In Milwaukee we are forcibly impressed with the growth and grandeur of the West. So favorable are the climatic conditions of that garden of America, that the mice run rank into rats. This is not fascinating to the traveller, still it is better than Albany
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and Niagara. Rats if not winning are tangible. I should not go so far as to make pets of them, as they do at the Newhall House; but I mention the fact of their transmutation as an interesting item of natural history, and an additional confirmation of the Darwinian theory of development. Here we have what has long been desired,--an actual example of the transmutation of species.
Milwaukee is a fair city in a fair country. It rains here all the time, but the rain comes down with spirit on clean pavements, and is spiritedly spattered back. The whole city looks hard and sound. It is built of the soft cream-colored brick which its own brick-kilns furnish, and it seems solid, old, durable.
It surprises me, this Milwaukee. Why, am I then antiquity? But I remember when Wisconsin was a Territory, and a Territory seemed a wild savage terra incognita, ravaged by "Wínnebagoes, Wínnebagoes, Póttawatomies, Póttawatomies, Sí-oose, Sí-oose," as we used to repeat in concert, with swaying, sonorous sing-song. Yet here is a change from an ancient to a modern world. For Pottawatomies and Winnebagoes, is a huge hotel, are velvet sofas and chairs and
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carpets; small, social rount tables in the dining-rooms, each one adorned with flowers; printed bills of a fare as profuse and varied and recherché as any in old Eastern cities, and as well cooked as in most of them; purple and scarlet and fine-twined linen. It is so extravagantly rainy that we cannot go out, but the obliging landlord--he must have been the landlord, for he lacked that polished and elaborate urbanity which distinguishes the hotel clerk,--besides he laughed heartily upon occasion, which would be deleterious to clerical dignity--the obliging landlord does his best to make up for it by taking us over his house, from turret to foundation-stone. Four hundred rooms have the Pottawatomies in which to bestow themselves; four hundred rooms, furnished, some with luxury and even elegance, all with decency and comfort, heated by steam, and provided with hot and cold baths. It might be conjectured that the Pottawatomies would stand afar off and dance a war-dance of surprise and admiration around the marvellous house; but we are assured that only last week they rushed in and filled all these rooms to overflowing, and, for aught that appears to the contrary, handled their napkins and flower-
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vases and bell-ropes and bath-tubs as decorously as Eastern savages. From the top of the house we behold the glory of the city, the fair young city, dimpling softly to her valleys, rising gently to her hills,--glory of church-spire and school-house, and the softer glory of happy homes. I see them shining dimly through the rain, draped with vines and warm with cheerful glow. Taste and comfort and content are surely there, for energy alone could never make this Wisconsin wilderness blossom in such roses. A single fact well shows how rapidly the course of empire has taken its westward way. Only in 1840 there was but a single school in Milwaukee, with twenty-five scholars; now, there are three hundred lager-beer shops!
And there is a girl in Milwaukee, I do not know her name, of whom her male friends, chatting in the hotel parlor, speak thus: "She is accomplished, lively, agreeable, admirable,--why is she not married?"
"I think," says another, smiling, yet earnest, "it is because she is so intensely in love with her mother. You have only to start a conversation with either of them on the subject of the other, and they are eloquent."
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This is high art and high nature in civilization,--an affection between parent and child so strong as to be absorbing and exclusive. For it will absorb nothing bad, will exclude nothing good. A heart so fixed will not be likely ever to loose its hold. Occupied already with a strong, pure love, it is in little danger of being dispossessed by a weak or worthless one. Nothing but integrity and courage and capacity, one would say, can enter there. Happy mother and happy daughter! Happy man, too, who shall one day come and see and conquer!
Away from Milwaukee, straight in among Sioux and Winnebagoes and Pottawatomies. Without, all is rain and darkness, tomahawks and scalping-knives and the smoky glare of pitch-pine torches; within, the mild glow of lamps, the satin-wood and velvet of civilization. Rushing through the night, to my eyes, gazing steadfastly forward seeing nothing, comes suddenly a quiver and fire in the curved letters above the car-door,--
Milwaukee and St. Paul. Late-born city of a
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late-born continent, never dreamed of by Paul. A sleeping princess resting on the shores of her beautiful, broad lake, veiled in enchanted slumbers these eighteen hundred years, while Paul and his fifty generations have risen to the light and gone down to the darkness in an undisputed apostolic succession. Now she wakes from her lovely sleep, she fronts the ruddy dawn, and the sunlight of Paul's Holy Land touches her youthful brow with the splendor of the morning. What wizard hand has suddenly and silently bridged this gulf of time and space, and set the old name and the new side by side, in a union so harmonious and so obvious that the world sees, unastonished, and as though it had not seen?
