, not only here but elsewhere, it has and well deserves to have, but it may need something more, not to impress the thoughtful and the well-informed, but the ignorant and heedless, a class which includes some prisoners and many witnesses. These institutions were established, no doubt, upon the principle that those who had so large a share in making the laws would certainly respect them, but experience has proved this hope to be

  fallacious, for no man knew better than the judges of America that on the occasion of any great popular excitement the law is powerless and cannot, for the time, assert its own supremacy. The tone of society in Boston is one of perfect politeness, courtesy, and good breeding. The ladies are unquestionably very beautiful, in face, but there I am compelled to stop. Their education is much as with us, neither better nor worse. I had heard some very marvelous stories

  in this respect, but not believing them was not disappointed. Blue ladies there are in Boston, but like philosophers of that color and sex in most other latitudes, they rather desire to be thought superior than to be so. Evangelical ladies there are likewise, whose attachment to the forms of religion and horror of theatrical entertainments are most exemplary. Ladies who have a passion for attending lectures are to be found among all classes and all conditions. In this kind of

  provincial life which prevails in cities such as this, the pulpit has great influence. The peculiar province of the pulpit in New England, always accepting the Unitarian ministry, would appear to be the denouncement of all innocent and rational amusements. The city, the chapel, and the lecture room are the only means of excitement accepted, and to the church, the chapel, and the lecture room, the ladies resort in crowds. Wherever religion is resorted to,

  as a strong drink, and as an escape from the delmenotinous round of home, those of its ministers who pepper the highest will be the surest to please. They who strew the eternal path with the greatest amount of brimstone, and who most ruthlessly tread down the flowers and leaves that grow by the wayside, will be voted the most righteous, and they who enlarge with the greatest pertinency on the difficulty of getting into heaven will be considered by all true believers

  certain of going there, though it would be hard to say by what process of reasoning this conclusion is arrived at. It is so at home, and it is so abroad. With regard to the other means of excitement, the lecture, it has at least the merit of being always new. One lecture treads so quickly on the heels of another that none are remembered, and the course of this month may be safely repeated next with its charm of novelty unbroken and its interest unabated. The fruits of the earth have

  their growth in corruption. One of the rottenest of these things there has sprung up in Boston a sect of philosophers known as transcendentalists. On inquiring what this appellation might be supposed to signify, I was given to understand that whatever was unintelligible would certainly be transcendental. Not deriving much comfort from this elucidation, I pursued the inquiry still further, and found that the transcendentalists are followers of my friend Mr. Carlyle, or, I should

  rather say, of a follower of his, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson. This gentleman has written a volume of essays in which, among much that is dreamy and fanciful, if he will pardon me for saying so, there is much more that is true and manly, honest and bold. Transcendentalism has its occasional vagaries, what school has not, but it has good healthful qualities in spite of them, not least among the number a hearty disgust of Kant, and an aptitude to detect her in all the million varieties

  of her everlasting wardrobe, and therefore, if I were a Bostonian, I think I would be a transcendentalist. The only preacher I heard in Boston was Mr. Taylor, who addresses himself peculiarly to seamen, and who was once a mariner himself. I found his chapel down among the shipping, in one of the narrow old waterside streets, with a gay blue flag waving freely from its roof. In the gallery opposite to the pulpit were a little choir of male and female singers,

  a violin cello and a violin. The preacher always sat in the pulpit, which was raised on pillars, and ornamented behind him with painted drapery of a livery and somewhat theatrical appearance. He looked like a weather-beaten, hard-featured man, of about six or eight-and-fifty, with deep lines graven as it were into his face, dark hair, and a stern, keen eye. Yet the general character of his countenance was pleasant and agreeable.

  The service commenced with a hymn to which succeeded an extemporary prayer. It had the fault of frequent repetition incidental to all such prayers, but it was plain and comprehensive in its doctrines, and breathed the tone of general sympathy and charity, which is not so commonly a characteristic of this form of address in the deity as it might be. That done, he opened his discourse, taking for his text a passage from

  the Song of Solomon, laid upon the desk before the commencement of the service by some unknown member of the congregation. Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning on the arm of her beloved? He handled his text in all kinds of ways, and twisted it into all manner of shapes, but always ingeniously, and with a rude eloquence well adapted to the comprehension of his hearers. Indeed, if I may not mistaken, he studied their sympathies and understandings much more than the

  display of his own powers. His imagery was all drawn from the sea, and from the incidents of a seaman's life, and was often remarkably good. He spoke to them of that glorious man, Lord Nelson, and of Collingwood, and drew nothing in as the saying is by the head and shoulders, but brought it to bear upon his purpose naturally and with a sharp mind to its effect. Sometimes, when much excited with his subject, he had an odd way, compounded of John Bunyan and Balfour of

  Burley, of taking his great quarto Bible under his arm, and pacing up and down the pulpit with it looking steadily down meantime into the midst of the congregation. Thus, when he applied his text to the first assemblage of his hearers, and pictured the wonder of the church at their presumption in forming a congregation among themselves, he stopped short with his Bible under his arm in the matter I have described, and pursued his discourse after this matter.

  Who are these? Who are they? Who are these fellows? Where do they come from? Where are they going to? Come from? What's the answer? Leaning out of the pulpit and pointing downward with his right hand. From below, starting back again and looking at the sailors before him. From below, my brethren. From under the hatches of sin, battent down above you by the evil one, that's where you come from. A walk up and down the pulpit. And where are you going, stopping abruptly? Where are you going?

  A loft, very softly and pointing upward. A loft, louder. A loft, louder still. That's where you are going, with a fair wind, all taut and trim, steering direct for heaven in its glory, where there are no storms or foul weather, and where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. Another walk. That's where you're going to, my friends. That's it. That's the place. That's the port. That's the haven. It's a blessed harbour, still water there in all changes of the winds and

  tides. No driving ashore upon the rocks or slipping your cables and running out to sea there. Peace, peace, peace, all peace. Another walk and patting the Bible under his left arm. What, these fellows are coming from the wilderness, are they? Yes, from the dreary blighted wilderness of iniquity, whose only crop is death. But do they lean upon anything? Do they lean upon nothing, these poor seamen? Three raps upon the Bible. Oh, yes, yes. They lean upon the arm of their beloved.

  Three more raps. Upon the arm of their beloved. Three more and a walk. Pilot, guiding star and compass, all in one to all hands. Here it is. Three more. Here it is. They can do their seamen's duty manfully and be easy in their minds in the utmost peril and danger with this two more. They can come, even these poor fellows can come from the wilderness, leaning on the arm of their beloved and go up, up, up, raising his hand higher and higher at every repetition of the word,

  so that he stood with it at last stretched above his head, regarding them in a strange wrapped manner and pressing the book triumphantly to his breast until he gradually subsided into some other portion of his discourse. I have cited this rather as an instance of the preacher's eccentricities in his merits, though taken in connection with his look and manner and the character of his audience, even this was striking. It is possible, however, that my favorable impression of him may have been

  greatly influenced and strengthened firstly by his impressing upon his hearers that the true observance of religion was not inconsistent with its earful deportment and an exact discharge of the duties of their station which, indeed, it scrupulously required of them, and secondly, by his cautioning them not to set up any monopoly in paradise and its mercies. I never heard these two points so wisely touched, if indeed I have ever heard them touched at all, by any preacher

  of that kind before. Having passed the time I spent in Boston in making myself acquainted with these things, and settling the course I should take in my future travels, and in mixing constantly with its society, I am not aware that I have any occasion to prolong this chapter. Some of its social customs, as I have not mentioned, however, may be told in a very few words. The usual dinner hour is two o'clock. A dinner party takes place at five, and at an evening

  party they seldom sup later than eleven, so that it goes hard but one gets home even from a route by midnight. I never could find out any difference between a party at Boston and a party in London, saving that at the former place all assemblies are held at more rational hours, that the conversation may possibly be a little louder and more cheerful, and a guest is usually expected to ascend to the very top of the house to take his cloak off, that he is certain to see, at every

  dinner, an unusual amount of poultry on the table, and at every supper at least two mighty bowls of hot stewed oysters, in any one of which a half-grown Duke of Clarence might be smothered easily. There are two theatres in Boston of good size and construction but sadly in want of patronage. The few ladies who resort to them set as of right in the front rows of the boxes. The bar is a large room with a stone floor, and there people stand and smoke and lounge about

  all the evening, dropping in and out as the humour takes them. There too the stranger is initiated into the mysteries of gin-sling, cocktail, sangary, mint julep, sherry-combler, timber-doodle, and other rare drinks. The house is full of boarders, both married and single, many of whom sleep upon the premises and contract by the week for their board and lodging, the charge for which diminishes as they go nearer the sky to roost. A public table is laid in a very handsome hall for breakfast,

  and for dinner, and for supper. The party sitting down together to these meals will vary in number from one to two hundred, sometimes more. The advent of each of these epochs in the day is proclaimed by an awful gong which shakes the very window-frames as it reverberates through the house and horribly disturbs nervous forerunners. There is an ordinary for ladies, and an ordinary for gentlemen. In our private room the cloth could not for any earthly consideration have been laid

  for dinner without a huge glass dish of cranberries in the middle of the table, and breakfast would have been no breakfast unless the principal dish were a deformed beef-steak with a great flat bone in the centre, swimming in hot butter and sprinkled with the very blackest of all possible pepper. Our bedroom was spacious and airy, but like every bedroom on this side of the Atlantic, very bare of furniture, having no curtains to the French bed-stead or to the window.

  It had one unusual luxury, however, in the shape of a wardrobe of painted wood, something smaller than an English watch-box. Or if this comparison should be insufficient to convey a just idea of its dimensions, they may be estimated from the fact of my having lived for fourteen days and nights in the firm belief that it was a shower-bath. End of chapter three.

• 05 - An American Railroad. Lowell and its Factory System

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  CHAPTER IV. An American Railroad, Lowell and its Factory System. Before leaving Boston, I devoted one day to an excursion to Lowell. I assign a separate chapter to this visit, not because I am about to describe it at any great length, but because I remember it as a thing

  by itself, and am desirous that my readers should do the same. I made acquaintance with an American railroad on this occasion for the first time. As these works are pretty much alike all through the States, their general characteristics are easily described. There are no first and second-class carriages, as with us, but there is a gentleman's car and a

  lady's car. The main distinction between them, which is that in the first everybody smokes, and in the second nobody does. As a black man never travels with a white one, there is also a negro car, which is a great blundering clumsy chest such as Gulliver put to sea in from the kingdom of Brobdingnag. There is a great deal of jolting, a great deal

  of noise, a great deal of wall, not much window, a locomotive engine, a shriek and a bell. The cars are like shabby omnibuses, but larger, holding thirty, forty, fifty people. The seats, instead of stretching from end to end, are placed crosswise. Each seat holds two persons. There is a long row of them on each side of the caravan, a narrow passage up

  the middle and a door at both ends. In the centre of the carriage there is usually a stove fed with charcoal or anthracite coal, which is for the most part red-hot. It is insufferably close, and you see the hot air fluttering between yourself and any other object you may happen to look at like the ghost of smoke. In the lady's car there are a great

  many gentlemen who have ladies with them. There are also a great many ladies who have nobody with them, for any lady may travel alone from one end of the United States to the other and be certain of the most courteous and considerate treatment everywhere. The conductor or check-taker or guard or whatever he may be wears no uniform. He walks

  up and down the car and in and out of it as his fancy dictates, leans against the door with his hands in his pockets and stares at you if you chance to be a stranger or enters into conversation with the passengers about him. A great many newspapers are pulled out, and a few of them are read. Everybody talks to you or to anybody else who hits his fancy. If

  you are an Englishman he expects that the railroad is pretty much like an English railroad. If you say no he says yes, interrogatively, and asks in what respect they differ. You enumerate the heads of difference one by one and he says yes, still interrogatively, to each. Then he guesses that you don't travel faster in England, and on your replying

  that you do says yes, again, still interrogatively, and it is quite evident don't believe it. After a long pause he remarks, partly to you and partly to the knob on the top of his stick, that Yankees are reckoned to be considerable of a go-ahead people too, upon which you say yes, and then he says yes again, affirmatively this time, and upon your looking

  out a window tells you that behind that hill, and some three miles from the next station, there is a clever town and a smart location where he expects you to have concluded to stop. Your answer in the negative naturally leads to more questions in reference to your intended route, always pronounced route, and whatever you are going you invariably

  learn that you can't get there without immense difficulty and danger, and that all the great sights are somewhere else. If a lady takes a fancy to any male passenger's seat, the gentleman who accompanies her gives him notice of the fact, and immediately vacates it with great politeness.

  Politics are much discussed, so are banks, so is cotton. Quiet people avoid the question of the presidency, for there will be a new election in three years and a half, and party feeling runs very high, the great constitutional feature of this institution being that directly the acrimony of the last election is over, the acrimony of the next one

  begins, which is an unspeakable comfort to all strong politicians and true lovers of their country, that is to say to ninety-nine men and boys out of every ninety-nine and a quarter. Except when a branch road joins the main one, there is seldom more than one track of rails, so that the road is very narrow, and the view, where there is a deep cutting, by no

  means extensive. When there is not, the character of the scenery is always the same. Mile after mile of stunted trees, some hewn down by the axe, some blown down by the wind, some half fallen and resting on their neighbours, many mere logs half hidden in the swamp, others moulded away to spongy chips. The very soil of the earth is made up of minute fragments

  such as these. Each pool of stagnant water has its crust of vegetable rottenness. On every side there are the boughs and trunks and stumps of trees, in every possible stage of decay, decomposition and neglect. Now you emerge for a few brief minutes on an open country, glittering with some bright lake or pool, broad as many an English river, but so small

  here that it scarcely has a name. Now catch hasty glimpses of a distant town, with its clean white houses and their cool piazzas, its prim new England church and schoolhouse, when whir, almost before you have seen the same dark screen, the stunted trees, the stumps, the logs, the stagnant water, all so like the last that you seem to have been

  transported back again by magic. The train calls at stations in the woods, where the wild impossibility of anybody having the smallest reason to get out is only to be equal by the apparently desperate hopelessness of there being anybody to get in. It rushes across the turnpike road, where there is no gate, no policeman, no signal, nothing

  but a rough wooden arch on which is painted, When the bell rings, look out for the locomotive. On it whirls headlong, dives through the woods again, emerges in the light, clatters over frail arches, rumbles upon the heavy ground, shoots beneath a wooden bridge, which intercepts the light for a second like a wink, suddenly awakens all the slumbering

  echoes in the main street of a large town, and dashes on haphazard, pale-mell, neck or nothing, down the middle of the road. There, with mechanics working at their trades, and people leaning from their doors and windows, and boys flying kites and playing marbles, and men smoking and women talking, and children crawling and pigs burrowing and

  unaccustomed horses plunging and rearing, close to the very rails, there, on, on, on, tears the mad dragon of an engine, with its train of cars, scattering in all directions a shower of burning sparks from its wood fire, screeching, hissing, yelling, panting, until at last the thirsty monster stops beneath the covered way to drink, the people

  cluster round, and you have time to breathe again. I was met at the station at Lowell, like a gentleman intimately connected with the management of the factories there, and gladly putting myself under his guidance, drove off at once to that quarter of the town in which the works the object of my visit were situated.

  Although only just of age, for if my recollection serves me, it has been a manufacturing town barely one in twenty years, Lowell is a large populous thriving place. Those indications of its youth, which first attracted the eye, give it a quaintness and audity of character which, to a visitor from the old country, is amusing enough. It was a very

  dirty winter's day, and nothing in the whole town looked old to me except the mud, which in some parts was almost knee-deep, and might have been deposited there on the subsiding of the waters after the deluge. In one place there was a new wooden church, which, having no steeple and being yet unpainted, looked like an enormous packing-case without

  any direction upon it. In another there was a large hotel, whose walls and colonnades were so crisp and thin and slight that it had exactly the appearance of being built with cards. I was careful not to draw my breath as we passed, and trembled when I saw a workman come out upon the roof, lest with one thoughtless stamp of his foot he should crash

  the structure beneath him and bring it rattling down. The very river that moves the machinery in the mills, for they are all worked by water power, seems to acquire a new character from the fresh buildings of bright red brick and painted wood among which it takes its course, and to be as light-headed, thoughtless, and brisk a young river in its

  murmurings and tumblings as one would desire to see. One would swear that every bakery, grocery, and book-bindery, and other kinds of store, took its shutters down for the first time and started in business yesterday. The golden pestles and mortars fixed as signs upon the sun- blind frames outside the druggists appears to have been just turned out

  of the United States mint, and when I saw a baby of some week or ten days old in a woman's arms at a street corner, I found myself unconsciously wondering where it came from, never supposing for an instant that it could have been born in such a young town as that. There are several factories in Lowell, each of which belongs to what

  we should term a company of proprietors, but what they call in America a corporation. I went over several of these, such as a woolen factory, a carpet factory, and a cotton factory, examined them in every part, and saw them in their ordinary working aspect with no preparation of any kind or departure from their ordinary everyday proceedings. I may

  add that I am well acquainted with our manufacturing towns in England, and have visited many mills in Manchester and elsewhere in the same manner. I happened to arrive at the first factory just as the dinner hour was over, and the girls were returning to their work. Indeed, the stares of the mill were thronged with them as I ascended. They were

  all well dressed, but not to my thinking, above their condition, for I like to see the humbler classes of society carefully in their dress and appearance, and even, if they please, decorate it with such little trinkets as come within the compass of their means. Supposing I get confined within reasonable limits, I would always encourage this kind of

  pride as a worthy element of self-respect in any person I employed, and should no more be deterred from doing so because some wretched female referred her fall to a love of dress than I would allow my construction of the real intent and meaning of the Sabbath to be influenced by any warning to the well-disposed, founded on his backslidings on that

  particular day which might emanate from the rather doteful authority of a murderer in Newgate. These girls, as I have said, were all well dressed, and that phrase necessarily includes extreme cleanliness. They have serviceable bonnets, good warm cloaks and shawls, and were not above clogs and

  patterns. Moreover, there were places in the mill in which they could deposit these things without injury, and there were conveniences for washing. They were healthy in appearance, many of them remarkably so, and had the manners and deporpent of young women, not of degraded brutes of burden. If I had seen in one of these mills, but I did not,

  though I looked for something of this kind with a sharp eye, the most lisping, mincing, affected and ridiculous young creature that my imagination could suggest, I should have thought of the careless, moping, slatternly degraded dull reverse, I have seen that, and should have been still well pleased to look upon her. The rooms in which they

  worked were as well ordered as themselves. In the windows of some there were green plants which were trained to shade the glass. In all there was as much fresh air, cleanliness and comfort as the nature of the occupation would possibly admit of. Oh, to so large a number of females, many of whom were only then just verging upon womanhood, it

  may be reasonably supposed that some were delicate and fragile in appearance, no doubt they were. But I solemnly declare that from all the crowd I saw in the different factories that day, I cannot recall or separate one young face that gave me a painful impression, not one young girl whom, assuming it to be a matter of necessity that she should gain

  her daily bread by the labour of her hands, I would have removed from those works if I had had the power. They reside in various boarding houses near at hand. The owners of the mills are particularly careful to allow no persons to enter upon the possession of these houses whose characters have not undergone the most

  searching and thorough inquiry. Any complaint that is made against them by the borders or by anyone else is fully investigated, and if good ground of complaint be shown to exist against them they are removed and their occupation is handed over to some more deserving person. There are a few children employed in these factories, but not many. The laws of

  the State forbid their working more than nine months of the year and require that they be educated during the other three. For this purpose there are schools in Lowell, and there are churches and chapels of various persuasions in which the young women may observe that form of worship in which they have been educated. At some distance from the

  factories and on the highest and pleasantest ground in the neighbourhood stands their hospital or boarding-house for the sick. It is the best house in those parts, and was built by an eminent merchant for his own residence. Like that institution at Boston, which I have before described, it is not parceled out into wards, but is divided into

  convenient chambers, each of which has all the comforts of a very comfortable home. The principal medical attendant resides under the same roof, and were the patient's members of his own family they could not be better cared for or attended with greater gentleness and consideration. The weekly charge in this establishment for each female

  patient is three dollars, or twelve shillings English, but no girl employed by any of the corporations is ever excluded for want of the means of payment. That they do not very often want the means may be gathered from the fact that in July 1841 no fewer than 978 of these girls were depositors in the Lowell Savings Bank, the amount of whose

  joint savings was estimated at one hundred thousand dollars, or twenty thousand English pounds. I am now going to state three facts which will startle a large class of readers on this side of the Atlantic very much. Firstly, there is a joint stock piano in many of the great boarding houses. Secondly, nearly

  all these young ladies subscribe to circulating libraries. Thirdly, they have got up among themselves a periodical called The Lowell Offering, a repository of original articles written exclusively by females actively employed in the mills, which is duly printed, published and sold, and whereof I brought away from Lowell four hundred good solid pages which I

  have read from beginning to end. The large class of readers, startled by these facts, will exclaim with one voice how very preposterous, on my deferentially inquiring why, they will answer, these things are above their station. In reply to that objection I would beg to ask what their station is. It is their station, and they do work. They labor in these

  mills upon an average twelve hours a day, which is unquestionably work and pretty tight work, too. Perhaps it is above their station to indulge in such amusements on any terms. Are we quite sure that we in England have not formed our ideas of the station of working people from accustoming ourselves to the contemplation of that class as they are,

  and not as they might be? I think that if we examine our own feelings we shall find that the pianos and the circulating libraries, and even the Lowell Offering, startle us by their novelty and not by their bearing upon any abstract question of right or wrong. For myself, I know no station in which the occupation of to-day cheerfully done and the

  occupation of to-morrow cheerfully looked to, any one of these pursuits is not most humanizing and laudable. I know no station which is rendered more endurable to the person in it, or more safe to the person out of it, by having ignorance for its associate. I know no station which has a right to monopolize the means of mutual instruction, improvement, and

  rational entertainment which has ever continued to be a station very long after seeking to do so. On the merits of the Lowell Offering as a literary production, I will only observe, putting entirely out of sight the fact of the articles having been written by these girls after the arduous labours of the

  day, that it will compare advantageously with the great many English annuals. It is pleasant to find that many of its tales are of the ideals, and of those who work in them, that they inculcate habits of self-denial and contentment, and teach good doctrines of enlarged benevolence. A strong feeling for the beauties of nature is displayed

  in the solitudes the writers have left at home, breezed through its pages like a wholesale village air, and though a circulating library is a favorable school for the study of such topics, it is very scant allusion to fine clothes, fine marriages, fine houses, or fine life. Some persons might object to the papers being signed occasionally with

  rather fine names, but this is an American fashion. One of the provinces of the State Legislature of Massachusetts is to alter ugly names into pretty ones, as the children improve upon the taste of their parents. These changes costing very little or nothing, scores of Mary Anne's are solemnly converted into bevelinas every season. It is said

  that on the occasion of a visit from General Jackson or General Harrison to this town—I forget which, but it is not to the purpose—he walked through three miles and a half of these young ladies all dressed out with parasols and silk stockings. But as I am not aware that any worse consequence ensued than a sudden looking up of all the parasols

  and silk stockings in the market, and perhaps the bankruptcy of some speculative New Englander who bought them all up at any price in expectation of a demand that never came, I set no great store by the circumstance. In this brief account of Lowell, an inadequate expression of the

  gratification it yielded me, and cannot fail to afford to any foreigner to whom the condition of such people at home is a subject of interest and anxious speculation, I have carefully abstained from drawing a comparison between these factories and those of our own land. Many of the circumstances whose strong influence has been at work for years

  in our manufacturing towns have not arisen here, and there is no manufacturing population in Lowell, so to speak, for these girls, often the daughters of small farmers, come from other states, remain a few years in the mills, and then go home for good. The contrast would be a strong one, for it would be between the good and evil, the living light

  and deepest shadow. I abstain from it because I deem it just to do so. But I only the more earnestly abjure all those whose eyes may rest on these pages to pause and reflect upon the difference between this town and those great haunts of desperate misery, to call to mind if they can in the midst of party strife and squabble the efforts that must be made

  to purge them of their suffering and danger, and last and foremost to remember how precious time is rushing by. I returned at night by the same railroad and in the same kind of car. One of the passengers being exceedingly anxious to expound at great length to my companion, not to me, of course, the true principles on

  which books of travel in America should be written by Englishmen, I feigned to fall asleep. But glancing all the way out at window from the corners of my eyes, I found abundance of entertainment for the rest of the ride in watching the effects of the wood fire, which had been invisible in the morning, but were now brought out in full relief by the

  darkness, for we were travelling in a whirlwind of bright sparks which showered about us like a storm of fiery snow.

• 06 - Worcester. The Connecticut River. Hartford. New Haven. To New York

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  V. WURSTER, THE CONNECTICOT RIVER, HARTFORD, NEW HAVEN, TO NEW YORK. Leaving Boston on the afternoon of Saturday the 5th of February, we proceeded by another railroad to Worster, a pretty New England town where we had arranged to remain under the hospitable roof of the Governor of the State until Monday morning. These towns and cities of New England, many of which would be villages in Old England, are as favourable

  specimens of rural America as their people are of rural Americans. The well-trimmed lawns and green meadows of home are not there, and the grass compared with our ornamental plots and pastures is rank and rough and wild, but delicate slopes of land, gently swelling hills, wooded valleys and slender streams abound. Every little colony of houses has its church and schoolhouse peeping from among the white roofs and shady trees. Every house is the

  whitest of the white, every Venetian blind the greenest of the green, every fine day's sky the bluest of the blue. A sharp dry wind and a slight frost had so hardened the roads that when we alighted at Worster, and their furrowed tracks were like ridges of granite. There was the unusual aspect of newness on every object, of course. All the buildings looked as if they had been built and painted that morning, and could be taken down on Monday

  with very little trouble. In the keen evening air, every sharp outline looked a hundred times sharper than ever. The clean cardboard colonnades had no more perspective than a Chinese bridge on a teacup, and appeared equally well calculated for use. The razor-like edges of the detachable cottages seemed to cut the very wind as it whistled against them, and to send it smarting on its way with a shriller cry than before. Those

  slightly built wooden dwellings behind which the sun was setting with a brilliant luster could be so looked through and through that the idea of any inhabitant being able to hide himself from the public gaze, or to have any secrets from the public eye, was not entertainable for a moment. Even where a blazing fire shone through the uncurtained windows of some distant house, it had the air of being newly lighted and of lacking warmth. And instead of awakening

  thoughts of a snug chamber, bright with faces that first saw the light round that same hearth, and ruddy with warm hangings, it came upon one suggestive of the smell of new mortar and damp walls. So I thought at least that evening. Next morning, when the sun was shining brightly and the clear church bells were ringing, and sedate people in their best clothes enlivened the

  pathways near at hand and dotted the distant thread of road, there was a pleasant Sabbath peacefulness on everything, which it was good to feel. It would have been better for an old church, better still for some old graves, but as it was, a wholesome repose and tranquillity pervaded the scene, which after the restless ocean and the hurried city had a doubly grateful influence on the spirits.

  We went on, next morning, still by railroad, to Springfield, from that place to Hartford. Whether we were bound, it is a distance of only five and twenty miles, but at that time of the year the roads were so bad that the journey would probably have occupied ten or twelve hours. Fortunately, however, the winter having been unusually mild, the Connecticut River was open, or in other words, not frozen. The captain of a small steamboat was going

  to make his first trip for the season that day, the second February trip, I believe, within the memory of man, and only waited for us to go on board. Accordingly, we went on board, with as little delay as might be. He was as good as his word and started directly. It certainly was not called a small steamboat without reason. I omitted to ask the question, that I should think it must have been of about half a pony power. Mr. Papp, the celebrated

  dwarf, might have lived and died happily in the cabin, which was fitted with common sash windows like an ordinary dwelling-house. These windows had bright red curtains, too, hung on slack strings across the lower panes, so that it looked like the parlour of a Lilliputian public house, which had got afloat in a flood or some or other water accident, and was drifting like nobody knew where. But even in this chamber there was a rocking-chair. It would be impossible

  to get on anywhere in America without a rocking-chair. I am afraid to tell how many feet short this vessel was, or how many feet narrow to apply the word's length and width to such measurement would be a contradiction in terms. But I may state that we all kept the middle of the deck lest the boat should unexpectedly tip over, and that the machinery, by some surprising process of condensation, worked between it and the keel, the whole forebeg a warm sandwich

  about three feet thick. It rained all day, as once I thought it never did rain anywhere but in the highlands of Scotland. The river was full of floating blocks of ice which were constantly crunching and cracking under us, and the depth of water in the course we took to avoid the larger masses carried down the middle of the river by the current did not exceed a few inches.

  Nevertheless we moved onward, dexterously, and, being well wrapped up, bad defiance to the weather and enjoyed the journey. The Connecticut River is a fine stream, and the banks in summer time are, I have no doubt, beautiful. At all events I was told so by a young lady in the cabin, and she should be a judge of beauty if the possession of quality include the appreciation of it for a more beautiful creature I never looked upon.

  After two hours and a half of this odd travelling, including a stoppage at a small town where we were saluted by a gun considerably bigger than our own chimney, we reached Hartford, and straightway repaired to an extremely comfortable hotel, except, as usual, in the article of bedrooms, which in almost every place we visited were very conducive to early rising. We tarried here four days. The town is beautifully situated in a basin of green hills, the soil

  is rich, well wooded, and carefully improved. It is the seat of the local legislature of Connecticut, whose sage body enacted in by-god times the renowned code of blue laws, in virtue whereof, among other enlightened provisions, any citizen who could be proved to have kissed his wife on Sunday was punishable, I believe, with the stocks. Too much of the old Puritan spirit exists in these parts to the present hour, but its influence has not tended, that

  I know, to make the people less hard in their bargains or more equal in their dealings. As I never heard of its working that effect anywhere else, I infer that it never will here. Indeed, I am accustomed with reference to great professions and severe faces to judge of the goods of the other world pretty much as I judge of the goods of this, and wherever I see a dealer in such commodities with too great a display of them in his window, I doubt

  the quality of the article within. In Hartford stands the famous oak in which the charter of King Charles was hidden. It is now englossed in a gentleman's garden. In the State House is the charter itself. I found the courts of law here just the same as at Boston, the public institutions almost as good. The insane asylum is admirably conducted, and so is the institution for the deaf and

  dumb. I very much question within myself as I walk through the insane asylum whether I should have known the attendance from the patients, but for the few words which passed between the former and the doctor in reference to the persons under their charge. Of course, I limit this remark merely to their looks, for the conversation of the mad people was mad enough.

  There was one little prim old lady, of very smiling and good-humoured appearance, who came sidling up to me from the end of a long passage, and with a curtsy of inexpressible condescension, propounded the unaccountable inquiry, "'Does Pontefract still flurry, sir, upon the soil of England?' "'He does, ma'am,' I rejoined.

  "'When you last saw him, sir, he was—' "'Well, ma'am,' said I, extremely well. He begged me to present his compliments. I never saw him looking better. At this the old lady was very much delighted. After glancing at me for a moment, as if to be quite sure that I was serious in my respectful air, she sidled back some paces, sidled forward again, made a sudden skip, at which I perceptibly retreated

  a step or two, and said, "'I am an anti-deluvian, sir.' I thought the best thing to say was that I suspected as much from the first. Therefore I said so. "'It is an extremely proud and pleasant thing, sir, to be an anti-deluvian,' said the old

  lady. "'I should think it was, ma'am,' I rejoined. The old lady kissed her hand, gave another skip, smirked and sidled down the gallery in a most extraordinary manner, and ambled gracefully into her own bed-chamber. In another part of the building there was a male patient in bed, very much flushed and heated.

  "'Well,' said he, starting up and pulling off his nightcap, "'it's all settled at last. I have arranged it with Queen Victoria.' "'Arranged what?' asked the doctor. "'Why, that business,' passing his hand wearily across his forehead, "'about the siege of New York.'

  "'Oh!' said I, like a man suddenly enlightened, for he looked at me for an answer. "'Yes. Every house without a signal will be fired upon by British troops. No harm shall be done to the others. No harm at all. Those that want to be safe must hoist flags. That's all they have to do, they must hoist flags.' "'Even while he was speaking, he seemed,' I thought, to have some faint idea that his

  talk was incoherent. Directly he had said these words, he laid down again, gave a kind of a groan, and covered his hot head with the blankets. There was another, a young man whose madness was love and music. After playing on the accordion a marty had composed, he was very anxious that I should walk into his chamber, which I immediately did. By way of being very knowing and hubring him to the top of his bent, I went to the window which

  commanded a beautiful prospect, and remarked, with an address upon which I greatly plume myself, "'With a delicious country you have about these lodgings of yours.' "'Pah!' said he, moving his figures carelessly across the notes of his instrument. "'Well, enough for such an institution as this.' I don't think I was ever so taken aback in all my life.

  "'I come here just for a whim,' he said coolly. "'That's all.' "'Oh, that's all,' said I. "'Yes, that's all. The doctor's a smart-bad. He quite enters into it. It's a joke of mine. I like it for a time. You didn't mention it. But I think I shall go out next Tuesday.'

  I assured him that I would consider our interview perfectly confidential, and rejoined the doctor. As we were passing through a gallery on our way out, a well-dressed lady of quiet and composed manners came up and proffered a slip of paper and a pen, begging that I would oblige her with an autograph. I complied, and we parted. "'I think I remember having had a few interviews like that with ladies out of doors. I hope

  she is not mad.' "'Yes.' "'On what subject? Autographs?' "'No, she hears voices in the air.' "'Well,' thought I. It would be well if we could shut up a few false prophets of these

  later times, who have professed to do the same, and I should like to try the experiment of a Mormonist or two to begin with. In this place there is the best jail for untried offenders in the world. There is also a very well-ordered state prison arranged upon the same plan as that of Boston, except that here there is always a sentry on the wall with a loaded gun. It contained at that time about two hundred prisoners. A spot was shown me in the sleeping-ward

  where a watchman was murdered some years since, in the dead of night, in a desperate attempt to escape made by a prisoner who had broken from his cell. A woman, too, was pointed out to me, who, for the murder of her husband, had been a close prisoner for sixteen years. "'Do you think,' I asked of my conductor, "'that after so very long an imprisonment she has any thought or hope of ever regaining her liberty?'

  "'Oh dear, yes,' he answered, "'to be sure she has. She has no chance of obtaining it, I suppose.' "'Well, I don't know,' which, by the by, is a national answer. Her friends mistrust her. What have they to do with it?' I naturally inquired. "'Well, they won't petition.'

  "'But if they did, they couldn't get her out, I suppose.' "'Well, not the first time, perhaps, nor yet the second. But tiring and wearying for a few years might do it. Does that ever do it?' "'Why, yes, that'll do it sometimes. Political friends'll do it sometimes. It's pretty often done one way or another.'

  "'I shall always entertain a very pleasant and grateful recollection of Hartford. It is a lovely place, and I had many friends there which I can never remember with indifference. We left it with no little regret on the evening of Friday the 11th, and travelled that night by railroad to New Haven. Upon the way the guard and I were formally introduced to each other, as we usually were on such occasions, and exchanged a variety of small talk. We

  We reach New Haven at about eight o'clock after a journey of three hours, and put up for the night at the best end. New Haven, known also as the City of Elms, is a fine town. Many of its streets, as its alias sufficiently imports, are planted with rows of grand old elm trees, and the same natural ornaments surround Yale College, an establishment of considerable eminence and

  reputation. The various departments of this institution are erected in a kind of park or common in the middle of town, where they are dimly visible among the shadowing trees. The effect is very like that of an old cathedral yard in England, and when their branches are in full leaf must be extremely picturesque. Even in the wintertime these groups of well-grown trees, clustering among the busy streets and houses of a thriving city, have a very quaint

  appearance, seeming to bring about a kind of compromise between town and country, as if each had met the other half way, and shaken hands upon it, which is at once novel and pleasant. After a night's rest we rose early, and in good time went down to the wharf and on board the pack at New York for New York. This was the first American steamboat of any size that

  I had seen, and certainly to an English eye it was infinitely less like a steamboat than a huge floating bath. I could hardly persuade myself, indeed, but that the bathing establishments off Westminster Bridge, which I left a baby, had suddenly grown to an enormous size, ran away from home, and set up foreign parts as a steamer. Being in America too, which our vagabonds do so particularly favour, it seemed the more probable. The great difference in

  appearance between these packets and ours is that there is so much of them out of the water, the main deck being enclosed on all sides and filled with casks and goods, like any second or third floor in a stack of warehouses, and the promenade or hurricane deck being atop of that again, a part of the machinery is always above this deck, where the connecting rod in a strong and lofty frame is seen working away like an iron top-sawyer. There is seldom

  any mast or tackle, nothing aloft but two tall black chimneys. The man at the helm is shut up in a little house in the fore part of the boat, the wheel being connected with the rudder by iron chains working the whole length of the deck, and the passengers, unless the weather be very fine indeed, usually congregate below. Directly you have left the wharf all the life and stir and bustle of a packet cease. You

  wonder for a long time how she goes on, for there seems to be nobody in charge of her, and when another of these dull machines come splashing by, you feel quite indignant with it as a sullen, cumbrous, ungraceful, unshiplike Leviathan, quite forgetting that the vessel you are on board of is its very counterpart. There is always a clerk's office on this lower deck where you pay your fare, a ladies' cabin, baggage and stowage rooms, engineer's room,

  and in short a great variety of perplexities which render the discovery of the gentleman's cabin a matter of some difficulty. It often occupies the whole length of the boat as it did in this case, and has three or four tiers of berths on each side. When I first descended into the cabin of the New York, it looked in my unaccustomed eyes about as long as the Burlington Arcade. The sound which has to be crossed on this passage is not always

  a very safe or pleasant navigation, and has been the scene of some unfortunate accidents. It was a wet morning and very misty, and we soon lost sight of land. The day was calm, however, and brightened towards noon. After exhausting, with good help from a friend, the larder, and the stock of bottled beer, I lay down to sleep, being very much tired with the fatigues of yesterday. But I woke from my nap in time to hurry up and see Hellgate,

  the Hogsback, the Frying-pan, and other notorious localities attractive to all readers of famous Diederich Knickerbocker's history. We were now in a narrow channel, with sloping banks on either side, besprinkled with pleasant villas, and made refreshing to the sight by turf and trees. Soon we shot in quick succession past a lighthouse, a madhouse, how the lunatics flung up their caps and roared in sympathy with the headlong engine and the driving tide,

  a jail, and other buildings, and so emerged into a noble bay whose waters sparkled in the now cloudless sunshine like nature's eyes turned up to Heaven. Then there lay stretched out before us, to the right, confused heaps of buildings, with here and there a spire or steeple, looking down upon the herd below, and here and there again a cloud of lazy smoke, and in the foreground a forest of ships massed, cheery with flapping sails and waving flags,

  crossing from among them to the opposite shore, where steam ferry boats, laden with people, couches, horses, wagons, baskets, boxes, crossed and recrossed by other ferry boats, all travelling to and fro and never idle. Stately among these restless insects were two or three large ships, moving with slow, majestic pace, as creatures of a prouder kind, disdainful of their puny journeys and making for the broad sea. Beyond were shining

  heights and islands and the glancing river, at a distance scarcely less blue and bright than the sky it seemed to meet, the city's hum and buzz, the clinking of capstans, the ringing of bells, the barking of dogs, the clattering of wheels tingled in the listening ear, all of which life and stir coming across the stirring water caught new life and animation from its free companionship, and sympathizing with its buoyant spirits glistened as it seemed

  in sport upon its surface, and hemmed the vessel round and plashed the water high about her sides, and floating her gallantly into the dock, flew off again to welcome other comers and speed before them to the busy port.

