Part 15

It is enormous, spreading over certainly three times the space which an English city of 250,000 inhabitants would occupy. We shall see the town on our return; meantime, as we ran out of the suburbs, we saw a house of considerable size waiting at the crossing for our train to pass before it went over, as coolly as a farmer’s waggon of hay would wait in England. O------told us that all the old houses in Chicago are moved in this way. As building is very expensive, when one of the big folk wants to put up some splendid new structure--bank, store, or the like--there are always men ready to buy the old house as it stands. They then just cut away its foundation, put it on rollers, and tote it away to the site they have bought in the suburbs. We fell upon breakfast in a half-famished state as we steamed away westward, and through the whole day were kept on the stretch. Not that there was any great beauty in the scenery, but the interest of getting actually into half-settled country was exceedingly absorbing. The most notable town we passed was Galena, in Northern Illinois, from which Grant went to the war, leaving his leather yard for that purpose. The citizens of Galena have bought and presented him a good square house of red brick on the top of the hill there. Then we ran along a tributary of the Mississippi, and about 4.30 came out on the father of waters; where we struck the mighty stream it was not impressive. We came upon a mighty swamp, not a river, miles and miles of trees, some of them fine large ones, standing in the water and covered with creepers. The river was luckily high, so that we had this effect of a forest rising out of water to perfection. Then there were miles of swamp, half water, half land, dreary and horrible to look at, sometimes sound enough for cattle to pick about, and then only fit for alligators and wild-fowl; of the latter we saw a number, including a white heron. At last we came upon the river, some three-quarters of a mile wide-up there, 1600 miles from the sea, and crossed by a gossamer bridge, a real work of high art. On the opposite side we stopped for tea-dinner at Dubuque, one of the largest towns in Iowa, and the first border city we had seen,--very quaint to behold, with streets laid out as broad as Regent Street, here and there a huge block of stores full of dry goods or groceries, and then a lot of wooden hovels, a vacant plot perhaps, and then a big hotel, or another great store,--the streets all as soft as Rotten Row, and much deeper in dirt, side pavements of wood, every house placarded in huge letters with the name and business of the owner. Here, for the first time, we saw emigrants’ waggons packed with their household goods and lumber (sawed planks) for their houses, bound for the prairies beyond, on which they settle under the homestead acts. In short, the pushing slipshod character of the great West was thoroughly mirrored in the place, and above all the other buildings was a fine common school open to every child in the place. This is the one universal characteristic of these towns and villages; almost the first thing they do is to build a famous big school. The member of Congress for the place and one or two other notables came down to see us after tea, and smoked a cigar with us in our saloon car before we started. The talk was, of course, on the wonders of the West, and the chances of Dubuque to be a big city in a year or two. Then we turned in and ran all night to Fort Dodge, from which the first line of this letter was written, a village with the same characteristics as the towns, except that the only building not of wood was the station, which, strange to say, was built of gypsum, found in great quantities here, and the only sort of stone they have. The president of the line--a shrewd, honest, Western man named Douglas, one of our party--guessed that in another five years they would have to pull the station down and manure the land with it. From this place we ran right up into the wild prairies, and at the highest point between the Mississippi and Missouri, at Storm Lake, I wrote you the hasty note which, I hope, you have received from those unknown parts. It is about the largest settlement in the 180 miles, consisting of perhaps twelve or fourteen wooden houses, one of which was a billiard saloon kept by an old Cornish man. He said that quite a number of Cornish miners are over in this district, some at lead and coal mines of a very primitive kind, others farming. On the whole, the people seemed a good, steady, independent lot, and the children looked wonderfully healthy, running about barefooted on the shore of the little lake or amongst the prairie grass. We made acquaintance with prairie chicken and the little earth squirrel, a jolly little dog, with a prettily marked back, who frisks into his hole instead of up a tree like ours. Then we dropped down, still through wild prairie, over which the single line of rail runs with no protection at all, till we came to Sioux City on the Missouri, and the biggest town on the river for 2000 miles from its source. There are 12,000 inhabitants, and precisely the same features as at Dubuque, except that it is a far more rowdy place, being still almost under the dominion of Judge Lynch. Only the day before we arrived, a border ruffian had been swaggering about the town, pistol in hand, and defying arrest. However, they did take him at last, and he was safe in prison. A fortnight earlier a rascal, who confessed to nine murders, had been taken and hung on the other side of the river. There are sixty-three saloons, at most of which gambling goes on regularly every night. The editor of the _Sioux Tribune_, an Irish Yankee of queer morals and extraordinary “go,” took us into one, stood drinks round, and expounded the ingenious games by which the settlers and officers of the Indian fort up the stream are cleared of their money. A rowdy, loafing, vagabond city, but there they have three or four fine schools (one had just cost 45,000 dollars), for which they tax the saloons mercilessly. I have no doubt the place will be quite respectable in another five years. We slept quietly and dropped down south along the Missouri to Council Bluffs, from which the earlier part of this was written. The Missouri is a doleful stream, shallow, with huge sandbanks in the middle, and great swamps at the side, but striking green bluffs rising above on the east bank under which we went; and behind them I saw the sun rise in great beauty. We just crossed the river to Omaha to say we had been in Missouri and seen the terminus of the Union-Pacific Railway, and a fine go-ahead place it is, like Dubuque, only twice as big and finely situate on hills above the Missouri River. We are now back at Chicago, having seen more frontier towns and prairies on our way here, and in five days, by the good fortune of this private train, have done more than we could have managed otherwise in nine.