Milwaukee and St. Paul. Does he know, I wonder, in his heavenly habitations, how green his memory lives in this new world? Does he see the strong city springing up in the wilderness, midway between two oceans, centre of a great and growing nation, centre of a far-stretching continent that rose from the undreamed solitude of the sea hundreds of years after his death, baptizing itself, in all its young vigor and its
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high hope, with the name of the martyr who died a death of violence and shame eighteen hundred years ago? And if he does know it, I wonder if he cares. Yes, as a martyr may, not as a Cæsar might.
Milwaukee and St. Paul. The very words are a lesson of honor and trust, of the futility of convention, of the immortality of principle. And sorely our young nation needs them in her headlong chase for good. Many men lived in Paul's day who wrought madly for earthly glory and honor and immortality, and history gives us not so much as the record of a name. Paul determined to know nothing among his generation save Jesus Christ and him crucified, and, throughout a world grown tenfold greater than Paul ever knew, his fame shines with a steady, serene, and ever-increasing brightness. Leaving house, and parents, and brother, and wife, and child, for the kingdom of God's sake, he has received manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.
There is an old couple in the car, husband and wife, well on towards seventy, another woman
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and man, all strangers to each other, all grandfathers and grandmothers; nice, honest people, who never quarrelled with the existing order of things. They while away the time with a great deal of interesting, commonplace conversation, showing a remarkable unanimity of opinion. There is also a young man with an infant in his arms. He leaves the train at a way-station, and one of the company tells the other what he has gathered of the young man's story. His wife has died within a few weeks, and this baby is the youngest of four children. He has given it away to some one in this village where we are waiting. They all pity the poor child. One tender-hearted old woman has a great deal of feelin' for it. She knows how to sympathize. Her own daughter died, leaving a little child. They hope this child will be taken good care of. Probably it will, for it is going to live with a relative of its mother. It seems not to occur to any of them that there can be wrong in the father's giving away his child. I long to say to them: Good, kind people, fatherly men, motherly women, unseared consciences, what right has this man to give away this child? Whose child is it? His own. Held by no other
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title than that which makes his horse or house his? Will God receive from him a quitclaim deed as valid evidence of transfer? When God asks him at his judgment-day, "Where is the child I gave into thy hands?" will it be enough to answer, "I gave it away to my wife's cousin"? Can a man wash his hands of his child's blood so easily?
I know what they would say: "Why, the child will be a great deal better off than if he had kept it himself." So the child would be a great deal better of in heaven than on earth, but that would not justify him in drowning it. He has just as good a right to give it to the angels as he has to give it to men and women. The child is his, and is "not transferable." He ought to retain his power over it, and his love and care for it. That its mother is dead is the worst possible reason why it should lose its father too. When a man is deprived of his right arm, does he cut off his left? When the mother dies, the father's duty is, as far as possible, to be both father and mother to the children. If he fails then, he fails honorably, but he need not fail. Men have tried it and have succeeded. To
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fail without trying is shameful. A man can no more rightfully give away his child than he can give away his own soul. Recklessly we assume and recklessly relinquish the most solemn trusts, but God maketh inquisition. Poverty or disease may force the child from its father's arms, but this young man bore no marks of either. He was well-dressed and well-looking, and, as far as appearances go, perfectly able to take care of all four of his children if he had been willing to devote himself to them. Good people, you have so much pity for the young man! I have very little. I am a hard-hearted, evil-minded traveller, and it looks to me full as likely as anything else that he is merely clearing the decks for another engagement!