• 07 - New York

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  CHAPTER VI. New York. The beautiful metropolis of America is by no means so clean a city as Boston, but many of its streets have the same characteristics, except that the houses are not quite so fresh-coloured, the sign-boards are

  not quite so gaudy, the gilded letters not quite so golden, the bricks not quite so red, the stone not quite so white, the blinds and area railings not quite so green, the knobs and plates upon the street-doors not quite so bright and twinkling. There are many by-streets, almost as neutral in clean colours, and positive in dirty ones, as by-streets in

  London. And there is one quarter, commonly called the Five Points, which in respect of filth and wretchedness, may be safely backed against Seven Dials or any other part of famed St. Giles's. The great promenade and thoroughfare, as most people know, is Broadway, a wide and bustling street which, from the Battery Gardens to its opposite termination in a

  country road, may be four miles long. Shall we sit down in an upper floor of the Carlton Host Hotel, situated in the best part of this main archery of New York, and when we are tired of looking down upon the life below, sally forth arm in arm and mingle with the stream? Warm weather! The sun strikes upon our heads at this open window, as though

  its rays were concentrated through a burning glass, but the day is in its zenith, and the season an unusual one. Was there ever such a sunny street as this Broadway? The pavement stones are polished with the tread of feet until they shine again. The red bricks of the houses might be yet in the dry hot kilns, and the roofs of those omnibuses look as though,

  if water were poured on them, they would hiss and smoke and smell like half-quenched fires. No stint of omnibuses here. Half a dozen have gone by within as many minutes. Plenty of hackney cabs and coaches, too. Gigs, Phaetons, large-wheeled Tilburys, and private carriages, rather of a clumsy make and not very different from the public vehicles, but built

  for the heavy roads beyond the city pavement. Negro coachmen in white, in straw hats, black hats, white hats, glazed caps, fur caps, in coats of drab, black, brown, green, blue, nanking, striped jean and linen, and there in that one instance, look while it passes or it will be too late, in suits of livery. Some southern Republican that, who puts his

  blacks in uniform and swales with sultan pomp and power, yonder, with that Phaeton with the well-clipped pair of greys has stopped, standing at their heads now, is a Yorkshire groom, who has not been very long in these parts, and looks sorrowfully round for a companion pair of top-boots, which he may traverse the city half a year without meeting. Heaven save

  the ladies how they dress! We have seen more colours in these ten minutes than we should have seen elsewhere in as many days. What various parasols! What rainbow silks and satins! What pinking of thin stockings and pinching of thin shoes, and fluttering of ribbons and silk tassels, and display of rich cloaks with gaudy hoods and linings! The young

  gentlemen are fond, you see, of turning down their shirt-collars and cultivating their whiskers, especially under the chin, but they cannot approach the ladies in their dress and bearing, being, to say the truth, humanity of quite another sort. By-runs of the desk and counter pass on, and let us see what kind of men those are beyond ye, those two

  labourers in holiday clothes, of whom one carries in his hand a crumpled scrap of paper from which he tries to spell out a hard name, while the other looks about for it on all the doors and windows. Irishmen both! You might know them if they were masked by their long-tailed blue coats and bright buttons, and their drab trousers, which they wear like men well

  used to working dresses, who are easy in no others. It would be hard to keep your model republics going without the countrymen and countrywomen of those two labourers. For who else would dig and delve and drudge and do domestic work, and make canals and roads and execute great lines of internal improvement? Irishmen both! and sorely puzzled too to find out

  what they seek. Let us go down and help them, for the love of home, and that spirit of liberty which admits of honest service to honest men, and honest work for honest bread no matter what it be. That's well. We have got the right address at last, though it is written in strange characters truly and might have been scrawled with the blunt handle of the spade the

  writer better knows the use of than a pen. Their way lies yonder, but what business takes them there? They carry savings. To hoard up? No. They are brothers, those men. One cross the sea alone, and working very hard for one half year, and living harder, saved funds enough to bring the other out. That done, they worked together side by side, contentedly sharing

  hard labour and hard living for another term, and then their sisters came, and then another brother, and lastly their old mother. And what now? Why, the poor old crone is restless in a strange land, and yearns to lay her bones, she says, among her people in the old graveyard at home. And so they go to pay her passage back, and God help her and them in every

  simple heart, and all who turn to the Jerusalem of their younger days, and have an altar fire upon the cold hearth of their fathers. This narrow thoroughfare, baking and blistering in the sun, is Wall Street, the stock exchange and Lombard Street of New York. Many a rapid fortune has been made in this street, and many a no less rapid ruin. Some of these very

  merchants whom you see hanging about here now have locked up money in their strong boxes like the man in the Arabian Nights, and opening them again have found but withered leaves. Below here, by the water side, where the bowsprits of ships stretch across the footway, and almost thrust themselves into the windows, lie the noble American vessels which

  have made their packet service the finest in the world. They have brought hither the foreigners who abound in all the streets, not perhaps that there are more here than in other commercial cities, but elsewhere they have particular haunts, and you must find them out. Here they pervade the town. We must cross Broadway again, gaining some

  refreshment from the heat and the sight of the great blocks of clean ice which are being carried into shops and bar rooms, and the pineapples and watermelons profusely displayed for sale. Fine streets of spacious houses here, you see. Wall Street has furnished and dismantled many of them very often, and here a deep green leafy square. Be sure that it is a

  hospitable house with inmates to be affectionately remembered always, where they have the open door and pretty show of plants within, and where the child with laughing eyes is peeping out of window at the little dog below. You wonder what may be the use of this tall flagstaff in the by-street, which something like Liberty's headdress on its top, so do I.

  But there is a passion for tall flagships hereabouts, and you may see its twin brother in five minutes if you have a mind. Again across Broadway, and so passing from the many-coloured crowd and glittering shops into another long main street, the Bowery, a railroad yonder sea where two stout horses trot along, drawing a score or two of people and a great

  wooden arc with ease. The stores are poorer here, the passengers less gay. Clothes ready-made and meat ready-cooked are to be bought in these parts, and the lively whirl of carriages is exchanged for the deep rumble of carts and wagons. These signs which are so plentiful, in shape like river-boys, or small balloons, hoisted by cords to poles and dangling

  there, announce, as you may see by looking up, oysters in every style. They tempt the hungry most at night, for then dull candles glimmering inside illuminate these dainty words and make the mouths of idlers water as they read and linger. What is this dismal-fronted pile of bastard Egyptian like an enchanter's palace in a melodrama? A famous

  prison called the Tombs. Shall we go in? So a long, narrow, lofty building, stove-heated as usual, with four galleries one above the other going round it and communicating by stairs. Between the two sides of each gallery and in its centre a bridge for the greater convenience of crossing. On each of these

  bridges sits a man, dozing or reading or talking to an idle companion. On each tier are two opposite rows of small iron doors. They look like furnace-doors, but are cold and black as though the fires within had all gone out. Some two or three are open, and women with drooping heads bent down are talking to the inmates. The hall is lighted by a skylight,

  but it is fast closed, and from the roof there dangle limp and drooping two useless wind-sails. A man with keys appears to show us round. A good looking fellow, and in his way civil and obliging. Are those black doors the cells? Yes. Are they all full? Well, they're pretty nigh full, and that's a fact in no two ways about it. Those at the bottom are

  unwholesome, surely. Why, we do only put coloured people in them, that's the truth. When do prisoners take exercise? Well, they do without it pretty much. Do they never walk in the yard? Considerable seldom. Sometimes, I suppose. Well, it's rare they do. They keep pretty bright without it. But suppose a man were here for twelve months. I know this

  is only a prison for criminals who are charged with grave offences, while they are awaiting their trial, or under remand. But the law here affords criminals many means of delay. What with motions for new trials and in arrest of judgment and what not, a prisoner might be here for twelve months, I take it, might he not? Well, I guess he might. Do you

  mean to say that in all that time he would never come out at that little iron door for exercise? He might walk some, perhaps, not much. Will you open one of the doors? All, if you like. The fastenings jar and rattle, and one of the doors turns slowly on its hinges. Let us look in. A small bare cell into which the light enters through a high

  chink in the wall. There is a rude means of washing, a table, and a bedstead. Upon the latter sits a man of sixty reading. He looks up for a moment, gives an impatient dogged shake, and fixes his eyes upon his book again. As we withdraw our heads the door closes on him and is fastened as before. This man has murdered his wife and will probably

  be hanged. How long has he been here? A month. When will he be tried? Next term. When is that? Next month. In England, if a man be under sentence of death, even he has erred exercise at certain periods of the day. Possible? With what stupendous and untranslatable coolness he says this, and how loungingly he leads on to the women's side, making

  as he goes a kind of iron castanet of the quay and the stair-rail. Each cell door on this side has a square aperture in it. Some of the women peep anxiously through it at the sound of footsteps. Others shrink away in shame. For what offence can that lonely child of ten or twelve years old be shut up here? Oh, that boy! He is the son of the prisoner we saw

  just now, is a witness against his father, and is detained here for safe keeping until the trial, that's all. But it is a dreadful place for a child to pass the long days and nights in. This is rather hard treatment for a young witness, is it not? What says our conductor? Well, it ain't a very rowdy life, and that's a fact. Again he clinks his metal castanet

  and leads us leisurely away. I have a question to ask him as we go. Pray, why do they call this place the Tombs? Well, it's the Kant name. I know it is, why. Some suicides happened here when it was first built. I expect it came about from that. I saw just now that that man's clothes were scattered about the floor of his cell. Don't you oblige the

  prisoners to be orderly and put such things away? Where should they put them? Not on the ground, surely. What do you say to hanging them up? He stops and looks round to emphasize his answer. May I say that's just it. When they head-hooks they would hang themselves, so they're taken out of every cell and there's only the marks left where they used to be.

  The prison-yard in which he pauses now has been the scene of terrible performances. Into this narrow, grave-like place men are brought out to die. The wretched creature stands beneath the gibbet on the ground, the rope about his neck, and when the sign is given a weight at its other end comes running down and swings him up into the air, a corpse. The law

  requires that there be present at this dismal spectacle the judge, the jury, and citizens to the amount of twenty-five. From the community it is hidden. To the desolate and bad the thing remains a frightful mystery. Between the criminal and them the prison-wall is interposed as a thick gloomy veil. It is the custom to his bed of death, his winding sheet and

  grave. From him it shuts out life and all the motives to unrepenting hardyhood in that last hour which its mere sight and presence is often all sufficient to sustain. There are no bold eyes to make him bold, no ruffians to uphold a ruffian's name before. All beyond the pitiless stone wall is unknown space. Let us go forth again into the cheerful streets.

  Once more in Broadway. Here are the same ladies in bright colours, walking to and fro in pairs and singly, yonder the very same light blue parasol which passed and re-passed the hotel window twenty times while we were sitting there. We are going to cross here, take care of the pigs, two portly sows are trotting up behind this carriage, and a select party

  of half a dozen gentlemen-hogs have just now turned the corner. Here is a solitary swine lounging homeward by himself. He has only one ear, having parted with the other two vagrant dogs in the course of his city rambles. But he gets on very well without it and leads a roving gentlemanly vagabond kind of life, somewhat answering to that of our

  club-men at home. He leaves his lodgings every morning at a certain hour, throws himself upon the town, gets through his day in some manner quite satisfactory to himself, and regularly appears at the door of his own house again at night like the mysterious master of Jill Blass. He is a free and easy, careless, indifferent kind of pig, having a very large

  acquaintance among other pigs of the same character, whom he rather knows by sight than conversation, as he seldom troubles himself to stop and exchange civilities, but goes grunting down the kennel, turning up the news and small talk of the city in the shape of cabbage-docs and awful, and bearing no tales but his own, which is a very short one for his old

  enemies the dogs have been at that too, and have left him hardly enough to swear by. He is, in every respect, a Republican pig, going wherever he pleases and mingling with the best society on an equal, if not superior, footing, for every one makes way when he appears, and the haughtiest give him the wall if he prefers it. He is a great philosopher

  and seldom moved unless by the dogs before mentioned. Sometimes, indeed, you may see his small eye twinkling on a slaughtered friend whose carcass garnishes a butcher's door post, but he grunts out, such as life, all flesh is pork, buries his nose in the mire again and waddles down the gutter, comforting himself with the reflection that there is one snout

  the less to anticipate stray cabbage-docs at any rate. They are the city scavengers, these pigs. Ugly brutes they are, having for the most part scanty brown backs like the lids of old horse-hair trunks spotted with unwholesome black blotches. They have long, gaunt legs too, and such piqued snouts that if one of them could be persuaded

  to sit for his profile, nobody would recognize it for a pig's likeness. They are never attended upon, or fed, or driven, or caught, but are thrown upon their own resources and early life, and become preternaturally knowing in consequence. Every pig knows where he lives, much better than anybody could tell him. At this hour, just as evening is closing in, you

  will see them roaming towards bed by scores, eating their way to the last. Occasionally some youth among them who has overeaten himself, or has been worried by dogs trots shrinkingly homeward like a prodigal son, but this is a rare case, perfect self-possession and self-reliance and immovable composure being their foremost attributes.

  The streets and shops are lighted now, and as the eye travels down the long thoroughfare dotted with bright jets of gas, it is reminded of Oxford Street or Piccadilly. Here and there a flight of broad, stone cellar steps appears, and a painted lamp directs you to the bowling saloon or tin pen alley, tin pens being a game of mingle chance and

  skill invented when the legislature passed an act forbidding nine pins. At other downward flights of steps are other lamps, making the whereabouts of oyster sellers, pleasant retreats, say I, not only by reason of their wonderful cookery of oysters, pretty nigh as large as cheese plates, or for their dear sake heartiest of Greek professors,

  but because of all kinds of catters of fish, or flesh, or fowl in these latitudes, the swallowers of oysters alone are not gregarious, but subduing themselves as it were to the nature of what they work in, and copying the coyness of the thing they eat, do sit apart in curtain boxes and consort by twos, not by two hundreds.

  But how quiet the streets are! Are there no itinerant bands, no wind or string instruments? No, not one. By day there are no punches, fantacini, dancing dogs, jugglers, conjurers, or castrinas, or even barrel organs. No, not one. Yes, I remember one. One barrel organ and a dancing monkey, sportive by nature but fast fading into a dull,

  lumpish monkey of the utilitarian school. Beyond that, nothing lively. No, not so much as a white moose in a twirling cage. Are there no amusements? Yes. There is a lecture-room across the way from which that glare of light proceeds, and there may be evening service for the ladies thrice a

  week or oftener. For the young gentlemen there is the counting-house, the store, the bar-room, the latter as you may see through these windows pretty full, hark to the clinking sounds of hammers breaking lumps of ice, and to the cool gurgling of the pounded bits as, in the process of mixing, they are poured from glass to glass. No amusements?

  What are these suckers of cigars and swallowers of strong drinks, whose hats and legs we see in every possible variety of twist doing but amusing themselves? What are the fifty newspapers which these precocious urchins are bawling down the street, at which are kept filed within? What are they but amusements? Not vapid, waterish

  amusements, but good, strong stuff, dealing in round abuse and black-art names, pulling off the roofs of private houses, as the halting devil did in Spain, pimping and pandering for all degrees of vicious taste, and gorging with coined lies the most vicarious maw, imputing to every man in public life the coarsest and the vilest motives, scaring away from the

  stabbed and prostrate body politic, every Samaritan of clear conscience and good deeds, and setting on with yell and whistle and the clapping of foul hands the vilest vermin and worst birds of prey. No amusements! Let us go on again, and passing this wilderness of an hotel, with stores about its base, like some continental theatre, or the London opera

  house shorn of its colonnade plunged into the Five Points. But it is needful first that we take as our escort these two heads of the police whom you would know for sharp and well-trade officers if you met them in the great desert. So true it is that certain pursuits, whatever carried on, will stamp men with the same character. These two might have

  been begotten, born and bred in Bow Street. We have seen no beggars in the street by night or day, but of other kinds of strollers plenty. Poverty, wretchedness and vice are rife enough where we are going now. This is the place. These narrow ways diverging to the right and left and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth. Such lies as our lead here bear

  the same fruits here as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces at the doors have counterparts at home, and all the wide world over. Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays. Many of those pigs

  live here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk up right in lieu of going on all fours, and why they talk instead of grunting? So far nearly every house is a low tavern, and on the barroom walls are colored prints of Washington and Queen Victoria of England, and the American Eagle. Among the pigeon-holes that hold the bottles are pieces of plate

  glass and colored paper, for there is in some sort a taste for decoration even here. And as seamen frequent these haunts, there are maritime pictures by the dozen of partings between sailors and their lady-loves, portraits of William of the Ballad and his black-eyed Susan of Will Watch the Bold Smuggler, or Paul Jones the Pirate and the like,

  on which the painted eyes of Queen Victoria and of Washington to boot rest in as strange companionship as on most of the scenes that are enacted in their wondering presence. What place is this to whom the squalid street conducts us? A kind of square of leprous houses, some of which are attainable only by crazy wooden stairs without. What lies

  beyond this tottering flight of steps that creak beneath our tread? A miserable room lighted by one dim candle and destitute of all comfort, save that which may be hidden in a wretched bed. Beside it sits a man, his elbows on his knees, his forehead hidden in his hands. What ails that man? asks the foremost officer. Fever, he suddenly replies,

  without looking up. Conceive the fancies of a feverish brain in such a place as this. Ascend these pitch-dark stairs, heedful of a false footing on the trembling boards, and grope your way with me into this wolfish den where neither ray of light nor breath of air appears to come. A negro lad, startled from his sleep by the officer's voice, he knows it

  well, but comforted by his assurance that he has not come on business, officiously bestirs himself to light a candle. The match flickers for a moment and shows great mounds of dusty regs upon the ground, then dies away and leaves a denser darkness than before, if there can be degrees in such extremes. He stumbles down the stairs and presently comes back,

  shading a flaring taper with his hand. Then the mounds of regs are seen to be astir and rise slowly up, and the floor is covered with heaps of negro women waking from their sleep, their white teeth chattering, and their bright eyes glistening and winking on all sides with surprise and fear like the countless repetition of one astonished African face in

  some strange mirror. Mount up these other stairs with no less caution. There are traps and pitfalls here for those who are not so well escorted as ourselves into the housetop, where the bare beams and rafters meet overhead and calm night looks down through the crevices in the roof. Open the door of one of these cramped hutches full of sleeping

  negroes. Bah! They have a charcoal fire within. There is a smell of singeing clothes or flesh so close they gather round the brazier and vapours issue from that blind and suffocate. From every corner as you glance about you in these dark retreats some figure crawls half awakened, as if the judgment hour were near at hand, and every obscene

  grave were giving up its dead. Where dogs would howl to lie, women and men and boys slink off to sleep, forcing the dislodged rats to move away in quest of better lodgings. Here, too, are lanes and alleys paved with mud knee-deep underground chambers where they dance and game, the walls bedecked with rough designs of ships and forts and flags,

  and American eagles out of number. Ruined houses open to the street. Whence through wide gaps in the walls other ruins loom upon the eye, as though the world of vice and misery had nothing else to show. Hiddiest tenements which take their name from robbery and murder, all that is loathsome drooping and decayed is here. Our leader has his hand upon the

  latch of Almax, and calls to us from the bottom of the steps for the assembly-room of the Five Points Fashionables as approached by a descent. Shall we go in? It is but a moment. Hade, the landlady of Almax, thrives. A buxom-fat mulatto woman, with sparkling eyes, whose head is daintily ornamented with a handkerchief of

  many colours, nor is the landlord much behind her in his finery, being attired in a smart blue jacket, like a ship steward, with a thick gold ring upon his little finger, and round his neck a gleaming golden watch-guard. How glad he is to see us! What will we please to call for? A dance? It shall be done directly, sir. A regular breakdown.

  The corpulent black fiddler and his friend who plays the tambourine stamp upon the boarding of the small raised orchestra in which they sit, and play a lively measure. Five or six couple come upon the floor, marshalled by a lively young negro who is the wit of the assembly and the greatest dancer known. He never leaves off making queer faces, and

  it is the delight of all the rest who grin from ear to ear incessantly. Among the dancers are two young mulatto girls, with large black drooping eyes and headgear after the fashion of the hostess, who are as shy or feigned to be as though they never danced before, and so look down before the visitors that their partners can see nothing but the long

  fringe lashes. But the dance commences. Every gentleman sits as long as he likes to the opposite lady, and the opposite lady to him, and all are so long about it that the sport begins to languish when suddenly the lively hero dashes into the rescue. Instantly the fiddler grins and goes at it tooth and nail. There is new energy in the tambourine, new laughter

  in the dancers, new smiles in the landlady, new confidence in the landlord, new brightness in the very candles. Single shuffle, double shuffle, cut and cross cut, snapping his fingers, rolling his eyes, turning in his knees, presenting the backs of his legs in front, spinning about on his toes and heels like nothing but the man's figures

  on the tambourine, dancing with two left legs, two right legs, two wooden legs, two wire legs, two spring legs, all sorts of legs and no legs. What is this to him? And in what walk of life or dance of life does man ever get such stimulating applause as thunders about him when having danced his partner off her feet, and himself too, he finishes by leaping

  gloriously on the bar-counter and calling for something to drink with a chuckle of a million of counterfeit Jim Crowes in one inimitable sound. The air, even in these distempered parts, is fresh after the stifling atmosphere of the houses, and now as we emerge into a broader street it blows upon us with a purer breath and the stars look bright again. Here

  are the tombs once more. The city watch-house is a part of the building. It follows naturally on the sites we have just left. Let us see that, and then to bed. What, do you thrust your common offenders against the police discipline of the town into such holes as these? Do men and women against whom no crime is proved lie here all night in

  perfect darkness, surrounded by the noisome vapours which encircle the flagging lamp you light us with, and breathing this filthy and offensive stench? Why, such indecent and disgusting dudgeons as these cells would bring disgrace upon the most despotic empire in the world. Look at them. Man, you who see them every night and keep the keys. Do you see

  what they are? Do you know how drains are made below the streets and wherein these human sewers differ except in being always stagnant? Well, he don't know. He has had five and twenty young women locked up in this very cell at one time, and you'd hardly realize what handsome faces they were among them. In God's name, shut the door upon the wretched creature

  who is in it now, and put its screen before a place quite unsurpassed in all the vice-neglect endeavour of the worst old town in Europe. Are people really left all night untried in these black sties? Every night. The watch is set at seven in the evening. The magistrate opens his court at five in the morning. That is the earliest hour at which the first

  prisoner can be released, and if an officer appear against him, he is not taken out till nine o'clock or ten. But if any one among them die in the interval as one man did not long ago, then he is half eaten by the rats in an hour's time as that man was, and they're an end. What is this intolerable tolling of great bells and crashing of wheels and shouting in

  the distance? A fire. And what that deep red light in the opposite direction? Another fire. And what these charred and blackened walls we stand before? A dwelling where a fire has been. It was more than hinted in an official report not long ago that some of these conflagrations were not wholly accidental, and that speculation and enterprise found a

  field of exertion even in flames, but be this as it may, there was a fire last night. There are two to-night, and you may lay an even wager there will be at least one to-morrow. So carrying that with us for our comfort, let us say good night and climb upstairs to bed. One day, during my stay in New York, I paid a visit to the different

  public institutions on Long Island, or Rhode Island, I forget which. One of them is a lunatic asylum. The building is handsome and is remarkable for a spacious and elegant staircase. The whole structure is not yet finished, but it is already one of considerable size and extent and is capable of accommodating a very large number of patients.

  I cannot say that I derive much comfort from the inspection of this charity. The different wards may have been cleaner and better ordered. I saw nothing of that salutary system which had impressed me so favourably elsewhere, and everything had a lounging, listless, madhouse air which was very painful.

  The moping idiot, cowering down with long, dishevelled hair, the gibbering maniac with his hideous laugh and pointed finger, the vacant eye, the fierce wild face, the gloomy picking of the hands and lips and munching of the nails, there they were all without disguise in naked ugliness and horror. In the dining-room, a bare, dull, dreary

  place, with nothing for the eye to rest on but the empty walls, a woman was locked up alone. She was bent, they told me, on committing suicide. If anything could have strengthened her in her resolution, it would certainly have been the insupportable monotony of such an existence. The terrible crowd with which these halls and galleries were filled so

  shocked me that I abridged my stay within the shortest limits, and declined to see that portion of the building in which the refractory and violent were under closer restraint. I have no doubt that the gentleman who presided over this establishment at the time I write of was competent to manage it, and had done all in his power to promote

  its usefulness. But will it be believed that the miserable strife of party-feeling is carried even into the sad refuge of afflicted and degraded humanity? Would it be believed that the eyes which are to watch over and control the wanderings of mind on which the most dreadful visitation to which our nature is exposed has fallen must wear

  the glasses of some wretched side in politics? Would it be believed that the governor of such a house as this is appointed and opposed and changed perpetually as parties fluctuate and vary, and as their despicable weather-cocks are blown this way or that? A hundred times in every week some new, most paltry exhibition of that narrow-minded

  and injurious party spirit which is the simoom of America sickening and blighting everything of wholesome life within its reach was forced upon my notice, but I never turn my back upon it with feelings of such deep disgust and measureless contempt as when I crossed the threshold of this madhouse. At a short distance from this building is a nether called the

  Alms-house, that is to say the work-house of New York. This is a large institution also, lodging, I believe, when I was there, nearly a thousand poor. It was badly ventilated and badly lighted, was not too clean, and impressed me on the whole very uncomfortably. But it must be remembered that New York is a great emporium of commerce, and as a

  plate of general resort, not only from all parts of the States, but from most parts of the world, has always had a large pauper population to provide for, and labors therefore under peculiar difficulties in this respect, nor must it be forgotten that New York is a large town, and that in all large towns a vast amount of good and evil is intermixed and

  jumbled up together. In the same neighbourhood is the farm where young orphans are nursed and bred. I did not see it, but I believe it is well conducted, and I can the more easily credit it from knowing how mindful they usually are in America of that beautiful passage in the litany which remembers all

  sick persons and young children. I was taken to these institutions by water in a boat belonging to the Island Jail, and rowed by a crew of prisoners who were dressed in a striped uniform of black and buff in which they looked like faded tigers. They took me by the same conveyance to the jail itself. It is an old prison, and quite a pioneer

  establishment on the plan I have already described. I was glad to hear this, for it is unquestionably a very indifferent one. The most is made, however, of the means it possesses, and it is as well regulated as such a place can be. The women work in covered sheds erected for that purpose. If I

  remember right, there are no shops for the men. But be that as it may, the greater part of them labour in certain stone quarries near at hand. The day being very wet indeed, this labour was suspended, and the prisoners were in their cells. Imagine these cells, some two or three hundred in number, and in every one a man locked up, this one at his door

  for air, with his hands thrust through the grate, this one in bed in the middle of the day, remember, and this one flung down in a heap upon the ground with his head against the bars like a wild beast. Make the rain pour down outside in torrents. Put the everlasting stone in the midst, hot and suffocating and vaporous as a witch's cauldron. Add a collection

  of gentle odours, such as would arise from a thousand mildewed umbrellas, wet through, and a thousand buck-baskets full of half-washed linen, and there is the prison as it was that day. The prison for the State at Sing Sing is, on the other hand, a model jail. That and Auburn are, I believe, the largest and best examples of the

  silent system. In another part of the city is the refuge for the destitute, an institution whose object is to reclaim youthful offenders, male and female, black and white, without distinction, to teach them useful trades, apprentice them to respectable masters, and make them worthy members of society. Its design, it will be seen, is similar to

  that at Boston, and it is a no less meritorious and admirable establishment. A suspicion crossed my mind during my inspection of this noble charity, whether the superintendent had quite sufficient knowledge of the world and worldly characters, and whether he did not commit a great mistake in treating some young girls, who were to all

  intents and purposes by their years and their past lives women, as though they were little children, which certainly had a ludicrous effect in my eyes, or, if I am much mistaken, in theirs also. As the institution, however, is always under a vigilant examination of a body of gentlemen of great intelligence and experience, it cannot fail to be

  well conducted. And whether I am right or wrong in this slight particular is unimportant to its deserts and character, which it would be difficult to estimate too high. In addition to these establishments, there are in New York excellent hospitals and schools, literary institutions and libraries, an admirable fire department, as indeed it

  should be, having constant practice, and charities of every sort and kind. In the suburbs there is a spacious cemetery, unfinished yet but every day improving. The saddest tomb I saw there was the Stranger's Grave, dedicated to the different hotels in the city. There are three principal theatres. Two of them, the Park and the Bowery, are large,

  elegant and handsome buildings, and are, I grieve to write it, generally deserted. The third, the Olympic, is a tiny show box for vaudeville and burlesques. It is singularly well conducted by Mr. Mitchell, a comic actor of great quiet humour and originality, who was well remembered and esteemed by London playgoers. I am happy to report of this

  deserving gentleman that his benches are usually well filled and that his theatre rings with merriment every night. I had almost forgotten a small summer theatre called Niblo's, with gardens and open-air amusements attached, but I believe it is not exempt from the general depression under which theatrical property, or what is humorously

  called by that nature, unfortunately labours. The country round New York is surpassingly and exquisitely picturesque. The climate, as I have already intimated, is somewhat of the warmest. What it would be without the sea breezes which come from its beautiful bay in the evening time, I will not throw myself or my readers into a fever by inquiring.

  The tone of the best society in this city is like that of Boston. Here and there it may be, with a greater infusion of the mercantile spirit, but generally polished and refined and always most hospitable. The houses and tables are elegant, the hours later and more rakish, and there is perhaps a greater spirit of contention in reference to

  appearances and the display of wealth and costly living. The ladies are singularly beautiful. Before I left New York I made arrangements for securing a passage home in the George Washington Packet Ship, which was advertised to sail in June, that being the month in which I had determined, if prevented by no accident in the course of my ramblings,

  to leave America. I never thought that going back to England, returning to all who are dear to me, and to pursuits that have insensibly grown to be part of my nature, I could have felt so much sorrow as I endured when I parted at last on board this ship with the friends who had accompanied me from the city. I never thought the name of any place so

  far away and so lately known could ever associate itself in my mind with a crowd of affectionate remembrances that now cluster about it. There are those in this city who would brighten to me the darkest winter day that ever glimmered and went out in Lapland, and before whose presence even home grew dim, when they and I exchanged that painful word which mingles

  with our every thought and deed which haunts our cradle-heads in infancy and closes up the vista of our lives in age.

• 08 - Philadelphia, and its Solitary Prison

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  CHAPTER VII. Philadelphia and its Solitary Prison The journey from New York to Philadelphia is made by railroad and two ferries, and usually occupies between five and six hours. It was a fine evening when we were passengers in the train, and watching the bright sunset from a little window near the door by which

  we sat, my attention was attracted to a remarkable appearance issuing from the windows of the gentleman's car immediately in front of us, which I suppose for some time was occasioned by a number of industrious persons inside ripping open feather beds and giving the feathers to the wind. At length it occurred to me that they were only spitting, which was indeed the case, though how any number of passengers, which it was possible for that car to contain,

  would have maintained such a playful and incessant shower of expectoration, I am still at a loss to understand, notwithstanding the experience in all salvatory phenomena which I afterwards acquired. I made acquaintance on this journey with a mild and modest young Quaker, who opened the discourse by informing me in a grave whisper that his grandfather was the inventor of cold-drawn

  castor oil. I mention the circumstance here, thinking it probable that this is the first occasion at which the valuable medicine in question was ever used as a conversational apparent. We reached the city late that night. Looking out of my chamber window before going to bed, I saw on the opposite side of the way a handsome building of white marble which had a mournful ghost-like aspect dreary to behold. I attributed this to the somber influence

  of the night, and on rising in the morning looked out again, expecting to see its steps and portico thronged with groups of people passing in and out. The door was still tight shut, however. The same cold, cheerless air prevailed, and the building looked as if the marble statue of Don Guzman could alone have any business to transact within its gloomy walls. I hastened to inquire its name and purpose, and then my surprise vanished. It

  was the tomb of many fortunes, the great catacomb of investment, the memorable United States Bank. The stoppage of this bank with all its ruinous consequences had cast, as I was told on every side, a gloom on Philadelphia. Under the depressing effect of which it yet laboured, it certainly did seem rather dull and out of spirits. It is a handsome city, but distractingly regular.

  After walking about it for an hour or two, I felt that I would have given the world for a crooked street. The collar of my coat appeared to stiffen and the brim of my hat to expand beneath its quakery influence. My hair shrunk into a sleek short crop, my hands folded themselves upon my breast of their own calm cord, and thoughts of taking lodgings in Mark Lane over against the market-place, and of making a large fortune by speculations in corn, came

  over me involuntarily. Philadelphia is most bountifully provided with fresh water, which is showered and jerked about and turned on and poured off everywhere. The waterworks, which are on a height near the city, are no less ornamental than useful, being tastefully laid out as a public garden and kept in the best and neatest order. The river is damned at this point, and forced by its own power into certain high tanks or reservoirs, whence

  the whole city, to the top stories of the houses, is supplied at a very trifling expense. There are various public institutions. Among them a most excellent hospital, a Quaker establishment, but not sectarian in the great benefits it confers, a quiet, quaint old library named after Franklin, a handsome exchange and post-office, and so forth. In connection with the Quaker hospital there is a picture by West, which is exhibited for the benefit of the funds

  The subject is Our Savior Healing the Sick, and it is perhaps as favorable a specimen of the master as can be seen anywhere. Whether this be high or low praise depends upon the reader's taste. In the same room there is a very characteristic and lifelike portrait by Mr. Sully, a distinguished American artist. My stay in Philadelphia was very short, but What I saw of its society I greatly liked. Treating of its general characteristics, I

  should be disposed to say that it is more provincial than Boston or New York, and that there is afloat in the fair city an assumption of taste and criticism savouring rather of those genteel discussions upon the same themes in connection with Shakespeare in the musical glasses of which we read in the Vicar of Wakefield. Near the city is a most splendid, unfinished marble structure for the Girard College, founded by a deceased gentleman of that name

  and of enormous wealth, which, if completed according to the original design, will be perhaps the richest edifice of modern times. But the bequest is involved in legal disputes, and pending them the work has stopped, so that like many other great undertakings in America even this is rather going to be done one of these days than doing now. In the outskirts stands a great prison called the Eastern Penitentiary, conducted on a plan

  peculiar to the State of Pennsylvania. The system here is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement. I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel and wrong. In its intention I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, and meant for reformation, but I am persuaded that those who devise this system of public discipline, and those benevolent gentlemen who carry it into execution, do not know what it is that they are doing. I believe that

  very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment prolonged for years, in flicks upon the sufferers, and in guessing at it myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen written upon their faces, and what to my certain knowledge they feel within. I am only the more convinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom,

  and which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow creature. I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body, and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh, because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear, therefore I the more denounce it as

  a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay. I hesitated once debating with myself whether if I had the power of saying yes or no I would allow it to be tried in certain cases where the terms of imprisonment were short. But now I solemnly declare that with no rewards or honours could I walk a happy man beneath the open sky by day or lie me down upon my bed at night with the consciousness that one human creature

  for any length of time, no matter what, lay suffering this unknown punishment in his silent cell and I the cause or I consenting it in the least degree. I was accompanied to this prison by two gentlemen officially connected with its management, and passed the day in going from cell to cell and talking with the inmates. Every facility was afforded me at the utmost courtesy could suggest. Nothing was concealed or hidden from

  view, and every piece of information that I sought was openly and frankly given. The perfect order of the building cannot be praised too highly, and of the excellent motives of all who are immediately concerned in the administration of the system there can be no kind of question. Between the body of the prison and the outer wall there is a spacious garden. Entering it by a wicket in the massive gate we pursued the path before us to its other termination,

  and passed into a large chamber from which seven long passages radiate. On either side of each is a long, long row of low-cell doors with a certain number over every one. Above, a gallery of cells like those below, except that they have no narrow yard attached as those in the ground-tier have, and are somewhat smaller. The possession of two of these is supposed to compensate for the absence of so much air and exercise as can be had in

  the dull strip attached to each of the others in an hour's time every day, and therefore every prisoner in this upper story has two cells adjoining and communicating with each other. Standing at the central point and looking down these dreary passages, the dull repose and quiet that prevails is awful. Occasionally there is a drowsy sound from some lone weaver's

  shuttle or shoemaker's last, but it is stifled by the thick walls and heavy dungeon door, and only serves to make the general stillness more profound. Over the head and face of every prisoner who comes into this melancholy house a black hood is drawn, and in this dark shroud an emblem of the curtain dropped between him and the living world he has led to the cell from which he never again comes forth until his whole term of imprisonment has expired.

  He never hears of wife and children, home or friends, the life or death of any single He sees the prison officers, but with that exception he never looks upon a human countenance or hears a human voice. He is a man buried alive, to be dug out in the slow round of years and in the meantime dead to everything but torturing anxieties and horrible despair. His name and crime and term of suffering are unknown, even to the officer who delivers

  him his daily food. There is a number over his cell door, and in a book of which the governor of the prison has one copy and the moral instructor another, this is the index of his history. Beyond these pages the prison has no record of his existence, and though he lived to be in the same cell ten weary years, he has no means of knowing down to the very last hour

  in which part of the building it is situated, what kind of men there are about him, whether in the long winter nights there are living people near, or he is in some lonely corner of the great jail with walls and passages and iron doors between him and the nearest share in its solitary horrors. Every cell has double doors, the outer one of sturdy oak, the other of grated iron, wherein there is a trap through which his food is handed.

  He has a Bible and a slate and pencil, and under certain restrictions has sometimes other books provided for the purpose, and pen and ink and paper. His razor, plate and can and hang upon the wall or shine upon the little shelf. Fresh water is laid on in every cell, and he can draw it at his pleasure. During the day his bedstead turns up against the wall and leaves more space for him to work in. His loom or bench or wheel is there, and

  there he labors, sleeps and wakes and counts the seasons as they change and grows old. The first man I saw was seated at his loom at work. He had been there six years and was to remain, I think, three more. He had been convicted as a receiver of stolen goods, but even after his long imprisonment denied his guilt and said he had been hardly dealt by. It was his second offence. He stopped his work when we went in, took off his spectacles,

  and answered freely to everything that was said to him, but always with a strange kind of pause first and in a low thoughtful voice. He wore a paper hat of his own making and was pleased to have it noticed and commanded. He had very ingeniously manufactured a sort of Dutch clock from some disregarded odds and ends, and his vinegar bottle served for the pendulum. Seeing me interested in this contrivance, he looked up at it with a great

  deal of pride, and said that he had been thinking of improving it, and that he hoped the hammer and a little piece of broken glass beside it would play music before long. He had extracted some colours from the yarn with which he worked, and painted a few poor figures on the wall, one of a female over the door he called the Lady of the Lake. He smiled as I looked at these contrivances to wile away the time, but when I looked from them to him I saw that

  his lip trembled, and could have been counting the beating of his heart. I forget how it came about, but some illusion was made to his having a wife. He shook his head at the word, turned aside, and covered his face with his hands. "'But you are resigned now,' said one of the gentlemen after a short pause, during which he had resumed his former manner. He answered with a sigh that seemed quite reckless

  in its hopelessness. "'Oh, yes, oh, yes, I am resigned to it. And you are a better man, you think?' "'Well, I hope so. I'm sure I hope I may be. And time goes pretty quickly. Time is very long, gentlemen, within these four walls.' He gazed about him—heaven only knows how warily—as he said these words—and in the act of doing so fell into a strange stare

  as if he had forgotten something. A moment afterwards he sighed heavily, put on his spectacles, and went about his work again. In another cell there was a German sentenced to five years' imprisonment for larceny, two of which had just expired. With colours procured in the same manner, he had painted every inch of the walls and ceiling quite beautifully. He had laid out the few feet of ground behind

  with exquisite neatness, and had made a little bed in the centre that looked by-the-by like a grave. The taste and ingenuity he had displayed in everything were most extraordinary, and yet a more dejected, heartbroken, wretched creature it would be difficult to imagine. I never saw such a picture of forlorn affliction and distress of mind. My heart bled for him. And when the tears ran down his cheeks, and he took one of the visitors aside to ask with

  his trembling hands, nervously clutching at his coat to detain him, whether there was no hope of his dismal sentence being commuted, the spectacle was really too painful to witness. I never saw or heard of any kind of misery that impressed me more than the wretchedness of this man. In a third cell was a tall strong black, a burglar working at his proper trade of making

  screws and the like. His time was nearly out. He was not only a very dexterous thief, but was notorious for his boldness and hardyhood, and for the number of his previous convictions. He entertained us with a long account of his achievements, which he narrated with such infinite relish that he actually seemed to lick his lips as he told us racy anecdotes of stolen plate and of old ladies whom he had watched as they sat at windows in silver

  spectacles. He had plainly had an eye to their metal even from the other side of the street, and had afterwards robbed. This fellow, upon the slightest encouragement, would have mingled with his professional recollections the most detestable cant. But I am very much mistaken if he could have surpassed the unmitigated hypocrisy with which he declared that he blessed the day on which he came into that prison, and that he never would commit another robbery

  as long as he lived. There was one man who was allowed, as an indulgence, to keep rabbits. His room having rather a close smell in consequence, they called to him at the door to come out into the passage. He complied, of course, and stood shading his haggard face in the unwanted sunlight of the great window, looking as wern and unearthly as if he had been summoned from the grave.

  He had a white rabbit in his breast, and when the little creature, getting down upon the ground, stole back into the cell, and he being dismissed crept timidly after it, I thought it would have been very hard to say in what respect the man was the nobler animal of the two. There was an English thief who had been there but a few days out of seven years, a villainous

  low-browed, thin-lipped fellow with a white face, who had as yet no relish for visitors, and who but for the additional penalty would have gladly stabbed me with a shoemaker's knife. There was another German who had entered the jail but yesterday, and who started from his bed when we looked in and pleaded in his broken English very hard for work. There was a poet, who after doing two days' work in every four and twenty hours, one for himself

  prison, wrote verses about ships, he was by trade a mariner, and the maddening wine-cup and his friends at home, there were very many of them. Some reddened at the sight of visitors, and some turned pale, some two or three had prisoners' nurses with them, for they were very sick, and one, a fat old negro whose leg had been taken off within the jail, had for his attendant a classical scholar, and an accomplished surgeon, himself a prisoner

  likewise. Sitting upon the stairs engaged in some slight work was a pretty coloured boy. "'Is there no refuge for young criminals in Philadelphia, then?' said I. "'Yes, but only for white children. Noble aristocracy and crime.' There was a sailor, who had been there upwards of eleven years, and who in a few months'

  time would be free. Eleven years of solitary confinement. "'I'm very glad to hear your time is nearly out.' What does he say? "'Nothing. Why does he stare at his hands and pick the flesh upon his fingers and raise his eyes for an instant every now and then to those bare walls which have seen his head

  turn grey? It is the way he has sometimes. Does he never look men in the face, and does he always pluck at those hands of his, as though he were bent on parting skin and bones? It is his humour, nothing more. It is his humour, too, to say that he does not look forward to going out, that he is not glad the time is drawing near, and that he did look forward to it once but that was very long ago, that he has lost all care for everything.

  It is his humour to be a helpless, crushed and broken man, and heaven be his witness that he has his humour thoroughly gratified. There were three young women in adjoining cells all convicted at the same time of a conspiracy to rob their prosecutor. In the and solitude of their lives they had grown to be quite beautiful. Their looks were very sad and might have moved the sternest visitor to tears, but not to that kind of sorrow which

  the contemplation of the men awakens. One was a young girl, not twenty, as I recollect, whose snow-white room was hung with the work of some former prisoner, and upon whose downcast face the sun in all its splendour shone down to the high chink in the wall where one narrow strip of bright blue sky was visible. She was very penitent and quiet, and had come to be resigned, she said, and I believe her, and had a mind at peace.

  "'In a word, you are happy here,' said one of my companions. She struggled, she did struggle very hard, to answer, yes. But raising her eyes and meeting that glimpse of freedom overhead, she burst into tears and said, she tried to be, she uttered no complaint, but it was natural that she should sometimes long to get out of that one cell. She could not help that, she sobbed, poor thing. I went from cell to cell that day, and every face I saw

  or word I heard or incident I noted is present to my mind in all its painfulness. But let me pass them by for one more pleasant glance of a prison on the same plan which I afterwards saw at Pittsburgh.' When I had gone over that in the same manner, I asked the governor if he had any person in his charge who was shortly getting out. He had one, he said, whose time was up next

  day, but he had only been a prisoner two years. Two years! I looked back through two years of my own life, out of jail, prosperous, happy, surrounded by blessings, comforts, good fortune, and thought how wide a gap it was, and how long those two years passed in solitary captivity would have been. I have the face of this man who was going to be released next day before me now. It is almost more memorable than its happiness than the other faces in their misery.

