Chapter VII: Part 7

I think I have told you already the sort of royal progress I am making. Some principal citizen always comes to the station to meet us in his carriage, books our luggage by the express (an admirable institution which saves you all the trouble with luggage), drives us up to his house, lodges us in the best rooms, has all the best folks in the neighbourhood to meet us at breakfast, dinner, tea, takes us to the sights of the neighbourhood, keeps all his servants out of sight when we are going, so that we can’t give any one a penny or even pay our washing bills, and finally sends us and our luggage down to the next boat or steamer, when we are booked already probably by a new friend. Certainly I never saw, heard of, or could imagine anything like the hospitality. It is no doubt in some degree, and in individual cases, owing to the part I took during the war in England, but Democrats as well as Republicans have been amongst our warmest hosts; in fact, I am fairly puzzled, and allow the tide at last to carry me along, floating down it and enjoying everything as well as I can. I think in my last I got to our start from Boston. No! was it? At any rate, I wrote about our day at Concord, I know, as to which I shall have to tell you more when we meet. After we got home Miss Mabel rushed upstairs, got into her photographing dress, the quaintest turn-out you can conceive, and commenced a series of groups, etc., which you shall have specimens of when I get back. She is endless fun; has the most arch way of talking to her father as “sir” every now and then; is charming with her stepmother; and altogether as bright a bit of life about a house as you would meet on a summer’s day. I parted from Lowell and his home feeling that the meeting had been more than successful. For these eighteen or nineteen years I have revelled in his books--indeed, have got so much from them and learned to love the parent of them so well, as I imagined him, that I almost feared the meeting, lest pleasant illusions should be broken. I found him much better than his books. We had a pleasant three hours’ rail to Newport, finding Mr. Field, a Philadelphian banker, at the station with his carriage. We were friends at once, for he is a famous, frank, goodlooking, John Bullish man of the world, who has travelled all over Europe and retained his new world simplicity and heartiness. He drove us all round the fashionable watering-place, the description of which I must postpone or I never shall get through (as we say here). His cottage, as he calls it, in accordance with the fashion here, is a charming villa, on the most southern point of Newport, close to the rocks on which the grand Atlantic roll was beating magnificently as we drove up.

Saturday morning a lot of men came to breakfast, including Colonel H------, the officer who had been the first to volunteer to take command of negroes in Virginia, before the New England States even began mustering them. I was delighted to make his acquaintance, as I knew his name in my anti-slavery standard as a real, advanced Radical, and I was anxious to realise that type of Yankee of which I had only seen Lloyd Garrison in England. He was very fascinating to my mind, and the most refined man in manners and look I have yet met, but I should say decidedly a cracked fellow in the good sense. We adjourned to the spouting rock, just at the point where the surf was beating gloriously, and as I continued talking with H------, of course I got a ducking by getting too near this rock, which is hollow underneath, so that it sends a spout of water up like a huge whale some second or two after the breaker hits it. The sight was superb, and well worth the payment of an unstarched waistcoat and shirt. We got home, and I changed at 11.30 or thereabouts, and when I came in to dress for dinner there was my waistcoat, washed and starched, on the bed. Mrs. Field had heard me say in joke that I should be out of white waistcoats. We went to the Episcopal Church on Sunday morning and had a good sermon of a quarter of an hour, sitting in the pew of an acquaintance of the previous day, a Mrs. H------ of New York, who drove us about in her handsome carriage, and insisted on giving me two books--one being extracts from Lincoln’s _Speeches and Letters_, which I am very glad to have. In the evening we were sent down to the pier, where we were picked up by the most magnificent steamer ever seen in the world, I should think, and by six next morning were running along the north river, one of the many entrances by sea to New York harbour. The approaches to the city are superb, but the first view of it disappointed me, the buildings along the water-side being for the most part poor and almost mean. We found Hewitt’s carriage waiting, he being out of town for his Sunday, and drove up through Broadway and Fourth Avenue to his house, which is a splendid roomy one, belonging to his father-inlaw, Mr. Cooper. The dear old gentleman, a hearty veteran of seventy-nine, is the founder of the Cooper’s Institute, a working-man’s college on a large scale. He has spent nearly a million dollars upon it, and it is certainly the best institution of the kind I have ever seen. He is one of the most guileless and sweetest of old men, and I shall have much to tell you of him. Mr. Hewitt, my friend, who is in partnership with him, and his wife and family live with the old gentleman. Here I found free admission to the four best clubs in New York--the Union League, the Century, and even the Manhattan, a democrat club of which Hewitt is a distinguished member. The nice brisk woman in the house gave us an excellent breakfast, and we started for the town about eleven. One of the first places I went to was Roebuck’s store, where I found him very flourishing. But I can’t go on to catalogue our doings or shan’t get this off. As very few folk are in New York, we are off to-day to West Point up the Hudson, where we stay for a military ball to-morrow night; on Friday we get to Niagara, and then away west, certainly as far as Omaha, to see prairies, etc., and possibly to San Francisco. We must be back here or in New England on the 1st of October, on the 6th is the Harvard Memorial ceremony, laying the first stone of their memorial building, on the 11th I am in for an address, and after that shall set my face homewards. I have looked at myself in the glass at your request and believe I look fabulous.