I think my old friends have reached the same conclusion, though probably by a different route; for when my ears are open again, the man is telling an up-country story to his sympathizing fellow-travellers. "There 's a man up in our town been courtin' a woman some time. She 's a school-teacher and smart. She was a widow and had two children. He's got two children, too. Boys. One on 'em drives an omnibus,
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t'other sells papers and sich. Well, they take care o' themselves. When the thing had been goin' on perhaps a year, an' he thought he 'd got her pretty well hitched on, he kind o' talked round about the children,--asked her if she could n't put 'em out somewher. Well, the amount of it was he wanted her, but he did n't want the children. Well, I tell ye, she rared right up, and told him he might go to the devil! She wa'n't goin' to sacrifice her children for him nor no other man! Bet ye, he come to time quick!"
A good story if he had only stopped there, but he did not. He rubbed his hands and laughed, and shuffled his feet, and then added in an indifferent tone, as if it were of no especial moment, only a thing to be expected,--"And they're married now!"
At midnight we leave the land and trust ourselves to the Great River. The steamer Daniel is our doom, and a very slatternly and unmannerly damsel she turns out to be. In the first place, the boat is crowded and we can get no state-rooms, not, however, because of the crowd, but of our blind confidence in a mendacious
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officer. In the next place, the fire in the stove is low, and the big, swaggering boy rekindles it with kerosene. The passengers shivering around the stove remonstrate, (not I,--I would rather run the risk of being blown up,) but he laughs, and says it is nothing but a little water, and gives another flirt to his can. Half a dozen times, at least, the kerosene can is brought forward, and the oil, not poured, but flung upon the fire. The flames flare out of the door and leap half-way up to the ceiling. A man appeals to one of the officers, who says there is no danger. All the talk about kerosene exploding is nothing. It is harmless as water. They have always used it, and never had any trouble. In spite of oil and wood, we are wretchedly uncomfortable. There are draughts everywhere, and we take violent colds. The way they open state-rooms on board the Damsel is to boost a boy to the top of the door, then make him wriggle through the ventilator, a somewhat prolonged process, and loose the fastenings from the inside. At least, that is the way I saw it done, and an edifying spectacle it is. The table is set with a warm, greasy abundance. There is an indefinable sham splen-
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dor all around, half disgusting and wholly comical. The paint and gilding, the velvet and Brussels, the plate, and the attendants show bravely by lamp-light, but the honest indignant sun puts all the dirty magnificence to shame. The crew are negroes, ragged, filthy, roistering, insubordinate, inefficient, and profane to the last degree. The orders are noisy, wordy, and undignified, given as a rollicking boy might order his comrades over whom he had not command, rather than as an officer to his men. The negroes re-issue them one to another with comments, questions, and expletives, and obey them in their own time and way. Wrestling, fighting, and swearing are their business; running the boat their interruption. The luggage and freight are their playthings, which they pull and kick about with a more hearty good-will than they take to anything else. Five men make the noise of a hundred, and possibly do the work of one. Repeatedly we get aground, and are pushed off with poles. The only wonder is that we get on at all with such utter recklessness and mismanagement. All the while our Floating Palace is unspeakably dirty, and we assimiliate to it more
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and more. These evils are entirely unnecessary, or I should not speak of them. The inconveniences of real frontier life may make a part of its attractiveness; but here is no frontier life; here are simply three days of vile discomfort that might just as well be delight, were it not for gross and wanton negligence or cupidity, or both. When we came back down the river we came in the steamer Chippewa (I think was the name), run, I believe, in opposition to the regular railroad line. It made the distance in less than half the time. The fare was three dollars less than that of the Damsel. The boat was clean, the crew so quiet that there hardly seemed to be any crew, and the voyage an unalloyed pleasure. It was simply that, in the one, all things were done decently and in order; in the other, all things were done indecently and in disorder. In the one case a little attention was shown to the comfort and safety of the passengers; in the other, both seemed to be left quite out of the account.