  How easy and how natural it was for him to say that the system was a good one, and that the time went pretty quick considering, and that when a man once felt he had offended the law and must satisfy it, he got along somehow, and so forth. What did he call you back to say to you in that strange flutter, I asked of my conductor when he had locked the door and joined me in the passage? Oh, that he was afraid the

  souls of his boots were not fit for walking, as they were a good deal worn when he came in, and that he would thank me very much to have them mended ready. Those boots had been taken off his feet and put away with the rest of his clothes two years before. I took that opportunity of inquiring how they conducted themselves immediately before going out, adding that I presumed they trembled very much.

  Well, it's not so much a trembling, was the answer, though they do quiver as a complete derangement of the nervous system. They can't sign their names to the book, sometimes can't even hold the pen, look about them without appearing to know why or where they are, and sometimes get up and sit down again twenty times in a minute. This is when they're in the office, where they are taken with the hood on, as they were brought in. When they

  get outside the gate they stop and look first one way and then the other, not knowing which to take. Sometimes they stagger as if they were drunk, and sometimes are forced to lean against the fence they're so bad, but they clear off in course of time. As I walked among these solitary cells and looked at the faces of the men within them, I tried to picture to myself the thoughts and feelings natural to their condition. I

  imagined the hood just taken off, and the scene of their captivity disclosed to them in all its dismal monotony. At first the man is stunned. His confinement is a hideous vision, his old life a reality. He throws himself upon his bed, and lies there, abandoned to despair. By degrees the insupportable solitude and bareness of the place rouses him from this stupor, and when the trap in his grated doors open he humbly begs and prays for work,

  give me some work to do, or I shall go raving mad. He hesitates, and by fits and starts applies himself to labour. But every now and then there comes upon him a burning sense of the years that must be wasted in that stone coffin, and that agony so piercing in the recollection of those who are hidden from his view and knowledge, that he starts from his seat and striding up and down the narrow room with both hands clasped on his uplifted

  head, hears spirits tempting him to beat his brains out on the wall. Again he falls upon his bed, and lies there moaning. Suddenly he starts up, wondering whether any other man is near, whether there is another cell like that on either side of him, and listens plainly. There is no sound, but other prisoners may be near for all that. He remembers to have heard once, when he little thought of coming near himself, that the cells were so

  constructed that the prisoners could not hear each other, though the officers could hear them. Where is the nearest man, upon the right or on the left? Or is there one in both directions? Where is he sitting now, with his face to the light, or is he walking to and fro? How is he dressed? Has he been here long? Is he much worn away? Is he very white in spectre-light? Does he think of his neighbour, too? Scarcely venturing to breathe and listening while he

  thinks, he conjures up a figure with his back towards him, and imagines it moving about in this next cell. He has no idea of the face, but he is certain of the dark form of a stooping In the cell upon the other side he puts another figure, whose face is hidden from him also. Day after day, and often when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he thinks of these two men until he is almost distracted. He never changes them. There they are always,

  as he first imagined them, an old man on the right, a younger man upon the left, whose hidden features torture him to death and have a mystery that makes him tremble. The weary days pass on with solemn pace like mourners at a funeral, and slowly he begins to feel that the white walls of the cell have something dreadful in them, that their colour is horrible, that their smooth surface chills his blood, that there is one hateful corner which torments

  him. Every morning when he wakes, he hides his head beneath the coverlet and shudders to see the ghastly ceiling looking down upon him. The blessed light of day itself peeps an ugly phantom face through the unchangeable crevice which is his prison window. By slow but sure degrees the terrors of that hateful corner swell until they beset him at all times, invade his rest, make his dreams hideous and his nights dreadful. At first he took a strange

  dislike to it, feeling as though it gave birth in his brain to something of corresponding shape which ought not to be there, and wracked his head with pains. Then he began to fear it, then to dream it, and of men whispering its name and pointing to it. Then he could not bear to look at it, nor yet to turn his back upon it. Now it is every night the lurking place of a ghost, a shadow, a silent something horrible to see, but whether bird or beast

  or muffled human shape he cannot tell. When he is in his cell by day he fears the little yard without. When he is in the yard he dreads to re-enter the cell. When night comes there stands the phantom in the corner. If he have the courage to stand in its place and drive it out, he had once being desperate, it broods upon his bed. In the twilight and always at the same hour a voice calls to him

  by name, as the darkness thickens, his loom begins to live, and even that, his comfort, is a hideous figure, watching him till daybreak. Again by slow degrees these horrible fancies depart from him one by one, returning sometimes unexpectedly but at longer intervals and in less alarming shapes. He has talked upon religious matters with the gentleman who visits him, and has read his Bible, and has written

  a prayer upon his slate, and hung it up as a kind of protection and an assurance of heavenly companionship. He dreams now sometimes of his children or his wife, but is sure that they are dead or have deserted him. He is easily moved to tears, is gentle, submissive, and broken-spirited. Occasionally the old agony comes back, a very little thing will revive it, even a familiar sound or the scent of summer flowers in the air, but it does

  not last long now, for the world without has come to be the vision and this solitary life the sad reality. If his term of imprisonment be short, I mean comparatively, for short it cannot be, the last half here is almost worse than all, for he thinks the prison will take fire, and he be burnt in the ruins, or that he is doomed to die within the walls, or that he will be detained on some false charge and sentenced for another term, or

  that something, no matter what, must happen to prevent his going at large. And this is natural, and impossible to be reasoned against, because after his long separation from human life and his great suffering any event will appear to him more probable in the contemplation than the being restored to liberty and his fellow creatures. If his period of confinement have been very long, the prospect of release bewilders and confuses him. His broken heart

  may flutter for a moment when he thinks of the world outside and what it might have been to him in all these lonely years, but that is all. The cell door has been closed too long on all its hopes and cares. Better to have hanged him in the beginning than bring him to this pass and send him forth to mingle with his kind, who are his kind no more. On the haggard face of every man among these prisoners the same expression sat, I know

  not what to liken it to. It had something of that strained attention which we see upon the faces of the blind and deaf mingled with a kind of horror as though they had all been terrified. In every little chamber that I entered, and at every grate through which I looked, I seemed to see the same appalling countenance. It lives in my memory, with the fascination of a remarkable picture. Parade before my eyes a hundred men with one among

  them newly released from this solitary suffering, and I would point him out. The faces of the women, as I have said, it humanizes and refines. Whether this be because of their better nature, which is elicited in solitude, or because of their being gentler creatures of greater patience and longer suffering, I do not know, but so it is. That the punishment is nevertheless to my thinking fully as cruel and as wrong in their case as in that of the men I need

  scarcely add. My firm conviction is that, independent of the mental anguish it occasions, an anguish so acute and so tremendous that all imagination of it must fall far short of the reality. It wears the mind into a morbid state, which renders it unfit for the rough contact and busy action of the world. It is my fixed opinion that those who have undergone this punishment must pass into society again morally unhealthy and diseased. There are

  many instances on record of men who have chosen or have been condemned to lives of perfect solitude, but I scarcely remember one, even among sages of strong and vigorous intellect, where its effect had not become apparent in some disordered train of thought or some gloomy hallucination. What monstrous phantoms bred of despondency and doubt, and borne and reared in solitude, have stalked upon the earth, making creation ugly and darkening the face

  of heaven. Suicides are rare among these prisoners, are almost, indeed, unknown, but no argument in favour of the system can reasonably be deduced from this circumstance, although it is very often urged. All men who have made diseases of the mind their study know perfectly well that such extreme depression and despair as will change the whole character and beat down all its powers of elasticity and self-resistance, maybe at work within a man, and yet stop short

  of self-destruction. This is a common case. Then it makes the senses dull and by degrees impairs the bodily faculties, I am quite sure. I remarked to those who were with me in this very establishment at Philadelphia, that the criminals who had been there long were deaf. They who were in the habit of seeing these men constantly were perfectly amazed at the idea which they had regarded as groundless and fanciful. And yet the very first priest

  to whom they appealed, one of their own selection confirmed by impression, which was unknown to him instantly, and said, with a genuine ear, it was impossible to doubt, that he couldn't think how it happened, but he was growing very dull of hearing. That it is a singularly unequal punishment and affects the worst man least, there is no doubt. In its superior efficiency as a means of reformation, compared with that other

  code of regulations which allows the prisoners to work in company without communicating together, I have not the smallest faith. All the instances of reformation that were mentioned to me were of a kind that might have been, and I have no doubt whatever in my own mind would have been, equally well brought about by the silent system. With regard to such men as the Negro burglar and the English thief, even the most enthusiastic have scarcely any hope

  of their conversion. It seems to me that the objection that nothing wholesome or good has ever had its growth in such unnatural solitude, and that even a dog or any of the more intelligent among beasts would pine and mope and rust away beneath its influence, would be in itself a sufficient argument against this system. But when we recollect, in addition, how very cruel and severe it is, and that a solitary life is always liable to peculiar and distinct

  objections of a more deplorable nature which have arisen here, and call to mind, moreover, that the choice is not between this system and a bad or ill-considered one, but between it and another which has worked well and is in its whole design and practice excellent, there is surely more than sufficient reason for abandoning a mode of punishment attended by so little hope of promise and fraught beyond dispute with such a host of evils.

  As a relief to its contemplation, I will close this chapter with a curious story arising after the same theme which was related to me on the occasion of this visit by some of the gentlemen concerned. At one of the periodic meetings of the inspectors of this prison, a working man of Philadelphia presented himself before the board, and earnestly requested to be placed in solitary confinement. On being asked what motive could possibly prompt him

  to make this strange demand, he answered that he had an irresistible propensity to get drunk, and that he was constantly indulging it to his great misery and ruin, that he had no power of resistance, that he wished to be put beyond the reach of temptation, and that he could think of no better way than this. It was pointed out to him in reply that the prison was for criminals who had been tried and sentenced by the law, and could not be

  made available for any such fanciful purposes. He was exhorted to abstain from intoxicating drinks, as he surely might be if he would, and received other very good advice with which he retired exceedingly dissatisfied with the result of his application. He came again and again and again, and was so very earnest and importunate that at last they took counsel together and took—he will certainly qualify himself for admission if we reject him every

  more—let us shut him up. He will soon be glad to go away, and then we shall get rid of him. So they made him sign a statement which would prevent his ever-sustaining in action for false imprisonment to the effect that his incarceration was voluntary, and of his own seeking. They requested him to take notice that the officer in attendance had orders to release him at any hour of the day or night when he might knock upon his

  door for that purpose, but desired him to understand that once going out he would not be admitted any more. These conditions agreed upon, and he still remaining in the same mind, he was conducted to the prison and shut up in one of the cells. In this cell, the man, who had not the firmness to leave a glass of liquor standing untasted on a table before him, in this cell in solitary confinement and working every day at his trade of shoemaking,

  this man remained nearly two years. His health beginning to fail at the expiration of that time, the surgeon recommended that he should work occasionally in the garden, and as he liked the notion very much, he went about this new occupation with great cheerfulness. He was digging here, one summer day, very industriously, when the wicket in the outer gate chanced to be left open, showing beyond the well-remembered dusty road and sunburnt

  fields. The way was as free to him as to any man living, but he no sooner raised his head and caught sight of it, all shining in the light, than with the involuntary instinct of a prisoner, he cast away his spade, scampered off as fast as his legs would carry him, and never once looked back. End of chapter 7

• 09 - Washington. The Legislature. And the President’s House

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  CHAPTER VIII. We left Philadelphia by steamboat at six o'clock one very cold morning, and turned our faces towards Washington. In the course of this day's journey, as on subsequent occasions, we encountered some Englishmen, small farmers perhaps, or country publicans at home, who were settled in America and were

  travelling on their own affairs. Of all grades and kinds of men that jostle one in the public conveyances of the States, these are often the most intolerable and the most insufferable companions. United to every disagreeable characteristic that the worst kind of American travellers these countrymen of ours display an amount of insolent conceit and cool assumption of

  superiority quite monstrous to behold. In the coarse familiarity of their approach, and the effrontery of their inquisitiveness, which they are in great haste to assert, as if they patted to revenge themselves upon the decent old restraints of home, they surpass any native specimens that come within my range of observation, and I often grew so patriotic when I saw and heard them that I would cheerfully

  have submitted to a reasonable fine if I could have given any other country in the whole world the honour of claiming them for its children. As Washington may be called the headquarters of tobacco-tinctured saliva, the time has come when I must confess without any disguise that the prevalence of those two odious practices of chewing and expectorating began about this time to be anything but agreeable, and

  soon became most offensive and sickening. In all the public places of America this filthy custom is recognized. In the courts of law the judge has his spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner his, while the jurymen and spectators are provided for, as so many men who in the course of nature must desire to spit incessantly. In the hospitals the students of medicine are requested by

  notices upon the wall to eject their tobacco juice into the boxes provided for that purpose, and not to discolor the stairs. In public buildings visitors are implored through the same agency to squirt the essence of their quids, or plugs, as I have heard them called by gentlemen learned in this kind of sweetmeat, into the national spittoons, and not about the bases of the marble columns. But in some parts this custom is inseparably mixed up

  with every meal and morning call, and with all the transactions of social life. The stranger who follows in the track I took myself will find it in its full bloom and glory, luxuriant in all its alarming recklessness at Washington. And let him not persuade himself, as I once did to my shame, that previous Taurus have exaggerated its extent. The thing itself is an exaggeration of nastiness which cannot be outdone. On board this steamboat there

  were two young gentlemen, with shirt-collars reversed as usual, and armed with very big walking-sticks, who planted two seats in the middle of the deck at a distance of some four paces apart, took out their tobacco-boxes, and sat down opposite each other to chew. In less than a quarter of an hour's time these hopeful youths had shed about them on the clean boards a copious shower of yellow rain clearing by that means a kind of magic circle

  within whose limits no intruders dared to come, and which they never failed to refresh and refresh before a spot was dry. This being before breakfast rather disposed me, I confess, to nausea. But looking attentively at one of the expectorators, I plainly saw that he was young in chewing, and felt inwardly uneasy himself. A glow of delight came over me at this discovery, and as I marked his face turn paler and paler, and saw the ball of tobacco in his left cheek

  quiver with his suppressed agony, while yet he spat and chewed and spat again an emulation of his older friend, I could have fallen on his neck and implored him to go on for hours. We all sat down to a comfortable breakfast in the cabin below, where there was no more hurry or confusion than at such a meal in England, and where there was certainly greater politeness exhibited than at most of our stage-coach banquets. At about nine o'clock we arrived

  at the railroad station, and went on by the cars. At noon we turned out again to cross a wide river in another steamboat, landed at a continuation of the railroad on the opposite shore, and went on by other cars, in which in the course of the next hour or so we crossed by wooden bridges each a mile in length two creeks called respectively Great and Little Gunpowder. The water in both was blackened with flights of canvas-backed ducks, which our most delicious eating and a bound

  hariboats at that season of the year. These bridges are of wood, have no parapet, and are only just wide enough for the passage of the trains, which in the event of the smallest accident would inevitably be plunged into the river. They are startling contrivances, and are most agreeable when passed. We stopped to dine at Baltimore, and being now in Maryland we're waited on for the first time by slaves. The sensation of exacting any service from human creatures who are bought and

  sold, and being for the time a party as it were to their condition, is not an enviable one. The institution exists, perhaps in its least repulsive and most mitigated form, in such a town as this, but it is slavery, and though I was with respect to it an innocent man, its presence filled me with a sense of shame and self-reproach. After dinner we went down to the railroad again and took our seats in the cars for Washington. Being rather early, those men and boys who happened to have

  nothing particular to do, and were curious in foreigners, came, according to custom, round the carriage in which I sat, let down all the windows, thrust in their heads and shoulders, hooked themselves on conveniently by their elbows, and fell to comparing notes on the subject of my personal appearance with as much indifference as if I were a stuffed figure. I never gained so much uncompromising information with reference to my own nose and eyes and various impressions wrought

  by my mouth and chin on different minds, and how my head looks when it is viewed from behind as on these occasions. Some gentlemen were only satisfied by exercising their sense of touch, and the boys, who are surprisingly precocious in America, were seldom satisfied even by that, but would return to the charge over and over again. Many a budding president has walked into my room with his cap on his head and his hands in his pockets, and stared at me for two whole hours, occasionally refreshing

  himself with a tweak of his nose or a draught from the water jug, or by walking to the windows and inviting other boys in the street below to come up and do likewise, crying, Here he is, come on, bring all your brothers, with other hospitable entreaties of that nature. We reached Washington at about half-past six that evening, and head upon the way a beautiful view of the capital, which is a fine building of the Corinthian order, placed upon a noble and commanding eminence.

  Arrived at the hotel I saw no more of the place that night being very tired and glad to get to bed. Breakfast over next morning I walked about the streets for an hour or two, and coming home throw up the window in the front and back and look out. Here is Washington, fresh in my mind and under my eye. Take the worst parts of the city road in Pentonville, or the straggling outskirts of Paris, where the houses are smallest, preserving all their oddities,

  but especially the small shops and dwellings occupied in Pentonville but not in Washington by furniture brokers, keepers of poor eating-houses, and fanciers of birds. Burn the hole down, build it up again in wood and plaster, widen it a little, throw in part of St. John's wood, put green blinds outside all the private houses, with a red curtain and a white one in every window, plough up all the roads, plant a great deal of coarse turf in every place where it

  ought not to be, erect three handsome buildings in stone and marble anywhere but the more entirely out of everybody's way the better, call one the post office, one the patent office, and one the treasury, make it scorching hot in the morning and freezing cold in the afternoon, with an occasional tornado of wind and dust, leave a brick field without the bricks in all centre places where a street may naturally be expected, and that's Washington. The hotel in which we live is a long

  row of small houses fronting on the street and opening at the back upon a common yard in which hangs a great triangle. Whenever a servant is wanted somebody beats on this triangle from one stroke up to seven according to the number of the house in which his presence is required, and as all the servants are always being wanted and none of them ever come, this enlivening engine is in full performance the whole day through. Clothes are drying in the same yard, female slaves,

  with cotton handkerchiefs twisted round their heads, are running to and fro on the same business, black waiters cross and recross with dishes in their hands, two great dogs are playing upon a mound of loose bricks in the centre of the little square, a pig is turning up his stomach to the sun and grunting, that's comfortable, and neither the men nor the women nor the dogs nor the pig, nor any created creature, takes the smallest notice of the triangle, which is tingling madly

  all the time. I walk to the front window and look across the road upon a long straggling row of houses, one storey high, terminating nearly opposite, but a little to the left in a melancholy piece of waste ground with frowsy grass which looks like a small piece of country that has taken to drinking and has quite lost itself. Standing anyhow and all wrong upon this open space, like something meteoric that has fallen down from the moon, is an odd lopsided, one-eyed kind of wooden building

  that looks like a church with a flagstaff as long as itself sticking out of a steeple something larger than a tea-chest. Upon the window is a small stand of couches, whose slave drivers are sitting themselves on the steps of our door and talking idly together. The three most obtrusive houses near at hand are the three meanest. On one, a shop which never has anything in the window and never has the door open, is painted in large characters the city lunch. At another, which looks

  like a back way to somewhere else but is an independent building in itself, oysters are procurable in every style. At the third, which is a very, very little tailor shop, pants are fixed to order, or in other words pantaloons are made to measure. And that is our street in Washington. It is sometimes called the City of Magnificent Distances, but it might with greater propriety be termed the City of Magnificent Intentions, for it is only on taking a bird's-eye view of it from

  the top of the capital that one can at all comprehend the vast designs of its projector and aspiring Frenchmen. Spacious avenues that begin in nothing and lead nowhere, streets mile-long that only want houses, roads, and inhabitants, public buildings that need but a public to be complete, and ornaments of great thoroughfares, which only lack great thoroughfares to ornament, are its leading features. One might fancy this season over and most of the houses gone out of

  town forever with their masters. To the admirers of cities it is a Barmicide feast, a pleasant field for the imagination to rove in, a monument raised to a deceased project and not even a legible inscription to record its departed greatness. Such as it is, it is likely to remain. It was originally chosen for the seat of government as a means of averting the conflicting jealousies and interests of the different States, and very probably too as being remote from mobs, a consideration

  not to be slighted even in America. It has no trade or commerce of its own, having little or no population beyond the President and his establishment, the members of the legislature who reside there during the session, the government clerks and offices employed in the various departments, the keepers of the hotels and boarding houses, and the tradesmen who supply their tables. It is very unhealthy. Few people would live in Washington, I take it, who were not obliged

  to reside there, and the tides of emigration and speculation, those rapid and regardless currents, are little likely to flow at any time toward such dull and sluggish water. The principal features of the capital are, of course, the two houses of assembly. But there is, besides, in the centre of the building, a fine rotunda 96 feet in diameter and 96 high whose circular wall is divided into compartments ornamented by historical pictures. Four of these have,

  for their subjects, prominent events in the revolutionary struggle. They were painted by Colonel Trumbull, himself a member of Washington staff at the time of their occurrence, from which circumstance they derive a peculiar interest of their own. In the same hall Mr. Greenow's large statue of Washington has been lately placed. It has great merits, of course, but it struck me as being rather strained and violent for its subject. I could wish, however, to have seen it in a better

  light than it can ever be viewed in where it stands. There is a very pleasant and commodious library in the capital, and from a balcony in front the bird's-eye view of which I have just spoken may be had together with the beautiful prospect of the adjacent country. In one of the ornamented portions of the building there is a figure of Justice, whereunto the guidebook says, The artist at first contemplated giving more of nudity, but he was warned that the public sentiment

  in this country would not admit of it, and in his caution he has gone perhaps into the opposite extreme. Poor Justice! She has been made to wear much stranger garments in America than those she pines in in the capital. Let us hope that she has changed her dressmaker since they were fashioned, and that the public sentiment of the country did not cut out the clothes she hides her lovely figure in just now. The House of Representatives is a beautiful and spacious hall of semicircular

  shape supported by handsome pillars. One part of the gallery is appropriated to the ladies, and there they sit in front rows and come in and go out as at a play or concert. The chair is canopied and raised considerably above the floor of the house, and every member has an easy chair and a writing desk to himself, which is denounced by some people out of doors as a most unfortunate and injudicious arrangement, tending to long sittings and prosaic speeches. It is an elegant

  chamber to look at, but a singularly bad one for all purposes of hearing. The Senate, which is smaller, is free from this objection, and is exceedingly well adapted for the uses for which it is designed. The sittings, I need hardly add, take place in the day, and the parliamentary forms are modelled on those of the old country. I was sometimes asked in my progress through other places whether I had not been very much impressed by the heads of the lawmakers in Washington, meaning not their chiefs

  and leaders, but literally their individual and personal heads, whereon their hair grew, and whereby the phrenological character of each legislator was expressed, and I almost as often struck my questioner dumb with indignant consternation by answering, No, that I didn't remember being at all overcome. As I must at whatever hazard repeat the avowal here, I will follow it up by relating my impressions on this subject in as few words as possible. In the first place, it may be from some

  imperfect development of my organ of veneration, I do not remember having ever fainted away or having even been moved to tears of joyful pride at sight of any legislative body. I have borne the House of Commons like a man, and have yielded to no weakness but slumber in the House of Lords. I have seen elections for borough and country, and have never been impelled, no matter which party won, to damage my hat by throwing it up into the air in triumph, or to crack my voice by shouting forth any reference

  to our glorious constitution, to the noble purity of our independent voters, or the unimpeachable integrity of our independent members. Having withstood such strong attacks upon my fortitude, it is possible that I may be of a cold and insensible temperament amounting to iciness in such matters, and therefore my impressions of the live pillars of the capital at Washington must be received with such grains of allowance as this free confession may seem to demand. Did I see in this public body

  an assemblage of men bound together in the sacred names of liberty and freedom, and so asserting the chaste dignity of those twin goddesses in all their discussions as to exalt at once the eternal principles to which their names are given, and their own character and the character of their countrymen in the admiring eyes of the whole world? It was but a week since an aged, grey-haired man, a lasting honour to the land that gave him birth, who has done good service to his country as his

  forefathers did, and who will be remembered, scores upon scores of years after the worms bred in its corruption, are but so many grains of dust. It was but a week since this old man had stood for days upon his trial before this very body, charged with having dared to assert the infamy of that traffic which has for its accursed merchandise men and women and their unborn children, yes, and publicly exhibited in the same city, all the while, gilded, framed, and glazed, hung up for

  general admiration, shown to strangers not with shame but pride, its face not turned towards the wall, itself not taken down and burned, is the unanimous declaration of the Thirteen United States of America, which solemnly declares that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It was not a month since the same body had sat calmly by and heard a man, one of themselves,

  with oaths which beggars in their drink reject, threaten to cut a nether's throat from ear to ear. There he sat among them, not crushed by the general feeling of the assembly, but as good a man as any. There was but a week to come, and a nether of that body, for doing his duty to those who sent him there, for claiming in a republic the liberty and freedom of expressing their sentiments, and making known their prayer, would be tried found guilty,

  and have strong censure passed upon him by the rest. His was a grave offence indeed, for years before he had risen up and said, A gang of male and female slaves for sale, warranted to breed like cattle, linked to each other by iron fetters, are passing now along the open street beneath the windows of your temple of equality. Look! But there are many kinds of hunters engaged in the pursuit of happiness, and they go variously armed. It is the inalienable

  right of some among them to take the field after their happiness equipped with cat and cart-whip, stalks and iron collar, and to shout their view holo, always in praise of liberty, to the music of clanking chains and bloody stripes. Where sat the many legislators of coarse threats, of words and blows such as coal-heavers deal upon each other when they forget their breeding. On every side, every session had its anecdotes of that kind,

  and the actors were all there. Did I recognize in this assembly a body of men, who, applying themselves in a new world to correct some of the falsehoods and vices of the old, purified the avenues to public life, paved the dirty ways to place and power, debated and made laws for the common good, but had no party but their country? I saw in them the wheels that move the meanest perversion of virtuous political machinery at the worst tools ever wrought,

  despicable trickery at elections, underhanded tampering with public officers, cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields and hired pens for daggers, shameful trucklings to mercenary knaves, whose claim to be considered is that every day and week they sew new crops of ruin with their venal types, which are for the dragon's teeth of yore, in everything but sharpness, aidings and abettings of every bad inclination in the popular mind, and artful

  suppressions of all its good influences, such things as these, and in a word, dishonest faction, in its most depraved and most unblushing form, stared out from every corner of the crowded hall. Did I see among them the intelligence and refinement, the true, honest, patriotic heart of America? Here and there were drops of its blood and life, but they scarcely colored the stream of desperate adventurers which set that way for profit and for pay. It is the game of these men

  and of their profligate organs to make the strife of politics so fierce and brutal and so destructive of all self-respected worthy men that sensitive and delicate-minded persons shall be kept aloof, and they, and such as they, be left to battle out their selfish views unchecked. And thus the lowest of all scrambling fights goes on, and they who in other countries would from their intelligence and station most aspire to make the laws, do here recoil the farthest from that degradation.

  That there are among the representatives of the people in both houses, and among all parties some men of high character and great abilities, I need not say. The foremost among those politicians who are known in Europe have already been described, and I see no reason to depart from the rule I have laid down for my guidance of abstaining from all mentions of individuals. It would be sufficient to add that to the most favorable accounts that have been written of them I more than fully and most

  heartily subscribe, and that personal intercourse and free communication have bred within me not the result predicted in the very doubtful proverb, but increased admiration and respect. They are striking men to look at, hard to deceive, prompt to act, lions in energy, critons in varied accomplishments, Indians in fire of eye and gesture, Americans in strong and generous impulse, and they as well represent the honor and wisdom of their country at home, as the distinguished gentleman who

  is now its minister at the British court sustains its highest character abroad. I visited both houses nearly every day during my stay in Washington. On my initiatory visit to the House of Representatives they divided against a decision of the chair but the chair won. The second time I went the member who was speaking, being interrupted by a laugh, mimicked it as one child would in quarreling with another and added that he would make

  honorable gentlemen opposite sing out a little more on the other side of their mouths presently. But interruptions are rare, the speaker being usually heard in silence. There are more quarrels than with us, and more threatenings than gentlemen are accustomed to exchange in any civilized society of which we have record. But farmyard imitations have not as yet been imported from the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The feature in oratory which appears to be the most practiced

  and most relished is the constant repetition of the same idea or shadow of an idea in fresh words and the inquiry out of doors is not what did he say but how long did he speak. These, however, are but enlargements of a principle which prevails elsewhere. The Senate is a dignified and decorous body, and its proceedings are conducted with much gravity and order. Both houses are handsomely carpeted, but the state to which these carpets are reduced by the universal disregard of the spittoon

  with which every honorable member is accommodated, and the extraordinary improvements on the pattern which are squirted and dabbled upon it in every direction do not admit of being described. I will merely observe that I strongly recommend all strangers not to look at the floor, and if they happen to drop anything, though it be their purse, not to pick it up with an un-gloved hand on any account. It is somewhat remarkable, too, at first, to say the least, to see so many

  honorable members with swelled faces, and it is scarcely less remarkable to discover that this appearance is caused by the quantity of tobacco they contrive to stow within the hollow of the cheek. It is strange enough, too, to see an honorable gentleman leaning back in his tilted chair with his legs on the desk before him, shaping a convenient plug with his pen-knife, and with it is quite ready for use, shooting the old one from his mouth as from a pop-gun,

  and clapping the new one in its place. I was surprised to observe that even steady old chewers of great experience are not always good marksmen, which has rather inclined me to doubt that general proficiency with the rifle of which we have heard so much in England. Several gentlemen called upon me who, in the course of conversation, frequently missed the spittoon at five paces, and one, but he was certainly short-sighted, mistook the closed sash for the open window at three.

  On another occasion, when I dined out and was sitting with two ladies and some gentlemen round a fire before dinner, one of the company fell short of the fireplace six distinct times. I am disposed to think, however, that this was occasioned by his not aiming at that object, as there was a white marble hearth before the fender which was more convenient and may have suited his purpose better. The Patent Office at Washington furnishes an extraordinary example

  of American enterprise and ingenuity, for the immense number of models it contains are the accumulated inventions of only five years, the whole of the previous collection having been destroyed by fire. The elegant structure in which they are arranged is one of design rather than execution, for there is but one side erected out of four, though the works are stopped. The Post Office is a very compact and very beautiful building, and one of the departments,

  among a collection of rare and curious articles, are deposited the presents which have been made from time to time to the American ambassadors at foreign courts by the various potentates to whom they were the accredited agents of the Republic, gifts which by the law they are not permitted to retain. I confess that I looked upon this as a very painful exhibition, and one by no means flattering to the national standard of honesty and honour. That can scarcely be a high state of

  moral feeling which imagines a gentleman of repute and station, likely to be corrupted in the discharge of his duty by the presence of a snuff-box, or a richly mounted sword, or an eastern shawl, and surely the nation who reposes competence in her appointed servants is likely to be better served than she who makes them the subject of such very mean and paltry suspicions. At Georgetown, in the suburbs, there is a Jesuit college, delightfully situated,

  and so far as I had an opportunity of seeing, well managed. Many persons who are not members of the Romish Church avail themselves, I believe, of these institutions, and of the advantageous opportunities they afford for the education of their children. The heights of this neighbourhood above the Potomac River are very picturesque, and are free, I should conceive, from some of the insolubrities of Washington. The air at that elevation was quite cool and refreshing, when in

  the city it was burning hot. The President's mansion is more like an English clubhouse, both within and without, than any other kind of establishment with which I can compare it. The ornamental ground about it has been laid out in garden-walks. They are pretty and agreeable to the eye, though they have that uncomfortable air of having been made yesterday which is far from favourable to the display of such beauties. My first visit to this house was on the morning after

  my arrival, when I was carried thither by an official gentleman who was so kind as to charge himself with my presentation to the President. We entered a large hall, and having twice or thrice rung a bell which nobody answered, walked without further ceremony through the rooms on the ground floor, as divers other gentlemen, mostly with their hats on and their hands in their pockets, were doing very leisurely. Some of these had ladies with them, to whom they were showing their

  premises. Others were lounging on the chairs and sofas, others, in a perfect state of exhaustion from listlessness, were yawning drearily. The greater portion of this assembly were rather asserting their supremacy than doing anything else as they had no particular business there than anybody knew of. A few were closely eyeing the movables, as if to be quite sure that the President, who was far from popular, had not made away with any of the furniture or sold the fixtures

  for his private benefit. After glancing at these loungers, who were scattered over a pretty drawing room, opening upon a terrace which commanded a beautiful prospect of the river and the adjacent country, and who were sauntering too about a larger state room called the Eastern Drawing Room, we went upstairs into another chamber, where were certain visitors waiting for audiences. At sight of my conductor, a black in plain clothes and yellow slippers, who was gliding

  noiselessly about and whispering messages in the airs of the most impatient, made a sign of recognition and glided off to announce him. We had previously looked into another chamber, fitted all round, with a great bare wooden desk or counter, whereon lay files of newspapers to which sundry gentlemen were referring. But there were no such means of beguiling the time in this apartment, which was as uncompromising and tiresome as any waiting-room in one of our public

  establishments, or any physician's dining-room during his hours of consultation at home. There were some fifteen or twenty persons in the room, one a tall, wiry, muscular old man from the waist sunburnt and swarthy, with a brown-white hat on his knees and a giant umbrella resting between his legs, who sat bolt-up right in his chair frowning steadily at the carpet and twitching the hard lines about his mouth as if he had made up his mind to fix the precedent on what he had

  to say and wouldn't bait him a grain. Another a Kentucky farmer, six feet six in height with his hat on and his hands under his coat-tails, who leaned against the wall and kicked the floor with his heel as though he had Time's head under his shoe and were literally killing him. A third an oval-faced, bilious-looking man, with sleek black hair cropped close, and whiskers and beards shaved down to blue dots who sucked the head of a thick stick and from time to time took it out of his

  mouth to see how it was getting on. A fourth did nothing but whistle. A fifth did nothing but spit. And indeed all these gentlemen were so very persevering and energetic in this latter particular, and bestowed their favour so abundantly upon the carpet that I take it for granted the presidential housemaids have high wages, or, to speak more genteely, an ample amount of compensation, which is the American word for slavery in the case of all public servants.

  We had not waited in this room many minutes before the black messenger returned, and conducted us into a nether of smaller dimensions where, at a businesslike table covered with papers, sat the President himself. He looked somewhat worn and anxious, and well he might being at war with everybody, but the expression of his face was mild and pleasant, and his manner was remarkably unaffected, gentlemanly and agreeable. I thought that in his whole carriage and demeanor

  he became his station singularly well. Being advised at the sensible etiquette of the Republican court admitted of a traveller like myself declining without any impropriety, an invitation to dinner, which did not reach me until I had concluded my arrangements for leaving Washington some days before to which it referred, I only returned to this house once. It was on the occasion of one of those general assemblies which are held on certain nights

  between the hours of nine and twelve o'clock, and are called, rather oddly, levies. I went with my wife at about ten. There was a pretty dense crowd of carriages and people in the courtyard, and so far as I could make out there were no very clear regulations for the taking up or setting down of company. There were certainly no policemen to soothe startled horses, either by sawing at their bridles or flourishing truncheons in their eyes, and I am ready to make oath that

  no inoffensive persons were knocked violently on the head, or poked acutely in their backs or stomachs, or brought to a standstill by any such gentle means, and then taken into custody for not moving on. But there was no confusion or disorder. Our carriage reached the porch in its turn, without any blustering, swearing, shouting, backing, or other disturbance, and we dismounted with as much ease and comfort as though we had been escorted by the whole metropolitan force from

  A to Z inclusive. The suite of rooms on the ground floor were lighted up and a military band was playing in the hall. In the smaller drawing-room the centre of a circle of company were the President and his daughter-in-law, who acted as the Lady of the Mansion, and a very interesting, graceful, and accomplished Lady too. One gentleman who stood among his group appeared to take upon himself the functions of a master of the ceremonies. I saw no other

  offices or attendants, and none were needed. The great drawing-room, which I have already mentioned, and the other chambers on the ground floor, were crowded to excess. The company was not, in our sense of the term, select, for it comprehended persons of very many grades and classes, nor were there any great display of costly attire. Indeed, some of the costumes may have been, for aught I know, grotesque enough, but the decorum and propriety of behaviour which prevailed

  were unbroken by any rude or disagreeable incident, and every man, even among the miscellaneous crowd in the hall, who were admitted without any orders or tickets to look on, appeared to feel that he was a part of the institution, and was responsible for its preserving a becoming character, and appearing to the best advantage. That these visitors, too, whatever their station, were not without some refinement of taste and appreciation of intellectual

  gifts and gratitude, to those men who, by the peaceful exercise of great abilities, shed new charms and associations upon the homes of their countrymen, and elevate their character in other lands, was most earnestly testified by their reception of Washington Irving, my dear friend, who had recently been appointed minister at the court of Spain, and who was among them that night in his new character for the first and last time before going abroad. I sincerely

  believe that in all the madness of American politics few public men would have been so earnestly devoted and affectionately caressed as this most charming writer, and I have seldom respected a public assembly more than I did this eager throng when I saw them turning out with one mind from noisy orators and officers of state, and flocking with a generous and honest impulse round the man of quiet pursuits, proud in his promotion as reflecting back upon their country,

  and grateful to him with their whole hearts for the store of graceful fancies he had poured out among them. Long may he dispense such treasures with unsparing hand, and long may they remember him as worthily. The term we had assigned for the duration of our stay in Washington was now at an end, and we were to begin to travel, for the railroad distances we had traversed yet in journeying among these older towns are on that great continent looked upon as nothing.

  I had first intended going south, to Charleston, but when I came to consider the length of time which this journey would occupy, and the premature heat of the season, which even at Washington had been often very trying, and weighed moreover in my own mind the pain of living in the constant contemplation of slavery against the more than doubtful chances of my ever seeing it in the time I had to spare, stripped of the disguises in which it would certainly be dressed, and so adding any

  item to the host of facts already heaped together on the subject, I began to listen to old whisperings which had often been present to me at home in England, when I had little thought of ever being here, and to dream again of cities growing up like palaces in fairy tales among the wilds and forests of the West. The advice I received in most quarters when I began to yield to my desire of travelling toward that point of the compass was, according to custom, sufficiently cheerless.

  My companion being threatened with more perils, dangers, and discumparts that I can remember or would catalogue if I could, but of which it will be sufficient to remark that blowings up in steamboats and breakings down in coaches were among the least, but having a Western route sketched out for me by the best and kindest authority to which I could have resorted, and putting no great faith in these discouragements, I soon determined on my plan of action. This was to travel south,

  only to Richmond in Virginia, and then to turn and shape our course for the Fire West, whither I beseeched the reader's company in a new chapter. End of chapter 8

• 10 - A Night Steamer on the Potomac River. Virginia Road, and a Black Driver. Richmond. Baltimore. The Harrisburg Mail, and a Glimpse of the City. A Canal Boat

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  CHAPTER IX. A NIGHT STEAMER ON THE PATOMIC RIVER, VIRGINIA ROAD AND A BLACK DRIVER, RICHMOND, BALTIMORE, THE HARRISBURG MAIL, AND A GLIMPSE OF THE CITY, A CANAL BOAT. We were to proceed, in the first instance, by steamboat. And as it is usual to sleep on board, in consequence of the starting hour being four o'clock in the morning, we went down to where she lay, at that very uncomfortable time for such expeditions when slippers are

  most valuable, and a familiar bed, in the perspective of an hour or two, looks uncommonly pleasant. It is ten o'clock at night, say half-past ten, moonlight warm and dull enough. The steamer, not unlike a child's Noah's Arkan form with the machinery on the top of the roof, is riding lazily up and down, and bumping clumsily against the wooden pier as the ripple of the river trifles with its unwieldy carcass. The wharf is some distance from the city.

  There is nobody down here, and one or two dull lamps upon the steamer's decks are the only signs of life remaining when our coach has driven away. As soon as our footsteps the planks, a fat negros, particularly favored by nature in respect of bustle, emerges from some dark stairs and marshals my wife towards the lady's cabin to which retreat she goes, followed by a mighty bale of cloaks and greatcoats. I valiantly resolved not to go to bed at all,

  but to walk up and down the pier till morning. I begin my promenade, thinking of all kinds of distant things in persons and of nothing near, and pace up and down for half an hour. Then I go on board again, and getting into the light of one of the lamps, look at my watch and think it must have stopped, and wonder what has become of the faithful secretary whom I brought along with me from Boston.

  He is supping with our late landlord, a field-martial at least, no doubt, in honor of our departure, and maybe two hours longer. I walk again, but it gets duller and duller. The moon goes down, next June seems farther off in the dark, and the echoes of my footsteps make me nervous. It has turned cold, too, and walking up and down without my companion in such lonely circumstances is but poor amusement. So I break my staunch resolution and think it may be perhaps as

  well to go to bed. I go on board again, open the door of the gentleman's cabin, and walk in. Somehow or other, from its being so quiet, I suppose, I have taken it into my head that there is nobody there. To my horror and amazement it is full of sleepers in every stage, shape, attitude, and variety of slumber. In the berths, on the chairs, on the floors, on the tables,

  and particularly round the stove, my detested enemy. I take another step forward and slip on the shining face of a black steward, who lies rolled in a blanket on the floor. He jumps up, grins half in pain and half in hospitality, whispers my own name in my ear, and groping among the sleepers leads me to my berth. Standing beside it, I count these slumbering passengers and get past forty. There is no use going further, so I begin to undress.

  As the chairs are all occupied, and there is nothing else to put my clothes on, I deposit them upon the ground, not without soiling my hands, for it is in the same condition as the carpets in the capital, and from the same cause. Having but partially undressed, I clamber on my shelf and hold the curtain open for a few minutes while I look round on all my fellow travellers again. That done, I let it fall on them and on the world, turn

  round and go to sleep. I wake, of course, when we get under way, for there is a good deal of noise. The day is then just breaking. Everybody wakes at the same time. Some are self-possessed directly, and some are much perplexed to make out where they are until they have rubbed their eyes, and leaning on one elbow, looked about them. Some yawn, some groan, nearly all spit, and a few get up. I am among the risers, for it is easy to feel,

  without going into the fresh air, that the atmosphere of the cabin is vile in the last degree. I huddle on my clothes, go down into the fore-cabin, get shaved by the barber, and wash myself. The washing and dressing apparatus for the passengers generally consists of two jack-towels, three small wooden basins, a keg of water, and a ladle to serve it out with, six square inches of looking-glass, two ditto-ditto of yellow soap, a comb and

  brush for the head, and nothing for the teeth. Everybody uses the comb and brush except myself. Everybody stares to see me using my own, and two or three gentlemen are strongly disposed to banter me on my prejudices, but don't. When I have made my toilet, I go upon the hurricane deck, and set in for two hours of hard walking up and down. The sun is rising brilliantly, and we are passing Mount Vernon, where Washington lies buried. The river is

  wide and rapid, and its banks are beautiful. All the glory and splendour of the day are coming on, and growing brighter every minute. At eight o'clock we breakfast in the cabin where I pass the night, but the windows and doors are all thrown open, and now it is fresh enough. There is no hurry or greediness apparent in the dispatch of the meal. It is longer than a travelling breakfast with us, more orderly and more polite.