Garrison’s Landing, opposite West Point, Friday, 9th September 1870.

I already look wistfully along the pages of my pocket-book which intervene between this and the beginning of November, and feel very like bolting home instead of going west. The only moments I have for writing are early (it is now 6.30) or after I come up to bed, as the dear, good folk provide occupation for all the rest of the time. Well, we got to New York on Monday mornings by the East River, and left it on Wednesday afternoon by the Hudson, having, I think, seen it superficially, so that I should retain a clear idea of it if I never saw it again. We dined on Monday at the Union League Club, Tuesday at the Manhattan, going in afterwards to the Century--all three clubs as complete, I think, as ours and open to strangers in every corner. We left New York on Wednesday afternoon with Mr. O------, Chairman of the Illinois Central Railway, who has this delicious place on the slope of the mountain opposite West Point. As usual there were carriages at the pier, and all trouble, expense, etc., has been taken off our hands. Mrs. O------ is the nicest Yankee lady we have seen (except Mabel), like Mrs. Goschen in face and charmingly appreciative. Her husband, staunch American, about fifty. The more fanatic Americans they are the more they seem to like to do for me, and as I spend the greater part of my time in showing them how mistaken they must be in their views as to England, else how is it that we didn’t interfere and get to war, I feel I am doing good work. They take to me, I can see, apart from my proclivities.

I am obliged to give up poor old Pam, the mercantile community of England, and the majority of the aristocracy; but when I have made a Jonah of these, I always succeed in bringing these good, simple, candid, impulsive fellows to admit that we did them no bad turn in their troubles. We leave to-day for Niagara, and during the next fortnight I hardly know how or when I can write.

Clifton Hotel, opposite Niagara Falls, 11th September 1870.