I suppose that the present style of railway management is just as good for the healthy development of a country as any other, or wise and energetic men who desire the development of a
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country would change it. People, it is found, will trvel, whether they trvel comfortably or uncomfortably. If a man desires to go West to make his fortune, he will go, whether he is treated with civility or incivility on the road, whether his carriage be warm or cold, and his surroundings clean or unclean. And as it is, perhaps, cheaper on the whole for a corporation to disregard these small matters than it is to regard them, probably there is no use in saying anything about them. But though in the struggle for life one cannot stand upon trifles, it is very certain that in travelling for pleasure one's opinion of a country is largely influenced by just these trifles. And very justly too, for it is to regard them, probably there is no use in saying anything about them. But though in the struggle for life one cannot stand upon trifles, it is very certain that in travelling for pleasure one's opinion of a country is largely influenced by just these trifles. And very justly too, for it is in little things that civilization shows itself. It is the finger-nails rather than the fineness of the broadcloath [sic] by which you judge the man. Barbaric splendor may consort with barbaric rudeness. A journey from the sea-coast to the interior shows plainly enough whence come those unpleasant books which British tourists have from time to time written about America. To a foreigner, the temptation to ridicule and vilify a country which lays itself so fearfully open to
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ridicule and vilification must be wellnigh irresistible. He may feel that it is no more than strict poetic justice for him to take out in fun what has been taken out of him in fare. Moreover, the disagreeable traits are thrust directly and continually upon his notice, are perpetually interfering with his personal comfort, while the excellences are more remote and abstract, and as most travellers are superficial and selfish, like the rest of us, we get irritable and irritating books, and much bad blood. But to a countryman it is too serious a matter to be made a jest of. It involves personal shame and blame. I do not know how our own compares with other countries; we may be on a higher plane than any in the Old World, but for all that our plane is low. The foulness of some--of many--of the steam-cars was such as one shudders to remember. Many of the slips it was impossible to enter, so filthy had the floor been made by their previous occupants. Even when you were able to secure a decent one, it would often happen that the nasty habits of the men around would render your position absolutely sickening. Railroad companies have instituted the smoking-car
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and the ladies' car,--very good as far as it goes. But the ladies' car is not reserved for women. Men are allowed to enter it if they accompany women. I suppose it was assumed that a woman would be the man's guaranty for good behavior. Pity it is not so; but, spite of wife or child, men bring with them their unclean lips and defile a whole car, while a man of perfect purity, if he happen to be alone, must be shut out into what horror of great darkness the imagination fails to portray. If, instead of a ladies' car, we could have a clean car, the arrangement would be far more agreeable.
Nor should I say that the railroads of the West are characterized by the civility of their servants. I should say quite the contrary, were it not that generalization on data so imperfect as mine is worthless, even if its statements happen to be true. Moreover, civility is perhaps not altogether a matter of latitude and longitude, but of individuals and even of moods as well. Perhaps a Western man travelling in the East might make the same remark concerning Eastern railroads that I should be inclined to make concerning his. The fault is not so much an aggressive
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incivility as a lack of civility,--an indifference to the common courtesies which distinguish savage from civilized life. No reasonable person would demand so much attention as some conductors give. I remember one, on the road between Cleveland and Toledo, who looked after his passengers as if they had been his family, taking us from a cold to a warm car, seeing that wet shawls and wraps were thoroughly dried, bringing in his books to study out the most desirable routes, and finally burdening himself with all the feminine hand-baggage he could carry, in aiding our passage from his own to another train. There was another conductor on the train from Chicago to Indianapolis,--a man whose good-nature was something noteworthy in life, not to say a steam-car. His patience and benevolence were inexhaustible. It was a regularly recurring pleasure to see his beautiful face come shining through the car. He rendered no especial, tangible service, but he was interested and friendly. When he took your tickets it was as if he had given you the right hand of fellowship, and sworn to stand by you through thick and thin. I saw him afterwards when off duty. He came into the train
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and met his family,--a pretty, lively, loving little woman, two little girls, and a baby,--and he held the baby all the way, and played with it, and chatted with his wife, and looked as happy as he deserved to be,--and she looked as happy as the wife of such a man should look. And I sat behind them, and thought, if I were the Pope, I would sprinkle holy water over them, and lay my hand on their heads and pronounce a benediction!