  Soon after nine o'clock we come to Potomac Creek, where we are to land, and then comes the oddest part of the journey. Seven stage coaches are preparing to carry us on. Some of them are ready, some of them are not ready. Some of the drivers are blacks, some whites. There are four horses to each coach, and all the horses, harnessed or unharnessed, are there. The passengers are getting out of the steamboat and into the coaches. The luggage

  being transferred in noisy wheel-barrows, the horses are frightened and impatient to start, the black drivers are chattering to them like so many monkeys, and the white ones whooping like so many drovers, for the main thing to be done in all kinds of hostiling here is to make as much noise as possible. The coaches are something like the French coaches, but not nearly so good. In lieu of springs they are hung on bands of the strongest

  leather. There is very little choice or difference between them, and they may be likened to the car portion of the swings at an English fair roofed, put upon axle-trees and wheels, and curtained with painted canvas. They are covered with mud from the roofs to the wheel-tire, and have never been cleaned since they were first built. The tickets we have received on board the steamboat are marked No. 1, so we belong to coach No. 1. I throw my coat

  on the box, and hoist my wife and her maid into the inside. It has only one step, and that being about a yard from the ground is usually approached by a chair, when there is no chair ladies trust in providence. The coach holds nine inside, having a seat across from door to door where we in England put our legs, so that there is only one feet more difficult in the performance than getting in, and that is getting out again. There is

  only one outside passenger, and he sits upon the box. As I am that one, I climb up, and while they are strapping the luggage on the roof and heaping it into a kind of tray behind, have a good opportunity of looking at the driver. He is a negro, very black indeed. He is dressed in a coarse pepper-and-salt suit, excessively patched and darned, particularly at the knees, grey stockings, enormous unblacked high-low shoes, and very short trousers. He

  has two odd gloves, one of party-coloured worsted and one of leather. He has a very short whip, broken in the middle and bandaged up with string, and yet he wears a low-crowned, broad-brimmed black hat, faintly shadowing forth the kind of insane imitation of an English coachman. But somebody in authority cries, Go ahead, as I am making these observations. The male takes the lead in a four-horse wagon, and all the coaches follow in procession,

  headed by number one. By the way, whenever an Englishman would cry All right, an American cries Go ahead, which is somewhat expressive of the national character of the two countries. The first half-mile of the road is over bridges made of loose planks laid across two parallel poles which tilt up as the wheels roll over them and in the river. The river has a clayy bottom and

  is full of holes, so that half a horse is constantly disappearing unexpectedly and can't be found again for some time. But we get past even this, and come to the road itself, which is a series of alternate swamps and gravel pits. A tremendous place is close before us. The black driver rolls his eyes, screws his mouth up very round, and looks straight between the two leaders, as if he were saying to himself, We have done this often before, but now I think

  we shall have a crash. He takes a rein in each hand, jerks and pulls at both, and dances on the splashboard with both feet, keeping his seat, of course, like the late lamented Ducrot in two of his fiery corsers. We come to the spot, sink down in the mire nearly to the coach windows, tilt on one side at an angle of forty-five degrees, and stick The inside scream dismally, the coach stops, the horses flounder, all the other six coaches

  stop, and their four and twenty horses flounder likewise, but merely for company and in sympathy with ours. Then the following circumstances occur. Black driver to the horses, Hi! Nothing happens. Inside scream again. Black driver to the horses, Ho! Horses plunge and splash the black driver. Gentleman inside looking out, Why, what on earth? Gentleman receives a variety of splashes and draws his head in again, without finishing his question or waiting

  for an answer. Black driver still to the horses, Jiddy, jiddy! Horses pull violently, drag the coach out of the hole, and draw it up a bank so steep that the black driver's legs fly up into the air, and he goes back among the luggage on the roof, but he immediately recovers himself and cries, still to the horses, PILL! No effect. On the contrary, the coach begins to roll back upon number two, which rolls back upon number three, which rolls

  back upon number four, and so on until number seven is heard to curse and swear nearly a quarter of a mile behind. Black driver, louder than before, PILL! Horses make another struggle to get up the bank, and again the coach rolls backwards. Black driver, louder than before, PILL! Horses make a desperate struggle. Black driver, recovering spirits, Hi, Jiddy, Jiddy, PILL! Horses make another effort. Black driver, with great vigor, Alley-loo, Hi, Jiddy, Jiddy,

  PILL! Alley-loo! Horses almost do it. Black driver, with his eye starting out of his head, Lee den, Lee der, Hi, Jiddy, Jiddy, PILL! Alley-loo! Lee! They run up the bank and go down again on the other side at a fearful pace. It is impossible to stop them, and at the bottom there is a deep hollow full of water. The coach rolls frightfully. The insides scream. The mud and water fly about us. The black driver dances like a madman. Suddenly we are

  all right by some extraordinary means and stop to breathe. A black friend of the black driver is sitting on a fence. The black driver recognizes him by twirling his head round and round like a harlequin, rolling his eyes, shrugging his shoulders and grinning from ear to ear. He stops short, turns to me, and says, We shall get you through, sir, like a fiddle, and hope a pleasure when we get you through,

  Old woman at home, sir, chuckling very much. Outside, gentlemen, sir, he often remember old woman at home, sir, grinning again. Ay, ay, we'll take care of the old woman, don't be afraid. The black driver grins again. But there is another hole, and beyond that another bank close before us. So he stops short, cries to the horses again, Easy, easy, den, Ease,

  steady, high, jitty, pill, alley, loo, but never lee, until we are reduced to the very last extremity and are in the midst of difficulties, extrication from which appears to be all but impossible. And so we do the ten miles or thereabouts in two hours and a half, breaking no bones, though bruising a great many, and in short getting through the distance like a fiddle.

  This singular kind of coaching terminates at Fredericksburg, whence there is a railway to Richmond. The tract of country through which it takes its course was once productive, but the soil has been exhausted by the system of employing a great amount of slave labor and forcing crops without strengthening the land, and it is now little better than a sandy desert overgrown with trees.

  Drury and uninteresting as its aspect is, I was glad to the heart to find anything on which one of the curses of this horrible institution has fallen, and had great pleasure in contemplating the withered ground that the richest and most thriving cultivation in the same place could possibly have afforded me. In this district, as in all others, where slavery sits brooding, I have frequently heard

  this admitted, even by those who are its warmest advocates, there is an air of ruin and decay abroad which is inseparable from the system. The barns and oathouses are moldering away, the sheds are patched and half roofless, the log cabins, built in Virginia with external chimneys made of clay or wood, are squalid in the last degree. There is no look of decent comfort anywhere. The miserable stations by the railway side, the great wild woodyards,

  whence the engine is supplied with fuel, the negro children rolling on the ground before the cabin doors, with dogs and pigs, the biped beasts of burden slinking past, gloom and ejection are upon them all. In the negro car belonging to the train in which we made this journey were a mother and her children who had just been purchased, the husband and father being left behind with

  their old owner. The children cried the whole way, and the mother was misery's picture. The champion of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness who had bought them rode in the same train, and every time we stopped, got down to see they were safe. The black and white gentleman Sinbad's travels, with one eye in the middle of his forehead, which shone like a burning coal, was nature's aristocrat compared with this white gentleman.

  It was between six and seven o'clock in the evening when we drove to the hotel, in front of which and on the top of the broad flight of steps leading to the door two or three citizens were balancing themselves on rocking chairs and smoking cigars. We found it a very large and elegant establishment, and were as well entertained as travellers need desire to be. The climate being a thirsty one, there was never at any hour of the day a scarcity

  of loungers in the spacious bar, or a cessation of the mixing of cool liquors, but they were a merrier people here, and had musical instruments playing to them the nights, which it was a treat to hear again. The next day and the next we rode and walked about the town, which is delightfully situated on eight hills overhanging James River, a sparkling stream studded here and there with

  bright islands, or brawling over broken rocks. Although it was yet but the middle of March, the weather in this southern temperature was extremely warm, the peach trees and magnolias were in full bloom, and the trees were green. In a low ground among the hills is a valley known as Bloody Run, from a terrible conflict with the Indians which once occurred there. It is a good place for such a struggle, and like every other spot I saw associated with

  any legend of that wild people now so rapidly fading from the earth, interest it be very much. The city is the seat of the local Parliament of Virginia, and in its shady legislative halls some orators were drowsily holding forth to the hot noon day. By dint of constant repetition, however, these constitutional sites had very little more interest for me than so many parochial

  And I was glad to exchange this one for a lounge at a well-arranged public library of some ten thousand volumes, and a visit to a tobacco-manufactory, where the workmen are all slaves. I saw in this place the whole process of picking, rolling, pressing, drying, packing in casks, and branding. All the tobacco thus dealt with was in course of manufacture for chewing,

  and one would have supposed that there was enough in this one storehouse to have filled the comprehensive jaws of America. In this form the weed looks like the oil-cake on which we fatten cattle, and even without reference to its consequences, is sufficiently uninviting. Many of the workmen appeared to be strong men, and it is hardly necessary to add that they were all laboring quietly then. After two o'clock in the day they are allowed to

  sing a certain number at a time. The hours striking, while I was there some twenty, sang a hymn in parts, and sang it by no means ill, pursuing their work meanwhile. A bell rang as I was about to leave, and they all poured forth into a building on the opposite side of the street to dinner. I said several times that I should like to see them at their meal, but as the gentleman to whom I mentioned this desire appeared to be suddenly taken rather

  deaf I did not pursue the request. Of their appearance I shall have something to say presently. On the following day I visited a plantation or farm of about twelve hundred acres on the opposite bank of the river. Here again, although I went down with the owner of the estate to the quarter, as that part of it which the slaves live is called, I was not invited to enter into any of their huts. All I saw of them was that they were very crazy,

  wretched cabins near to which groups of half-naked children basked in the sun or wallowed on the dusty ground. But I believe that this gentleman is a considerate and excellent master who inherited his fifty slaves, and is neither a buyer nor a seller of human stock, and I am sure from my own observation and conviction that he is a kind-hearted, worthy man. The planter's house was an airy, rustic dwelling that brought defoes' description of such places

  strongly to my recollection. The day was very warm, but the blinds being all closed, and the windows and doors set wide open, a shady coolness rustled through the rooms, which was exquisitely refreshing after the glare and heat without. Before the windows was an open piazza, where, in what they call the hot weather, whatever that may be, they sling hammocks and drink and doze luxuriously. I do not know how their cool rejections may

  taste within the hammocks, but having experience I can report that, out of them, the mounds of ices and the bowls of mint julep and sherry cobbler they make in these latitudes are refreshments never to be thought of afterwards, in summer, by those who would preserve contented minds. There are two bridges across the river. One belongs to the railroad, and the other, which is a very crazy affair, is the private property of some old lady in the neighborhood who levies

  upon the townspeople. Crossing this bridge, on my way back, I saw a notice painted on the gate cautioning all persons to drive slowly under a penalty, if the offender were a white man of five dollars, if a negro fifteen stripes. The same decay and gloom that overhang the way by which it is approached hover above the town of Richmond. There are pretty villas and cheerful houses in its streets, and nature smiles upon the country round, but jostling

  its handsome residences, like slavery itself going hand in hand with many lofty virtues, are deplorable tenements, fences unrepaired, walls crumbling into runeous heaps, hinting gloomily at things below the surface these, and many other tokens of the same description, force themselves upon the notice, and are remembered with depressing influence when livelier features are forgotten.

  To those who are happily unaccustomed to them, the countenances in the streets and laboring places too are shocking. All men who know that there are laws against instructing slaves, of which the pains and penalties greatly exceed in their amount the fines imposed on those who maim and torture them, must be prepared to find their faces very low in the scale of intellectual expression. But the darkness, not of skin but mind, which meets the stranger's

  eye at every turn, the brutalizing and blotting out of all fairer characters traced by nature's hand, immeasurably outdo his worst belief. That travel creation of the great satirist brain, who fresh from living among horses, peered from a high casement down upon his own kind with trembling horror, was scarcely more repelled and daunted by the sight than those who look upon some of those faces for the first time must surely be. I left the

  last of them behind me in the person of a wretched drudge, who, after running to and fro all day till midnight and mopping in his stealthy winks of sleep upon the stairs between wiles, was washing the dark passages at four o'clock in the morning, and went upon my way with a grateful heart that I was not doomed to live where slavery was, and had never had my senses blunted to its wrongs and horrors in a slave-rocked cradle.

  It had been my intention to proceed by James River and Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore, but one of the steamboats being absent from her station through some accident, and the means of conveyance being consequently rendered uncertain, we returned to Washington by the way we had come. There were two constables on board the steamboat, in pursuit of runaway slaves, and halting there again for one night, went on to Baltimore next afternoon. The most

  comfortable of all the hotels which I had any experience in the United States, and they were not a few, is Barnum's, in that city, where the English traveller will find curtains to his bed, for the first and probably the last time in America, this is a disinterested remark for I never use them, and where he will be likely to have enough water for washing himself, which is not at all a common case. This capital of the State of Maryland is a

  bustling, busy town, with a great deal of traffic of various kinds, and in particular of water commerce. That portion of the town, which at most favours, is none of the cleanest, it is true, but the upper part is of a very different character, and has many agreeable streets and public buildings. The Washington Monument, which is a handsome pillar with a statue on its summit, the Medical College, and the Battle Monument, in memory of an engagement

  the British at North Point, are the most conspicuous among them. There is a very good prison in the city, and the State Penitentiary is also among its institutions. In this latter establishment there were two curious cases. One was that of a young man who had been tried for the murder of his father. The evidence was entirely circumstantial, and was very conflicting and doubtful, nor was it possible to assign any motive which could have tempted him to the

  of so tremendous a crime. He had been tried twice, and on the second occasion the jury felt so much hesitation in convicting him that they found a verdict of manslaughter or murder in the second degree, which it could not possibly be, as there had beyond all doubt been no quarrel or provocation, and if he were guilty at all, he was unquestionably guilty of murder in its broadest and worst signification. The remarkable feature in the

  that if the unfortunate deceased were not really murdered by this own son of his, he must have been murdered by his own brother. The evidence lay in a most remarkable manner between these two. On all the suspicious points the dead man's brother was the witness. All the explanations for the prisoner, some of them extremely plausible, went by construction and inference to inculcate him as plotting to fix the guilt upon his nephew. It must

  have been one of them, and the jury had to decide between two sets of suspicious, almost equally unnatural, unaccountable and strange. The other case was that of a man who once went to a certain distillers and stole a copper measure containing a quantity of liquor. He was pursued and taken with the property in his possession, and was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. On coming out of the jail at the expiration of that term, he went back

  to the same distillers and stole the same copper measure containing the same quantity of liquor. There was not the slightest reason to suppose the man wished to return to prison. Everything but the commission of the offence made directly against that assumption. There are only two ways of accounting for this extraordinary proceeding. One is that after undergoing so much for this copper measure he conceived he had established a sort of claim and right

  to it. The other that, by dint of long thinking about, it had become a monomania with him, and had acquired a fascination which he found it impossible to resist swelling from an earthly copper gallon into an ethereal golden vat. After remaining here a couple of days, I bound myself to a rigid adherence to the plan I had laid down so recently, and resolved to set forward on our western journey without

  any more delay. Accordingly, having reduced the luggage within the smallest possible compass by sending back to New York to be afterwards forwarded to us in Canada, so much of it as was not absolutely wanted, and having procured the necessary credentials to banking houses on the way, and having moreover looked for two evenings at the setting sun, with as well defined an idea of the country before us as if we had been going to travel into the very

  centre of that planet. We left Baltimore by another railway at half-past eight in the morning and reached the town of York some sixty miles off by the early dinner-time of the hotel which was the starting place of the four-horse coach wherein we were to proceed to Harrisburg. This conveyance, the box of which I was fortunate enough to secure, had come down to meet us at the railway station, and was as muddy and cumbersome as usual.

  As more passengers were waiting for us at the inn door, the coachman observed under his breath in the usual self-communicative voice, looking at the while at his mouldy harness as if it were to that he was addressing himself. I expect we shall want the big coach. I could not help wondering within myself what the size of this big coach might be, and how

  many persons it might be designed to hold, for the vehicle, which was too small for our purpose, was something larger than two English heavy night-couches, and might have been the twin brother of a French diligence. My speculations were speedily set at rest, however, for as soon as we had dined there came rumbling up the street, shaking its sides like a corpulent giant, a kind of barge on wheels. After much blundering and backing, it stopped at the

  door, rolling heavily from side to side when its other motion had ceased, as if it had taken cold in its damp stable, and between that, and the having been required in its drop-sicle old age to move at any faster pace than a walk, were distance by shortness of wind. If here ain't the Harrisburg male at last and dreadful bright and smart to look at,

  too, cried an elderly gentleman in some excitement, darn my mother! I don't know what the sensation of being darned may be, or whether a man's mother has a keener relish or dis relish of the process than anybody else, but if the endurance of this mysterious ceremony by the old lady in question had depended on the accuracy of her son's vision in respect to the abstract brightness and smartness of the Harrisburg male, she would certainly have undergone its

  infliction. However, they booked twelve people inside, and the luggage, including such trifles as a large rocking-chair and a good-sized dining-table, being at length made fast upon the roof, we started off in great state. At the door of another hotel there was another passenger to be taken up. "'Any room, sir,' cries the new passenger to the coachman.

  "'Well, there's room enough,' replies the coachman, without getting down or even looking at him. "'There ain't no room at all, sir,' balls the gentleman inside, which another gentleman also inside confirms, by predicting that the attempt to introduce any more passengers won't fit no how. The new passenger, without any expression of anxiety, looks into the coach

  and then looks up at the coachman. "'Now, how do you mean to fix it?' says he, after a pause, for I must go. The coachman employs himself in twisting the lash of his whip into a knot, and takes no more notice of the question, clearly signifying that it is anybody's business but his, and that the passengers would do well to fix it among themselves. In this state of things matters seem to be

  approximating to a fix of another kind, when another inside passenger in a corner who is nearly suffocated cries faintly, I'll get out. This is a matter of relief or self-congratulation to the driver, for his immovable philosophy is perfectly undisturbed by anything that happens in the coach. Of all things in the world, the coach would seem to be the very last upon his mind. The exchange is made, however, and then the passenger who has given

  up his seat makes a third upon the box, seating himself in what he calls the middle, that is, with half his person on my legs and the other half on the driver's. "'Go ahead, captain,' cries the Colonel, who directs. "'Go, Lang,' cries the Captain, to his company, the horses, and away we go. We took up at a rural bar-room, after we had gone a few miles, an intoxicated gentleman

  who climbed upon the roof among the luggage, and subsequently, slipping off without hurting himself, was seen in the distant perspective reeling back to the grog-shock where we had found him. We also parted with more of our freight at different times, so that when we came to change horses I was again alone outside. The coachmen always change with the horses, and are usually as dirty as the coach. The first was dressed like a very shabby English

  baker, the second like a Russian peasant, for he wore a loose purple camlet robe with a fur collar tied round his waist with a party-coloured worsted sash, grey trousers, light blue gloves, and a cap of beer-skin. It had by this time come on to rain very heavily, and there was a cold, damp mist besides which penetrated to the skin. I was glad to take advantage of a stoppage and get down to stretch my legs, shake the water off my greatcoat, and swallow

  the usual anti-temperance recipe for keeping out the cold. When I mounted to my seat again, I observed a new parcel lying on the coach-roof, which I took to be a rather large fiddle in a brown bag. In the course of a few miles, however, I discovered that it had a glazed cap at one end and a pair of muddy shoes at the other, and further observation demonstrated it to be a small boy in a snuff-coloured coat with his arms quite pinioned to his sides

  by deep forcing into his pockets. He was, I presume, a relative or friend of the couchman's, as he lay top of the luggage with his face toward the rain, and except when a change of position brought his shoes in contact with my hat he appeared to be asleep. At last, on some occasion of our stopping, this thing slowly upreared itself to the height of three feet six, and fixing its eyes on me, observed in piping accents with a complacent yawn,

  half quenched in an obliging air of friendly patronage, "'Well now, stranger, I guess you find this a most like an English afternoon, eh?' The scenery, which had been tame enough at first, was for the last ten or twelve miles beautiful. Our road wound through the pleasant valley of the Susquehanna, the river dotted with innumerable green islands lay upon our right, and on the left a steep ascent craggy

  with broken rock and dark with pine trees. The mist, reething itself into a hundred fantastic shapes, moved solemnly upon the water, and the gloom of evening gave to all an air of mystery and silence which greatly enhanced its natural interest. We crossed this river by a wooden bridge, roofed and covered in on all sides, and nearly a mile in length. It was profoundly dark, perplexed with great beams, crossing and re-crossing it at every

  possible angle, and through the broad chinks and crevices in the floor the rapid river gleamed far down below like a legion of eyes. We had no lamps, and as the horses stumbled and floundered through this place towards the distant speck of dying light it seemed interminable. I really could not at first persuade myself as we rumbled heavily on, filling the bridge with hollow noises, and I held down my head to save it from the rafters

  above, but that I was in a painful dream, for I have often dreamed of toiling through such places, and as often argued even at the time, this cannot be reality. At length, however, we emerged upon the streets of Harrisburg, whose feeble lights reflected dismally from the wet ground did not shine out upon a very cheerful city. We were soon established in a snug hotel, which though smaller and far less splendid than many we put up at, it raised

  above them in all my remembrance by having for its landlord the most obliging, considerate and gentlemanly person I ever had to deal with. As we were not to proceed upon our journey until the afternoon, I walked out after breakfast the next morning to look about me, and was duly shown a model prison on the solitary system just erected and as yet without an inmate. The trunk of an old tree to which Harris, the first settler here, afterwards

  buried under it, was tied by hostile Indians with his funeral pile about him, when he was saved by the timely appearance of a friendly party on the opposite shore of the river, the local legislature, for there was another of those bodies here again in full debate, and the other curiosities of the town. I was very much interested in looking over a number of treaties made from time to time

  with the poor Indians, signed by the different chiefs at the period of their ratification, and preserved in the office of the secretary to the commonwealth. These signatures, traced, of course, by their own hands, are rough drawings of the creatures or weapons they were called after. Thus the great turtle makes a crooked pen-and-ink outline of a great turtle. The buffalo sketches a buffalo. The war hatchet sets a rough image of that weapon for his

  mark. So with the arrow, the fish, the scalp, the big canoe, and all of them. I could not but think, as I looked at these feeble and tremulous productions of hands which could draw the longest arrow to the head in a stout elk-horn bow, or split a bead or a feather with a rifle-ball, of crabs musing over the parish register, and the irregular scratches made with a pen by men who would plough a lengthy furrow straight from end to end. Nor

  could I help bestowing many sorrowful thoughts upon the simple warriors whose hands and hearts were set there in all truth and honesty, and who only learned in course of time from white men how to break their faith and quibble out of forms and bonds. I wonder, too, how many times the credulous big turtle, or trusting little hatchet, had put his mark to treaties which were falsely read to him, and had signed away he knew not what, until it went and cast

  him loose upon the new possessors of the land, a savage indeed. Our host announced before our early dinner that some members of the legislative body to do us the honor of calling. He had kindly yielded up to us his wife's own little parlor, and when I begged that he would show them in, I saw him look with painful apprehension at its pretty carpet, though being otherwise occupied at the time. The cause of his uneasiness

  did not occur to me. It certainly would have been more pleasant to all the parties concerned, and would not, I think, have compromised their independence in any material degree if some of these gentlemen had not only yielded to the prejudices in favor of spittoons, but had abandoned themselves for the moment even to the conventional absurdity of pocket handkerchiefs. It still continued to rain heavily, and when we went down to the canal-boat, for that was

  the mode of conveyance by which we were to proceed after dinner, the weather was as uncompromising and obstinately wet as one would desire to see, nor was the sight of this canal-boat in which we were to spend three or four days by any means a cheerful one, as it involved some uneasy speculations concerning the disposal of the passengers at night, and opened a wide field of inquiry touching the other domestic arrangements of the establishment which was

  sufficiently disconcerting. However there it was, a barge with a little house in it, viewed from the outside, and a caravan at a fair viewed from within, the gentlemen being accommodated as the spectators usually are in one of those locomotive museums of penny-wanders, and the ladies being partitioned off by a red curtain after the manner of the dwarfs and giants in the same establishments

  whose private lives are passed in rather close exclusiveness. We sat here looking silently at the row of little tables which extended down both sides of the cabin, and listening to the rain as it dripped and pattered on the boat, and with a dismal merriment in the water until the arrival of the railway train, for whose final contribution to our stock of passengers our departure was alone deferred. It brought

  a great many boxes which were bumped and tossed upon the roof, almost as painfully as if they had been deposited on one's own head without the intervention of a porter's knot, and several damp gentlemen whose clothes on their drawing round the stove began to steam again. No doubt it would have been a thought more comfortable in the driving rain, which now poured down more soakingly than ever had admitted of a window being open, or if our number had

  been something less than thirty. But there was scarcely time to think as much. When a train of three horses was attached to the tow-rope, the boy upon the leader smacked his whip. The rudder creaked and groaned complainingly, and we had begun our journey. End of chapter 9

• 11 - Some further Account of the Canal Boat, its Domestic Economy, and its Passengers. Journey to Pittsburg across the Alleghany Mountains. Pittsburg

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  CHAPTER X. As it continued to rain most perseveringly, we all remained below. The damp gentlemen round the stove, gradually becoming mildewed by the action of the fire, and the dry gentlemen lying at full length upon the seats, or slumbering uneasily with their faces on the tables, or walking up and down the cabin, which it was barely possible

  for a man of the middle height to do without making bald places on his head by scraping it against the roof. At about six o'clock all the small tables were put together to form one long table, and everybody sat down to tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon, shad, liver, steaks, potatoes, pickles, ham, chops, black puddings, and sausages.

  "'Will you try,' said my opposing neighbour, handing me a dish of potatoes, broken up in milk and butter, "'will you try some of these fixings?' There are few words which perform such various duties as this word fix. It is the Caleb Quotum of the American vocabulary. You call upon a gentleman in a country town, and his help informs you that he is fixing

  himself just now, but will be down directly, by which you are to understand that he is dressing. You inquire on board a steamboat of a fellow passenger whether breakfast will be ready soon, and he tells you he should think so, for when he was last below they were fixing the tables, in other words laying the cloth.

  You beg a porter to collect your luggage, and he entreats you not to be uneasy, for he'll fix it presently. And if you complain of indisposition, you are advised to have recourse to Dr. So-and-so who will fix you in no time. One night I ordered a bottle of mulled wine at a hotel where I was staying, and waited

  a long time for it. At length it was put upon the table with an apology from the landlord that he feared it wasn't fixed properly. And I recollect once, at a stage-coach dinner, overhearing a very stern gentleman demand of a waiter, who presented him with a plate of underdone roast beef, whether he called

  that fixing God-amighty's vittles. There is no doubt that the meal at which the invitation was tendered to me which has occasioned this digression was disposed of somewhat ravenously, and that the gentleman thrust the broad-bladed knives and the two-pronged forks further down their throats than ever I saw the same weapons except in the hands of a skilful juggler.

  But no man sat down until the ladies were seated, or omitted any little act of politeness which could contribute to their comfort. Nor did I ever once, on any occasion anywhere during my rambles in America, see a woman exposed to the slightest act of rudeness, incivility, or even inattention. By the time the meal was over, the rain, which seems to have worn itself out by coming down

  so fast, was nearly over too. And it became feasible to go on deck which was a great relief, notwithstanding its being a very small deck, and being rendered still smaller by the luggage which was heaped together in the middle under a tarpaulin covering, leaving on either side a path so narrow that it became a science to walk to and fro without tumbling overboard into the canal.

  It was somewhat embarrassing at first, too, to have to duck nimbly every five minutes whenever the man at the helm cried, Bridge! and sometimes when the cry was, Low Bridge! to lie down nearly flat. But custom familiarizes one to anything, and there were so many bridges that it took a very short time to get used to this.

  As night came on we drew in sight of the first range of hills which are the outposts of the Allegheny Mountains, the scenery which had been uninteresting hitherto became more bold and striking. The wet ground reeked and smoked after the heavy fall of rain, and the croaking of the frogs, whose noise in these parts is almost incredible, sounded as though a million of

  fairy teams with bells were travelling through the air and keeping pace with us. The night was cloudy yet, but moonlight too, and when we crossed the Susquehanna River, over which there is an extraordinary wooden bridge with two galleries one above the other, so that even there two team-boats meeting may pass without confusion, it was wild and grand. I have mentioned my having been in some uncertainty and doubt at first relative to the sleeping

  arrangements on board this boat. I remained in the same vague state of mind until ten o'clock or thereabouts when going below. I found suspended on either side of the cabin three long tiers of hanging book-shells designed apparently for volumes of the small octavo size.

  Looking with greater attention at these contrivances, wondering to find such literary preparations in such a place, I described on each shelf a sort of microscopic sheet and blanket. Then I began dimly to comprehend that the passengers were the library, and that they were to be arranged edgewise on these shelves till morning. I was assisted to this conclusion by seeing some of them gathered round the master of

  the boat at one of the tables, drawing lots with all the anxieties and passions of gamesters depicted in their countenances, while others, with small pieces of cardboard in their hands, were groping among the shelves in search of numbers corresponding with those they had drawn. As soon as any gentleman found his number, he took possession of it by immediately undressing

  himself and crawling into bed. The rapidity with which an agitated gambler subsided into a snoring slumberer was one of the most singular effects I have ever witnessed. As to the ladies, they were already in bed behind the red curtain, which was carefully drawn and pinned up the centre, though as every cough or sneeze or whisper behind this

  curtain was perfectly audible before it, we had still a lively consciousness of their society. The politeness of the person in authority had secured me to a shelf in a nook near this red curtain, in some degree removed from the great body of sleepers to which place I retired, with many acknowledgments to him for his attention.

  I found it, on after measurement, just the width of an ordinary sheet of bath-post letter-paper, and I was at first in some uncertainty as to the best means of getting into it. With the shelf being a bottom one, I finally determined on lying upon the floor, rolling gently in, stopping immediately I touched the mattress, and remaining for the night with this side uppermost whatever it might be.

  Luckily, I came upon my back at exactly the right moment. I was much alarmed on looking upward to see, by the shape of his half-yard of sacking, which his weight had bent into an exceedingly tight bag, that there was a very heavy gentleman above me, whom the slender cord seemed quite incapable of holding, and I could not help reflecting upon the grief of my wife and family in the event of his coming down in the night.

  But as I could not have got up again without a severe bodily struggle which might have alarmed the ladies, and as I had nowhere to go to, even if I had, I shut my eyes upon the danger, and remained there. One of two remarkable circumstances is indisputably a fact with reference to that class of society who travel in these boats.

  Either they carry their restlessness to such a pitch that they never sleep at all, or they expectorate in dreams, which would be a remarkable mingling of the real and ideal. All night long and every night on this canal there was a perfect storm and tempest of spitting, and once my coat being the very centre of the hurricane sustained by five gentlemen, which moved vertically, strictly carrying out Reed's theory of the law of storms, I

  was feigned the next morning to lie on the deck and rub it down with fair water before it was in a condition to be worn again. Between five and six o'clock in the morning we got up, and some of us went on deck to give them an opportunity of taking the shelves down, while others, the morning being very cold, crowded round the rusty stove, cherishing the newly kindled fire, and filling the grate

  with those voluntary contributions of which they had been so liberal all night. The washing accommodations were primitive. There was a tin ladle chained to the deck, with which every gentleman who thought it necessary to cleanse himself, many were superior to this weakness, fished the dirty water out of the canal and poured it into a tin basin secured in like manner.

  There was also a jack-towel, and hanging up before a little looking glass in the bar in the immediate vicinity of the bread and cheese and biscuits were a public comb and hairbrush. At eight o'clock, the shelves being taken down and put away and the tables joined together, everybody sat down to the tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, hams, chops, black puddings, and sausages all over again.

  Some were fond of compounding this variety and having it all on their plates at once. As each gentleman got through his own personal amount of tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, ham, chops, black puddings, and sausages, he rose up and walked off. When everybody had done with everything, the fragments were cleared away, and one of the

  waiters appearing anew in the character of a barber shaved such of the company as desired to be shaved while the remainder looked on or yawned over their newspapers. Dinner was breakfast again without the tea and coffee, and supper and breakfast were identical. There was a man on board this boat, with a light, fresh-coloured face and a pepper-and-salt suit of clothes, who was the most inquisitive fellow that can possibly be imagined. He never

  spoke otherwise than interrogatively. He was an embodied inquiry. Sitting down or standing up, still or moving, walking the deck or taking his meals, there he was, with a great note of interrogation in each eye, two in his cocked ears, two more in his turned-up nose and chin, at least half a dozen more about the quarters of his mouth, and the largest one of all in his hair, which was brushed pertly off his forehead in a flaxen clump. Every button in

  his clothes said, "'Eh? What's that? Did you speak? Say that again, will you?' He was always wide awake, like the enchanted bride who drove her husband frantic, always restless, always thirsting for answers, perpetually seeking and never finding. There never was such a curious man. I wore a fur greatcoat at that time, and before we were well clear of the wharf he questioned

  me concerning it and its price, and where I bought it, and when, and what fur it was, and what it weighed, and what it cost. Then he took notice of my watch and asked me what that cost, and whether it was a French watch, and where I got it, and how I got it, and whether I bought it or had it given me, and how it went, and where the keyhole was, and when I wound it, every night or every morning, and whether I ever forgot to wind it at all,

  and if I did, what then? Where had I been to last? Where was I going next? Where was I going after that? And had I seen the President? And what did he say? And what did I say? And what did he say when I had said that? Eh? Law not, do tell." Finding that nothing would satisfy him, I evaded his questions after the fur score or two, and in particular pleaded ignorance respect to the name of the fur whereof the coat was

  made. I am unable to say whether this was the reason, but the coat fascinated him afterwards. He usually kept close behind me as I walked and moved as I moved, that he might look at it the better, and he frequently dived into narrow places after me at the risk of his life that he might have the satisfaction of passing his hand up the back and rubbing it the wrong way.

  We had another odd specimen on board of a different kind. This was a thin-faced, spare-figured man of middle age and stature, dressed in a dusty, drabbish-coloured suit such as I never saw before. He was perfectly quiet during the first part of the journey. Indeed, I don't remember having so much as see him until he was brought out by circumstances as great men often are. The conjunction of events which made him famous happened briefly thus. The

  canal extends to the foot of the mountain, and there of course it stops. The passenger is being conveyed across it by land-carriage and taken on afterwards by another canal-boat, the counterpart of the first, which awaits them on the other side. There are two canal lines of passage-boats, one is called the Express and one, a cheaper one, the Pioneer. The Pioneer gets first to the mountain and waits for the Express people to come up, both

  sets of passengers being conveyed across it at the same time. We were the Express Company. But when we had crossed the mountain and had come to the second boat, the proprietors took it into their beads to draft all the pioneers into it likewise so that we were five and forty at least, and the accession of passengers was not at all of that kind which improved at night. Our people grumbled at this, as people do in such cases, but suffered the

  boat to be towed off with the whole freight aboard nevertheless, and away we went down the canal. At home I should have protested lustily, but being a foreigner here I held my peace. Not so this passenger. He cleft a path along the people on deck, we were nearly all on deck, and without addressing anybody whomsoever soliloquized as follows. This may suit you, this may, but it don't suit me. This may be all very well with Down

  Easter's and men of Boston raising, but it won't suit my figure know-how and no two ways about that, and so I tell you. Now, I'm from the brown forest of Mississippi, I am, and when the sun shines on me it does shine a little. It don't glimmer where I live, the people don't. No, I'm a brown forester, I am. I ain't a Johnny cake. There are no smooth skins where I live. We're rough men there, rather. If Down Easter's and men of Boston

  raising like this I am glad of it, but I'm none of that raising nor of that breed. No, this company wants a little fixing, it does. I'm the wrong sort of man for them, I am. They won't like me, they won't. This is piling up atop, a little too mountainous this is. At the end of every one of these short sentences he turned upon his heel and walked the other way, checking himself abruptly when he had finished another short sentence and turning

  back again. It is impossible for me to say what terrific meaning was hidden in the words of this brown forester, but I know that the other passengers looked on in a sort of admiring horror and that presently the boat was put back to the wharf as many of the pioneers as could be coaxed or bullied into going away were gut-rid of. When we started again some of the boldest spirits on board made bold to say, to the

  obvious occasion of this improvement in our prospects, Much obliged to you, sir. Whereunto the brown forester, waving his hand and still walking up and down as before, replied, No, you ain't. You're none of my raising. You may act for yourselves, you may. I have pinted out the way. Downeasters and Johnny Cakes can follow if they please. I ain't a Johnny Cake, I am. I am from the brown forest of the Mississippi, I am. And so on as before.

  He was unanimously voted one of the tables for his bed that night. There is a great contest for the tables, in consideration for his public services, and he had the warmest corner by the stove throughout the rest of the journey. But I never could find out that he did anything except sit there, nor did I hear him speak again until, in the midst of the bustle and turmoil of getting the luggage ashore in the dark at Pittsburgh, I stumbled over him as

  he sat smoking a cigar on the cabin steps and heard him muttering to himself with a short laugh of defiance, I ain't a Johnny Cake, I ain't. I am from the brown forest of the Mississippi, I am, dammey. I am inclined to argue from this, that he has never left off saying so. But I could not make an affidavit of that part of the story if required to do so by my Queen and country.

  As we have not yet reached Pittsburgh yet, however, in the order of our narrative, I may go on to remark that breakfast was perhaps the least desirable meal of the day, as in addition to the many savoury odours arising from the eatables already mentioned, there were whiffs of gin, whiskey, brandy, and rum from the little bar hard by, and a decided seasoning of stale tobacco. Many of the gentleman-passengers were far from particular in respect of their

  linen, which was in some cases as yellow as the little rivulets that had trickled for the quarters of their mouths in chewing and dried there, nor was the atmosphere quite free from zephyr whisperings of the thirty beds which had just been cleared away, and of which we were further and more pressingly reminded by the occasional appearance of the tablecloth of a kind of game not mentioned in the bill of fare. And yet despite these

  oddities, and even they had for me at least a humour of their own, there was much in this mode of travelling which I heartily enjoyed at the time, and look back upon with great pleasure. Even the running up, bare-necked, at five o'clock in the morning from the tainted cabin to the dirty deck, scooping up the icy water, plunging one's head into it, and drawing it out all fresh and glowing with the cold, was a good thing. The fast, brisk walk upon

  the towing path between that time and breakfast when every vein and artery seemed to tingle with health, the exquisite beauty of the opening day when light came gleaming off from everything, the lazy motion of the boat when one lay idly on the dock, looking through rather than at the deep blue sky, the gliding on at night so noiselessly past frowning hills sullen with dark trees, and sometimes angry in one red burning spot high up where unseen men

  lay crouching round a fire, the shining oat of the bright stars undisturbed by noise of wheels or steam or any other sound that the limpid rippling of the water as the boat wet on, all these were pure delights. Then there were new settlements and detachable log cabins and frame houses, full of interest for strangers from an old country, cabins with simple ovens, made of clay, and lodgings for the pigs nearly as good as many of the human quarters, broken

  windows patched with worn-out hats, old clothes, old boards, fragments of blankets and paper, and home-made dressers standing in the open air without the door, whereon was ranged the household store not hard to count of earthen jars and pots. The eye was pained to see the stumps of great trees stickily strewn in every field of wheat and seldom to lose the eternal swamp and dull morass with hundreds of rotten trunks and twisted branches steeped in its

  unwholesome water. It was quite sad and oppressive to come upon great tracks where settlers had been burning down the trees and where their wounded bodies lay abode like those of murdered creatures while here and there some charred and blackened giant reared aloft two withered arms and seemed to call down curses on his foes. Sometimes at night the way wound through some lonely gorge, like a mountain pass in Scotland, shining and coldly glittering in

  the light of the moon, and so closed in by high steep hills all round that there seemed to be no egress save through the narrower path by which we had come, until one rugged hillside seemed to open, and shutting out the moonlight as we passed into its gloomy throat wrapped our new course in shade and darkness. We had left Harrisburg on Friday. On Sunday morning we arrived at the foot of the mountain

  which is crossed by railroad. There are ten inclined planes, five ascending and five descending. The carriages are dragged up the former and let slowly down the latter by means of stationary engines, the comparatively level spaces between being traversed, sometimes by horse, sometimes by engine power, as the case demands. Occasionally the rails are laid upon the extreme verge of a giddy precipice, and looking from the carriage window the traveller gazes sheer

  down without a stone or scrape of fence between into the mountain depths below. The journey is very carefully made, however. Only two carriages travelling together, and while proper precautions are taken, is not to be dreaded for its dangers. It was very pretty travelling thus, at a rapid pace along the heights of the mountain in a keen wind, to look down into a valley full of light and softness, catching glimpses through

  the tree-trops of scattered cabins, children running to the doors, dogs bursting out to bark whom we could see without hearing, terrified pigs scampering homewards, families sitting out in their rude gardens, cows gazing upward with a stupid indifference, men in their shirt-sleeves looking on at their unfinished houses planning out to-morrow's work, and we riding onward high above them like a whirlwind.