I am glad to find that I shall be able to get off this one more letter to you by regular post before we plunge away west for nearly a fortnight. I do so long for you every now and then when there is something to see which you would specially appreciate, not only then as you well know, but then specially, in the glorious reaches of the Hudson near West Point, for instance, where you have all the beauty of the Scotch Highlands, with a hundred well-kept rich men’s houses, and a monster hotel or two crowning some high point,--an excellent substitute, in my view, for the ruined keeps of robber barons on the Rhine,--and endless steamers and sloops, with their white sails and great tows, as they call them, of a dozen large flats lashed together and bringing down lumber and corn from the west, passing up and down; but, above all, last night, when we went under the light of a glorious full moon and saw these mighty falls from above, and then went down some 200 steps, and along under the overhanging cliffs, till we actually got under the end of the horse-shoe fall on the Canadian side, and looked up and saw the moon through the falling water. Just as we descended, an American gentleman and his daughter and an English girl with them came up, to whom we gave our seats, and when we came back they were still there, so we told them what we had seen and offered to escort them down. They were delighted, and “papa” did not object, so down we all went, and so we had a second treat behind the cataract, and being with these ladies made me horribly wishful to get you there. The girl (Philadelphian) was very pretty and simple, so I handed her over to R------, and gave my arm to the English one. To-day we went across the ferry amid a great turbulence of waters, and looked up at the descending rivers, to the English Church on the opposite side. An American bishop preached, and afterwards we walked on Goat Island, above and between the two falls, and saw such effects of rainbows, and lilac and green and purple and pure white surges, as it is utterly impossible to describe, but I shall try to do it by the help of photographs when I get back. Then we had a bath in the rush just above the Falls; you have a little room through which a slice some four feet wide of the water is allowed to rush; you get in at the side, in the back water, and then take hold of a short rope fixed close above the rush, and let the waters seize and tear at you, which it does with a vengeance, tugging as if it would carry off your legs and pull you in two in the middle. You can get out of it in a moment by just slewing yourself round, and the sensation is marvellously delicious. I forget whether you had one of the baths at Geneva, where the blue Rhone rushes through at about a third of the pace. That is the only bath I ever remember the least to be compared to this above Niagara. But let me see, I hadn’t got farther with you than our chateau on the Hudson. Well, we left it on Friday after breakfast at about nine o’clock, and travelled away steadily with only twenty minutes’ stop at Albany, where we dined, and a quarter of an hour at Rochester. The greater part of the road was decidedly pretty, especially the earlier part which ran along the banks of the Hudson. We stopped at Rome, Syracuse, and Utica amongst other places, all busy, stirring places apparently, with their streets all converging on and open to the line of rail. Every one has to look out for themselves, and you get in and out of the trains at your own peril. I have heard of very few accidents, and I don’t believe there are as many as with us; but I should think a good many people must often be left behind, as the train starts without any signal, leaving you to climb in as you can, an easy enough feat for an active man, but scarcely for any one else. This journey was our first really long one; we did not get to Suspension Bridge, where we slept, till past midnight, but I didn’t find it very tiring. There was a drawing-room car on, but I would not go in it. The other cars are quite comfortable enough, and I like seeing and being with the people, though they continue to be the most silent and reserved of any race I have ever been amongst. Next day (Saturday) just glanced at the Falls; we ran round the west of Lake Ontario, by Hamilton, to Toronto, the capital of the province, and were exceedingly struck and pleased with the signs of vigour and prosperity both in the country and cities. The farming is certainly cleaner and better than on the American side of the lake, and the towns don’t lose by comparison with those of the same size over the border. At Toronto I found Dymond, one of my best Lambeth supporters, in the Globe Office, and we called on one of our _Peruvian_ acquaintances, who regaled us with champagne in his huge store; we went over the law courts and other public buildings, dined, and then on to the boat to cross back to Niagara. It is about two hours’ sail and very pleasant. There were quite a number of young and pretty girls on board going across for the trip, as you might drive out in a carriage to any suburb. It seems the regular afternoon amusement and lounge, and the heads of families take season tickets which pass all their belongings. There were three Canadian M.P.’s also on board, with whom I got a good deal of useful and pleasant chat; one of them (M.P. for Niagara) induced me to “drink” twice in ginger-ale and brandy, and again in champagne, which was the first instance of that pressingly convivial habit supposed to be universal on this side that I have seen. I am uncommonly glad it doesn’t really prevail, as nothing I detest more than this irregular kind of drinking. The pick-me-up is decidedly one of the most loathsome inventions of a decrepit civilisation. We got to our hotel here, right opposite the Falls, by about six, saw them first before tea and afterwards by moonlight, as I have already narrated. In an hour’s time we start for Chicago. Our late host, Mr. O------, the President of the Illinois Central Kail, one of the greatest of the Western’s system of railways, has followed us here, and is going round a tour of inspection of his line, and to open 150 miles of new way for traffic. So we shall go round in an express train with him, seeing everything in the most luxurious and easiest manner--a wonderful piece of luck. It was his nice wife who persuaded him to come off and do it now at once while he could have us with him. I am sitting at my open window, outside of which is a broad verandah with a magnificent view of the Falls. I am getting what I take to be my last look at them, and for the last time the sound of many waters, the finest to be heard in the world, I suppose, is in my ears. The mid-Atlantic when the waves were highest struck me more, but nothing else I have ever seen in Switzerland or elsewhere comes near this. It is the first great hotel we have been in, and not a bad specimen I imagine. We get heaps of meals, and though the cooking is not all one could wish, there is nothing to hinder your living very well. We are waited on by some fifteen or twenty real darkies--good, grinning, curly-pated Sambos and Pompeys--so, of course, I am happy so far as service goes. Seriously, though, they are much more obliging and quite as intelligent as their white compeers here and in the States.

Storm Lake, 13th. September 1870.