But such conductors are a gift of the gods. We may welcome them when they come, but not clamor for them when they are withheld. Yet surely it is not unreasonable to ask that conductors shall be able and willing to give information as to times and ways of trvel on their own roads. There are often points concerning the arrival and departure of trains, which materially affect a person's plans, and which a conductor might settle in two minutes,--in ten seconds. Yet, not unfrequently, questions are so imperfectly and unsatisfactorily answered, that they might as well not be answered at all. For instance, we are discussing whether we shall stop in Chicago for the night, or go through to
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Milwaukee. We appeal to the conductor to know if we change cars in Chicago. "We do," is the hurried reply, with such a noli me tangere air, that no ordinary valor can brave another question. After settling down for a night's ride, we learn by chance that not only do we change cars at Chicago, but stations also, and moreover the train arriving at ten in the evening does not leave till six in the morning; so that we can get neither a night's sleep nor a night's travel, and are obliged as the next best resort to be set down in Mudhole. It never was my way to suffer in silence, and it is a satisfaction to know that one conductor has been enlightened as to his duty in such cases; but if one tenth part of the time which he spent afterwards in explaining why he had not answered the question properly had been spent in answering it at the time of it, there would have been a good deal of trouble saved on both sides. As I said, this seems not to proceed from any premeditated incivility, but from mere inattention to or unconsciousness of the proprieties of the situation. Doubtless, a conductor, from New Year's to Christmas, is asked many unnecessary and silly
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questions. Doubtless, also, many questions which seem to him unnecessary and silly are not so to the questioner. But no matter if they are. We are told by high authority that the fools are three out of four in every person's acquaintance, so that a large majority of the travelling public are foolish, and as railroads are theoretically, at least, for the convenience of the public, and not for the emolument of the stockholders, provision should be made for any questions which travellers ask in good faith, as necessary to the successful prosecution of their journey. To a person who goes into Chicago every day, it may be impossible to conceive a fatuity so great as not to know that Chicago is a point of departure, and not a mere place of transit; yet such fatuity does exist, and should be taken into account. This one thing, it seems to me, is very apt to fall out of sight not in the West alone, that railroads are created for people, and not people for railroads; and that the officers of a railroad are public servants and not irresponsible monarchs.
In nearly all the cars in which we travelled, there was a stove and a fire, indicating an original benevolent intention; but the fire was constantly
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going out,--three times for example in one trip from one to twelve in the evening. The agreeable and healthful consequence was a temperature ranging from the red-hot shimmer of an air-tight to the shivering zero of no fire at all,--a change not beneficial to the strong, but absolutely dangerous to the weak. There are usually arrangements for a degree of ventilation, but it seems to be nobody's business to see that these arrangements are carried into effect. We entered a car one morning from the fresh stinging air. We found a hot fire, a full carriage, every ventilator shut, and, of course, a horrible condition of things; but nobody seemed to mind it. It was suggested to the conductor that the ventilators might be opened, "Why, yes, certainly, he should think so," and he sprang at them briskly with great good-nature. But they resisted his efforts with a stubbornness that indicated long disuse. He called in the brakeman; one or two passengers volunteered their services; and, arming themselves with poker, and shovel, and billets of wood, they made such a vigorous onset that the ventilators soon gave way, and we had a fine current of sweet air rushing through the car, and
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driving out the sluggish death that had been slowly settling down upon us.
As we were approaching Chicago, one of these omnibus men who go through a train seeking whom they may devour scattered some of his tickets to our party. When he had gathered them up again, he coolly remarked that he would take the other ticket. There was no other ticket forthcoming. He insisted that one had been retained. He was assured to the contrary, but he "believed what he saw with his own eyes." What he saw with his own eyes was an Eastern horse-car ticket, of the same color as his own, in my half-open purse. Willing to satisfy him, I showed it to him; and invited him to examine the purse for himself. I think he saw that he was wrong, yet had not the manliness to apologize, and refused also to look into the purse, but muttered his belief again. Now I suppose one might survive a suspicion of theft. Every man has his price, but no one likes to be rated cheaply. Had it been a ticket to a coach and eight cream-colors, with footmen and outriders, I might have been supposed actuated by laudable ambition, though pushed somewhat to extremes; but to
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be thought capable of stealing a ride in a cold, rickety, jolting omnibus, with a snarl of straw on the floor, was not to be tolerated. People speak about losing temper, as if all you can do with your temper is to lose it. But if, instead of losing temper you use it,--bring it up in full force, hold it well in hand, and hurl it straight and steady at your foe, it becomes a very effective weapon. I know that it made of my ticket-man a ticket-of-leave man in an incredibly short space of time. When the conductor came in he was regaled with the narrative. It was the same odd, droll, good-natured little man who led the charge on the ventilators. He seemed to think it a wondrous good joke, laughed an irresistible, deprecating, hearty little smothered laugh, and hoped we did not blame him. O no! but what was the man's name? Well, he was sure he did n't know. He came on the cars. Believed they called him Bob. That was all he knew about him. It was suggested to him whether his train would not make quite as good time without such bobs appended,--which seemed to amuse him mightily. But if nameless and irresponsible Bobs are to be allowed to infest
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trains and insult passengers at will, it is a question whether we shall not introduce the summary Southern style of procedure. A friend from South Carolina had the misfortune to lose his ticket. To our condolence, he replied quietly that he should not pay again.