  It was amusing too when we had dined and rattled down a steep pass, having no other moving power than the weight of the carriages themselves, to see the engine released long after us come buzzing down alone, like a great insect, its back of green and gold so shining in the sun, that if it had spread a pair of wings and soared away no one would have had occasion as I fancied for the least surprise. But it stopped short of us in a very business-like

  when we reached the canal, and before we left the wharf, went panting up this hill again with the passengers who had waited our arrival for the means of traversing the road by which we had come. On the Monday morning furnace-fires and clanking hammers on the banks of the canal warned us that we approached the termination of this part of our journey. After going through another

  dreamy place, a long aqueduct along the Allegheny River, which was stranger than the bridge at Harrisburg, being a vast low wooden chamber full of water, we emerged upon that ugly confusion of backs of buildings and crazy galleries and stairs, which always abuts on water, whether it be river, sea, canal or ditch, and were at Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is like Birmingham in England. At least its townspeople say so. Setting aside

  the streets, the shops, the houses, wagons, factories, public buildings and population, It certainly has a great quantity of smoke hanging about it, and is famous for its ironworks. Besides the prison to which I have already referred, this town contains a pretty arsenal and other institutions. It is very beautifully situated on the Allegheny River, over which there are two bridges, and the villas of the wealthier citizens sprinkled about the high

  grounds in the neighborhood are pretty enough. We lodged at a most excellent hotel, and were admirably served. As usual, it was full of boarders, was very large, had a broad colonnade to every story of the house. We tarried here three days. Our next point was Cincinnati, and as this was a steamboat journey and Western steamboats usually blow up one or two a week in the season, it was advisable to collect opinions in reference to the comparative safety

  of the vessels bound that way, then lying in the river. One called the messenger was the best recommended. She had been advertised to start positively every day for a fortnight or so, had not gone yet, nor did her captain seem to have any very fixed intention on the subject. But this is the custom, for if the law were to bind down a free and independent citizen to keep his word with the public, what would become of the liberty of the subject?

  Besides, it is in the way of trade, and if passengers be decoyed in the way of trade, and people be inconvenienced in the way of trade, what man, who is a sharp tradesman himself, shall say, We must put a stop to this? Impressed by the deep solemnity of the public announcement, I, being then ignorant of these usages, was for hurrying on board in a breathless state immediately. But receiving private and confidential information, that

  the boat would certainly not start until Friday, April 1st, we made ourselves very comfortable in the meanwhile, and went on board at noon that day.

• 12 - From Pittsburg to Cincinnati in a Western Steamboat. Cincinnati

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  XI. From Pittsburgh to Cincinnati in a Western Steamboat. SINCINATTI. The messenger was one among a crowd of high-pressure steamboats, clustered together by a wharfside, from the rising ground that forms the landing-place, and backed by the lofty bank on the opposite

  side of the river, appeared no larger than so many floating models. She had some forty passengers on board, exclusive of the poorer persons on the lower deck, and in half an hour or less proceeded on her way. We had for ourselves a tiny stateroom with two berths in it, opening out of the lady's cabin. There was undoubtedly something satisfactory in this location, inasmuch as it was in the

  stern, and we had been a great many times very gravely recommended to keep as far aft as possible because the steamboats generally blew up forward. Nor was this an unnecessary caution, as the occurrence and circumstances of more than one such fatality during our stay sufficiently testified. Apart from the source of self-congratulation, it was an unspeakable relief to have any place, no matter how confined, where one could be alone, and as the row

  of little chambers of which this was one, had each a second-glass store besides that in the lady's cabin which opened on a narrow gallery outside the vessel where the other passengers seldom came, and where one could sit in peace and gaze upon the shifting prospect, we took possession of our new quarters with much pleasure. If the native packets I have already described be unlike anything we are in the habit of

  seeing on water, these western vessels are still more foreign to all the ideas we are accustomed to entertain of boats. I hardly know what to liken them to, or how to describe them. In the first place they have no mast, cordage, tackle, rigging, or other such boat-like gear, nor have they anything in their shape at all calculated to remind one of a boat's head, stem, sides, or keel. Except that they are in the water and display a couple of paddle-boxes,

  they might be intended for anything that appears to the contrary to perform some unknown service high and dry upon a mountain-top. There is no visible deck even, nothing but a long black ugly roof covered with burnt-out feathery sparks above which tower two iron chimneys and a horse escape-valve with a glass steerage-house. Then, in order as the eye descends towards the water, are the sides and doors and windows of the staterooms jumbled as oddly together

  as though they formed a small street built by the varying tastes of a dozen men. The hull is supported on beams and pillars resting on a dirty barge, but a few inches above the water's edge and in the narrow space between this upper structure and this barge's deck are the furnace-fires and machinery, open at the sides to every wind that blows and every storm of rain it drives along its path. Passing one of these boats at night and seeing

  the great body of fire exposed, as I have just described, that rages and roars beneath the frail pile of painted wood, the machinery, not warded off or guarded in any way, but doing its work in the midst of the crowd of idlers and emigrants and children who throng the lower deck, under the management, too, of reckless men whose acquaintance with its mysteries may have been of six months' standing, one feels directly that the wonder is not

  that there should be so many fatal accidents, but that any journey should be safely made. Within there is one long narrow cabin, the whole length of the boat, from which the staterooms open on both sides. A small portion of it at the stern is partitioned off for the ladies, and the bar is at the opposite extreme. There is a long table down the centre and at either end a stove. The washing apparatus is forward on the deck. It is a little better than on

  board the canal-boat, but not much. In all modes of travelling the American customs, with reference to the means of personal cleanliness and wholesome ablution, are extremely negligent and filthy, and I strongly incline to the belief that a considerable amount of illness is referable to this cause. We are to be on board the messenger three days, arriving at Cincinnati, barring accidents, on Monday morning. There are three meals a day, breakfast at

  seven, dinner at half-past twelve, supper about six. At each there are a great many small dishes and plates upon the table, with very little in them, so that although there is every appearance of a mighty spread, there is seldom really more than a joint, except for those who fancy slices of beetroot, shreds of dried beef, complicated entanglements of yellow pickle, maize, Indian corn, apple-sauce, and pumpkin. Some people fancy all these little

  deities together, and sweet preserves beside, by way of relish to their roast pig. They are generally those dyspeptic ladies and gentlemen who eat unheard-of quantities of hot cornbread, as good for the digestion as needed pin-cushion for breakfast and for supper. Those who do not observe this custom, and who help themselves several times instead, usually suck their knives and forks meditatively until they have decided what to take next, then pull them

  out of their mouths, put them in the dish, help themselves, and fall to work again. At dinner there is nothing to drink upon the table but great jugs full of cold water. Nobody says anything at any meal to anybody. All the passengers are very dismal, and seem to have tremendous secrets weighing on their minds. There is no conversation, no laughter, no cheerfulness, no sociality except in spitting, and that is done in silent fellowship round

  the stove when the meal is over. Every man sits down dull and languid, swallows his fare as if breakfast, dinners, and suppers were necessities of nature never to be coupled with recreation or enjoyment, and having bolted his food in a gloomy silence, bolts himself in the same state. But for these animal observances you might suppose the whole male portion of the company to be the melancholy ghosts of departed bookkeepers who had fallen dead at

  the desk such as their wary air of business and calculation. Undertakers on duty would be sprightly beside them, and a collation of funeral-baked meats in comparison with these meals would be a sparkling festivity. The people are all alike, too. There is no diversity of character. They travel about on the same errands, say and do the same things in exactly the same manner, and follow in the same dull, cheerless round. All down the long table there

  is scarcely a man who is in anything different from his neighbour. It is quite a relief to have sitting opposite that little girl of fifteen with a locatious chin who, to do her justice, acts up to it and fully identifies nature's handwriting, for of all the small chatter-boxes that ever invaded the repose of drowsy ladies' cabins, she is the first and foremost. The beautiful girl, who sits a little beyond her, further down the table

  there, married the young man with the dark whiskers, who sits beyond her, only last month. They are going to settle in the very far west, where he has lived four years, but where she has never been. They were both overturned in a stagecoach the other day, a bad omen anywhere else where overturns are not so common, and his head, which bears the marks of a recent wound, is bound up still. She was hurt, too, at the same time, and lay insensible for some

  days bright as her eyes are now. Further down still sits a man who is going some miles beyond their place of destination to improve a newly discovered copper mine. He carries the village that is to be, with him, a few frame-cottages and an apparatus for smelting the copper. He carries its people, too. They are partly American and partly Irish, and heard together on the lower deck where they amused themselves last evening till the night was pretty far

  advanced by alternately firing off pistols and singing hymns. They and the very few who have been left at table twenty minutes rise and go away. We do so, too, and passing through our little stateroom, resume our seats in the quiet gallery without. A fine broad river always, but in some parts much wider than in others, and then there is usually a green island covered with trees dividing it into two streams. Occasionally

  we stop for a few minutes, maybe to take in wood, maybe for passengers at some small town or village—I ought to say city, every place is a city here—but the banks are for the most part deep solitudes overgrown with trees, which hereabouts are already in leaf and very green. For miles and miles and miles these solitudes are unbroken by any signs of human life or trace of human footstep, nor is anything seen to move about them but the blue jay,

  whose colour is so bright and yet so delicate that it looks like a flying flower. At lengthened intervals a log cabin, with its little space of cleared land about it, nestles under a rising ground, and sends its thread of blue smoke curling up into the sky. It stands in the corner of the poor field of wheat which is full of great unsightly stumps like earthy butcher's blocks. Sometimes the ground is only just now cleared, the fell trees lying

  yet upon the soil, and the log-house only this morning begun. As we pass this clearing the settler leans upon his axe or hammer and looks wistfully at the people from the world. The children creep out of the temporary hut, which is like a gypsy tent upon the ground, and clap their hands and shout. The dog only glances round at us, and then looks up into his master's face again, as if he were rendered uneasy by any suspension of the common business

  and had nothing more to do with pleasurers. And still there is the same eternal foreground. The river has washed away its banks, and stately trees have fallen down into the stream. Some have been there so long that they are mere dry, grisly skeletons. Some have just toppled over, and having earth yet about their roots, are bathing their green heads in the river and putting forth new shoots and branches. Some are almost sliding down as you look at

  them. And some were drowned so long ago that their bleached arms start out from the middle of the current and seem to try to grasp the boat and drag it under water. Through such a scene as this, the unwieldy machine takes its horse sullen way, venting at every revolution of the paddles a loud high-pressure blast, enough, one would think, to waken up the host of Indians who lie buried in a great mound yonder, so old that mighty oaks and other

  forest trees have struck their roots into its earth, and so high that it is a hill even among the hills that nature planted round it. The very river, as though it shared one's feelings of compassion for the extinct tribes who lived so pleasantly here in their blessed ignorance of white existence hundreds of years ago, steals out of its way to ripple near this mound, and there are few places where the Ohio sparkles more brightly than in the

  big grave creek. All this I see as I set in the little stern gallery mentioned just now. Evening slowly steals upon the landscape and changes it before me when we stop to set some immigrants ashore. Five men, as many women and a little girl. All their worldly goods are a bag, a large chest and an old chair, one old high-backed rush-bottom chair, a solitary settler in itself. They are rowed ashore in the boat, while the vessel stands a little

  off awaiting its return, the water being shallow. They are landed at the foot of a high bank, on the summit of which are a few log cabins attainable only by a long winding path. It is growing dusk, but the sun is very red and shines on the water and on some of the treetops like fire. The men get out of the boat first, help out the women, take out the bag, the chest, the chair, bid the rowers good-bye, and shove the boat off for them. At the first

  plash of the oars in the water, the oldest woman of the party sets down in the old chair close to the water's edge without speaking a word. None of the others sit down, though the chest is large enough for many seats. They all stand where they landed, as if stricken into stone, and look after the boat. So they remain quite still and silent, the old woman and her old chair in the centre of the bag and chest upon the shore, without anybody

  heating them all eyes fixed on the boat. It comes alongside, is made fast, the men jump on board, the engine is put in motion, and we go hoarsely on again. There they stand yet, without the motion of a hand. I can see them through my glass, when, in the distance and increasing darkness, they are mere specks to the eye, lingering there still, the old woman in the old chair and all the rest about her not stirring in the least degree, and

  thus I slowly lose them. The night is dark, and we proceed within the shadow of the wooden bank which makes it darker. After gliding past the sombre maze of boughs for a long time, we come upon an open space where the tall trees are burning. The shape of every branch and twig is expressed in a deep red glow, and as the light wind stirs and ruffles it, they seem to vegetate in fire. It is such a sight as we read of in legends of enchanted

  forests, saving that it is sad to see these noble works wasting away so awfully alone, and to think how many years must come and go before the magic that created them will rear their like upon this ground again. But the time will come, and when in their changed ashes the growth of centuries unborn has struck its roots, the restless men of distant ages will repair to these again unpeopled solitudes, and their fellows in cities far away that

  slumber now, perhaps beneath the rolling sea, will read in language strange to any ears in being now, but very old to them, of primeval forests where the axe was never heard, and where the jungle ground was never trodden by a human foot. Midnight and sleep blot out these scenes and thoughts, and when the morning shine to gain it gilds the host-tops of a lively city before whose broad-paved wharf the boat is moored,

  with other boats and flags, and moving wheels and hum of men about it, as though there were not a solitary or silent rude of ground within the compass of a thousand miles. Cincinnati is a beautiful city, cheerful, thriving, and animated. I have not often seen a place that commends itself so favourably and pleasantly to a stranger at the first glance as this does, with its clean houses of red and white, its well-paved roads, and footways of bright

  tile. Nor does it become less prepossessing on a closer acquaintance. The streets are broad and airy, the shops extremely good, the private residence is remarkable for their elegance and neatness. There is something of invention and fancy in the varying styles of these latter erections, which, after the dull company of the steamboat, is perfectly delightful as conveying an assurance that there are such qualities still in existence.

  The disposition to ornament these pretty villas and render them attractive leads to the culture and the laying out of well-kept gardens, the sight of which, to those who walk along the streets, is inexpressibly refreshing and agreeable. I was quite charred with the appearance of the town, and its adjoining suburb of Mount Auburn, from which the city, lying in an amphitheatre of hills, forms a picture of remarkable beauty and is seen to great advantage. There happened

  to be a great temperance convention held here on the day after our arrival, and as the order of march brought the possession under the windows of the hotel in which we lodged when they started in the morning, I had a good opportunity of seeing it. It comprised several thousand men, the members of various Washington auxiliary temperance societies, and was marshaled by officers on horseback who cantered briskly up and down the line with scarves and ribbons

  of bright colours fluttering out behind them gaily. There were bands of music, too, and of number, and it was a fresh holiday-looking concourse altogether. I was particularly pleased to see the Irishmen, who formed a distinct society among themselves and mustered very strong with their green scarves, carrying their national harp and their portrait of Father Matthew high above the people's heads. They looked as jolly and good-humoured as ever,

  and working here the hardest for their living, and doing any kind of sturdy labour that came in their way, were the most independent fellows there, I thought. The banners were very well painted and flaunted down the street famously. There was the smiting of the rocks and the gushing forth of the waters, and there was a temperate man with considerable of a hatchet, as the standard bearer would probably have said, aiming a deadly blow at a serpent which

  was apparently about to spring upon him from the top of a barrel of spirits. But the chief feature of this part of the show was a huge allegorical device borne among the ship-carpenters on one side, whereof the steamboat alcohol was represented bursting her boiler and exploding with a great crash, while upon the other the good ship-temperance sailed away with a fair wind, to the heart's content of the captain crew and passengers. After going round the

  procession repaired to a certain appointed place, where, as the printed program set forth, it would be received by the children of the different free schools singing temperate songs. I was prevented from getting there in time to hear these little warblers, or to report upon this novel kind of vocal entertainment, novel at least to me, but I found in a large open space each society gathered round its own banners and listening in silent attention

  to its own orator. The speeches, judging from the little I could hear of them, were certainly adapted to the occasion as having that degree of relationship to cold water at which wet blankets may claim, but the main thing was the conduct and appearance of the audience throughout the day, and that was admirable and full of promise. Cincinnati is honorably famous for its free schools, of which it has so many that no person's

  child among its population can, by possibility, want the means of education, which are extended upon an average to four thousand pupils annually. I was only present in one of these establishments during the hours of instruction. In the boys' department, which was full of little urchins, varying in their ages, I should say, from six years old to ten or twelve, the master offered to institute an extemporary examination of the pupils in algebra, a proposal which,

  because I was by no means competent of my ability to detect mistakes in that science, I declined with some alarm. In the girls' school, reading was proposed, and as I felt tolerably equal to that art, I expressed my willingness to hear a class. Books were distributed accordingly, and some half-dozen girls relieved each other in reading paragraphs from English history. But it seemed to be a dry compilation, infinitely above their powers, and when they

  had blundered through three or four dreary passages concerning the Treaty of Amiens, and other thrilling topics of the same name, obviously without comprehending ten words, I expressed myself quite satisfied. It is very possible that they only mounted to this exalted stave in the ladder of learning for the astonishment of a visitor, and that at other times they keep upon its lower rounds, but I should have been much better pleased

  and satisfied if I had heard them exercised in simpler lessons which they understood. As in every other place I visited, the judges here were gentlemen of high character and attainments. I was in one of the courts for a few minutes, and found it like those to which I have already referred. A nuisance cause was trying, there were not many spectators, and the witnesses, counsel, and jury formed a sort of family circle sufficiently jocose

  and snug. The society with which I mingled was intelligent, courteous, and agreeable. The inhabitants of Cincinnati are proud of their city as one of the most interesting in America, and with good reason, for beautiful and thriving as it is now, and containing as it does a population of fifty thousand souls but two in fifty years have passed away since the ground on which it stands, bought at that time for a few dollars, was a wild

  wood, and its citizens were but a handful of dwellers in scattered log huts upon the river shore. End of chapter 11

• 13 - From Cincinnati to Louisville in another Western Steamboat; and from Louisville to St. Louis in another. St. Louis

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  XII. Leaving Cincinnati at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, we embarked for in the Pike steamboat, which, carrying the males, was a packet of a much better class than that in which we had come from Pittsburgh. As this passage does not occupy more than twelve or thirteen hours, we

  arranged to go ashore that night, not coveting the distinction of sleeping at a stateroom when it was possible to sleep anywhere else. Their chance to be on board this boat, in addition to the usual dreary crowd of passengers, won Pitchlin, a chief of the Choctaw tribe of Indians, who sent in his card to me, and with whom I had the pleasure

  of a long conversation. He spoke English perfectly well, though he had not begun to learn the language, he told me, until he was a young man grown. He had read many books, and Scott's poetry appeared to have left a strong impression on his mind, especially the opening of The Lady of the Lake and the great battle scene in Marmion, in which, no doubt,

  from the congeniality of the subjects to his own pursuits and tastes, he had great interest and delight. He appeared to understand correctly all he had read, and whatever fiction had enlisted his sympathy in its belief had done so keenly and earnestly. I might almost say fiercely. He was dressed in our ordinary, everyday costume, which hung about his

  fine figure loosely and with indifferent grace. On my telling him that I regretted not to see him in his own attire, he threw up his right arm for a moment, as though he were brandishing some heavy weapon, and answered, as he let it fall again, that his race were losing many things besides their dress, and would soon be seed upon the earth no

  more. But he wore it at home, he added proudly. He told me that he had been away from his home, west of the Mississippi, seventeen months, and was now returning. He had been chiefly at Washington on some negotiations pending between his tribe and the Government, which were not settled yet, he said in a melancholy way,

  and feared never would be, for what could a few poor Indians do against such well-skilled men of business as the Whites? He had no love for Washington, tired of towns and cities very soon, and longed for the forest and the prairie. I asked him what he thought of Congress, he answered with a smile that it wanted dignity in an Indian's eyes. He

  would very much like, he said, to see England before he died, and spoke with much interest about the great things to be seen there. When I told him of that chamber in the British Museum wherein are preserved household memorials of a race that ceased to be thousands of years ago, he was very attentive, and it was not hard to see that he had a

  reference in his mind to the gradual fading away of his own people. This led us to speak of Mr. Catlin's gallery, which he praised highly, observing that his own portrait was among the collection, and that all the likenesses were elegant. Mr. Cooper, he said, had painted the red man well, and so would I, he knew, if I would go home with him and

  hunt buffaloes, which he was quite anxious I should do. When I told him that, supposing I went, I should not be very likely to damage the buffaloes much, he took it as a great joke and laughed heartily. He was a remarkably handsome man some years past forty, I should judge, with long black hair, an aquiline nose, broad cheekbones, a sunburnt

  complexion, and a very bright, keen, dark and piercing eye. There were but twenty thousand of the Choctaws left, he said, and their number was decreasing every day. A few of his brother-chiefs had been obliged to become civilized and to make themselves acquainted with what the whites knew, for it was their only chance of existence. But they were

  not many, and the rest were as they always had been. He dwelt on this and said several times that unless they tried to assimilate themselves to their conquerors, they must be swept away before the strides of civilized society. When we shook hands at parting, I told him he must come to England, as

  he longed to see the land so much, that I should hope to see him there one day, and that I could promise him he would be very well received and kindly treated. He was evidently pleased by this assurance, though he rejoined with a good-humoured smile and an arch-shake of his head, that the English used to be very fond of the red men when they wanted their

  help, but had not cared much for them since. He took his leave, as stately and complete a gentleman of nature's making as ever I beheld, and moved among the people in the boat another kind of being. He sent me a lithographed portrait of himself soon afterwards, very like, though scarcely handsome enough, which I have carefully preserved in memory of

  our brief acquaintance. There was nothing very interesting in the scenery of this day's journey, which brought us at midnight to Louisville. We slept at the Galt House, a splendid hotel, and were as handsomely lodged as though we had been in Paris rather than hundreds of miles beyond the Alleghenies. The city

  presenting no objects of sufficient interest to detain us on our way, we resolved to proceed next day by another steamboat, the Fulton, and to join it about noon at a suburb called Portland, where it would be delayed some time in passing through a canal. The interval after breakfast we devoted to riding through the town, which is regular and

  cheerful, the streets being laid out at right angles and planted with young trees. The buildings are smoky and blackened from the use of bituminous coal, but an Englishman is well used to that appearance, and we disposed to quarrel with it. There did not appear to be much business during, and some unfinished buildings and improvements seemed

  to intimate that the city had been overbuilt in the ardour of going ahead and was suffering under the reaction consequent upon such feverish forcing of its powers. On our way to Portland we passed a magistrate's office, which amused me as looking far more like a dame's school than any police establishment,

  for this awful institution was nothing but a little lazy good-for-nothing front parlour open to the street, wherein two or three figures, I presume the magistrate and his mermitans, were basking in the sunlight, the very effigies of languor and repose. It was a perfect picture of justice retired from business for want of customers, her sword and

  scales sold off, napping comfortably with her legs upon the table. Here as elsewhere in these parts the road was perfectly alive with pigs of all ages, lying about in every direction, fast asleep, or grunting along in quest of hidden dainties. I had always a sneaking kindness for these odd animals, and found a constant source of amusement when all

  others failed in watching their proceedings. As we were riding along this morning I observed a little incident between two youthful pigs, which was so very human as to be inexpressibly comical and grotesque at the time, though I daresay in telling it is tame enough. One young gentleman, a very delicate porker, with several straws sticking about

  his nose, beckoning recent investigations in a dung-hill, was walking deliberately on, profoundly thinking, when suddenly his brother, who was lying in a miry hole unseen by him, rose up immediately before his startled eyes, ghostly with damp mud. Never was pigs' whole mass of blood so turned. He started back at least three feet, gazed for a moment,

  and then shot off as hard as he could go, his excessively little tail vibrating with speed and terror like a distracted pendulum. But before he had gone far he began to reason with himself as to the nature of this frightful appearance, and as he reasoned he relaxed his speed by gradual degrees until at last he stopped and faced about. There was his brother

  with the mud upon him, glazing in the sun, yet staring out of the very same hole, perfectly amazed at his proceedings. He was no sooner assured of this, and he assured himself so carefully that one may almost say he shaded his eyes with his hand to see the better, that he came back at a round trot, pounced upon him, and summarily took off a piece of his tail

  as a caution to him to be careful what he was about for the future, and never to play tricks with his family any more. We found the steamboat in the canal, waiting for the slow process of getting through the lock, and went on board, where we shortly afterwards had a new kind of visitor in the person of a certain Conteque giant

  whose name was Porter, and who is of the moderate height of seven feet eight inches in his stockings. There never was a race of people who so completely gave the lie to history as these giants, of whom all the chroniclers have so cruelly libeled. Instead of roaring and ravaging about the world, constantly catering for their cannibal larders, and

  perpetually going to market in an unlawful manner, they are the meekest people in any man's acquaintance, rather inclining to milk and vegetable diet, and bearing anything for a quiet life. So decidedly are amiability and mildness in their characteristics, that I confess I look upon that youth who distinguished himself by the slaughter of these inoffensive

  persons as a false-hearted brigand, who pretending to philanthropic motives was secretly influenced only by the wealth stored up within their castles and the hope of plunder. And I lean the more to this opinion for finding that even the historian of these exploits, with all his partiality for his hero, is famed to admit that the slaughtered

  monsters in question were of a very innocent and simple turn, extremely guileless and ready of belief, leading a credulous ear to the most improbable tales, suffering themselves to be easily entrapped into pits, and even, as in the case of the Welsh giant, with an excess of the hospitable politeness of a landlord, ripping themselves open rather

  than hint at the possibility of their guests being versed in the vagabond arts of sleight of hand and hocus-pocus. The Kentucky giant was but another illustration of the truth of this position. He had a weakness in the region of the knees, and a trustfulness in his long face which appealed even to five feet nine for

  encouragement and support. He was only twenty-five years old, he said, and had grown recently, for had been found necessary to make an addition to the legs of his inexpressibles. At fifteen he was a short boy. And in those days his English father and his Irish mother had rather snubbed him as being too small of stature to sustain the credit

  of the family. He added that his health had not been good, though it was better now, but short people are not wanting who whisper that he drinks too hard. I understand he drives a hackney coach, though how he does it unless he stands on the footboard behind and lies along the roof upon his chest with his chin in the box, it will be difficult to

  comprehend. He brought a gun with him as a curiosity. Crissened the little rifle and displayed outside a shop window, it would make the fortune of any retail business in Holborn. When he had shown himself and talked a little while, he withdrew with his pocket instrument and went bobbing down the cabin among men of six feet high

  and upwards, like a lighthouse walking among lampposts. Within a few minutes afterwards we were out of the canal and in the Ohio River again. The arrangements of the boat were like those of the messenger, and the passengers were of the same order of people. We fed at the same times, on the same kind of vians, in the same dull manner, and with the same

  observances. The company appeared to be oppressed by the same tremendous concealments and had as little capacity of enjoyment or lightheartedness. I never in my life did see such listless, heavy dullness as brooded over these meals. The very recollection of it weighs me down and makes me for the moment wretched. Reading and writing on my knee in our little

  cabin, I really dreaded the coming of the hour that summoned us to table, and was as glad to escape from it again as if it had been a penance or a punishment. Healthy tearfulness and good spirits forming a part of the banquet, I could soak my crusts in the fountain with Lasage's strolling player and revel in their glad enjoyment, but sitting down with so many

  fellow animals to ward off thirst and hunger as a business, to empty each creature, his yahoo's trough as quickly as he can, and then slink silently away, to have these social sacraments stripped of everything but the mere greedy satisfaction of the natural cravings, goes so against the grain with me that I seriously believe the recollection of these funeral feasts will

  be a waking nightmare to me all my life. There was some relief in this boat too, which had not been in the other, for the captain, a blunt good natured fellow, had his handsome wife with him, who was disposed to be lively and agreeable, as were a few other lady passengers who had their seats about us at the same end of the table, but nothing could have made

  head against the depressing influence of the general body. There was a magnetism of dullness in them which would have beaten down the most facetious companion that the earth ever knew. A jest would have been a crime, and a smile would have faded into a grinning horror. Such deadly leaden people, such systematic plodding, weary insupportable heaviness,

  such a mass of animated indigestion in respect of all that was genial, joval, frag, social or hearty, never, sure, was brought together elsewhere since the world began. Nor was the scenery, as we approached the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, at all inspiriting in its influence. The trees were stunted in their growth, the banks were low and flat, the

  settlements and log cabins fewer in number, their inhabitants more wan and wretched than any we had encountered yet. No songs of birds were in the air, no pleasant scents, no moving lights and shadows from swift passing clouds. Hour after hour the changeless glare of the hot unwinking sun shone upon the same monotonous objects. Hour after hour the river rolled

  along as wearily and slowly as the time itself. At length, upon the morning of the third day, we arrived at a spot so much more desolate than any we had yet beheld that the forlornest places we had passed were in comparison with it full of interest. At the junction of the two rivers, on ground so flat and low and marshy that at certain seasons of the year it

  is inundated to the housetops, lies a breeding place of fever, ague and death, vaunted in England as a mine of golden hope and speculated in on the face of monstrous representations to many people's ruin. A dismal swamp on which the half-built houses wrought away, cleared here and there for the space of a few yards, and teeming then with rank and wholesome

  vegetation, in whose baleful shade the wretched wanderers who are tempted hither droop and die and lay their bones, the hateful Mississippi circling and eddying before it, and turning off upon its southern course a slimy monster hideous to behold, a hotbed of disease, an ugly sepulcher, a grave uncheered by any gleam of promise, a place without one single quality in

  earth or air or water, to commend it. Such is this dismal Cairo. But what words shall describe the Mississippi, great father of rivers, who, praise me to heaven, has no young children like him? An enormous ditch, sometimes two or three miles wide, running liquid mud six miles an hour, its strong and frothy current choked and obstructed everywhere by huge logs and whole

  forest trees, now twining themselves together in great rafts, from the interstices of which a sedgy, lazy foam works up to float upon the water's top, now rolling past like monstrous bodies their tangled roots, showing like matted hair, now glancing singly by like giant leeches, and now writhing round and round in the vortex of some small whirlpool like wounded

  snakes. The banks slow, the trees dwarfish, the marshes swimming with frogs, the wretched cabins few and far apart, their inmates hollow-cheeked and pale, the weather very hot, the mosquitoes penetrating into every crack and crevice of the boat, mud and slime on everything, nothing pleasant in its aspect but the harmless lightning which flickers every night upon the

  dark horizon. For two days we toiled up this foul stream, striking constantly against the floating timber, or stopping to avoid those most dangerous obstacles, the snags or sawyers which are the hidden trunks of trees that have their roots below the tide. When the nights are very dark, the lookout stationed

  in the head of the boat knows by the ripple of the water if any great impediment be near at hand and rings a bell beside him, which is the signal for the engine to be stopped, but always in the night this bell has work to do, and after every ring there comes a blow which renders it no easy matter to remain in bed.

  The decline of day here was very gorgeous, tinging the firmament deeply with red and gold up to the very key-stode of the arch above us. As the sun went down behind the bank, the slightest blades of grass upon it seemed to become as distinctly visible as the arteries in the skeleton of a leaf, and when, as it slowly sank, the red and golden bars upon the

  water grew dimmer and dimmer yet, as if they were sinking too, and all the glowing colours of departing day paled inch by inch before the sombre night. The scene became a thousand times more lonesome and more dreary than before, and all its influences darkened with the sky. We drank the muddy water of this river while we were upon it. It is

  considered wholesome by the natives, and is something more opaque than gruel. I have seen water like it at the filter shops but nowhere else. On the fourth night after leaving Louisville we reached St. Louis, and here I witnessed the conclusion of an incident trifling enough in itself, but very pleasant to see, which had interested me during the whole

  journey. There was a little woman on board, with a little baby, and both little woman and little child were cheerful, good-looking, bright-eyed, and fair to see. The little woman had been passing a long time with her sick mother in New York, and had left her home in St. Louis in that condition

  in which ladies who truly loved their lords desired to be. The baby was born in her mother's house, and she had not seen her husband, to whom she was now returning, for twelve months, having left a month or two after their marriage. Well, to be sure, there never was a little woman so full of hope and

  tenderness and love and anxiety as this little woman was, and all day long she wondered whether he would be at the wharf, and whether he had got her letter, and whether if she sent the baby ashore by somebody else he would know it, meeting it in the street, which, seeing that he had never set eyes upon it in his life, was not likely in the abstract, but

  was probable enough to the young mother. She was such an artless little creature, and was in such a sunny, beaming, hopeful state, and let out all this matter clinging close about her heart so freely that all the other lady passengers entered into the spirit of it as much as she, and the captain who heard all about it from his wife was wondrous sly, I

  promise you, inquiring every time we met at table as in forgetfulness whether she expected anybody to meet her at St. Louis, and whether she would want to go ashore the night we reached it, but he supposed she and cutting many other dry jokes of that nature. There was one little wheezing, dried, apple-faced old woman who took occasion to doubt the

  constancy of husbands in such circumstances of bereavement, and there was another lady with a lap dog, old enough to moralize on the likeness of human affections, and yet not so old that she could not help nursing the baby now and then, or laughing with the rest when the little woman called it by her father's name, and asked at all manner of fantastic

  questions concerning him and the joy of her heart. It was something of a blow to the little woman that when we were within twenty miles of our destination it became clearly necessary to put this baby to bed, but she got over it with the same good humor, tied a handkerchief round her head, and came out into the little gallery with the rest. Then such an oracle

  as she became in reference to the localities, and such facetiousness as was displayed by the married ladies, and such sympathy as was shown by the single ones, and such peals of laughter as the little woman herself, who would just as soon have cried, greeted every jest with. At last there were the lights of St. Louis, and here was the wharf, and those were the

  steps, and the little woman covering her face in her hands, and laughing, or seeming to laugh, more than ever ran into her own cabin and shut herself up. I have no doubt that in the charming inconstancy of such excitement she stopped her ears lest she should hear him asking for her, but I did not see her do it.

  Then a great crowd of people rushed on board, though the boat was not yet made fast, but was wandering about among the other boats to find a landing-place and everybody looked for the husband, and nobody saw him. When in the midst of us all, heaven knows how she ever got there, there was the little woman clinging with both arms tight round the neck of a

  fine, good-looking, sturdy young fellow, and in a moment afterwards there she was again, actually clapping her little hands for joy as she dragged him through the small door of her cabin to look at the baby as he lay asleep. We went to a large hotel called the Planter's House, built like an

  English hospital, with long passages and bare walls and skylights above the room-doors for free circulation of air. There were a great many borders in it, and as many lights sparkled and glistened from the windows down into the street below, when we drove up as if it had been illuminated on some occasion of rejoicing.

  It is an excellent house, and the proprietors have most bountiful notions of providing the creature comforts. Dining along with my wife in our own room one day, I counted fourteen dishes on the table at once. In the old French portion of the town the thoroughfares are narrow and crooked, and some of the houses are very quaint and picturesque, being

  built of wood with tumbled-down galleries before the windows, approachable by stairs or rather ladders from the street. There are queer little barber shops and drinking-houses too in this quarter, and an abundance of crazy old tenements with blinking casements such as may be seen in Flanders. Some of these ancient habitations with high garret gable windows

  perking into the roofs have a kind of French shrug about them, and being lopsided with age appear to hold their heads askew besides as if they were grimacing in astonishment at the American improvements. It is hardly necessary to say that these consist of wharfs and warehouses and new buildings in all directions, and of a great many vast plains which are

  still progressing. Already, however, some very good houses, broad streets and marble-fronted shops have gone so far ahead as to be in a state of completion, and the town bids fare in a few years to improve considerably, though it is not likely ever to vie in point of elegance or beauty with Cincinnati. The Roman Catholic religion introduced here

  by the early French settlers prevails extensively. Among the private institutions are a Jesuit college, a convent for the ladies of the Sacred Heart, and a large chapel attached to the college, which was in course of erection at the time of my visit and was intended to be consecrated on the 2nd of December in the next year. The architect of

  this building is one of the reverend fathers of the school, and the work proceeds under his sole direction. The organ will be sent from Belgium. In addition to these establishments there is a Roman Catholic cathedral dedicated to St. Francis Xavier and a hospital founded by the

  munificence of a deceased resident who is a member of that church. It also sends missionaries from hence among the Indian tribes. The Unitarian Church is represented in this remote place as most other parts of America by a gentleman of great worth and excellence. The poor have good reason to remember and bless it, for it befriends them and

  aids the cause of rational education without any sectarian or selfish views. It is liberal in all its actions, of kind construction and of wide benevolence. There are three free schools already erected and in full operation in this city. A fourth is building and will soon be opened. No man ever admits the unhealthiness of the place he dwells

  in unless he is going away from it, and I shall therefore, I have no doubt, be at issue with the inhabitants of St. Louis in questioning the perfect salubrity of its climate and in hinting that I think it must rather dispose to fever in the summer and autumnal seasons. Just adding that it is very hot, lies among great rivers, and has vast

  tracts of undrained swampy land around it, I leave the reader to form his own opinions. As I had a great desire to see a prairie before turning back from the furthest point of my wanderings, and as some gentlemen of the town had, in their hospitable consideration, an equal desire to gratify me, a day

  was fixed before my departure for an expedition to the Looking-Glass Prairie which is within thirty miles of the town. Deeming it possible that my readers may not object to know what kind of thing such a gypsy party may be at that distance from home, and among what sort of objects it moves, I will describe the jaunt in another chapter.

• 14 - A Jaunt to the Looking-glass Prairie and back

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  XIII. A jaunt to the Looking-Glass Prairie and back. I may premise that the word prairie is variously pronounced prer-er-er-er-er. The latter mode is perhaps the most in favour. We were fourteen and all, and all young men. Indeed, it is a singular though very natural feature in the society of these distant settlements that

  it is mainly composed of adventurous persons in the prime of life and has very few grey heads among it. There were no ladies, the trip being a fatiguing one, and we were to start at five o'clock in the morning punctually. I was called at four that I might be certain of keeping nobody waiting, and having got some bread and milk for breakfast, threw up the window and looked down into the street, expecting to see the whole party busily astir

  and great preparations going on below. But as everything was very quiet and the street presented that hopeless aspect with which five o'clock in the morning is familiar elsewhere, I deemed it as well to go to bed again and went accordingly. I woke again at seven o'clock, and by that time the party had assembled, and were gathered round one light carriage with a very stoat axle-tree, one something on wheels like an

  amateur carrier's cart, one double Phaeton of great antiquity and unearthly construction, one gig with a great hole in its back and a broken head, and one rider on horseback who was to go on before. I got into the first coach with three companions, the rest bestowed themselves in the other vehicles, two large baskets were made fast to the lightest, two large stone jars in wicker cases technically known as Debbie Johns were consigned to the

  least rowdy of the party for safekeeping, and the procession moved off to the ferry-boat, in which it was to cross the river bodily men, horses, carriages, and all, as the manner in these parts is. We got over the river in due course, and mustered again before a little wooden box on wheels hoved down all a slant in a morass with Merchant Taylor painted in very large letters over

  the door. Having settled the order for proceeding and the road to be taken, we started off once more and began to make our way through an ill-favoured black hollow called, less expressively, the American Bottom. The previous day had been, not to say hot, for the term is weak and lukewarm in its power of conveying an idea of the temperature. The town had been on fire in a blaze. But at night it had come on to rain in torrents, and all night long

  it had rained without cessation. We had a pair of very strong horses, but travelled at the rate of little more than a couple of miles an hour through one unbroken slough of black mud and water. It had no variety but in depth. Now it was only half over the wheels, now it hid the axle-tree, and now the coach sank down in it almost to the windows. The air resounded in all directions with the loud chirping of the frogs, who, with the

  pigs, a coarse ugly breed, as unwholesome looking as though they were the spontaneous growth of the country, had the whole scene to themselves. Here and there we passed a long hut, but the wretched cabins were wide apart and thinly scattered, for though the soil is very rich in this place, few people can exist in such a deadly atmosphere. On either side of the track, if it deserves the name, was the thick bush, and everywhere was

  stagnant slimy rotten filthy water. As it is the custom in these parts to give a horse a gallon or so of cold water whenever he is in a foam with heat, we halted for that purpose at a log inn in the wood, far removed from any other residence. It consisted of one room, bare-roofed and bare-walled, of course, with a loft above. The ministering priest was a swarthy young savage, in a shirt

  of cotton-print-like bed furniture and a pair of ragged trousers. There were a couple of young boys, too, nearly naked, lying idled by the well, and they and he and the traveller at the inn turned out to look at us. The traveller was an old man, with a grey grisly beard two inches long, a shaggy moustache of the same hue, and enormous eyebrows which almost obscured his lazy semi-drunken glance, as he stood regarding us with folded arms, poisoning himself

  alternately upon his toes and heels. On being addressed by one of the party, he drew nearer and said, rubbing his chin, which scraped under his horny hand like fresh gravel beneath a nailed shoe, that he was from Delaware, and had lately bought a farm down there, pointing into one of the marshes where the stunted trees were thickest. He was going, he added, to St. Louis to fetch his family, whom he had left behind, but he seemed in no great

  hurry to bring on these encumbrances, for when we moved away he loitered back into the cabin and was plainly bent on stopping there so long as his money lasted. He was a great politician, of course, and explained his opinions at some length to one of our company, but I only remember that he concluded with two sentiments, one of which was, Somebody for ever and the other, Blast everybody else, which is by no means a bad abstract of the

  general creed in these matters. When the horses were swollen out to about twice their natural dimensions—there seems to be an idea here that this kind of inflation improves their going—we went forward again, through mud and mire and damp and festering heat and break and bush, attended always by the music of the frogs and pigs, until nearly noon, when we halted at a place called Belleville.

  Belleville was a small collection of wooden houses, huddled together in the very heat of the bush and swamp. Many of them had singularly bright doors of red and yellow, for the place had been lately visited by a travelling painter, who got along, as I was told, by eating his way. The criminal court was sitting, and was at that moment trying some criminals for horse-dealing, with whom it would most likely go hard, for livestock of all kinds being necessarily very

  much exposed in the woods is hailed by the community in rather higher value than human life, and for this reason juries generally make a point of finding all men indicted for cattle-stealing guilty, whether or no. The horses belonging to the bar, the judge and witnesses, were tied to temporary racks set up roughly in the road, by which it is to be understood a forest path nearly knee-deep

  in mud and slime. There was a hotel in this place, which like all hotels in America, had its large dining-room for the public table. It was an odd, shambling, low-roofed out-house, half-cowshed and half-kitchen, with a coarse brown canvas tablecloth and tin sconces stuck against the walls to hold candles at supper-time. The horseman had gone forward to have coffee and some eatables prepared, and they were by this time nearly ready. He had ordered

  wheat bread and chicken fixings, in preference to cornbread and common doings, the latter kind of rejection includes only pork and bacon. The former comprehends broiled ham, sausages, veal cutlets, steaks, and such other viands of that nature as may be supposed by a tolerably wide, poetical construction to fix a chicken comfortably in the digestive organs of any lady or gentleman.