Chicago, September 1870.

I am so afraid that I shan’t get off a letter regularly twice a week from this run in the West, that I begin this in a spare three minutes between packing and a testimonial which is to be given me here by a lot of young graduates of the American Universities at the Club at four o’clock. This place is the wonder of the wonderful West, as you know already. A gentleman I met to-day tells me he came up to this place in 1830, when it consisted of a fort with two companies, a dozen little wooden huts, and an encampment of 3000 or 4000 Indians who had come in to get their allowances under treaty with the United States. Now it is one of the handsomest cities I ever saw, with 300,000 inhabitants, and progressing at the rate of 1500 a week or thereabouts. We have had our first experience of a first-rate American hotel, the Fremont House here. It is decidedly not cheap. At present rates about fifteen shillings or four dollars a day; but you can eat and drink anything but wine and spirits all day, with the exception of one hour in the afternoon between lunch and dinner. I ordered a peach just now for lunch, and they brought me a whole plateful, not so good as our hot-house ones, but very fine fruit. Yesterday I went twice to hear Robert Collyer, a famous Unitarian minister here. He was born in Yorkshire, where he worked as a blacksmith, preaching as a Methodist, and finally, twenty years ago, came out to the West and established himself here. He has great and deserved influence, and is altogether the finest man of the kind I have ever met. His text was out of Job: “Dost thou know the springs of the deep?” I forget the exact words, but you will find them in the splendid 38th chapter, where God is showing Job who is master (as the cabman put it). He had been for his holiday at the sea, and was full of thoughts which, as he said, he wanted to get off to his people. He began by a quotation from Ruskin as to the fantastic power and beauty of the sea, said that no trace of love for the sea could be found in the Bible, only fear of it. In the New Jerusalem, St. John dreamed “there shall be no more sea.” Same with all great poets, even English, illustrated by Burns and Shakespere, and Dr. Johnson’s saying, “That a ship was a prison with a chance of being drowned.” Even sailors don’t really look on sea as home, and fear it, and weave mystical notions of all kinds round it. Yet the sea has its sweet and gentle side too; it nourishes every plant and flower that grows by its exhalations, and keeps the rivers sweet and running; and look at one of the exquisite little shells which you may find after the fiercest storm, or the bit of sea-weed lying on the shore, or the limpet on the rock. The lashing of the storm has done them no harm, and there they lie as perfect as if it had never been raging. about them. So the great stormy sea of life has its gentle and loving side for every one of us so long as we trust in God and just obey His laws and do His will. I have given you the very barest outline of a very striking sermon. In the evening I went to tea with him, and there was a large bunch of grapes on my plate with the enclosed little paper, “To Mr. Hughes from the children,” which touched me much. The children are very nice. Robert Lincoln, Abe’s son, and a lot of his friends are our entertainers to-day, and in the evening we go by the night train to St. Louis. I laid aside the other sheet to go off to this club dinner with the young Chicago men, and I have never had a more hearty greeting or kinder words and looks than amongst these youngsters, all graduates of some university, most of them officers in the late war, who are settled down in the great money-making town, and are living brave and sterling and earnest lives there. I really can’t tell you the sort of things they said (they drank your health, and the proposer made one of the prettiest little speeches in proposing it I ever heard); in short, I was positively ashamed, and scarcely knew how to meet it all or what to say to them; but it was less embarrassing than it would have been with any other young men, for this kind of young American (like Holmes) is so transparently sincere that you can come out quite square with him before you have known him an hour. Our good friends of the Illinois Central gave us free passage to St. Louis, to which we travelled all night. It is the biggest town in Missouri, was a great slave-holding place in 1860, and very “secesh” during the war. A fine city it is too, with its grand quay lined with huge steamers, and its miles of fine streets. Rowdy though, still, full of low saloons and gambling-houses. The most drunken town in the United States, the gentleman who met us, and drove us about and got us free papers here to Cincinnati, told us. The most characteristic thing that happened to me was that I was shaved by a negro (and better shaved than I ever was in my life before). He had been body servant to his master, a rich Southern planter, through the first three years of the war. His master was at last shot and he managed to get taken, and so “I’se no slave now,” as he said, with all his ivories shining. His education has not been much improved, however, for he thought England was at war, as being somehow part either of France or Germany, he couldn’t just say which, and would scarcely believe me when I declared that we were separated by the sea from both. Then we travelled all night again (I sleep splendidly in these palace cars, so don’t be alarmed), and got here to the queen city of Ohio this morning, after the most glorious sunrise I ever saw. This also is a very fine city on the Ohio, with fine hills all round and a magnificent suspension bridge. The most characteristic sight I have seen here, however, was two small boys trotting along together barefooted, with a piece of sugar-cane between them, each sucking one end. I had a note to Force, one of Sherman’s generals, now a judge here, who kindly sent us round in a carriage, but was too busy to come with us. To-night we make another long run to Philadelphia. We should have gone to Washington and so worked north, but Philadelphia is the next place where I shall get letters, and I can’t do any longer without hearing from you, so that’s all about it. I have lots of friends in Philadelphia, so shall probably make two days’ stay there.