"But what will you do?"
"Tell the conductor I have lost it."
"And suppose he does not believe you?"
"O, I shall knock him down."
Now we shall have railroads properly conducted. The safety and comfort of the passengers will no longer be left to the character or caprice of individuals, but the conduct of trains will be reduced to a system, of which civility will be a component part. Placidity of temper will be tested in competitive examinations. Due notice will be given before trains leave those edifying stations at which they are announced to stop from five to twenty minutes "for refreshments," and from which they are accustomed to slip away at their own sweet will, without so much as saying, "By your leave." Classification will be so strictly enforced, that even the engine will puff his smoke on the inoffensive side, and no hint
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of anything obnoxious shall come betwixt the wind and our nobility. So potent is the pen over the passions and the prejudices of corporations!
All this while we are sailing--when we are not aground--up through storm and night, the wild darkness and the gray morning twilight. We are a rough set on board this wretched Damsel. We have velvet chairs, but unwashen hands. We huddle around the stove, a dark, dingy cloud. The woman next me is a study,--short, sinewy, brown, with full, protruding mouth, prominent dark teeth, very conspicuous when she talks, and she talks much and confidentially to me. She wears a man's dark straw hat, with a red plaid ribbon tied around it in a home-made bow. She looks like a man herself, and acts not unlike a man, for she has been smoking her pipe vigorously on deck. She tells me she is going up into Minnesota somewhere, to visit her father and mother. He is over ninety years old. Her sister and daughter are also married, and living there, and want her to come; but her man wants her to go up and see how she likes it before he buys. Her father says he misses her. He ain't no company now
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to smoke with, and he misses Ann. When he lived with her they often used to get up in the night and have a smoke, and then go back to bed again. She has to smoke on account of her stomach. She talks about her boy, and is afraid he did n't get no sleep last night, and will be sick this morning. Her "boy" soon comes to view, a black-bearded lounging fellow, six feet high at least, and that little woman talks to him and of him as if he were only five years old. She is captain of her ship beyond question. She presently draws a small bottle from her pocket, takes a draught, and then, on hospitable thoughts intent, offers it to me. She says it is essence of peppermint, and she has wind in her stomach, and if she did not drink it she should faint. I am afraid I shall faint if I do. So I assure her I am perfectly well, and will not draw upon her small resources. She takes it in good part, and sticks to me through the journey with her pipe, and her plans, and her pa, and her exposed teeth. Altogether she impresses me as a good-natured fiend,--a little grinning, social imp,--as I tell her in mental apostrophes while listening to her confidences. A horrible woman. A woman? A beetle. A cockroach.
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There is an unhappy child shrieking around the cabin. His straight yellow hair hangs over his forehead nearly to his eyes. He has a cold, cross, red face, raw nose, and his little bare legs above his low stockings are mottled and red. There is a possible heaven in his blue eyes, but he is going away from it every day under the guiding hand of his mother. I suppose the poor child is really wretched from cold; but he has a bad disposition besides, which manifests itself in incessant squalls, with or without provocation. I see him presently stray to the outside, and climb up the guards of the boat, and I rather hope he will tumble overboard. Certainly he might go farther and fare worse. There is a young Middle-State woman, tall, and slender, and shrewd, with a pleasant, liquid voice, an easy way of meeting everybody, and very indistinct notions of geography. She makes acquaintance right and left without leaving her arm-chair. She supposes the captain found travelling here very different during the war from what it is now. No, not materially, he says. But he must have had a good many shots from the guerillas! And she is not startled out of her easy self-satisfaction at
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being told that the guerillas never ventured up into the wilds of Wisconsin. We have a company of nuns on board, and they are by far the most intelligent and refined-looking people here. For one thing they are clean, and the eye dwells delighted and refreshed on their pure muslin and black and drab. Moreover they are quiet, and they are pretty; they ask no questions, they move about softly, their faces have repose. They are a little oasis in this desert. Sometimes a priest comes up,--there are three or four on board,--and they chat pleasantly and laugh heartily. There is a party of German girls going up to St. Paul, healthy, happy, homely, and no dirtier than the rest of us. They soon get on exceeding good terms with the servants, and I hear a couple just on the other side of the door arranging a correspondence. Flirt away, my hearties. Dan Cupid is no disdainer of humble folk, and disports himself as gayly among barnyard fowls as among birds of paradise.