  On one of the door-posts at this inn was a tin plate, whereon was inscribed in characters of gold, Dr. Crocus, and on a sheet of paper pasted up by the side of this plate was a written announcement that Dr. Crocus would that evening deliver a lecture on phrenology for the benefit of the Belleville public at a charge for admission of so much ahead. Straying upstairs, drawing the preparation of the chicken fixings, I happened to pass the doctor's chamber,

  and as the door stood wide open and the room was empty, I made bold to peep in. It was a bare, unfurnished, comfortless room, with an unframed portrait hanging up at the head of the bed, a likeness I taken of the doctor, for the forehead was fully displayed, and great stress was laid by the artist upon its phrenological developments. The bed itself was covered with an odd patchwork counterpane. The room was destitute of carpet or of curtain.

  There was a damp fireplace without any stove, full of wood ashes, a chair and a very small table, and on the last name piece of furniture was displayed in great array the doctor's library consisting of some half-dozen greasy old books. Now, it certainly looked about the last apartment on the whole earth out of which any man would be likely to get anything to do him good, but the door, as I have said, stood coaxingly

  open, and plainly said in conjunction with the chair and portrait, the table and the books, In the passage below, when I went downstairs again, was Dr. Crocus himself. A crowd had the courthouse, and a voice from among them called out to the landlord, Colonel, introduce Dr. Crocus.

  Mr. Dickens says the Colonel, Dr. Crocus. Upon which Dr. Crocus, who was a tall, fine-looking Scotchman, but rather fierce and warlike in appearance for a professor of the peaceful art of healing, bursts out to the concourse with his right arm extended and his chest thrown out as far as it will possibly come, and says, Your countryman, sir. When upon Dr. Crocus and I shake hands, and Dr. Crocus looks as if I didn't by any means realize

  his expectations, which, in a linen blouse and a great straw hat, with a green ribbon and no gloves, and my face and nose profusely ornamented with the stings of mosquitoes and the bites of bugs, it is very likely I did not. Long in these parts, sir, says I. Three or four months, sir, says the doctor.

  Do you think of soon returning to the old country, says I. Dr. Crocus makes no verbal answer, but gives me an imploring look which says so plainly, will you ask me that again a little louder, if you please, that I repeat the question. Think of soon returning to the old country, sir, repeats the doctor. To the old country I rejoin.

  Dr. Crocus looks round upon the crowd to observe the effect he produces, rubs his hands, and says, in a very loud voice, Not yet a while, sir, not yet. You won't catch me at that just yet, sir. I'm a little too fond for freedom for that, sir. Ha-ha. It's not so easy for a man to tell himself from a free country such as this, sir. Ha-ha. No, no. Ha-ha. None of that till one's obliged

  to do it, sir. No, no. As Dr. Crocus says these latter words, he shakes his head knowingly and laughs again. Many of the bystanders shake their heads in concert with the doctor, and laugh too, and look at each other as much to say a pretty bright and first-rate sort of chap as Crocus, and unless I am very much mistaken, a good many people went to the lecture that night

  who never thought about phrenology or about Dr. Crocus either in all their lives before. From Belleville we went on through the same desolate kind of waste and constantly attended without the interval of a moment by the same music, until at three o'clock in the afternoon we halted once more at a village called Lebanon to inflate the horses again, and give them some corn besides, of which they stood much in need. Pending this ceremony I walked into

  the village where I met a full-sized dwelling-house coming downhill at a round trot drawn by a score or more of oxen. The public-house was so very clean and good a one that the managers of the jaunt resolved to return to it and put up there for the night if possible. This course decided on, and the horses being well refreshed, we again pushed forward and came upon the prairie at sunset.

  It would be difficult to say why or how, though it was possibly from having heard and read so much about it, but the effect on me was disappointment. Looking towards the setting sun, there lay stretched out before my view a vast expanse of level ground, unbroken save by one thin line of trees which scarcely amounted to a scratch upon the great blank until it met the glowing sky wherein it seemed to dip, mingling with its rich colours and mellowing

  in its distant blue. There it lay, a tranquil sea or lake without water, if such a simile be admissible, with the day going down upon it, a few birds wheeling here and there, and solitude and silence raining paramount around. But the grass was not yet high. There were bare black patches on the ground, and the few wild flowers that the eye could see were poor and scanty. Great as the picture was, its very flatness and extent which left nothing

  to the imagination tamed it down and cramped its interest. I felt little of that sense of freedom and exhilaration which a Scottish heath inspires, or even our English downs awakened. It was lonely and wild, but oppressive in its barren monotony. I felt that in travelling the prairies I could never abandon myself to the scene, forgetful of all else, as I should do instinctively where the heather underneath my feet or an iron-bound coast

  beyond, but should often glance towards the distant and frequently receding line of the horizon and wish it gained and passed. It is not a scene to be forgotten, but it is scarcely one, I think, at all events as I saw it, to remember with much pleasure, or to cover the looking on again in afterlife. We encamped near a solitary log-house for the sake of its water and dined upon the plain.

  The baskets containing roast-fowls, buffalo's tongue, an exquisite dainty, by the way, ham, bread, cheese and butter, biscuits, champagne, sherry, lemons and sugar for punch, and abundance of rough ice. The meal was delicious, and the entertainers were the soul of kindness and good-humour. I have often recalled that cheerful part of my pleasant recollection since, and shall not easily forget, in junketing nearer home with friends of older date, my

  boon-companions on the prairie. Returning to Lebanon that night, we lay at the little inn at which we had halted in the afternoon. In point of cleanliness and comfort it would have suffered by no comparison with any English ale-house of a homely kind in England. Rising at five o'clock next morning, I took a walk about the village. None of the houses

  were strolling about to-day, but it was early for them yet, perhaps, and then amused myself by lounging in a kind of farmyard behind the tavern of which the leading features were a strange jumble of rough sheds for stables, a rude colonnade built as a cool place of resort, a deep well, a great earthen mound for keeping vegetables in in wintertime, and a pigeon-house whose little apertures looked, as they do in all pigeon-houses, very much

  too small for the admission of the plump and swelling-breasted birds who were strutting about it, though they tried to get in never so hard. That interest exhausted, I took a survey of the inn's two parlours, which were decorated with coloured prints of Washington and President Madison, and of a white-faced young lady, much speckled by the flies, who held up her gold neck-chain for the admiration of the spectator, and informed all admiring

  comers that she was just seventeen, though I should have thought her older. In the best room were two oil-portraits of the Kit-Kat size, representing the landlord and his infant son, both looking as bold as lions, and staring out of the canvas with an intensity that would have been cheap at any price. They were painted, I think, by the artist who had touched up the Belleville doors with red and gold, for I seemed to recognise his style immediately.

  After breakfast we started to return by a different way from that which we had taken yesterday, and coming up at ten o'clock with an encampment of German immigrants carrying their goods and carts, who had made a rousing fire which they were just quitting, stopped there to refresh. And very pleasant the fire was, for hot though it had been yesterday, it was quite cold today, and the wind blew keenly. Looming in the distance, as we rode

  along, was another of the ancient Indian burial places called the Monk's Mound, in memory of a body of fanatics of the Order of La Trappe, who founded a desolate convent there many years ago, when there were no settlers within a thousand miles, and were all swept off by the pernicious climate, in which lamentable fatality few rational people will suppose, perhaps, that society experienced any very severe deprivation.

  The track of today had the same features as the track of yesterday. There was the swamp, the bush, and the perpetual chorus of frogs, the rank unseemly growth, the unwholesome streaming earth. Here and there and frequently, too, we encountered a solitary broken-down wagon full of some new settlers' goods. It was a pitiful sight to see one of these vehicles deep in the mire, the axle-tree broken, the wheel lying idly by its side, the man gone

  miles away to look for assistance, the woman seated among their wandering household gods, with a baby at her breast, a picture of forlorn, dejected patients, the team of oxen crouching down mournfully in the mud, and breathing forth such clouds of vapour from their mouths and nostrils, that all the damp mist and fog around seemed to have come directly from them. In due time we mustered once again before the merchant-tailors, and having done so,

  crossed over to the city in the ferry-boat, passing on the way a spot called Bloody Island, the dueling-ground of St. Louis, and so designated in honour of the last fatal combat fought there, which was with pistols breast to breast. Both combatants fell dead upon the ground, and possibly some rational people may think of them as of the gloomy madmen of the Monk's Mount, that they were no great loss to the community.

• 15 - Return to Cincinnati. A Stage-coach Ride from that City to Columbus, and thence to Sandusky. So, by Lake Erie, to the Falls of Niagara

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  CHAPTER XIV. RETURN TO CINCINADTI, A STAGE-COACH RIDE FROM THAT CITY TO COLUMBUS, AND THENCE TO CENDOSKI. SO BY LAKE ARIE TO THE FALLS OF NIAGRA. As I had a desire to travel through the interior of the State of Ohio, and to strike the lakes,

  as the phrase is, at a small town called Cendoski, to which that route would conduct us on our way to Niagara, we had to return from St. Louis by the way we had come, and to retrace our former track as far as Cincinnati. The day on which we were to take leave of St. Louis being very fine, and the steamboat which was to have started I don't know how early in the morning postponing, for the third

  or fourth time, her departure until the afternoon, we rode forward to an old French village on the river, properly called Carondelet and nicknamed Viede Poach, and arranged that the packet should call for us there. The place consisted of a few poor cottages, and two or three public houses, the State of whose larders certainly seemed to justify the second designation of the village, for

  there was nothing to eat in any of them. At length, however, by going back some half a mile or so, we found a solitary host where procurable, and there we tarried to wait the advent of the boat, which would come in sight from the green before the door a long way off. It was a neat, unpretending village tavern, and we took our repast in a quaint little

  room with a bed in it, decorated with some old oil paintings, which in their time had probably been done in a Catholic chapel or monastery. The fare was very good, and served with great cleanliness. A house was kept by a characteristic old couple with whom we had a long top, and who were perhaps a very good sample of that kind of people in the West.

  The landlord was a dry, tough, hard-faced old fellow, not so very old either, for he was but just turned sixty, I should think, who had been out with the militia in the last war with England, and had seen all kinds of service except a battle, and he had been very near seeing that, he added, very near. He had all his life been restless and locomotive, with an irresistible desire for change, and

  there was still the son of his old self, for if he had nothing to keep him at home, he said, slightly jerking his hat at his thumb towards the window of the room in which the old lady sat as we stood talking in front of the house, he would clean up his musket and be off to Texas to-morrow morning. He was one of the very many descendants of Cain proper to this continent, who seemed

  destined from their birth to serve as pioneers in the great human army, who gladly go on from year to year extending its outposts and leaving home after home behind them, and die at last utterly regardless of their graves being left thousands of miles behind by the wandering generation who succeed. His wife was a domesticated, kind-hearted old soul who had come with him from the queen

  city of the world which it seemed was Philadelphia, but had no love for this Western country, and indeed had little reason to bear it any, having seen her children one by one die here of fever in the full prime and beauty of their youth. Her heart was sore, she said, to think of them, and to talk on this theme even to strangers in that blighted place so far from her old home eased it somewhat and became a melancholy pleasure.

  The boat appearing towards evening, we bade adieu to the poor old lady and her vagrant spouse, and making for the next landing place we're soon on board. The messenger again, in our old cabin, and steaming down the Mississippi. If the coming up this river slowly making head against the stream be an irksome journey, the shooting down it with the turbid current is almost worse, for then the boat, proceeding at the rate of twelve or fifteen miles an

  hour, had to force its passage through a labyrinth of floating logs which in the dark it is often to see beforehand or avoid. All that night the bell was never silent for five minutes at a time, and after every ring the vessel reeled again, sometimes beneath a single blow, sometimes beneath a dozen dealt in quick succession, the lightest of which seemed more than enough to beat in her frail

  keel, as though it had been pie-crust. Looking down upon the filthy river after dark, it seemed to be alive with monsters as these black masses rolled upon the surface, or came starting up again head first when the boat, in ploughing her way among a shoal of such obstructions, drove a few among them for the moment under water. Sometimes the engine stopped during a long interval, and then before her and behind, in gathering close about her on

  all sides, were so many of these ill-favoured obstacles that she was fairly hemmed in, the of a floating island, and was constrained to pause until they parted somewhere, as dark clouds will do before the wind, and opened by degrees a channel out. In good time next morning, however, we came again in sight of the detestable morass called Cairo, and stopping there to take in wood lay alongside a barge whose starting timbers

  scarcely held together. It was moored to the bank, and on its side was painted coffee-house, that being, I suppose, the floating paradise to which the people fly for shelter when they lose their houses for a month or two beneath the hideous waters of the Mississippi. But looking southward from this point, we had the satisfaction of seeing that intolerable river dragging its slimy length and ugly freight abruptly off towards New Orleans, and passing

  a yellow line which stretched across the current, were again upon the clear Ohio, never, I trust, to see the Mississippi more, saving in troubled dreams and nightmares. Leaving it for the of its sparkling neighbor was like the transition from pain to ease, or the awakening from a horrible vision to cheerful realities. We arrived at Louisville on the fourth night and gladly availed ourselves of this excellent

  hotel. Next day we went on in the Ben Franklin, a beautiful male steamboat, and reached Cincinnati shortly after midnight. Being by this time nearly tired of sleeping upon shelves, we had remained awake to go ashore straightway, and groping a passage across the dark decks of other boats, and among the labyrinths of engine machinery and leaking casks of molasses, we reached the streets, knocked up the porter at the hotel where we had stayed before, and

  were to our great joy safely housed soon afterwards. We rested but one day at Cincinnati, and then resumed our journey to Sandusky. As it comprised two varieties of stagecoach traveling, which with those I have already glanced at to comprehend the main characteristics of this mode of transit in America, I will take the reader as our fellow passenger and pledge myself to perform the distance with all possible

  dispatch. Our place of destination in the first instance is Columbus. It is distant about 120 miles from Cincinnati, but there is a Macabendize road, rare blessing the whole way, and the rate of traveling upon it is six miles an hour. We start at eight o'clock in the morning in a great mail-coach, whose huge cheeks are so very ruddy and plethoric that it appears

  to be troubled with a tendency of blood to the head. Dropsicle it certainly is, for it will hold a dozen passengers inside, but wonderful to add it is very clean and bright being nearly new and rattles through the streets of Cincinnati gaily. Our way lies through a beautiful country, richly cultivated and luxuriant in its promise of an abundant harvest. Sometimes we pass a field where the strong bristling stalks

  of Indian corn look like a crop of walking-sticks, and sometimes an enclosure where the green wheat is springing up among a labyrinth of stumps. The primitive worm-fence is universal, and an ugly thing it is, but the farms are neatly kept, and save for these differences one might be traveling just now in Kent. We often stop to water at a roadside inn which is always dull and silent. The coachmen dismounts

  and fills his bucket, and holds it to the horse's heads. There is scarcely ever any one to help him. There are seldom any loungers standing round, and never any stable company with jokes to crack. Sometimes, when we have changed our team, there is a difficulty in starting again, arising out of the prevalent mode of breaking a young horse, which is to catch him, harness him against his will, and put him in a stage-coach without further notice.

  But we get on somehow or other, after a great many kicks and a violent struggle, and jog on as before again. Occasionally, when we stop to change, some two or three half-dozen loafers will come loitering out with their hands in their pockets, or will be seen kicking their heels in rocking-chairs, or lounging on the windowsill, or sitting on a rail within the colonnade. They have not often anything to say, though, either to us or to each other,

  but sit there idly staring at the coach and horses. The landlord of the inn is usually among them, and seems of all the party to be the least connected with the business of the house. Indeed, he is with reference to the tavern what the driver is in relation to the coach and passengers. Whatever happens in his sphere of action he is quite indifferent and perfectly easy in his mind.

  The frequent change of coachman works no change or variety in the coachman's character. He is always dirty, sullen, and taciturn. If he be capable of smartness of any kind, moral or physical, he has a faculty of concealing it which is truly marvellous. He never speaks to you as you sit behind him in the box, and if you speak to him he answers, if at all, in monosyllables. He points out nothing in the road and seldom looks at anything, being

  to all appearance thoroughly weary of it and existence generally. As to doing the honours of his coach, his business, as I have said, is with the horses. The coach follows because it is attached to them and goes on wheels, not because you are in it. Sometimes, towards the end of a long stage, he suddenly breaks out into a discordant fragment of an election song, but his face never sings along with him. It is only his

  voice, and not often that. He always chews and always spits, and never encumbers himself with a pocket-hackertjef. The consequences to the box-passenger, especially when the wind blows towards him, are not agreeable. Whenever the coach stops and you can hear the voices of the inside passengers, or whenever any bystander addresses them or any one among them, or they address each other, you will hear one phrase repeated over and over and

  over again to the most extraordinary extent. It is an ordinary and unpromising phrase enough, being neither more nor less than, yes, sir, but it is adapted to every variety of circumstance and fills up every pause in the conversation. Thus. The time is one o'clock at noon. The scene a place where we are to stay and dine on this journey. The coach drives up to the door of an inn. The day is warm and there are several

  idlers lingering about the tavern and waiting for the public dinner. Among them is a stout gentleman in a brown hat, swinging himself to and fro in a rocking-chair on the pavement. As the coach stops, the gentleman in a straw hat looks out of the window. Straw hat to the stout gentleman in the rocking-chair. I reckon that's Judge Chaperson, ain't it? Brown hat, still swinging, speaking very slowly and without any emotion whatever. Yes, sir.

  Straw hat. Warm weather, Judge. Brown hat. Yes, sir. Straw hat. There was a snap of cold last week. Brown hat. Yes, sir. Straw hat. Yes, sir. A pause. They look at each other very seriously. Straw hat. I calculate you'll have got through that case of the corporation, Judge, by this time now. Brown hat. Yes, sir. Straw hat. How did the verdict go, sir? Brown hat. For the defendant, sir. Straw hat. Interrogatively. Yes, sir. Brown hat. Affirmatively.

  Yes, sir. Both, amusingly, as each gazes down the street. Yes, sir. Another pause. They look at each other again, still more seriously than before. Brown hat. This coach is rather behind its time to-day, I guess. Straw hat. Doubtingly. Yes, sir. Brown hat. Looking at his watch. Yes, sir. Nigh upon two hours. Straw hat. Raising his eyebrows in very great surprise. Yes, sir. Brown hat. Decisively, as he puts up his watch. Yes, sir. All the

  other inside passengers, among themselves. Yes, sir. Coachman. At a very surly tone. No, it ain't. Straw hat. To the coachman. Well, I don't know, sir. We were a pretty tall time coming that last fifteen mile, that's a fact. The coachman, making no reply, and plainly declining to enter into any controversy on a subject so far removed from his sympathies and feelings, another passenger says, Yes, sir, and the gentleman in the straw hat, in

  of his courtesy, says, Yes, sir, to him in return. The straw hat that inquires of the brown hat, whether that coach, in which he, the straw hat, then sits, is not a new one, to which the brown hat again makes answer, Yes, sir. Straw hat. I thought so. Pretty loud smell of varnish, sir. Brown hat. Yes, sir. All the other inside passengers. Yes, sir. Brown hat. To the company in general. Yes, sir.

  The conversational powers of the company, having been by this time pretty heavily taxed, the straw hat opens the door and gets out, and all the rest alight also. We dine soon afterwards with the boarders in the house, and have nothing to drink but tea and coffee. As they are both very bad and the water is worse, I ask for brandy, but it is a temperance hotel, and spirits are not to be had for love or money. This preposterous forcing of unpleasant

  the reluctant throats of travellers is not at all uncommon in America, but I never discovered that the scruples of such wincing landlords induced them to preserve any unusually nice balance between the quality of their face and their scale of charges. On the contrary, I rather suspected them of diminishing the one and exalting the other by way of recompense for the loss of their profit on the sale of spiritual liquors. After all, perhaps the

  plainest course for persons of such tender consciousness would be a total abstinence from tavern-keeping. Dinner over, we get into another vehicle which is ready at the door, for the coach has been changed in the interval, and resume our journey which continues through the same kind of country until evening, when we come to the town where we are to stop for tea and supper. And having

  delivered the mail-bags at the post-office, ride through the usual wide street lined with the usual stores and houses, the drapers having hung up at their door by way of sign a piece of bright red cloth to the hotel where this meal is prepared. There being many borders here we sit down, a large party, and a very melancholy one as usual. But there is a buxom hostess at the head of the table, and opposite a simple Welsh schoolmaster with his wife

  and child, who came here on a speculation of greater province than performance to teach the classics, and they are sufficient subjects of interest until the meal is over and another couch is ready. In it we go on once more, lighted by a bright moon until midnight, when we stop to change the coach again, and remain for half an hour or so in a miserable room with a blurred lithograph of Washington over the smoky fireplace, and a mighty jug of cold

  water on the table, to which refreshment the moody passengers do so apply themselves that they would seem to be, one and all, keen patients of Dr. Sandrago. Among them is a very little boy who chews tobacco like a very big one, and a droning gentleman who talks arithmetically and statistically on all subjects, from poetry downwards, who always speaks in the same key with exactly the same emphasis and with very grave deliberation. He came outside just now

  and told me how that the uncle of a certain young lady, who had been spirited away and married by a certain captain, lived in these parts, and how this uncle was so valiant and ferocious that he shouldn't wonder if he were to follow the said captain to England, and shoot him down in the street wherever he found him, in the feasibility of which strong measure I, being for the moment rather prone to contradiction from feeling half asleep and very tired, declined

  to acquiesce, assuring him that if the uncle did resort to it, or gratified any other little whim of the like nature, he would find himself one morning prematurely throttled at the old Bailey, and that he would do well to make his will before he went, as he would certainly want it before he had been in Britain very long. On we go all night, and by and by the day begins to break, and presently the first cheerful

  rays of the warm sun come slanting on us brightly. It sheds its light upon a miserable waste of sodden grass and dull trees and squalid huts, whose aspect is forlorn and grievous in the last degree. A very desert in the woods, whose growth of green is dank and noxious like that upon the top of standing water where poisonous fungus grows in the rare footprint on the oozy ground and sprouts like witch's coral from the crevices of the cabin wall

  and floor, it is a hideous thing to lie upon the very threshold of a city. But it was purchased years ago, and as the owner cannot be discovered, the State has been unable to reclaim it. So there it remains in the midst of cultivation and improvement, like ground accursed and made obscene and rank by some great crime. We reached Columbus shortly before seven o'clock and stayed there to refresh that day and night,

  having excellent apartments at a very large unfinished hotel called the Neil House, which were richly fitted with the polished wood of the black walnut, and opened on a handsome portico and stone veranda like rooms in some Italian mansion. The town is clean and pretty, and of course is going to be much larger. It is the seat of the State Legislature of Ohio, and lays claim in consequence to some consideration and importance. There being

  no stagecoach next day, upon the road we wish to take, I hired an extra at a reasonable charge to take us to Tiffin, a small town from whence there is a railroad to Sandusky. This extra was an ordinary four-horse stagecoach, such as I have described, changing horses and drivers as the stagecoach would, but was exclusively our own for the journey. To ensure our having horses at the proper stations, and being in commoted by no strangers, the

  proprietors sent an agent on the box, who was to accompany us the whole way through, and thus attended, and bearing with us, besides a hamper full of savory cold meats and fruit and wine, we started off again in high spirits at half-past six o'clock next morning, very much delighted to be by ourselves, and disposed to enjoy even the roughest journey. It was well for us that we were in this humor, for the road we went over that day was certainly

  enough to have shaken tempers that were not resolutely at set fare down to some inches below stormy. At one time we were all flung together in a heap at the bottom of the coach, and at another we were crushing our heads against the roof. Now one side was down deep in the mire, and we were holding on to the other. Now the coach was lying on the tails of the two-wheelers, and now it was rearing up in the air in a frantic state, with all

  four horses standing on the top of an insurmountable eminence, looking coolly back at it as though they would say, Unharness us, it can't be done. The drivers on these roads, who certainly get over the ground in a manner which is quite miraculous, so twist and turn the team about in forcing a passage corkscrew fashion through the bogs and swamps, that it was quite a common circumstance on looking out of the window to see the coachman with the ends of the pair

  of reins in his hands, apparently driving nothing or playing at horses, and the leaders staring at one another unexpectedly from the back of the coach as if they had some idea of getting up behind. A great portion of the way was over what is called a corduroy road, which is made by throwing trunks of trees into a marsh and leaving them to settle there. The very slightest of the jolts with which the ponderous carriage fell from log to log

  was enough, it seemed, to have dislocated all the bones in the human body. It would be impossible to experience a similar set of sensations in any other circumstances, unless perhaps than attempting to go up to the top of St. Paul's in an omnibus. Never, never once that day was the coach in any position, attitude, or kind of motion to which we are accustomed in coaches. Never did it make the smallest approach to one's experience of the

  proceedings of any sort of vehicle that goes on wheels. Still it was a fine day, and the temperature was delicious, and though we had left summer behind us in the West, we were fast leaving spring. We were moving towards Niagara and home. We alighted in a pleasant wood towards the middle of the day, dined on a fallen tree, and leaving our best fragments with a cottager, and our worst with the pigs, who swarm in this part of the country like

  grains of sand on the seashore to the great comfort of our commissarate in Canada. We went forward again gaily. As night came on the track grew narrower and narrower, until at last it so lost itself among the trees that the driver seemed to find his way by instinct. We had the comfort of knowing at least that there was no danger of his falling asleep, for every now and then a wheel would strike against an unseed stump with such a

  jerk that he was feigned to hold on pretty tight and pretty quick to keep himself upon the box. Nor was there any reason to dread the least danger from furious driving inasmuch as over that broken ground the horses had enough to do to walk. As to shying, there was no room for that, and a herd of wild elephants could not have run away in such a wood with such a coach at their heels, so we stumbled along quite satisfied.

  These stumps of trees are a curious feature in American travelling. The varying illusions they present to the unaccustomed eye as it grows dark are quite astonishing in their number and reality. Now there is a Grecian urn erected in the centre of a lonely field. Now there is a woman weeping at a tomb. Now a very commonplace old gentleman in a white waistcoat with a thumb thrust into each armhole of his coat. Now a student pouring on a book.

  Now a crouching negro. Now a horse, a dog, a cannon, an armed man, a hunchback throwing off his cloak and stepping forth into the light. They were often as entertaining to me as so many glasses and a magic lantern, and never took their shapes at my bidding, but seemed to force themselves upon me, whether I would or know. And strange to say I sometimes recognised in them counterparts of figures once familiar to me in pictures attached to

  childish books forgotten long ago. It soon became too dark, however, even for this amusement, and the trees were so close together that their dry branches rattled against the couch on either side and obliged us all to keep our heads warm. It lightened too for three whole hours, each flash being very bright and blue and long, and as the vivid streaks came darting in among the crowded

  benches and the thunder rolled gloomily above the treetops, one could scarcely help thinking that there were better neighbourhoods at such a time than thick woods afforded. At length, between ten and eleven o'clock at night, a few feeble lights appeared in the distance, and Upper Sandusky, an Indian village where we were to stay till morning, lay before us. They were gone to bed at the Log Inn, which was the only house of entertainment

  in the place, but soon answered to our knocking and got some tea for us in a sort of kitchen or common room tapestried with old newspapers pasted against the wall. The bedchamber to was shown, was a large, low, ghostly room, with a quantity of withered branches on the hearth and two doors without any fastening opposite to each other, both opening on the black night and wild country, and so contrived that one of them always blew the other open,

  a novelty on domestic architecture which I do not remember to have seen before, and which I was somewhat disconcerted to have forced on my attention after getting into bed, as I had a considerable sum in gold for our travelling expenses in my dressing-case. Some of the luggage, however piled against the panels, soon settled this difficulty, and my sleep would not have been much affected that night, I believe, though it had failed

  to do so. My Boston friend climbed up to bed, somewhere in the roof, where another guest was already snoring hugely. But being bitten beyond his power of endurance, he turned out again and fled for shelter to the coach, which was airing itself in front of the house. This was not a very politic step, as it turned out, for the pigs senting him and looking upon the

  coach as a pie with some matter of meat inside grunted round it so hideously that he was afraid to come out again, and lay there shivering till morning. Nor was it possible to warm him when he did come out, by means of a glass of brandy, for in Indian villages the legislature, with a very good and wise intention, forbids the sale of spirits by tavern-keepers. The however, is quite inefficacious, for the Indians never fail to procure liquor of a worse kind

  at a dearer price from travelling peddlers. It is a settlement of the Wyandotte Indians who inhabit this place. Among the company at breakfast was a mild old gentleman who had been for many years employed by the United States Government in conducting negotiations with the Indians, and who had just concluded a treaty with these people by which they bound themselves in consideration of a certain annual

  sum to remove next year to some land provided for them west of the Mississippi and a little way beyond St. Louis. He gave me a moving account of their strong attachment to the familiar scenes of their infancy, and in particular to the burial places of their kindred, and of their great reluctance to leave them. He has witnessed many such removals, and always with pain, though he knew that they departed for their own good. The question whether this

  tribe should go or stay had been discussed among them a day or two before, in a hut erected for that purpose, the logs of which still lay upon the ground before the inn. When the speaking was done the eyes and nose were ranged on opposite sides, and every male adult voted in his turn. The moment the result was known the minority, a large one, cheerfully yielded to the rest, and withdrew all kinds of opposition.

  We met some of these poor Indians afterwards, riding on shaggy ponies. They were so like the meaner sort of gypsies that if I could have seen any of them in England I should have concluded as a matter of course that they belonged to that wandering and restless people. Leaving this town directly after breakfast, we pushed forward again over a rather worse

  road than yesterday, if possible, and arrived about noon at Tiffin, where we parted with the extra. At two o'clock we took the railroad, the traveling on which was very slow, its construction being indifferent, and the ground wet and marshy, and arrived at Sandusky in time to dine that evening. We put up at a comfortable little hotel on the brink of Lake Erie, lay there that night, and had no choice but to wait there deck-stay until a steamboat

  bound for Buffalo appeared. The town, which was sluggish and uninteresting enough, was something like the back of an English watering-place out of the season. Our host, who was very attentive and anxious to make us comfortable, was a handsome middle-aged man who had come to this town from New England, in which part of the country he was raised. When I say that he constantly walked in and out of the room, with his hat on, and stopped to converse in

  the same free and easy state, and lay down on our sofa, and pulled his newspaper out of his pocket and rented at his ease, I merely mention these traits as characteristic of the country, not at all as being a matter of complaint, or as having been disagreeable to me. I should undoubtedly be offended by such proceedings at home, because there they are not the custom, and where they are not they would be impertinences. But in America

  the only desire of a good-natured fellow of this kind is to treat his guests hospitably and well, and I had no more right, and I can truly say no more disposition, to measure his conduct by our English rule and standard, than I had to quarrel with him for not being of the exact stature which would qualify him for admission into the Queen's Grenadier Guards. As little inclination had I to find fault with a funny old lady, who was an upper-dominant

  domestic in this establishment, and who, when she came to wait upon us at any meal, sat herself down comfortably in the most convenient chair, and producing a large pin to pick her teeth with, remained performing that ceremony, and steadfastly regarding us meanwhile with much gravity and composure, now and then pressing us to eat a little more, until it was time to clear away. It was enough for us that whatever we wished done was done

  with great civility and readiness, and a desire to oblige, not only here but everywhere else, and that all our wants were, in general, zealously anticipated. We were taking an early dinner at this house on the day after our arrival, which was Sunday, when a steamboat came in sight and presently touched at the wharf. As she proved to be on her way to Buffalo, we hurried on board with all speed, and soon left Sandusky far

  behind us. She was a large vessel of five hundred tons, and handsomely fitted up, though with high-pressure engines, which always conveyed that kind of feeling to me which I should be likely to experience, I think, if I had lodgings on the first floor of a powder mill. She was laden with flour, some casks of which commodity were stored upon the deck. The captain, coming up to have a little conversation, and to introduce a friend, seated himself a stride

  of one of these barrels, like a bacchus of private life, and pulling a great clasp-knife out of his pocket, began to whittle it as he talked, by paring thin slices off the edges. Then he whittled with such industry and hearty good-will, that but for his being called away very soon, it must have disappeared bodily, and left nothing in its place but grist and shavings. After calling it one or two flat places, with low dams stretching out into

  the lake, whereon were stumpy lighthouses, like windmills without sails, the whole looking like a Dutch vignette, we came at midnight to Cleveland, where we lay all night until nine o'clock next morning. I entertained quite a curiosity in reference to this place, from having seen at Sandusky a specimen of its literature in the shape of a newspaper, which was very strong indeed

  upon the subject of Lord Ashburton's recent arrival in Washington, to adjust the points in dispute between the United States Government and Great Britain, informing its readers that as America had whipped England in her infancy, and whipped her again in her youth, so it was clearly necessary she must whip her once again in her maturity, and pledging its credit to all true Americans, that if Mr. Webster did his duty in the approaching negotiations,

  and sent the English Lord home again in double quick time, they should within two years sing Yankee Doodle in Hyde Park, and Hail Columbia on the scarlet courts of Westminster. I found it a pretty town, and had the satisfaction of beholding the outside of the office of the journal from which I had just quoted. I did not enjoy the delight of seeing the wit who indicted the paragraph in question, but I have no doubt he is a prodigious man

  in his way, and held in high repute by a select circle. There was a gentleman on board to whom, as I unintentionally learned through the thin partition which divided our stateroom from the cabin in which he and his wife conversed together, I was unwittingly the occasion of very great uneasiness. I don't know why or wherefore, but I appeared to run in his mind perpetually, and to dissatisfy him very much.

  First of all I heard him say, and the most ludicrous part of the business was, that he said it in my very ear, and could not have communicated more directly with me if he had leaned upon my shoulder and whispered me, "'Baws is on board still, my dear.' After a considerable pause, he added, complainingly, "'Baws keeps himself very close,' which was

  true enough, for I was not very well, it was lying down with a book. I thought he had done with me after this, but I was deceived, for a long interval having elapsed, during which I imagined him to have been turning restlessly from side to side, and trying to go to sleep, he broke out again with, I suppose, that Baws will be writing a book by and by and putting all our names in it, at which imaginary consequence of being on board a boat with Baws, he groaned

  and became silent. We called at the town of Erie, at eight o'clock that night, and lay there an hour. Between five and six next morning we arrived at Buffalo, where we breakfasted, and, being too near the Great Falls to wait patiently anywhere else, we set off by train the same morning at nine o'clock to Niagara.

  It was a miserable day, chilly and raw, a damp mist falling, and the trees in that northern region quite bare and wintry. Whenever the train halted I listened for the roar, and I was constantly straining my eyes in the direction where I knew the falls must be, from seeing the river rolling on towards them, every moment expecting to behold the spray. Within a few minutes of our stopping, not before, I saw two great white clouds rising

  up slowly and majestically from the depths of the earth. That was all. At length we alighted, and then for the first time I heard the mighty rush of water, and felt the ground tremble my feet. The bank is very steep, and was slippery with rain and half-melted ice. I hardly know how I got down, but I was soon at the bottom and climbing with two English officers who were crossing and had joined me over some broken rocks, deafened by the noise, half

  blinded by the spray, and wet to the skin. We were at the foot of the American fall. I could see an immense torrent of water tearing headlong down from some great height, but had no idea of shape or situation or anything but vague immensity. When we were seated in the little ferry-boat and were crossing the swollen river immediately before both cataracts, I began to feel what it was. But I was in a manner stunned and unable to comprehend

  the vastness of the sea. It was not until I came on table-rock and looked, great heaven, on what a fall of bright green water, that it came upon me in its full might and majesty. Then, when I felt how near to my Creator I was standing, the first effect and the enduring one, instant and lasting, of the tremendous spectacle was peace. Peace of mind, tranquillity, calm recollections of the dead, great thoughts of eternal rest and happiness, nothing of

  gloom or terror. Niagara was at once stamped upon my heart, an image of beauty to remain there changeless and indelible until its pulses ceased to beat for ever. Oh, how the strife and trouble of daily life receded from my view and lessened in the distance during the ten memorable days we passed on that enchanted ground! What voices spoke from out the thundering water! What faces, faded from the earth, looked out upon me from its gleaming depths! What

  heavenly promise glistened in those angels' tears, the drops of many hues that showered around and twined themselves about the gorgeous arches which the changing rainbows made! I never stirred in all that time from the Canadian side whither I had gone at first. I never crossed the river again, for I knew there were people on the other shore, and in such a place it is natural to shun strange company. To wander to and fro all day, and

  see the cataracts from all points of view, and to stand upon the edge of the great horseshoe fall, marking the hurried water gathering strength as it approached the verge, yet seeming too to pause before it shot into the gulf below, to gaze from the river's level up at the torrent as it came streaming down, to climb the neighbouring heights and watch it through the trees, and see the wreathing water in the rapids hurrying on to take its fearful

  plunge, to linger in the shadow of the solemn rocks three miles below, watching the river as, stirred by no visible cause, it heaved and eddied and awoke the echoes, being troubled yet far down beneath the surface by its giant leap, to have Niagara before me, lighted by the sun and by the moon, red in the day's decline, and grey as evening slowly fell upon it, to look upon it every day, and wake up in the night and hear its ceaseless voice,

  this was enough. I think in every quiet season now, still do those waters roll and leap, and roar and tumble all day long, still are the rainbows spanning them a hundred feet below, still when the sun is on them do they shine and glow like molten gold, still when the day is gloomy do they fall like snow, or seem to crumble away like the front of a great chalk cliff, or roll down the rock like dense white smoke, but always does the

  mighty stream appear to die as it comes down, and always from its unfathomable grave arises that tremendous ghost of spray and mist which has never laid, which has haunted this place with the same dread salientity since darkness brooded on the deep, and that first flood before the deluge, light, came rushing on creation at the word of God.

• 16 - In Canada; Toronto; Kingston; Montreal; Quebec; St. John’s. In the United States again; Lebanon; The Shaker Village; West Point

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  15 In Canada Toronto Kingston Montreal Quebec St. John's In the United States again Lebanon The Shaker Village West Point I wish to abstain from instituting any comparison or drawing any parallel whatever between the social features of the United States and those of the British possessions in Canada. For

  this reason I shall confine myself to a very brief account of our journeyings in the latter territory. But before I leave Niagara I must advert to one disgusting circumstance which hardly have escaped the observation of any decent traveller who has visited the falls. On Table Rock there is a cottage belonging to a guide where little relics of the place are sold, and where visitors register their names in a book kept for the purpose. On the

  wall of the room in which a great many of these volumes are preserved the following request is posted. Visitors will please not copy or extract the remarks and poetical effusions from the registers and albums kept here. But for this intimation I should have let them lie upon the tables on which they were strewn with careful negligence, like books in a drawing room, being quite satisfied with the stupendous silliness of certain stanzas with an anticlimax

  at the end of each which were framed and hung up on the wall. Curious, however, after reading this announcement, to see what kind of morsels were so carefully preserved, I turned a few leaves and found them scrawled all over with the vilest and filthiest ribaldry that ever human hogs delighted in. It is humiliating enough to know that there are among men brutes so obscene and worthless that they can delight in laying these miserable profanations upon

  the very steps of nature's greatest altar, but that these should be hoarded up for the delight of their fellow swine and kept in a public place where any eyes may see them is a disgrace to the English language in which they are written, though I hope few of these entries have been made by Englishmen, and a reproach to the English side on which they are preserved.