Continental Hotel, Philadelphia, 23rd September 1870.

Where was I in my narrative? I guess (I am getting a thorough Yankee in my vernacular) I gave you a short account of the queen city, as they call Cincinnati. We left Cincinnati at ten o’clock on Wednesday night and came right away for 600 miles to Philadelphia.

The most interesting part of the road was the crossing the Alleghanies, up which we wound through vast forest tracks for some thirty miles, and down the eastern slopes in the sunset, getting daylight for all the most beautiful parts. As we were rushing up one of the finest gorges, some 200 yards wide, we were suddenly aware of a huge eagle (bigger than those we saw on the Danube as we steamed through the Iron Cates) sailing up on the opposite side, perhaps 100 yards from the train. We were going eighty miles an hour at the least, and the grand old fellow swept along without the least apparent effort, keeping abreast of our car for I should think a couple of miles, when he suddenly turned and settled on a fine pine-tree.

After breakfast we had a real field-day in this splendid city, which rivals Boston in interest and character. Outside it is built of red brick and white marble, the contrast of which materials is to me singularly taking, though I daresay it is very bad art.

Then the chief streets run away long and straight, and as you look down them all seem to dive into groups of trees. Walnut Street, Chestnut Street, and Spruce Street are the names of the oldest and handsomest avenues. Our friend Field, the banker, was all ready for us, and a dozen new friends, including General Meade, the first Federal general who won the battle in the East, and a charming, tall, handsome, grizzled, gentlemanly soldier. We went over the old State House, a pre-revolutionary building, from the top of which there is a splendid view of the town, with the two rivers, the Delaware and Schuylkill, on which it stands. There is the hall in which the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the chair in which Hancock sat, and the table on which it lay for signature. The square is charming, with its old trees and turf, just as it has always stood, and I am happy to say the Pennsylvanians are very proud «of the old place, won’t allow it to be touched, and are likely to keep it there till it burns, as I suppose the State House, with all the old-fashioned timbers in wall and roof, will some day. Then we went to the great Normal School for girls here, five hundred strong, the daughters of all sorts of folk, from physicians and lawyers to labourers. I was exceedingly interested and instructed in many classes, especially in the history class. The handsome, self-possessed young woman who was teaching was just beginning the Revolutionary War as we came in, and “felt like” changing the subject as she said, but I begged her to go on, and heard the old story from Lexington down to Cornwallis’s surrender without turning a hair. After classes, at two, the whole school was gathered for Scripture reading and singing a hymn. After the hymn, in compliment to us, they began “God save the Queen”; Rawlins and I got up by a sort of instinct, and to my immense amusement up got the whole company. Then I was asked to say a few words; and talked about the grand education they were getting, referred to the history class and told them no Englishman worth the name now regretted the end of the struggle one hundred years old, but only that any of the bitterness should still be left; spoke of the grand country which has been entrusted to them to be filled with the poor of the whole world, told them that we had a woman’s rights movement at home as well as they, which I hoped would not fall into any great absurdities, but there were two rights they would always insist on--the right of every girl in the States to such an education as they were getting, and their own right (they are all being educated as teachers) to go and give this education to those who want it most in West and South. Then the girls all filed out to march music, played by a senior girl, winding in and out of the rows of benches on which they had sat, and so away downstairs and to all parts of the town, the prettiest sight you can imagine. The girls are at the most awkward