But the twilight seems to be departing. There is a glimmer as of sunlight on the ceiling. We quickly take the hint, wrap ourselves warmly, and go on deck. Is it magic? Is it miracle? The
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dirty Damsel disappears, crew and cargo. At once and forever we know the Great River. Father of Waters, King of Waters, God's own hand has set the crown upon his forehead, and he reigns by right divine. So grand, so still, there is no speech nor language. Through night and storm we have sailed into another world. Here walk the Immortals,--nay, it is as if God himself--Jehovah of old--came down to tread these solitudes, and the hush of His awful presence lingers still.
God is here, but it is man's world. More sweet in its beauty, more solemn in its sublimity, more exultant in its splendor, than imagination ever conceived,--for us it is and was created. No puny meddlers we thrid this glorious wilderness, but heirs we enter upon our estate, all breathless with the first unfolding of its magnificence. Up the broad, cold, steel-blue river we wind steadily to its Northern home. No flutter of its orange groves, no fragrance of its Southern roses, no echo of its summer lands, can penetrate these distances. Only prophecies of the sturdy North are here,--the glitter of the Polar sea, the majesty of Arctic solitudes. The
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imagination is touched. The vision becomes continental. The eye looks out upon a hemisphere. Vast spaces, lost ages, the unsealed mysteries of cold and darkness and eternal silence sweep around the central thought, and people the wilderness with their solemn symbolism. Prettiness of gentle slope, wealth and splendor of hue, are not wanting, but they shine with veiled light. Mountains come down to meet the Great River. The mists of the night lift slowly away, and we are brought suddenly into the presence-chamber. One by one they stand out in all their rugged might, only softened here and there by fleecy clouds still clinging to their sides, and shining pink in the ruddy dawn. Bold bluffs that have come hundreds of miles from their inland home guard the river. They rise on both sides, fronting us bare and black, layer of solid rock piled on solid rock, defiant fortifications of some giant race, crowned here and there with frowning tower; here and there overborne and overgrown with wild-wood beauty, vine and moss and manifold leafage, gorgeous now with the glory of the vanishing summer. It is as if the everlasting hills had parted to give the Great River entrance
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to the hidden places of the world. And then the bold bluffs break into sharp cones, lonely mountains rising head and shoulders above their brethren, and keeping watch over the whole country; groups of mountains standing sentinel on the shores, almost leaning over the river, and hushing us to breathless silence as we sail through their awful shadow. And then the earth smiles again, the beetling cliffs recede into dim distances, and we glide through a pleasant valley. Green levels stretch away to the foot of the far cliffs, level with the river's blue, and as smooth,--sheltered and fertile, and fit for future homes. Nay, already the pioneer has found them, and many a hut and cottage and huddle of houses show whence art and science, and all the amenities of human life, shall one day radiate. And even as we greet them we have left them, and the heights clasp us again, the hills overshadow us, the solitude closes around us. All day long we pass through this enchanted wilderness. Frowning and smiling, advancing, receding, hill whispers to hill its secret over our heads; now across the valley-lands between it calls aloud, and now it lifts its forehead to the
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sky, rapt in its eternal thought. And the brilliance of clear mid-day, the golden haze of the afternoon, the lingering softness of twilight, and the moon's unclouded brightness woo out every form and shade of beauty, reveal every line of grandeur, deepen all the glooms and the heighten all the lustres, till the soul is bewildered and wellnigh overpowered. Then welcome, brooding shelter of the night, kindly darkness that soon shall shape and shadow overflow! Welcome, sweet familiar twinkle of the old stars, beckoning us back to the world we knew before,--more home-like and more near than the home-lights gleaming on these strange shores!