  The quarters of our soldiers at Niagara are finally and eerily situated. Some of them are large detached houses on the plain above the falls which were originally designed for hotels and in the evening time when the women and children are leaning over the balconies Watching the men as they played at ball and other games upon the grass before the door, they often presented a little picture of cheerfulness and animation which made it quite a pleasure

  to pass that way. At any garrisoned point where the line of demarcation between one country and another is so very narrow as at Niagara, desertion from the ranks can scarcely fail to be of frequent occurrence, and it may be reasonably supposed that when the soldiers entertain the wildest and maddest hopes of the fortunate independents that await them on the other side, the impulse to play traitor, which such a play suggests to dishonest minds,

  is not weakened. But it very rarely happens that the men who do desert are happy or contented afterwards, and many instances have been known in which they have confessed their grievous disappointment and their earnest desire to return to their old service if they could but be assured of pardon or lenient treatment. Many of their comrades, notwithstanding, do the like from time to time, and instances of loss of life in the effort to cross the

  river with that object are far from being uncommon. Several men were drowned in the attempt to swim across not long ago, and one who had the maddest to trust himself upon a table as a raft was swept down to the whirlpool where his mangled body eddied round and round some days. I am inclined to think that the noise of the falls is very much exaggerated, and this will

  appear the more probable when the depth of the great basin in which the water is received is taken into account. At no time during our stay there was the wind at all high or boisterous, but we never heard them three miles off even at the very quiet time of sunset, although we often tried. Queenston, at which place the steamboat start for Toronto, or, I should rather say, at which place they call, for their wharf is at Lewiston on the opposite

  shore, is situated in a delicious valley through which the Niagara River in colour of very deep green pursues its course. It is approached by a road that takes its winding way among the heights by which the town is sheltered, and seen from this point as extremely beautiful and picturesque. On the most conspicuous of these heights stood a monument erected by the provincial legislature in memory of General Brock, who was slain in a battle with the

  American forces after having won the victory. Some vagabond, supposed to be a fellow of the name of Lett, who is now, or who lately was in prison as a felon, blew up this monument two years ago, and it is now a melancholy ruin, with a long fragment of iron railing hanging dejectedly from its top, and waving to and fro like a wild ivy branch or broken vine stem. It is of much higher importance than it may seem that this statue should be

  repaired at the public cost, as it ought to have been long ago. Firstly, because it is beneath the dignity of England to allow a memorial raised in honour of one of her defenders to remain in this condition on the very spot where he died. Secondly, because the sight of it in its present state, and the recollection of the unpunished outrage which brought it to this pass, is not very likely to soothe down border feelings among English subjects

  here or compose their border quarrels and dislikes. I was standing on the wharf at this place, watching the passengers embarking in a steamboat which preceded that whose coming we awaited, and participating in the anxiety with which a sergeant's wife was collecting her few goods together, keeping one distracted eye hard upon the porters, who were hurrying them on board, and the other on a hoopless washing

  tub for which, as being the most utterly worthless of all her movables, she seemed to entertain particular affection, when three or four soldiers with a recruit came up and went on board. The recruit was a likely young fellow enough, strongly built and well made, but by no means sober. Indeed, he had all the air of a man who had been more or less drunk for some days. He carried a small bundle over his shoulder slung at the end of a walking-stick, and had

  a short pipe in his mouth. He was as dusty and dirty as recruits usually are, and his shoes betokened that he had travelled on foot some distance, but he was in a very jocose state, and shook hands with this soldier and clapped that one on the back and talked and laughed continually like a roaring idle dog as he was. The soldiers rather laughed at this blade than with him, seeming to say, as they stood

  straightening their canes in their hands and looking coolly at him over their glazed stalks, Go on, my boy, while you may, you'll know better by and by, when suddenly the novice, who had been backing towards the gangway in his noisy merriment, fell overboard before their eyes and splashed heavily down into the river between the vessel and the dock. I never saw such a good thing as this change that came over these soldiers in an instant,

  Just before the man was down, their professional manner, their stiffness and constraint were gone, and they were filled with the most violent energy. In less time than is required to tell it, they had him out again, feet first, with the tails of his coat flapping over his eyes, everything about him hanging the wrong way, and the water streaming off at every thread in his threadbare dress. But the moment they set him upright and found that he was none

  the worse, they were soldiers again, looking over their glazed stalks more compositely than ever. The half-sobered recruit glanced round for a moment, as if his first impulse was to express some gratitude for his preservation. But seeing them with this air of total unconcern, and having his wet pipe presented to him with an oath by the soldier who had been by far

  the most anxious of the party, he stuck it in his mouth, thrust his hands into his moist pockets, and without even shaking the water off his clothes, walked on board whistling, not to say as if nothing happened, but as if he had meant to do it, and it had been a perfect success. Our steamboat came up directly this had left the wharf, and soon bore us to the mouth of

  the Niagara, where the stars and stripes of America flutter on one side, and the Union Jack of England on the other. And so narrow is the space between them that the sentinels in either fort can often hear the watchword of the other country given. Thence we emerged on Lake Ontario, an inland sea, and by half-past six o'clock were at Toronto. The country round this town, being very flat, is bare of scenic interest, but the town itself is full of life

  and motion, bustle, business and improvement. The streets are well paved and lighted with gas, the houses are large and good, the shops excellent. Many of them have a display of goods in their windows, such as may be seen in thriving country towns in England, and there are some which would do no discredit to the metropolis itself. There is a good stone prison here, and there are, besides a handsome church, a courthouse, public offices,

  many commodious private residences, and a government observatory for noting and recording the magnetic variations. In the College of Upper Canada, which is one of the public establishments of the city, a sound education in every department of polite learning can be had at a very much moderate expense, the annual charge for the instruction of each pupil not exceeding nine pounds sterling. It has pretty good endowments on the way of land, and is a valuable and

  useful institution. The first stone of a new college had been laid but a few days before by the Governor-General. It will be a handsome, spacious edifice, approached by a long avenue which is already planted and made available as a public walk. The town is well adapted for wholesome exercise at all seasons, for the footways in the thoroughfares which lie beyond the principal street are

  plank-like floors and kept in very good and clean repair. It is a matter of deep regret that political differences should have run high in this place, and led to most discreditable and disgraceful results. It is not long since guns were discharged from a window in this town at the successful candidates in an election, and the coachman of one of them was actually shot in the body, though not dangerously wounded. But one man was killed on the same occasion,

  and from the very window whence he received his death the very flag which shielded his murderer not only in the commission of the crime but from its consequences was displayed again on the occasion of the public ceremony performed by the Governor-General to which I have just adverted. Of all the colours in the rainbow there is but one which could be so employed. I need not say that flag was orange.

  The time of leaving Toronto for Kingston is noon. By eight o'clock next morning the traveller is at the end of his journey, which is performed by a steamboat upon Lake Ontario calling at Port Hope and Coburg, the latter a cheerful thriving little town. Vast quantities of flour form the chief item in the freight of these vessels. We had no fewer than 1,080 barrels on board between Coburg and Kingston. The latter place, which is now the seat of government

  in Canada, is a very poor town, rendered still poorer in the appearance of its marketplace by the ravages of a recent fire. Indeed, it may be said of Kingston that one half of it appears to be burnt down and the other half not to be built up. The government house is neither elegant nor commodious, yet it is almost the only house of any importance in the neighbourhood. There is an admirable jail here, well and wisely governed and excellently

  regulated in every respect. The men were employed as shoemakers, rope-makers, blacksmiths, tailors, carpenters and stone-cutters, and in building a new prison, which was pretty far advanced towards completion. The female prisoners were occupied in needlework. Among them was a beautiful girl of twenty who had been there nearly three years. She acted as bearer of secret dispatches for the self-styled patriots on Navy Island during the Canadian insurrection, sometimes

  dressing as a girl and carrying them in her stays, sometimes attiring herself as a boy and secreting them in the lining of her hat. In the latter character she always rode as a boy would, which was nothing to her, for she could govern any horse that any man could ride and could drive four in hand with the best whip in those parts. Setting forth on one of her patriotic missions, she appropriated to herself the first horse she could lay her

  hands on, and this offence had brought her where I saw her. She had quite a lovely face, though, as the reader may suppose from this sketch of her history, there was a lurking devil in her bright eyes which looked out pretty sharply from between her prison bars. There is a bomb-proof fort here of great strength, which occupies a bold position and is capable, doubtless, of doing good service, though the town is much too close upon the frontier to

  be long held, I should imagine, for its present purpose in troubled times. There is also a where a couple of government steamboats were building and getting on vigorously. We left Kingston for Montreal on the 10th of May at half-past nine in the morning and proceeded in a steamboat down the St. Lawrence River. The beauty of this noble stream at almost any point, but especially in the commencement of this journey, when it winds its way among

  the thousand islands, can hardly be imagined. The number and constant successions of these islands, all green and richly wooded, their fluctuating sizes, some so large that for half an hour together one among them will appear as the opposite bank of the river, and some so small that they are mere dimples on its broad bosom, their infinite variety of shapes, and the numberless combinations of beautiful forms which the trees growing

  on them present, all form a picture fraught with uncommon interest and pleasure. In the afternoon we shot down some rapids where the river boiled and bubbled strangely, and where the force and headlong violence of the current were tremendous. At seven o'clock we reached Dickinson's Landing, whence travellers proceed for two or three hours by stagecoach, the navigation of the river being rendered so dangerous and difficult to the interval

  by rapids that steamboats do not make the passage. The number and length of these portages over which the roads are bad and the travelling slow render the way between the towns of Montreal and Kingston somewhat tedious. Our course lay over a wide, unenclosed tract of country at a little distance from the riverside whence the bright warning lights on the dangerous parts of the St. Lawrence shone vividly. The night was dark and raw, and the way dreary

  enough. It was nearly ten o'clock when we reached the wharf where the next steamboat lay and went on board and to bed. She lay there all night and started as soon as it was day. The morning was ushered in by a violent thunderstorm and was very wet, but gradually improved and brightened up. Going on deck after breakfast I was amazed to see floating down with a stream a most gigantic raft with some thirty or forty wooden houses

  upon it, and at least as many flag-masks so that it looked like a nautical street. I saw many of these rafts afterwards, but never one so large. All the timber, or lumber as it is called in America, which is brought down the St. Lawrence, is floated down in this manner. When the raft reaches its place of destination it is broken up, the materials are sold, and the boatmen return for more. At eight we landed again, and travelled by

  a stagecoach for four hours through a pleasant and well-cultivated country, perfectly French in every respect, in the appearance of the cottages, the air, language, and dress of the signboards on the shops and taverns, and the virgins' shrines and crosses by the wayside. Nearly every common labourer and boy, though he had no shoes to his feet, wore round his waist a sash of some bright colour, generally red, and the women, who were working in the

  fields and gardens and doing all kinds of husbandry, wore, one and all, great flat straw-hats with most capacious brims. There were Catholic priests and sisters of charity in the village and in the streets, and images of the Saviour at the corners of crossroads and in other public places. At noon we went on board another steamboat and reached the village of Le Chine, nine miles from Montreal, by three o'clock. There we left the river and went on by land.

  Montreal is pleasantly situated on the margin of the St. Lawrence, and is backed by some bold heights about which there are charming rides and drives. The streets are generally narrow and irregular, as in most French towns of any age, but in the more modern parts of the city they are wide and airy. They display a great variety of very good shops, and both in the town and suburbs there are many excellent private dwellings. The granite keys are remarkable

  for their beauty, solidity and extent. There is a very large Catholic cathedral here, recently erected with two tall spires of which one is yet unfinished. In the open space in front of this edifice stands a solitary grim looking square brick tower, which has a quaint and remarkable appearance, and which the wise acres of the place have consequently determined to pull down immediately. The government house

  is very superior to that at Kingston, and the town is full of life and bustle. In one of the suburbs is a plank road, not footpath, five or six miles long, and a famous road it is too. All the rides in this vicinity were made doubly interesting by the bursting out of spring, which is here so rapid that it is but a day's leap from barren winter to the blooming youth of summer. The steamboats to Quebec perform the journey in the night,

  that is to say they leave Montreal at six in the evening, and arrive in Quebec at six next morning. We made this excursion during our stay in Montreal, which exceeded a fortnight, and were charmed by its interest in beauty. The impression made upon the visitor by this Gibraltar of America, its giddy heights, its citadel suspended as it were in the air, its picturesque steep streets and frowning gateways, and the splendid views which burst upon the

  eye at every turn, is at once unique and lasting. It is a place not to be forgotten or mixed up in the mind with other places, or altered for a moment in the crowd of scenes a traveller can recall. Apart from the realities of this most picturesque city, there are associations clustered about it which would make a desert rich in interest. The dangerous precipice along whose rocky front Wolf and his brave companions climbed to glory, the plains of

  Abraham, where he received his mortal wound, the fortress so chivalrously defended by Montcalm, and his soldiers' grave dug for him while yet alive by the bursting of a shell, are not the least among them, or among the gallant incidents of history. That is a noble monument, too, and worthy of two great nations, which perpetuates the memory of both brave generals and on which their names are jointly written.

  The city is rich in public institutions and in Catholic churches and charities, but it is mainly in the prospect from the sight of the old government house and from the citadel that its surpassing beauty lies. The exquisite expanse of country rich in field and forest, mountain height and water, which lies stretched out before the view, with miles of Canadian villages glancing in long white streaks, like veins along the landscape, the motley crowd

  of gables, roofs and chimney tops, and the old hilly town immediately at hand, the beautiful St. Lawrence sparkling and flashing in the sunlight, and the tiny ships below the rock from which you gaze, whose distant rigging looks like spider's webs against the light, while casks and barrels on their decks dwindle into toys, and busy mariners become so many puppets, all this, frayed by a sunken window in the fortress and looked at from the shadowed

  room within, forms one of the brightest and most enchanting pictures that the eye can rest upon. In the spring of the year vast numbers of emigrants who have newly arrived from England or from Ireland pass between Quebec and Montreal on their way to the backwoods and new settlements of Canada. If it be an entertaining lounge, as I very often found it, to take a morning

  stroll upon the quay at Montreal and see them grouped in hundreds on the public wharfs about their chests and boxes, it is a matter of deep interest to be their fellow passenger on one of these steamboats and, mingling with the concourse, see and hear them unobserved. The vessel in which we returned from Quebec to Montreal was crowded with them, and at night they spread their beds between decks, those who had beds, at least, and slept so

  close and thick about our cabin door that the passage to and fro was quite blocked up. They were nearly all English, from Gloucester the greater part, and it had a long winter passage out, but it was wonderful to see how clean the children had been kept, and how untiring in their love and self-denial all the poor parents were. Can't as we may, and as we shall to the end of things, it is very much harder for the

  poor to be virtuous than it is for the rich, and the good that is in them shines the brighter In many a noble mansion lives a man, the best of husbands and of fathers, whose private worth in both capacities is justly lauded to the skies. But bring him here, upon this crowded deck, strip from his fair young wife her silken dress and jewels, unbind her braided hair, stamp early wrinkles on her brow, pinch her pale cheek with care and much privation,

  Array her faded form in coarsely patched attire, let there be nothing but his love to set her forth or deck her out, and you shall put it to the proof indeed. So change his station in the world that he shall see in those young things who climb about his knee not records of his wealth and name, but little wrestlers with him for his daily bread, so many poachers on his scanty meal, so many units to divide his every sum of comfort, and farther to reduce

  its small amount. In lieu of the endearments of childhood in its sweetest aspect, heap upon him all his pains and wants, its sicknesses and ills, its fretfulness, caprice and querulous endurance. Let its prattle be not of engaging infant fancies, but of cold and thirst and hunger. And if his fatherly affection outlive all this, and he be patient, watchful, tender, careful of his children's lives, and mindful always of their joys and sorrows, then send

  him back to Parliament and pulpit and quarter sessions, and when he hears fine talk of the depravity of those who live from hand to mouth and labor hard to do it, let him speak up as one who knows, and tell those holders forth that they, by parallel with such a class, could be high angels in their daily lives, and lay but humble siege to Heaven at last. Which of us shall say what he would be, if such realities, with small relief or change

  all through his days, were his? Looking round upon these people, far from home, houseless, indigent, wandering, weary with travel and hard living, and seeing how patiently they nursed and tended their young children, how they consulted ever their wants first, then supply their own, what gentle ministers of hope and faith the women were, how the men profited by their example, and how very, very seldom even a moment's petulance or harsh

  complaint broke out among them, I felt a stronger love and honor of my kind come glowing on my heart, and wished to God there had been many atheists in the better part of human nature there to read this simple lesson in the Book of Life. We left Montreal for New York again on the 30th of May, crossing to La Prairie on the opposite shore of the St. Lawrence in a steamboat. We then took the railroad to St. John's, which

  is on the brink of Lake Champlain. Our last greeting in Canada was from the English officers in the pleasant barracks at that place, a class of gentlemen who had made every hour of our visit memorable by their hospitality and friendship, and with rural Britannia sounding in our ears soon left it far behind. But Canada has held and always will remain a foremost place in my remembrance. Few Englishmen

  are prepared to find it what it is. Advancing quietly, all differences settling down, and being fast forgotten, public feeling and private enterprise alike, in a sound and wholesome state, nothing of flush or fever in its system, but health and vigor throbbing in its steady pulse, it is full of hope and promise. To me, who had been accustomed to think of it as something left behind in the strides of advancing society, as something neglected

  and forgotten, slumbering and wasting in its sleep, the demand for labour and the rates of wages, the busy keys of Montreal, the vessels taking in their cargoes and discharging them, the amount of shipping in the different ports, the commerce, roads, and public works, all made to last. The respectability and character of the public journals, and the amount of rational comfort and happiness which honest industry may earn, were very great surprises.

  The steamboats on the lakes and their conveniences, cleanliness and safety, in the gentlemanly character and bearing of their captains, and in the politeness and perfect comfort of their social regulations, are unsurpassed even by the famous Scotch vessels, deservedly so much esteemed at home. The inns are usually bad, because the custom of boarding at hotels is not so general here as in the States, and the British officers, who form a large portion

  of the society of every town, live chiefly at the regimental messes, but in every other respect the traveller in Canada will find as good provision for his comfort as in any place I know. There is one American boat, the vessel which carried us on Lake Champlain from St. John's to Whitehall, which I praise very highly, but no more than it deserves, when I say that it is superior even to that in which we went from Queenston to Toronto,

  or to that in which we travelled from the latter place to Kingston, or, I have no doubt, I may add, to any other in the world. The steamboat, which is called the Burlington, is a perfectly exquisite achievement of neatness, elegance, and order. The decks are drawing rooms, the cabins are boudoirs, choicely furnished and adorned with prints, pictures, and musical instruments. Every nook and corner in the vessel is a perfect curiosity of graceful

  comfort and beautiful contrivance. Captain Sherman, her commander, to whose ingenuity and excellent taste these results are solely attributable, has bravely and worthily distinguished himself on more than one trying occasion, not least among them in having the moral courage to carry British troops at a time during the Canadian Rebellion when no other conveyance was open to them. He and his vessel are held in universal respect, both by his own countrymen

  and ours, and no man ever enjoyed the popular esteem who, in his sphere of action, won and wore it better than this gentleman. By means of this floating palace we were soon in the again, and call that evening at Burlington, a pretty town where we lay an hour or so. We reached Whitehall, where we were to disembark at six next morning, and might have done so earlier, but that these steamboats lie for some hours in the night in consequence of

  the lake becoming very narrow at that part of the journey and difficult of navigation in the dark. Its width is so contracted at one point indeed that they are obliged to warp round by means of a rope. After breakfasting at Whitehall we took the stagecoach for Albany, a large and busy town where we arrived between five and six o'clock that afternoon after a very hot day's journey, for we were now in the height of summer again. At seven we

  started for New York on board a great North River steamboat which was so crowded with passengers that the upper deck was like the box lobby of the theatre between the pieces and the lower one like Tottingham Court Road on a Saturday night. But we slept soundly, notwithstanding, and soon after five o'clock next morning reached New York. Terrying here only that day and night to recruit after our late fatigues, we started off once

  more upon our last journey in America. We had yet five days to spare before embarking for England, and I had a great desire to see the Shaker village, which is peopled by a religious sect from whom it takes its name. To this end we went up the North River again, as far as the town of Hudson, and there hired an extra to carry us to Lebanon thirty miles distant and, of course, another and a different Lebanon from that village where I slept on

  the night of the prairie trip. The country through which the road meandered was rich and beautiful, the weather very fine, and for many miles the Catskill Mountains where Rip Van Winkle and the ghostly Dutchman played at nine pins one memorable gusty afternoon, towered in the blue distance like stately clouds. At one point, as we ascended a steep hill, a thwart whose base a railroad, yet constructing, took its course, we came upon

  an Irish colony. With means at hand of building decent cabins, it was wonderful to see how clumsy, rough and wretched its hovels were. The best were poor protection from the weather, the worst let in the wind and rain through wide breaches in the roof of sod and grass, and in the walls of mud. Some had neither door nor window, some had nearly fallen down, and were imperfectly propped up by stakes and poles. All were runous and filthy. Hideously

  ugly old women and dirty buxom young ones, pigs, dogs, men, children, babies, pots, kettles, dung-hills, vile refuge, rank straw and standing water, all wallowing together in an inseparable heap composed the furniture of every dark and dirty hut. Between nine and ten o'clock at night we arrived at Lebanon, which is renowned for its warm baths and for a great hotel well adapted, I have no doubt, to the gregarious taste of

  those seekers after health and pleasure who repair here, but inexpressibly comfortless to me. We were shown into an immense apartment lighted by two dim candles called the Drawing Room, from which there was a descent by a flight of steps to another vast desert called the Dining Room. Our bed-chambers were almost certain long rows of little white-washed cells, which opened from either side of a dreary passage, and were so like rooms in a prison

  that I half expected to be locked up when I went to bed, and listened involuntarily for the turning of the key on the outside. There need be baths somewhere in the neighbourhood, where the other washing arrangements were on as limited a scale as I ever saw even in America. Indeed, these bedrooms were so very bare of even such common luxuries as chairs that I should say they were not provided with enough of anything, but that I bethink

  myself of our having been most bountifully bitten all night. The house is very pleasantly situated, however, and we had a good breakfast. That done we went to visit our place of destination, which was some two miles off, and the way to which was soon indicated by a finger-post whereon was painted to the Shaker Village. As we rode along we passed a party of Shakers who were at work upon the road, who wore the broadest

  of all broad-brimmed hats, and were in all visible respect such very wooden men that I felt about as much sympathy for them and as much interest in them as if they had been so many figureheads of ships. Presently we came to the beginning of the village, and at the door of a house where the Shaker manufacturers are sold, and which is the headquarters of the elders, requested permission to see the Shaker worship. Pending the conveyance of

  this request to some person in authority, we walked into a grim room, where several grim hats were hanging on grim pegs, and the time was grimly told by a grim clock which uttered every tick with a kind of struggle as if it broke the grim silence reluctantly and under protest. Ranged against the wall were six or eight stiff, high-backed chairs, and they partook so strongly of the general grimness that one would much rather have sat

  on the floor than incurred the smallest obligation to any of them. Presently there stalked into this apartment a grim old Shaker, with eyes as hard and dull and cold as the great round metal buttons on his coat and waistcoat, a sort of calm goblin. Being informed of our he produced a newspaper wherein the body of elders, whereof he was a member, had advertised but a few days before that in consequence of certain unseemly interruptions which their

  worship had received from strangers, their chapel was closed to the public for the space of one year. As nothing was to be urged in opposition to this reasonable arrangement, we requested leave to make some trifling purchase of Shaker goods, which was grimly unseated. We accordingly repaired to a store on the same house and on the opposite side of the passage, where the stock was presided over by something alive in a russet case which

  the elder said was a woman, and which I suppose was a woman, though I should not have suspected it. On the opposite side of the road was their place of worship, a cool, clean edifice of wood with large windows and green blinds, like a spacious summer-house. As there was no getting into this place and nothing was to be done but walk up and down and look at

  it and the other buildings in the village, which were chiefly of wood painted a dark red like English barns and composed of many stories like English factories, I have nothing to communicate to the reader beyond the scanty results I gleaned the while our purchases were making. These people are called Shakers from their peculiar form of adoration, which consists

  of a dance performed by the men and women of all ages who arrange themselves for that purpose in opposite parties, the men first divesting themselves of their hats and coats, which they gravely hang against the wall before they begin, and tying a ribbon round their shirt sleeves as though they were going to be bled. They accompany themselves with a droning humming noise, and dance until they are quite exhausted, alternately advancing

  and retiring in a preposterous sort of trot. The effect is said to be unspeakably absurd, and if I may judge from a print of this ceremony which I have in my possession, and which I am informed by those who have visited the chapel as perfectly accurate, it must be infinitely grotesque. They are governed by a woman, and her rule is understood to be absolute, though she has the assistance of a council of elders. She lives, it is said, in strict seclusion

  in certain rooms above the chapel, and is never shown to profane eyes. If she at all resemble the lady who presided over the store, it is a great charity to keep her as close as possible, and I cannot too strongly express my perfect concurrence in this benevolent proceeding. All the possessions and revenues of the settlement are thrown into a common stock which is managed

  by the elders. As they have made converts among people who were well to do in the world, and are frugal and thrifty, it is understood that this fund prospers, the more especially as they have made large purchases of land. Nor is this at Lebanon the only shaker settlement there are, I think, at least three others. They are good farmers, and all their produce is eagerly purchased and highly esteemed. Shaker seeds, shaker herbs, and shaker distilled

  waters are commonly announced for sale in the shops of towns and cities. They are good breeders of cattle, and are kind and merciful to the brute creation. Consequently, shaker be seldom failed to find a ready market. They eat and drink together after the Spartan model at a great public table. There is no union of the sexes, and every shaker, male and female, is devoted to a life of celibacy. Rumour has been busy upon this theme, but here again

  I must refer to the lady of the store, and say that if many of the sister-shakers resemble her I treat all such slander as bearing on its face the strongest marks of wild improbability, but that they take as proselytes persons so young that they cannot know their own minds, and cannot possess much strength of resolution in this or any other respect, I can assert from my own observation of this extreme juvenility of certain youthful shakers whom I saw at

  work among the party on the road. They are said to be good drivers of bargains, but to be honest and just in their transactions, and even in horse-dealing to resist those which would seem, for some undiscovered reason, to be almost inseparable from that branch of traffic. In all matters they hold their own course quietly, live in their gloomy, silent commonwealth, and show little desire to interfere with other people. This is well

  enough, but nevertheless I cannot, I confess, incline towards the shakers, view them with or extend towards them any very lenient construction. I so abhor, and from my soul detest that bad spirit, no matter by what class or sect it may be entertained, which would strip life of its hellful graces, rob youth of its innocent pleasures, pluck from maturity and age their pleasant ornaments, and make existence but a narrow path towards the grave, that odious

  spirit which, if it could have had full scope and sway upon the earth, must have blasted and made barren the imaginations of the greatest men and left them, in their power of raising up enduring images before their fellow-creatures yet unborn, no better than the beasts, that in these very broad-brimmed hats and very sombre coats, in stiffed-necked, solemn-visaged piety, in short, no matter what its garb, whether it hath cropped hair, as in a shaker

  or long nails, as in a hoodoo temple, I recognize the worst among the enemies of heaven and earth, who turn the water at the marriage feasts of this poor world not into wine but gall. And if there must be people vowed to crush the harmless fancies and the love of innocent delights and gaieties which are a part of human nature, as much a part of it as any other love or hope that is our common portion, let them, for me, stand openly revealed

  among the ribbled and licentious, the very idiots know that they are not on the immortal road and will despise them and avoid them readily. Leaving the shaker village with a hearty dislike of the old shakers and a hearty pity for the young ones, tempered by the strong probability of their running away as they grow older and wiser, which they not uncommonly do, we returned to Lebanon and so to Hudson by the way we

  had come upon the previous day. There we took the steamboat down the North River towards New York, but stopped some four hours' journey short of it at West Point, where we remained the night and all next day and next night too. In this beautiful place, the fairest among the fair and lovely highlands of the North River, shut in by deep green heights and ruined forts, and looking down the distant town of Newburgh, upon a glittering path of

  sunlit water, with here and there a skiff whose white sail often bends on some new tack as sudden flaws of wind come down upon her from the gullies and the hills, hemmed in besides all round with memories of Washington and events of the Revolutionary War, is the military school of America. It could not stand on more appropriate ground, and any ground more beautiful can hardly be. The course of education is severe but well devised and manly.

  Through June, July and August the young men encamp upon the spacious plain whereon the college stands, and all the year their military exercises are performed there daily. The term of study at this institution, which the State requires from all cadets, is four years, but whether it be from the rigid nature of the discipline, or the national impatience of restraint or both causes combined, not more than half the number who begin their studies

  here ever remain to finish them. The number of cadets being about equal to that of the members of Congress, one is sent here from every congressional district, its member influencing the selection. Commissions in the service are distributed on the same principle. The dwellings of the various professors are beautifully situated, and there is a most excellent hotel for strangers, though it had the two drawbacks of being a total abstinence house, wines and

  spirits being forbidden to the students, and to serving the public meals at rather uncomfortable hours to wit breakfast at seven, dinner at one, and supper at sunset. The beauty and freshness of this calm retreat, in the very dawn and greenness of summer—it was then the beginning of June—were exquisite indeed. Leaving it upon the sixth and returning to New York to embark for England on the succeeding

  I was glad to think that among the last memorable beauties which had glided past us and softened in the bright perspective were those whose pictures, traced by no common hand, are fresh in most men's minds not easily to grow old or fade beneath the dust of time—the Catskill Mountains, Sleepy Hollow, and the Tappan Z. End of Chapter 15

• 17 - The Passage Home

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  XVI. The Passage Home I never had so much interest before, and very likely I shall never have so much interest again, in the state of the wind as on the long-looked-for morning of Tuesday the seventh of June.

  Some nautical authority had told me a day or two previous, anything with West in it will do. So when I darted out of bed at daylight and throwing up the window, was saluted by a lively breeze from the north-west which had sprung up in the night, it came upon me so freshly, rustling with so many happy associations, that I conceived upon the spot a special regard for all airs blowing from that quarter of the compass, which I shall cherish, I dare

  say, until my own wind has breathed its last frail puff and withdrawn itself forever from the mortal calendar. The pilot had not been slow to take advantage of this favourable weather, and the ship, which yesterday had been in such a crowded dock that she might have retired from trade for good at all, for any chance she seemed to have of going to sea, was now full sixteen

  miles away. A gallant sight she was, when we, first gaining on her in a steamboat, saw her in the distance riding at anchor, her tall mass pointing up in graceful lines against the sky, and every rope and spark, pressed in delicate and threadlike outline, gallant too, when, we being all aboard, the anchor came up to the steady course, cheerily men, oh cheerily! And she followed proudly in the towing steamboat's wake, but bravest and most

  gallant of all, when the tow-rope being cast adrift, the canvas fluttered from her masts, and spreading her white wing she soared away upon her free and solitary course. In the after-cabin we were only fifteen passengers in all, and the greater part were from Canada, where some of us had known each other. The night was rough and squally, so were the next two days, but they flew by quickly, and we were soon as cheerful and snug a party with

  an honest manly-hearted cabin at our head, as ever came to the resolution of being mutually agreeable on land or water. We breakfasted at eight, lunched at twelve, dined at three, and took our tea at half-past seven. We had abundance of amusements, and dinner was not the least among them, firstly for its own sake, secondly because of its extraordinary length, its duration, inclusive

  of all the long pauses between the courses, being seldom less than two hours and a half, which was a subject of never failing entertainment. By way of beguiling the tediousness of these banquets, a select association was formed at the lower end of the table, below the mast, to whose distinguished President modesty forbids me to make any further allusion, which, being a very hilarious and jovial institution, was, prejudice apart, in high favour with the rest

  of the community, and particularly with a black steward who lived for three weeks in a broad grin at the marvellous humour of these incorporated worthies. Then we had chess for those who played it, whist, cribbage, books, backgammon and shovelboard. In all weathers, fair or foul, calm or windy, we were every one on deck walking up and down in pairs, lying in the boats, leaning over the side, or chatting in a lazy group together.

  We had no lack of music, for one played the accordion, another the violin, and another, who usually began at six o'clock a.m., the key bugle, the combined effort of which instruments, when they all played different tunes in different parts of the ship, at the same time, and within hearing of each other as they sometimes did, everybody being intentionally satisfied with his own performance, was sublimely hideous.

  When all these means of entertainment failed, a sail would heave in sight, looming perhaps the very spirit of a ship, in the misty distance, or passing us so close that through our glasses we could see the people on her decks, and easily make out her name and whither she was bound. For hours together we could watch the dolphins and porpoises as they rolled and leaped and dived around the vessel, or those small creatures ever on the wing, the mother-carries

  which had borne us company from New York Bay, and for a whole fortnight fluttered about the vessel's stern. For some days we had a dead calm, or very light winds, during which the crew amused themselves with fishing, and hooked an unlucky dolphin, who expired in all her rainbow colours on the deck, an event of such importance in our barren calendar that afterwards we dated from the dolphin and made the day on which he died an error.

  Besides all this, when we were five or six days out, there began to be much talk of icebergs, of which wandering islands on an unusual number had been seen by the vessels that had come into New York a day or two before we left that port, and of whose dangerous neighbourhood we were warned by the sudden coldness of the weather and the sinking of the mercury in the barometer. While these tokens lasted, a double look-out was kept,

  and many dismal tales were whispered after dark of ships that had struck upon the ice had gone down in the night, but the wind obliging us to hold a southward course, we saw none of them, and the weather soon grew bright and warm again. The observation every day at noon and the subsequent working of the vessel's course was, as may be supposed, a feature in our lives of paramount importance, nor were there

  wanting, as there never are, sagacious doubters of the captain's calculations, who, as soon as his back was turned, would, in the absence of compasses, measure the chart with bits of string and ends of pocket-hackerts, and points of snuffers, and clearly prove him to be wrong by an odd thousand miles or so. It was very edifying to see these unbelievers shake their heads and frown, and hear them hold forth strongly upon navigation, not that

  they knew anything about it, but that they always mistrusted the captain in calm weather, or when the wind was adverse. Indeed, the mercury itself was not so variable as this class of passengers, whom you will see, when the ship is going nobly through the water, quite pale with admiration, swearing that the captain beats all captains ever known, or even hinting at subscriptions for a piece of plate, and who, next morning, when the

  breeze has lulled, and all the sails hang useless in the idle air, shake their despondent heads again, and say with screwed-up lips, they hope that captain is a sailor, but they shrewdly doubt him. It even became an occupation in the calm to wonder when the wind would spring up in the favourable quarter, where, it was clearly shown by all the rules and precedents it ought

  to have sprung up long ago. The first mate, who whistled for it zealously, was much respected for his perseverance, and was regarded even by the unbelievers as a first-rate sailor. Many gloomy looks would be cast upward through the cabin skylights at the flapping sails while dinner was in progress, and some, growing bold in ruthfulness, predicted that we should land about the middle of July. There are always on board ship a sanguine one and a despondent

  one. The latter character carried it hollow at this period of the voyage, and triumphed over the sanguine one at every meal by inquiring whether he supposed the great Western, which left New York a week after us, was now, and where he supposed the canard steam-packet was now, and what he thought of sailing vessels as compared with steamships now, and so beset his life with pestilent attacks of that kind that he too was obliged to effect despondency

  for very peace and quietude. These were additions to the list of entertaining incidents, but there was still another source of interest. We carried in the steerage nearly a hundred passengers, a little world of poverty, and as we came to know individuals among them by sight from looking down upon the deck where they took the air in the daytime, and cooked their food, and very often ate it too, we became curious to know their histories and

  with what expectations they had gone out to America, and on what errands they were going home and what their circumstances were. The information we got on these heads from the carpenter, who had charge of these people, was often of the strangest kind. Some of them had been in America but three days, some but three months, and some had gone out in the first voyage of that very ship in which they were now returning home. Others had sold their

  clothes to raise the passage-money, and had hardly rags to cover them. Others had no food and lived upon the charity of the rest, and one man, it was discovered nearly at the end of the voyage, not before, for he kept his secret close and did not court compassion, had had no sustenance whatever but the bones and scraps of fat he took from the plates used in the after-cabin dinner when they were put out to be washed. The whole system of

  shipping and conveying these unfortunate persons is one that stands in need of thorough revision. If any class deserved to be protected and assisted by the Government, it is that class who are banished from their native land in search of the bare means of subsistence. All that could be done for these poor people by the great compassion and humanity of the captain and officers was done, but they require much more. The law is bound, at least upon the

  English side, to see that too many of them are not put on board one ship, and that their accommodations are decent, not demoralizing and profligate. It is bound, too, in common humanity to declare that no man shall be taken on board without his stock of provisions being previously inspected by some proper officer and pronounced moderately sufficient for his support upon the voyage. It is bound to provide or to require that there be provided a medical

  attendant, whereas in these ships there are none, though sickness of adults and deaths of children on the passage are matters of the very commonest occurrence. Above all, it is the duty of any Government, be it monarchy or republic, to interpose and put an end to that system by which a firm of traders and emigrants purchase of the owners the whole tween decks of a ship, and send on board as many wretched people as they can

  lay hold of, on any terms they can get, without the smallest reference to the conveniences of the steerage, the number of berths, the slightest separation of the sexes, or anything but their own immediate profit. Nor is even this the worst of the vicious system, for certain crimping agents of these houses, who have a percentage on all the passengers they in Vigil, are constantly travelling about those districts where poverty and discontent

  are rife, and tempting the credulous into more misery by holding out monstrous inducements to emigration which can never be realized. The history of every family we had on board was pretty much the same. After hoarding up and borrowing and begging and selling everything to pay the passage, they had gone out to New York expecting to find streets paved with gold, and had found them paved with very hard

  and very real stones. Enterprise was dull, labourers were not wanted, jobs of work were to be got, but the payment was not. They were coming back even poorer than they went. One of them was carrying an open letter from a young English artisan, who had been in New York a fortnight, to a friend near Manchester, whom he strongly urged to follow him. One of the officers brought it to me as a curiosity.

  "'This is the country, Jim,' said the writer. "'I like America. There is no despotism here. That's the great thing. Employment of all sorts is going a begging in wages or capital. You have only to choose a trade, Jim, and be it. I haven't made a choice of one yet, but I shall soon. At present I haven't quite made up my mind whether to be a carpenter or a tailor.'

  There was yet another kind of passenger, and but one more, who in the calm and light winds was a constant theme of conversation and observation among us. This was an English sailor, a smart, thorough-built English man-o-wars man from his hat to his shoes, who was serving in the American navy, and having got leave of absence was on his way home to see his friends. When he presented himself to take and pay for his passage, it had been suggested to him that

  being an able seaman he might as well work it and save the money, but this piece of advice he very indignantly rejected, saying he'd be damned but for once he'd go aboard ship as a gentleman. Accordingly they took his money, but he no sooner came aboard than he stowed his kit in the forecastle, arranged to mess with the crew, and the very first time the hands were turned up went aloft like a cat before anybody. And all through the

  passage there he was, first at the braces, outermost on the yard, perpetually lending a hand everywhere, but always with a sober dignity in his manner, and a sober grin on his face, which plainly said, I do it as a gentleman, for my own pleasure, mind you. At length and at last the promised wind came up in right good earnest, and away we went before it, with every stitch of canvas set slashing through the water nobly. There was

  a grandeur in the motion of the splendid ship, as overshadowed by her massive sails she rowed at a furious pace upon the waves which filled one with an indescribable sense of pride and exultation. As she plunged into a foaming valley, how I loved to see the green waves bordered deep with white come rushing on astern to buoy her upward at their pleasure, and curl about her as she stooped again, but always own her for their haughty mistress

  On, on we flew, with changing lights upon the water, being now in the blessed region of fleecy skies, a bright sun lighting us by day and a bright moon by night, the vain pointing directly homeward, alike the truthful index to the favouring wind and to our cheerful hearts, until at sunrise one fair Monday morning, the twenty-seventh of June, I shall not easily forget the day, there lay before us old Cape Clear, God bless it, showing in the mist of

  early morning like a cloud, the brightest and most welcome cloud to us that ever hid the face of Heaven's fallen sister home. Dim-spec as it was in the wide prospect, it made the sunrise a more cheerful sight, and gave to it that sort of human interest which it seems to want at sea. There, as elsewhere, the return of day is inseparable from some sense of renewed hope and gladness, but the light shining in the dreary waste of water and showing it in

  all its vast extent of loneliness presents a solemn spectacle which even night, veiling it in darkness and uncertainty, does not surpass. The rising of the moon is more in keeping with the solitary ocean, and has an air of melancholy grandeur which in its soft and gentle influence seems to comfort while it saddens. I recollect, when I was a very young child, having a fancy that the reflection of the moon in water was a path to Heaven

  by the spirits of good people on their way to God, and this old feeling often came over me again when I watched it on a tranquil night at sea. The wind was very light on this same Monday morning, but it was still in the right quarter, and so by slow degrees we left Cape Clear behind and sailed along within sight to the coast of Ireland, and how merrily we all were, and how loyal to the George Washington, and how full of mutual congratulations and

  how venturesome in predicting the exact hour at which we should arrive at Liverpool may be easily imagined and readily understood. Also how heartily we drank the captain's health that day at dinner, and how restless we became about packing up, and how two or three of the most sanguine spirits rejected the idea of going to bed at all that night as something it was not worth while to do, so near the shore, but went nevertheless and slept soundly,

  and how to be so near our journey's end was like a pleasant dream from which one feared to wake. The friendly breeze freshened again next day, and on we went once more before it gallantly, descrying now and then an English ship going homeward under shortened sail while we, with every inch of canvas crowded on, dashed gaily past and left her far behind. Towards evening

  the weather turned hazy with a drizzling rain, and soon became so thick that we sailed as it were in a cloud. Still we swept onward like a phantom ship, and many an eager eye glanced up to where the lookout on the mast kept watch for Holyhead. At length his long-expected cry was heard, and at the same moment there shone out from the haze and mist ahead a gleaming light which presently was gone, and soon returned and soon was gone again. Whenever it came

  back the eyes of all on board brightened and sparkled like itself, and there we all stood watching this revolving light upon the rocket Holyhead, and praising it for its brightness and its friendly warning, and lauding it in short above all signal lights that ever were displayed until it once more glimmered faintly in the distance far behind us. Then it was time to fire a gun for a pilot, and almost before its smoke had cleared away

  a little boat with a light at her mast did came bearing down upon us through the darkness swiftly. And presently our sails being backed she ran alongside, and the horse pilot, wrapped and muffled in pea-coats and shawls to the very bridge of her weather-ploughed-up nose, stood bodily among us on the deck. And I think if that pilot had wanted to borrow fifty pounds for an indefinite period on no security we should have engaged to lend it to him among

  us before his boat had dropped astern, or, which is the same thing, before every scrap of news in the paper he brought with him had become the common property of all on board. We turned in pretty late that night, and turned out pretty early next morning. By six o'clock we clustered on the deck, prepared to go ashore, and looked upon the spires and roofs and smoke of Liverpool. By eight we all set down in one of its hotels to eat and drink together

  for the last time, and by nine we had shaken hands all round and broken up our social company forever. The country by the railroad seemed, as we rattled through it, like a luxuriant garden. The beauty of the fields, so small they looked, the hedgerows and the trees, the pretty cottages, the beds of flowers, the old church-yards, the antique houses and every well-known object,

  the exquisite delights of that one journey crowded in the short compass of a summer's day, the joy of many years, with the winding up with home, and all that makes it dear, no tongue can tell, or pen of mine describe.

• 18 - Slavery

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  XVII. SLAVERY. The upholders of slavery in America, of the atrocities of which system I shall not write one word for which I have not had ample proof and warrant, may be divided into three great classes. The first are those more moderate and rational owners of human cattle, who have come into

  the possession of them as so many coins in their trading-capital, but who admit the frightful nature of the institution in the abstract, and perceive the dangers to society with which it is fraught. Dangers which, however distant they may be, or howsoever tardy in their coming on, are as certain to fall upon its guilty head as is the day of judgment. The second consists of all those owners, breeders, users, buyers, and sellers of slaves, who

  will, until the bloody chapter has a bloody end, own, breed, use, buy, and sell them at all hazards, who doggedly deny the horrors of the system in the teeth of such a mass of evidence as never was brought to bear in any other subject, and to which the experience of every day contributes its immense amount, who would at this or any other moment gladly involve America in a war, civil or foreign, provided that it had for its sole end an object

  the assertion of their right to perpetuate slavery, and to whip and work and torture slaves unquestioned by any human authority, and unassailed by any human power, who, when they speak of freedom, mean of freedom to oppress their kind, and to be savage, merciless, and cruel, and of whom every man on his own ground in Republican America is a most exacting and a sterner, and a less responsible despot than the Caliph Horeyn Arshad in his angry

  robe of scarlet. The third, and not the least numerous or influential, is composed of all that delicate gentility which cannot bear a superior and cannot brook an equal of that class whose Republicanism means I will not tolerate a man above me, and of those below none must approach too near, whose pride in a land where voluntary servitude is shunned as a disgrace must be

  ministered to by slaves, and whose inalienable rights can only have their growth in negro wrongs. It has been sometimes urged, in the unavailing efforts which have been made to advance the cause of human freedom in the Republic of America, strange cause for history to treat of, sufficient regard has not been had to the existence of the first class of persons,

  and it has been contended that they are hardly used in being confounded with the second. This is no doubt the case. Noble instances of pecuniary and personal sacrifice have already had their growth among them, and it is much to be regretted that the gulf between them and the advocates of emancipation should have been widened and deepened by any means, though rather, as they

  are beyond dispute, among these slave-owners, many kind masters who are tender in the exercise of their unnatural power. Still it is to be feared that this injustice is inseparable from the state of things with which humanity and truth are called upon to deal. Slavery is not a wit, though more endurable, because some hearts are to be found which

  can partially resist its hardening influences, nor can the indignant tide of honest wrath stand still, because in its onward course it overwhelms a few who are comparatively innocent among a host of guilty. The ground most commonly taken by these better men among the advocates of slavery is this. It is a bad system, and for myself I would willingly get rid of it, if I could most willingly.