age, and, of course, many of them plain, but altogether as comely as the same sort would be with us, and not a sign of poverty amongst them, though many were quite plainly dressed. My democratic soul rejoiced at the sight as you may fancy. What a chance for straining the nonsense out of a girl if she has any! We adjourned from the great training-school for girls to the Girard College for orphan boys, founded by a queer old French Voltairian citizen of Philadelphia, who died some forty years ago and left property worth half a million of our money to found this college, with the express _proviso_ that no parson of any denomination was ever to be admitted within the walls. I am happy to say, however, that, notwithstanding this provision, which is observed to the letter, the Bible is read and every day’s instruction is begun and ended by a religious service. This, by the way, is the case almost everywhere in the States. Notwithstanding all the assertions to the contrary, I have found only one place in which the education is purely secular. This was Cincinnati, where the result is obtained by a combination of the Roman Catholics with the German town population. Well, this college, as it is called, is simply a vast boys’ home, just like our own, except that the boys live in a most superb white marble building, copied from the Parthenon. The classes were being taught, and kept in right good order by women, who indeed almost monopolise teaching in this State, and they are in the proportion of more than ten to one. The fault of Girard College is that it is not wanted; the public school system which has grown up since its foundation being open to every one, and offering at least as good an education. If its funds could have been used to support the boys while at the public schools it would have been better. The whole arrangements are decidedly more luxurious than those at Rugby in my time, and they have not yet established workshops. After our round of institutions we were entertained at the Union League Club. The dinner was good and the company better, Mr. MacMichael, the mayor, who had been the chief mover in establishing the club in the dark days of 1861, presided, with General Meade, who commanded at Gettysburg on his left and me on his right. Dear old Field, the most furious and impulsive of Republicans, and the most ardent lover and abuser of England and Englishmen, vice-president, and the rest of the company, staff-officers in the war or marked men in some other way. The club had sent eleven regiments to the war at its own expense, and had exercised immense influence on the Union at the most critical time. At last I was fairly cornered; I had often before had to defend our position in sharp skirmishes, but now, for the first time, was in for a general engagement. Well, I just threw away all defensive arms, and attacked them at once. “You say we were led by our aristocracy, who were savagely hostile to you; I admit they were hostile, though with many notable exceptions, such as the Duke of Argyll, Lord Carlisle, Howards and Cavendishes; but what did you expect? I have taken in three or four American papers for years, and in your debates in Congress, in your newspapers, in every utterance of your public men, I have never heard or read anything but savage abuse of our aristocracy. They don’t reply to your insults, but they don’t forget them, so when you got into such hard lines they went in heartily for your enemies. Well, you say the South were England’s real enemies for the last forty years. True, but aristocracy did not care for that, democracy was represented by you, and that was what they went against.” There was an outcry: “Why, here’s a pretty business, we thought you were a Democrat.”

“So I am, in our English sense, but I am before all things an Englishman. I have nothing to do with our aristocracy (except knowing a few of them), and I fought as hard against them in England through the war as you did against the rebels; but I am not going to allow you to separate them from the nation, or to suppose that they can be punished except through the nation.”

“Well, but what do you say for all your great commercial world--bankers, merchants, manufacturers, our correspondents, look how they turned on us!”