  But it is not so bad as you in England take it to be. You are deceived by the representations of the emancipationists. The greater part of my slaves are much attached to me. You will say that I do not allow them to be severely treated, but I will put it to you whether you believe that it can be a general practice to treat them inhumanely when it

  would impair their value, and would be obviously against the interests of their masters. Is it in the interest of any man to steal, to game, to waste his health and mental faculties by drunkenness, to lie, forswear himself, indulge hatred, seek desperate revenge, or do murder? No, all these are roads to ruin.

  And why then do men tread them? Because such inclinations are among the vicious qualities of mankind. Blot out ye friends of slavery from the catalogue of human passions, brutal lust, cruelty, and the abuse of irresponsible power, of all earthly temptations the most difficult to be resisted.

  And when ye have done so, and not before, we will inquire whether it be in the interest of a master to lash and maim the slaves over whose lives and limbs he has an absolute control. But again, this class, together with that last one I have named, the miserable aristocracy spawned of a false republic, lift up their voices and exclaim, Public opinion is all sufficient to prevent such cruelty as you denounce.

  Public opinion. Why public opinion in the slave states is slavery, is it not? Public opinion in the slave states has delivered the slaves over to the gentle mercies of their masters. Public opinion has made the laws and denied the slaves legislative protection.

  Public opinion has knotted the lash, heated the branding-iron, loaded the rifle and shielded the murderer. Public opinion threatens the abolitionist with death if he ventures to the south, and legs him with a rope about his middle in broad unblushing noon through the first city in the east.

  Public opinion has within a few years burned a slave alive at a slow fire in the city of St. Louis, and public opinion has to this day maintained upon the bench that estimable judge who charged the jury impaneled them to try his murderers, that the most horrid deeds was an act of public opinion, and being so must not be punished by the laws the public sentiment has made.

  Public opinion hailed this doctrine with a howl of wild applause, and set the prisoners free to walk the city, men of mark and influence and stationed as they had been before. Public opinion. What class of men have an immense preponderance over the rest of the community in their power of representing public opinion in the legislature, the slave-owners?

  They send from their twelve states one hundred members, while the fourteen free states, with the free population nearly double, return but a hundred and forty-two. Before whom do the presidential candidates bow down the most humbly, on whom do they fawn the most fondly, and for whose taste do they cater the most assiduously in their servile protestations?

  The slave-owners always. Public opinion. Here the public opinion of the free south is expressed by its own members in the House of Representatives at Washington. I have a great respect for the chair, quoth North Carolina.

  I have a great respect for the chair as an officer of the House, and a great respect for him personally. Nothing but that respect prevents me from rushing to the table and tearing that petition which has just been prevented for the abolition of slavery in the district of Columbia to pieces.

  I warn the abolitionists, says South Carolina, ignorant, infuriated barbarians as they are, that if chance shall throw any of them into our hands he may expect a felon's death. Let an abolitionist come within the borders of South Carolina, cries the third, mild Carolina's colleague, and if we can catch him we will try him and notwithstanding the interference of all the governments on earth, including the Federal Government, we will hang him.

  Public opinion has made this law. It has declared that in Washington, in that city which takes its name from the father of American liberty, any justice of the peace may bide with fetters any negro passing down the streets and thrust him into jail, no offence on the black man's part is necessary. The justice says, I choose to think this man a runaway and locks him up.

  Public opinion empowers the man of law when this is done to advertise the negro in the newspapers warning his owner to come and claim him or he will be sold to pay the jail fees. But supposing he is a free black and has no owner, it may naturally be presumed that he is set at liberty. No, he is sold to recompense his jailer.

  This has been done again and again and again. He has no means of proving his freedom, has no advisor, messenger, or assistance of any sort or kind, no investigation into his cases made or inquiry instituted. He, a free man, who may have served for years and bought his liberty, is thrown into jail on no process, for no crime and on no pretense of crime, and is sold to pay the jail fees.

  This seems incredible even of America, but it is the law. Public opinion is deferred to in such cases as the following, which is headed in the newspaper's Interesting Law Case. An interesting case is now on trial in the Supreme Court arising out of the following facts.

  A gentleman residing in Maryland has allowed an aged pair of his slaves substantial, though not legal, freedom for several years. While thus living, a daughter was born to them, who grew up in the same liberty until she married a free negro, and went with him to reside in Pennsylvania. They had several children, and lived unmolested until the original owner died, when his heir

  attempted to regain them. But the magistrate before whom they were brought decided that he had no jurisdiction in the case. The owner seized the women and her children in the night, and carried them to Maryland. Cash for Negroes, cash for Negroes, cash for Negroes, is the heading of advertisements

  in great capitals down the long columns of the crowded journals, woodcuts of a runaway hands crouching beneath a bluff pursuer in top boots, who having caught him grasped him by the throat, agreeably diversify the pleasant text. The leading article protests against that abominable and hellish doctrine of abolition, which is repugnant alike to every law of God and nature.

  The delicate mamma, who smiles her acquiescence in this sprightly writing as she reads the paper in her cool piazza, quiets her youngest child, who clings about her skirts by promising the boy a whip to beat the little niggers with. But the Negroes, little and big, are protected by public opinion. Let us try the public opinion by another test, which is important in three points of view.

  First as showing how desperately timid of the public opinion slave-owners are in their delicate descriptions of fugitive slaves in widely circulated newspapers. Secondly as showing how perfectly contented the slaves are, and how very seldom they run away. Thirdly as exhibiting their entire freedom from scar or blemish or any mark of cruel

  infliction as their pictures are drawn not by lying abolitionists, but by their own truthful masters. The following are a few specimens of the advertisements in the public papers. It is only four years since the oldest among them appeared, and others of the same nature continue to be published every day in shoals.

  Ran away, Negress Caroline, head on a collar with one prong turned down. Ran away, a black woman, Betsy, had an iron bar on her right leg. Ran away, the Negro Manuel, much marked with irons. Ran away, the Negress Fanny, head on an iron band about her neck. Ran away, a Negro boy about twelve years old, head round his neck a chain dog collar with

  de Lamparte engraved on it. Ran away, the Negro Houn, has a ring of iron on his left foot, also grease his wife leaving a ring and chain on the left leg. Ran away, a Negro boy named James, said boy was ironed when he left me. Committed to jail, a man who calls his name John, he has a clog of iron on his right foot

  which will weigh four or five pounds. Detained at the police jail, the Negro wench Myra, has several marks of lashing and has irons on her feet. Ran away, a Negro woman and two children. A few days before she went off I burned her with a hot iron on the left side of her face.

  I tried to make the letter M. Ran away, a Negro man named Henry, his left eye out, some scars from a dirk on and under his left arm, and much scarred with the whip. One hundred dollars reward for a Negro fellow, Pompey, forty years old, he is branded on the left jaw.

  Committed to jail, a Negro man, has no toes on the left foot. Ran away, a Negro woman named Rachel, has lost all her toes except the large one. Ran away, Sam, he was shot a short time since through the hand and has several shots in his left arm and side. Ran away, my Negro man Dennis, said Negro has been shot in the left arm between the

  shoulder and elbow which has paralyzed the left hand. Ran away, my Negro man named Simon, he has been shot badly in his back and right arm. Ran away, a Negro named Arthur, has a considerable scar across his breast and each arm, made by a knife, loves to talk much of the goodness of God. Twenty-five dollars reward for my man Isaac, he has a scar on his forehead caused by a

  blow and one on his back made by a shot from a pistol. Run away, a Negro girl called Mary, has a small scar over her eye, a good many teeth missing, the letter A is branded on her cheek and forehead. Ran away, Negro Ben, has a scar on his right hand, his thumb and forefinger being injured by being shot last fall, a part of the bone came out, he has also one or two large scars

  on his back and hips. Detained at the jail, a mulatto named Tom, has a scar on the right cheek and appears to have been burned with powder on the face. Ran away, a Negro man named Ned, three of his fingers are drawn into the palm of his hand by a cut, has a scar on the back of his neck nearly half round done by a knife.

  Was committed to jail, a Negro man, says his name is Josiah, his back very much scarred by the whip and branded on the thigh and hips in three or four places, thus J.M. The rim of his right ear has been bit or cut off. Fifty dollars reward for my fellow Edward, he has a scar on the corner of his mouth, two cuts on and under his arm and the letter E on his arm.

  Ran away, Negro boy, Ellie, has a scar on one of his arms from the bite of a dog. Ran away from the plantation of James Surjit, the following Negroes, Randall has one ear cropped, Bob has lost one eye, Kentucky Tom has one jaw broken. Ran away, Anthony, one of his ears cut off and his left hand cut with an axe. Fifty dollars reward for the Negro Jim Blake, has a piece cut out of each ear and the middle

  finger of the left hand cut off to the second joint. Ran away, a Negro woman named Maria, has a scar on one side of her cheek by a cut, some scars on her back. Ran away, the mulatto wench Mary, has a cut on the left arm, a scar on the left shoulder and two upper teeth missing.

  I should say, perhaps, an explanation of this latter piece of description that among the other blessings which public opinion secures to the Negroes is the common practice of violently punching out their teeth. To make them wear iron collars by day and night, and to worry them with dogs, are practices almost too ordinary to deserve mention.

  Ran away, my man Fountain, has holes in his ears, a scar on the right side of his forehead, has been shot in the hind part of his legs, and is marked on the back with the whip. Two hundred and fifty dollars reward for my Negro man Jim. He is much marked with shot in his right thigh. The shot entered on the outside, halfway between the hip and knee joints.

  Brought to jail, John, left ear cropped. Taken up, a Negro man, is very much scarred about the face and body, and has the left ear bit off. Ran away, a black girl named Mary, has a scar on her cheek and the end of one of her toes cut off.

  Ran away, my Malatta woman Judy, she has had her right arm broke. Ran away, my Negro man Levi. His left hand has been burnt and I think the end of his forefinger is off. Ran away, a Negro man named Washington, has lost a part of his middle finger and the end of his little finger.

  Twenty-five dollars reward for my man John, the tip of his nose is bit off. Twenty-five dollars reward for the Negro slave Sally, walks as though crippled in the back. Ran away, Joe Dennis, has a small notch in one of his ears. Ran away, Negro boy Jack, has a small crop out of his left ear. Ran away, a Negro man named Ivory, has a small piece cut out of the top of each ear.

  Well upon the subject of ears I may observe that a distinguished abolitionist in New York once received a Negro's ear which had been cut off close to the head in a general post letter. It was forwarded by the free and independent gentleman who had caused it to be amputated with a polite request that he would place the specimen in his collection. I could enlarge this catalogue with broken arms and broken legs and gnashed flesh and missing teeth and

  lacerated backs and bites of dogs and brands of red-hot irons innumerable, but as my readers will be sufficiently sickened and repelled already I will turn to another branch of the subject. These advertisements, of which a similar collection may be made for every year and month and week and day, and which are coolly read in families as things of course and as a part of the current news and small talk, will serve to show how very much the

  slaves profit by public opinion and how tender it is in their behalf. But it may be worth while to inquire how the slave-owners and the class of society to which great numbers of them belong defer to public opinion in their conduct, not to their slaves but to each other, how they are accustomed to restrain their passions, what their bearing is among themselves, whether they are fierce or gentle, whether their social customs be brutal, sanguinary

  and violent, or bear the impress of civilization and refinement. That we may have no partial evidence from abolitionists in this inquiry either, I will once more turn to their own newspapers and I will confine myself this time to a selection from paragraphs which appeared from day to day during my visit to America, and which refer to occurrences happening while I was there. The italics in these extracts, as in the foregoing, are my

  own. These cases did not all occur, it will be seen, in territory actually belonging to legalized slave-states, though most, and those of the very worst among them, did, as their counterparts constantly do. But the position of the scenes of action in reference to places immediately where slavery is the law, and the strong resemblance between that class of outrages and the rest,

  lead to the just presumption that the character of the parties concerned was formed in slave districts and brutalized by slave customs. Horrible Tragedy By a ship from the Southport Telegraph, Wisconsin, we learn that the Hon. Charles C. P. Arnt, member of the Council for Brown County, was shot dead on the floor of the Council Chamber

  by James R. Vineyard, member from Grant County. The affair grew out of a nomination for Sheriff of Grant County. Mr. E. S. Baker was nominated and supported by Mr. Arnt. The nomination was opposed by Vineyard, who wanted the appointment to vest in his own brother. In the course of debate the deceased made some statements which Vineyard pronounced false, and made use of violent and insulting language dealing largely in personalities, to which Mr. A.

  After the adjournment Mr. A. stepped up to Vineyard and requested him to retract, which he refused to do, repeating the offensive words. Mr. Arnt then made a blow at Vineyard, who stepped back apace, drew a pistol, and shot him dead. The issue appears to have been provoked on the part by Vineyard, who was determined that all hazards to defeat the appointment of Baker, and who himself defeated, turned his ire and revenge upon the unfortunate Arnt.

  The Wisconsin Tragedy Public indignation runs high in the territory of Wisconsin in relation to the murder of C. C. P. Arnt in the Legislative Hall of the Territory. Meetings have been held in different counties in Washington denouncing the practice of secretly bearing arms in the Legislative Chambers of the country. We have seen the account of the expulsion of James R. Vineyard,

  the perpetrator of the bloody deed, and are amazed to hear that after this expulsion by those who saw Vineyard kill Mr. Arnt in the presence of his aged father, who was on a visit to see his son, little dreaming that he was to witness his murder, Judge Dunn has discharged Vineyard on bail. The Miner's Free Press speaks in terms of merited rebuke at the outrage upon the feelings of the people of Wisconsin. Vineyard was within arms-length

  of Mr. Arnt when he took such deadly aim at him that he never spoke. Vineyard might at pleasure being so near have only wounded him, but he chose to kill him. Murder By a letter in a St. Louis paper of the 4th, we notice a terrible outrage at Burlington, Iowa. A Mr. Bridgman, having had a difficulty with a citizen of the place, Mr. Ross, a brother-in-law

  of the latter, provided himself with one of Colt's revolving pistols, met Mr. B. in the street, and discharged the contents of five of the barrels at him, each shot taking effect. Mr. B., though horribly wounded and dying, returned the fire and killed Ross on the spot. The Frightful Death of Robert Potter From the Caddo Gazette of the Twelfth Instinct we learn of the frightful death of Colonel

  Robert Potter. He was beset in his host by an enemy named Rose. He sprang from his coach, seized his gun, in his night-clothes, rushed from the house. For about two hundred yards his speed seemed to defy his pursuers, but getting entangled in a thicket he was captured. Rose told him that he intended to act a generous part and give him a chance for his life. He then told Potter he might run and should not be interrupted till he reached a certain

  distance. Potter started at the word of command, and before a gun was fired he had reached the lake. His first impulse was to jump into the water and die for it, which he did. Rose was close behind him and formed his men on the bank ready to shoot him as he rose. In a few seconds he came up to breathe, and scarce had his head reached the surface of the water when it was completely riddled with the shot of their guns, and he sunk to rise no more.

  Murder in Arkansas We understand that a severe encounter came off a few days since in the Seneca nation between Mr. Luce, the sub agent of the mixed band of the Seneca's, Qua-Pa and the Shawnees, and Mr. James Gillespie of the mercantile firm of Thomas G. Allenson and Company of Maysville, Benton County, Arkansas, in which the latter was slain with a bowie-knife. Some

  difficulty had for some time existed between the parties. It is said that Major Gillespie brought on the attack with a cane. A severe conflict ensued, during which two pistols were fired by Gillespie and one by Luce. Luce then stabbed Gillespie with one of those never-failing weapons, a bowie-knife. The death of Major G. is much regretted, as he was a liberal-minded and energetic man. Since the above was in type, we have learned that Major Allenson

  has stated to some of our citizens in town that Mr. Luce gave the first blow. We forbear to give any particulars, as the matter will be the subject of judicial investigation. Foul deed. The steamer Thames, just from Missouri River, brought us a hand-bill offering a reward of five hundred dollars for the person who assassinated Lilburn W. Baggs, late governor of this state, at independence on the night of the sixth instant. Governor Baggs, it is

  stated, in written memorandum, was not dead, but mortally wounded. Since the above was written, we received a note from the clerk of the Thames giving the following particulars. Governor Baggs was shot by some villain on Friday, sixth instant, in the evening, while sitting in a room in his own house in independence. His son, a boy, hearing a report, ran into the room and found the governor sitting in his chair, with his jaw fallen down and his

  head leaning back. On discovering the injury done to his father, he gave the alarm. Foot-tracks were found in the garden below the window, and a pistol picked up, supposed to have been overloaded and thrown from the hand of the scoundrel who fired it. Three buck-shots of a heavy load took effect, one going through his mouth, one into the brain, and another probably in or near the brain, all going to the back part of the neck and head. The governor

  was still alive on the morning of the seventh, but no hopes for his recovery by his friends, but slight hopes for his physicians. A man was suspected, and the sheriff most probably has possession of him by this time. The pistol was one of a pair stolen some days previous from a baker in independence, and the legal authorities have the description of the other. RECONTRA

  An unfortunate affair took place on Friday evening on Chattres Street, in which one of our most respectable citizens received a dangerous wound from a poignard in the abdomen. From the B. New Orleans of yesterday, we learn the following particulars. It appears that an article was published in the French side of the paper on Monday last, containing some strictures on the artillery battalion for firing their guns on Sunday morning, in answer

  to those of the Ontario and Woodbury, and thereby much alarm was caused to the families of those persons who were out all night preserving the peace of the city. Major C. Galley, commander of the battalion, resenting this, called at the office and demanded the author's name, of Mr. P. Arpin, was given to him, who was absent at the time. Some angry words then passed with one of the proprietors, and a challenge followed. The friends of both parties

  tried to arrange the affair, but failed to do so. On Friday evening about seven o'clock Major Galley met Mr. P. Arpin in Chattres Street and accosted him. "'Are you Mr. Arpin?' "'Yes, sir.' "'But I have to tell you that you are applying an appropriate epithet. I shall remind you

  of your words, sir. But I have said I would break my cane on your shoulders. I know it, but I have not yet received the blow.' At these words Major Galley, having a cane in his hands, struck Mr. Arpin across the face, and the latter drew a pannier from his pocket and stabbed Major Galley in the abdomen. Fears are entertained that the wound will be mortal. We understand that Mr. Arpin has given security for his appearance at the criminal court to

  answer the charge.' AFRAY IN MISSISSIPPI On the 27th, in an afray near Carthage, Leek County, Mississippi, between James Cottingham and John Wilburn, the latter was shot by the former, and so horribly wounded that there was no hope of his recovery. On the second instant there was an afray at Carthage between

  A. C. Sharkey and George Goff, in which the latter was shot and thought mortally wounded. He delivered himself up to the authorities, but changed his mind and escaped. PERSONAL ENCOUNTER An encounter took place in Sparta a few days since, between the barkeeper of a hotel and a man named Burry. It appears that Burry had become somewhat noisy, and that the barkeeper,

  determined to preserve order, had threatened to shoot Burry, whereupon Burry drew a pistol and shot the barkeeper down. He was not dead at the last accounts, but slight hopes were entertained of his recovery. DUAL The clerk of the Steamboat Tribune informs us that another duel was fought on Tuesday

  last by Mr. Robbins, a bank officer in Vicksburg, and Mr. Fall, the editor of the Vicksburg Sentinel. According to the arrangement, the parties had six pistols each, which, after the word FIRE, they were to discharge as fast as they pleased. Fall fired two pistols without effect. Mr. Robbins' first shot took effect in Fall's thigh, who fell and was unable to continue the combat.

  AFRAY IN CLARK COUNTY An unfortunate affray occurred in Clark County, Missouri, near Waterloo, on Tuesday the 19th ultimate, which originated in settling the partnership concerns of Mr. McCain and McAllister, who had been engaged in the business of distilling and resulting in the death of the latter, who was shot down by Mr. McCain because of his attempts to take possession of seven barrels

  of whiskey, the property of McCain, which had been knocked off to McAllister at a sheriff's sale at one daughter per barrel. McCain immediately fled, and at the latest dates have not been taken. This unfortunate affray caused considerable excitement in the neighborhood, as both the parties were men with large families depending on them and stood well in the community. I will quote but one more paragraph, which by reason of its monstrous absurdity may be

  a relief to these atrocious deeds. A FAIR OF HONOR We have just heard the particulars of a meeting which took place on Six Mile Island on Tuesday between two young bloods of our city. Samuel Thurston, aged fifteen, and William Hine, aged thirteen years. They were attended by young gentlemen of the same age. The weapons

  used on the occasion were a couple of Dixon's best rifles, the distance thirty yards. They took one fire without any damage being sustained by either party, except the ball of Thurston's gun passing through the crown of Hine's hat. Through the intercession of the Board of Honor the challenge was withdrawn and the difference amicably adjusted. If the reader will picture to himself the kind of Board of Honor which amicably adjusted

  the difference between these two little boys, who in any other part of the world would have been amicably adjusted on two porter's backs and soundly flogged with birch and rods, he will be possessed no doubt with his strongest sense of its ludicrous character as that which sets me laughing whenever its image rises up before me. Now I appeal to every human mind imbued with the commonest of common sense and the commonest

  of common humanity, to all dispassionate reasoning creatures of any shade of opinion, and ask with these revolting evidences of the state of society which exists in and about the slave districts of America before them, can they have a doubt of the real condition of the slave, or can they for a moment make a compromise between the institution or any of its flagrant fearful features and their own just consciences? Will they say, of any tale of cruelty and

  horror, however aggravated in detail, that it is improbable when they can turn to the public prints and running, read such signs as these laid before them by the men who rule the slaves in their own acts and under their own hands? Do we not know that the worst deformity and ugliness of slavery are at once the cause and the effect of the reckless license taken by these free-born outlaws? Do we not know

  that the man who has been born and bred among its wrongs, who has seen in his childhood husbands obliged at the word of command to flog their wives, women indecently compelled to hold up their own garments that men may lay the heavier stripes upon their legs, driven and harried by brutal overseers in their time of travail and becoming mothers on the field of toil under the very lash itself, who has read in youth and seen his virgin sisters

  read descriptions of runaway men and women and their disfigured persons which could not be published elsewhere of so much stock upon a farm or at a show of beasts? Do we not know that that man, whenever his wrath is kindled up, will be a brutal savage? Do we not know that as he is a coward in his domestic life, stalking among his shrinking men and women slaves armed with his heavy whip, so he will be a coward out of doors and carrying coward's

  weapons hidden in his breast, will shoot men down and stab them when he quarrels? And if our reason did not teach us this and much beyond, if we were such idiots as to close our eyes to that fine mode of training which rears up such men, should we not know that they who among their equals stab and pistol in the legislative halls and in the counting-house and on the market-place and in all the elsewhere peaceful pursuits of life must be to their

  dependence, even though they were free servants, so many merciless and unrelenting tyrants? What, shall we declaim against the ignorant peasantry of Ireland and mince the matter when these American task-masters are in question? Shall we cry shame on the brutality of those who hamstring cattle and spare the lights of freedom upon earth, who notch the ears of men and women, cut pleasant posies in the shrinking flesh, learn to write with pens

  of red-hot iron on the human face, wrack their poetic fancies for liveries of butylation which their slaves shall wear for life, and carry to the grave, breaking living limbs as did the soldiery who mocked and slew the Saviour of the world and set defenceless creatures up for targets? Shall we whimper over legends of the tortures practised on each other by the pagan Indians and smile upon the cruelties of Christian men? Shall

  we, so long as these things last, exult above the scattered remnants of that race and triumph in the white enjoyment of their possessions? Rather, for me, restore the forest and the Indian village in lieu of stars and stripes, let some poor feather flutter in the breeze, replace the streets and squares by wigwams, and though the death-song of a hundred haughty warriors fill the air, it will be music to the shriek of one unhappy slave. On one theme,

  which is commonly before our eyes, and in respect of which our national character is changing fast, let the plain truth be spoken, and let us not, like dastards, beat about the bush by hinting at the Spaniard and the fierce Italian. When knives are drawn by Englishmen in conflict, let it be said and known, We owe this change to Republican slavery. These are the weapons of freedom. With sharp points and edges such as these, Liberty in

  America hews and hacks her slave, or, failing that pursuit, her sons devote them to a better use and turn them on each other. End of Chapter 17

• 19 - Concluding Remarks - Postscript

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  18. Concluding Remarks AND Postscript There are many passages in this book where I have been at some pains to resist the temptation of trumping my readers with my own deductions and conclusions, preferring that they should judge for themselves from such premises as I have laid before them. My only option is

  to carry them with me faithfully wheresoever I went, and that task I have discharged. But I may be pardoned if on such a theme as the general character of the American people, and the general character of their social system as presented to a stranger's eyes, I desire to express my own opinions in a few words before I bring these volumes to a close. They are, by nature, frank, brave, cordial, hospitable, and affectionate. Cultivation

  and refinement seem but to enhance their warmth of heart and ardent enthusiasm, and it is the possession of these latter qualities in a most remarkable degree which renders an educated American one of the most endearing and most generous of friends. I never was so won upon as by this class, never yielded up my full confidence and esteem so readily and pleasurably as to them, never can make again in half a year so many friends for whom

  I seem to entertain the regard of half a life. These qualities are natural, I implicitly believe, to the whole people. That they are, however, sadly sapped and blighted in their growth among the mass, and that there are influences at work which endanger them still more, and give but little present promise of their healthy restoration, is a truth that ought to be told. It is an essential part of every national character to pique itself

  mightily upon its faults, and to deduce tokens of its virtue or its wisdom from their very exaggeration. One great blemish in the popular mind of America and the prolific parent of an innumerable brood of evils is universal distrust. Yet the American citizen plumes himself upon this spirit even when he is sufficiently dispassionate to perceive the ruin it works, and will often adduce it, in spite of his own reason, as an instance of the great sagacity

  and acuteness of the people, and their superior shrewdness and independence. You carry, says the stranger, this jealousy and distrust into every transaction of public life. By repelling worthy men from your legislative assemblies, it has bred up a class of candidates for the suffrage, who, in their very act, disgrace your institutions and your people's It has rendered you so fickle and so given to change that your inconstantly has passed

  into a proverb, for you no sooner set up an idol firmly than you are sure to pull it down and dash it into fragments, and this because directly you reward a benefactor or a public servant you distrust him, merely because he is rewarded, and immediately apply yourself to find out either that you have been too bountiful in your acknowledgments, or he remiss in his deserts. Any man who attains a high place among you, from the president downwards,

  may date his downfall from that moment, for any printed lie that any notorious villain pens, although it militate directly against the character and conduct of a life, appeals at once to your distrust and is believed. You will strain at a gnat in the way of trustfulness and confidence, however fairly won and well deserved. But you will swallow a whole caravan of camels if they be laden with unworthy doubts and mean suspicions. Is this well,

  think you, or likely to elevate the character of the governors or the governed among you? The answer is invariably the same. There's freedom of opinion here, you know. Every man thinks for himself, and we are not to be easily overreached. That's how our people come to be suspicious. Another prominent feature is the love of smart dealing, which gilds over many a swindle and gross breach of trust, many a defalcation, public and private, and enables

  many a knave to hold his head up with the best, who well deserves a halter, though it has not been without its retributive operation, for this smartness has done more in a few years to impair the public credit and to cripple the public resources than dull honesty, however rash, could have affected in a century. The merits of a broken speculation, or a bankruptcy, or of a successful scoundrel are not gauged by its or his observance of the Golden Rule,

  do as you would be done by, but are considered with reference to their smartness. I recollect on both occasions of our passing that ill-fated Cairo on the Mississippi, remarking on the bad effects such gross deceits must have when they exploded, in generating a want of confidence abroad and discouraging foreign investment, but I was given to understand that this was a very smart scheme by which a deal of money had been made,

  and that its smartest feature was that they forgot these things abroad in a very short time, and speculated again as freely as ever. The following dialogue I have held a hundred times. Is it not a very disgraceful circumstance that such a man as so-and-so should be acquiring a large property by the most infamous and odious means, and notwithstanding all the crimes of which he has been guilty should be tolerated and abetted by your citizens? He is a proper nuisance,

  is he not? Yes, sir. A convicted liar? Yes, sir. He has been kicked and cuffed and caned? Yes, sir. And he is utterly dishonourable, debased and profligate? Yes, sir. In the name of wonder, then, what is his merit? Well, sir, he is a smart man. In like manner, all kinds of deficient and impolitic usages are referred to the national love of trade, though oddly enough it would be a weighty charge against a foreigner that he regarded the Americans as a trading people.

  The love of trade is assigned as a reason for that comfortless custom, so very prevalent in country towns, of married persons living in hotels having no fireside of their own, and seldom meeting from early morning until late at night but at the hasty public meals. The love of trade is a reason why the literature in America is to remain forever unprotected, for we are a trading people and don't care for poetry, though we do, by the way,

  profess to be very proud of our poets, while healthful amusements, cheerful means of recreation and wholesome fancies must fade before the stern, utilitarian joys of trade. These three characteristics are strongly presented at every turn, full in the stranger's view. But the foul growth of America has a more tangled root than this, and it strikes its fibres deep in the licentious press.

  Schools may be erected, east, west, north and south, pupils be taught and masters reared by scores upon scores of thousands, colleges may thrive, churches may be crammed, temperance may be diffused, and advancing knowledge in all other forms walk through the land with great strides, but while the newspaper press of America is in or near its present abject state, high moral improvement in that country is hopeless. Year by year it must and will go back,

  year by year the tone of public feeling must sink lower down, year by year the Congress and the Senate must become of less account before all decent men, and year by year the memory of the great fathers of the revolution must be outraged more and more in the bad life of their degenerate child. Among herd of journals which are published in the States there are some, the readers scarcely need be told, of character and credit. From personal intercourse with

  accomplished gentlemen connected with publications of this class I have derived both pleasure and profit, but the name of these is few, and of the other's legion, and the influence of the good is powerless to counteract the moral poison of the bad. Among the gentry of America, among the well-informed and moderate, in the learned professions, at the bar and on the bench, there is as there can be but one opinion in reference to the vicious character of these

  infamous journals. It is sometimes contended, I will not say strangely, for it is natural to seek excuses for such a disgrace, that their influence is not so great as a visitor would suppose. I must be pardoned for saying that there is no warrant for this plea, and that every fact and circumstance tends directly to the opposite conclusion. When any man of any grade of desert in intellect or character can climb to any public distinction no matter what in America,

  without first groveling down upon the earth and bending the knee before this monster of depravity, when any private excellence is safe from its attacks, when any social confidence is left unbroken by it, or any tie of social decency and honour is held in the least regard, when any man in that free country has freedom of opinion and presumes to think for himself and speak for himself without humble reference to a censorship which, for its rampant ignorance and base

  dishonesty, he utterly loathes and despises in his heart, when those who most acutely feel its infamy and the reproach it casts upon the nation, and who most denounce it to each other, dare to set their heels upon and crush it openly in the sight of all men, then I will believe that its influence is lessening, and men are returning to their manly senses. But while that press has its evil eye in every house, and its black hand in every appointment in the State from a President

  to a Postman, while with ribbled slander for its only stock and trade, it is the standard literature of an enormous class who must find their reading in a newspaper or they will not read at all, so long must its odium be upon the country's head, and so long must the evil it works be plainly visible in the Republic. To those who are accustomed to the leading English journals, or to the respectable journals of the continent of Europe, to those who are accustomed to anything

  else in print and paper, it would be impossible, without an amount of extract for which I have neither space nor inclination, to convey an adequate idea of this frightful engine in America. But if any man desire confirmation of my statement on this head, let him repair to any place in the City of London where scattered numbers of these publications are to be found, and there let him form his own opinion. Note to the original edition, or let him refer to an able

  and perfectly truthful article in the Foreign Quarterly Review published in the present month of October, to which my attention has been attracted since these sheets have been passing through the press. He will find some specimens there by no means remarkable to any man who has been in America, but sufficiently striking to one who has not. It would be well, there can be no doubt, for the American people as a whole, if they loved the real

  less and the ideal somewhat more. It would be well, if there were greater encouragement to likeness of heart and gaiety, and a wider cultivation of what is beautiful without being eminently and directly useful. But here I think the general remonstrance, we are a new country, which is so often advanced as an excuse for defects which are quite unjustifiable, as being of right only the slow growth of an old one may be very reasonably urged, and I yet hope to hear of there being some other

  national amusement in the United States besides newspaper politics. They certainly are not a humorous people, and their temperament always impressed me as being of a dull and gloomy nature. In shrewdness of remark and a certain cast-iron quaintness, the Yankees, or people of New England, unquestionably take the lead, as they do in most other evidences of intelligence. But in travelling about, out of the large cities, as I have remarked in former parts of these

  volumes, I was quite oppressed by the prevailing seriousness and melancholy air of business which was so general and unvarying that at every new town I came to I seemed to meet the very same people whom I had left behind me at the last. Such defects as are perceptible in the national matters seem to me to be referable in a great degree to this cause, which has generated a dull, sullen persistence in coarse usages and rejected the graces of life as undeserving of attention.

  There is no doubt that Washington, who was always most scrupulous and exact on points of ceremony, perceived the tendency towards this mistake even in his time and did his utmost to correct it. I cannot hold with other writers on these subjects that the prevalence of various forms of descent in America is in any way attributable to the non-existence there of an established church. Indeed, I think the temper of the people, if it admitted to such an institution being founded

  amongst them, would lead them to desert it as a matter of course merely because it was established. But supposing it to exist, I doubt its probable efficacy in summoning the wandering sheep to one great fold simply because of the immense amount of descent which prevails at home, and because I do not find in America any one form of religion with which we in Europe or even England are unacquainted. Descenters resort thither in great numbers as other people do simply because

  it is a land of resort, and great settlements of them are founded because ground can be purchased and towns and villages reared where there were none of the human creation before. But even the Shakers emigrated from England. Our country is not unknown to Mr. Joseph Smith, the apostle of Mormonism, or to his benighted disciples. I have beheld religious scenes myself in some of our populous towns which can hardly be surpassed by an American camp meeting,

  and I am not aware that any instance of superstitious imposter on the one hand, and superstitious credulity on the other, has had its origin in the United States, which we cannot more than parallel by the precedence of Mrs. Southcoat, Mary Toff's the Rabbit Breeder, or even Mr. Thorne of Canterbury, which later case arose some time after the Dark Ages had passed away.

  The republican institutions of America undoubtedly lead the people to assert their self-respect and their equality, but a traveller is bound to bear those institutions in his mind, and not hastily to resent the near approach of a class of strangers who, at home, would keep aloof. This characteristic, when it was tinctured with no foolish pride and stopped short of no honest service, never offended me, and I very seldom, if ever, experienced its rude or unbecoming display.

  Once or twice it was comically developed, as in the following case, but this was an amusing incident and not the rule or near it. I wanted a pair of boots at a certain town, for I had none to travel in, but those with the memorable cork soles which were much too hot for the fiery decks of a steamboat. I therefore sent a message to an artist in boots, importing with my compliments

  that I should be happy to see him, if he would do me the polite favour to call. He very kindly returned for answer that he would look round at six o'clock that evening. I was lying on the sofa, with a book and a wine-glass, at about that time, when the door opened, and a gentleman in a stiff cravat, within a year or two on either side of thirty, entered in his hat and gloves, walked up to the looking-glass, arranged his hair,

  took off his gloves, slowly produced measure from the uttermost depths of his coat pocket, and requested me in a languid tone to unfix my straps. I complied, but looked with some curiosity at his hat which was still upon his head. It might have been that, or it might have been the heat, but he took it off. Then he sat himself down on a chair opposite to me, rested an arm on each knee, and leaning forward very much, took from the ground, by a great effort,

  the specimen of metropolitan workmanship which I had just pulled off, whistling pleasantly as he did so. He turned it over and over, surveyed it with a contempt no language can express, and inquired if I wished him to fix me a boot like that. I courteously replied that, provided the boots were large enough, I would leave the rest to him, that if convenient and practicable, I should not object to their bearing some resemblance to the model then before him,

  but that I would be entirely guided by and would beg to leave the whole subject to his judgment and discretion. You ain't particular about this scoop in the heel, I suppose, then, says he. We don't follow that here. I repeated my last observation. He looked at himself in the glass again, went closer to it to dash a grade or two of dust out to the corner of his eye, and settled his cravat. All this time my leg and foot were in the air.

  Nearly ready, sir, I inquired. Well, pretty nigh, he said. Keep steady. I kept as steady as I could, both in foot and face, and having by this time got the dust out and found his pencil case, he measured me and made the necessary notes. When he had finished he fell into his old attitude, and taking up the boot again, mused for some time. And this, he said at last, is an English boot, is it? This is a London boot, eh?

  That, sir, I replied, is a London boot. He mused over it again, after the manner of Hamlet with Yorick's skull. Nodded his head, as who should say, I pity the institutions that led to the production of this boot. Rose put up his pencil, notes, and paper, glancing at himself in the glass, all the time, put on his hat, drew on his gloves very slowly, and finally walked out. When he had been gone about a minute the door reopened, and his hat and his head reappeared.

  He looked round the room, and at the boot again, which was still lying on the floor, appeared thoughtful for a minute, and then said, Well, good afternoon. Good afternoon, sir, I said. And that was the end of the interview. There is but one other head on which I wish to offer a remark,

  and that has reference to the public health. In so vast a country where there are thousands of millions of acres of land yet unsettled and uncleared, and on every root of which vegetable decomposition is annually taking place, where there are so many great rivers and such opposite varieties of climate, there cannot fail to be a great amount of sickness at certain seasons. But I may venture to say, after conversing with many members of the medical profession in

  America, that I am not singular in the opinion that much of the disease which does prevail might be avoided, if a few common precautions were observed. Greater means of personal cleanliness are indispensable to this end. The custom of hastily swallowing large quantities of animal food three times a day and rushing back to sedentary pursuits after every meal must be changed, the gentler sex must go more wisely clad and take more healthful exercise,

  and in the latter clause the males must be included also. Above all, in public institutions and throughout the whole of every town and city, the system of ventilation and drainage and removal of impurities requires to be thoroughly revised. There is no local legislature in America which may not study Mr. Chadwick's excellent retort upon the sanitary condition of our laboring classes with immense advantage.

  I have now arrived at the close of this book. I have little reason to believe from certain warnings I have had since I returned to England that it will be tenderly or favorably received by the American people. And as I have written in truth in relation to the mass of those who form their judgment and express their opinions, it will be seen that I have no desire to court by any adventitious means the popular applause.

  It is enough for me to know that what I have set down in these pages cannot cost me a single friend on the other side of the Atlantic who is in anything deserving of the name. For the rest, I put my trust implicitly in the spirit in which they have been conceived and penned, and I can bide my time. I have made no reference to my reception, nor have I suffered it to influence me in what I have written. For in either case,

  I should have offered but a sorry acknowledgment compared with that I bear within my breast towards those partial readers of my former books across the water who met me with an open hand and not with one that closed upon an iron muzzle. Postscript At a public dinner given to me on Saturday, 18 April, 1868, in the City of New York,

  by two hundred representatives of the Press of the United States of America, I made the following observations among others. So much of my voice has lately been heard in the land that I might have been contented with troubling you no further from my present standing point were it not a duty with which I henceforth charge myself not only here but on every suitable occasion whatsoever and wheresoever to express my

  high and grateful sense of my second reception in America and to bear my honest testimony to the national generosity and magnanimity. Also to declare how astounded I have been by the amazing changes I have seen around me on every side, changes moral, changes physical, changes in the amount of land subdued in people, changes in the rise of vast new cities, changes in the growth of older cities almost out of recognition, changes in the graces and amenities of life, changes in the

  press without whose advancement no advancement can take place anywhere. Nor am I, believe me, so arrogant as to suppose that in five and twenty years there have been no changes in me and that I had nothing to learn and no extreme impressions to correct when I was here first. And this brings me to a point on which I have, ever since I landed in the United States last November, observed a strict silence, though sometimes tempted to break it, but in reference

  to which I will, with your good leave, take you into my confidence now. Even the press, being human, may be sometimes mistaken or misinformed, and I rather think that I have in one or two rare instances observed its information to be not strictly accurate with reference to myself. Indeed I have now and again been more surprised by printed news that I have read of myself than by any printed news that I have ever read in my present state of existence.

  Thus the vigor and perseverance with which I have for some months past been collecting materials for, and hammering away at, a new book on America, has much astonished me, seeing that all that time my declaration has been perfectly well known to my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, that no consideration on earth would induce me to write one. But what I have intended, what I have resolved upon, and this is the confidence I seek to place in you, is, on my

  return to England, in my own person, in my own journal, to bear for the behoof of my countrymen such testimony to the gigantic changes in this country as I have hinted at to-night, also to record that wherever I have been, in the smallest places equally with the largest, I have been received with unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, sweet temper, hospitality, consideration, and with unsurpassable respect for the privacy daily enforced upon me by the nature of my avocation here,

  and the state of my health. This testimony, so long as I live, and so long as my descendants have any legal right in my books, I shall cause to be republished as an appendix to every copy of these two books of mine in which I have referred to America. And this I will do, and cause to be done, not in mere love and thankfulness, but because I regard it as an act of plain justice and honour. I said these words with the greatest earnestness that I could lay upon them,

  and I repeat them in print here with equal earnestness. So long as this book shall last, I hope that they will form a part of it, and will be fairly read as inseparable from my experiences and impressions of America. Charles Dickens, May 1868. End of Chapter 18 and Postscript. End of American Notes