One line from this odd little station, right in the middle of the Iowa prairies, which slope away right out of sight in every direction. It is the highest point between Fort Dodge and Sioux City. Fifteen months ago there were not three settlers’ cabins on the whole 140 miles; now they are dotted along every mile or so, sometimes turf huts, sometimes wooden, with generally a group of barefooted, healthy children tumbling about the doors. We are sitting in the little wooden post-office here, on the walls of which hang maps of the splendid town which is to be run up in the next three or four years, and notices of a meeting of the citizens of Storm Lake to hear the addresses of Captain Jackson Orr, the Republican candidate for Congress of the district, and of Governor G------, who comes to support him. The whole place at present consists of some ten or twelve wooden huts, with two more ambitious buildings running up, one an hotel and the other a big store. The settlers are a fine rough set of fellows, but full of intelligence, and determined to make their place the most important city in the State. It is a most exquisite climate, with a lake four miles by two, in which there are plenty of pickerel, and as we came along in our express train we have put up lots of coveys of prairie hens, like big tame grouse, most delicious eating too. _Express train_, you will look at with wondering eyes. Well, or rather wâàl, as they pronounce it here, that is the explanation of the whole _city_, and accounts for all that is going to happen on this glorious prairie. A line of rail has been _built_ right across it by some enterprising folk in New York, who want now to lease it to the Illinois Central Railway, with which it makes connections at Fort Dodge. We left Chicago yesterday morning, got to Dubuque on the Mississippi by night, travelled all through the night to Fort Dodge, and are on here now fifty-three miles farther inspecting. It is regal travelling. We have two carriages,--one a charming sleeping-car, in which I have a beautiful little state-room, another carriage for dining, etc., equally commodious, all our stores on board, so that we live splendidly, two negro boys to wait on us. O------, the present president, and the vice-president of the line, are our only fellow-passengers, each of whom is as well lodged as I am. We go along as we please, sometimes at forty, sometimes at ten miles an hour, talking to the people at each little log-house station, and enjoying the confines of civilisation in the most perfect luxury. While they are talking about the price of land round here I have just this ten minutes, and find I can fire off this note with some chance that it may get off by the New York boat of Saturday, so that I shan’t lose a post or you a letter.

Fort Dodge, 13th September 1870.

Here we are! September 15, 2 p.m. You will see, if you have got my last from Sioux City, that the above heading is somewhat wild. The fact is, that just as I had written the three first words (in fact, while I was writing them, which accounts for their jerky look), our little train moved on from Fort Dodge and I couldn’t write, even on our superb springs. Now we are at Council Bluffs, opposite Omaha. Why, hang it! here we go again moving on, and I must stop again.

3 p.m.--We only ran three miles and then stopped to lunch and let a Union-Pacific train pass. Now after a famous lunch in our second or commissariat car, I am getting a smoke and a few more lines to you before we are off eastward again. Thank Heaven! after all the wonderful new sights and sensations of the last three and a half days since we left Niagara, I confess to the utmost delight at feeling that we have made our farthest point, and that I am already some three miles plus the breadth of the Missouri River and Omaha City on my way back to you. It is still more than a month before we embark for home (if I can hold out as long); still, we are on our way! However, you must not think that I am not enjoying myself wonderfully. I am, and am also, I hope, good company, for when one is treated like the Grand Turk or the Emperor of Russia, the least one can do is to be pleasant. But if I go on with my sensations, I shall never pick up my narrative; as it is, I shall be obliged to leave thousands of things till we meet, when I do hope I shan’t have forgotten anything. Well, didn’t I leave off at Niagara? We left the hotel in front of the Falls there on Monday morning after breakfast with O----, who had no power except for himself till we got to Chicago; we had been furnished with free passes, and rode in the ordinary cars through Ontario province to Windsor, opposite Detroit. In Canada, again, the difference was at once visible between the two peoples; but I am not at all prepared to admit that the Canadians have the worst of it, certainly not in the roadside cookery, for we had the best joint of beef we have seen since we left home at dinner, and the best bread and butter at tea. At Windsor the train ran quietly on to the huge ferry-boat-steamer, and we had a moonlight passage to the railway station at Detroit. Here we secured berths in the Pullman sleeping car, for which you pay rather more than you would for a bed at a first-class hotel. However, they are an admirable institution, and enable one to get through really wonderful travelling feats. We were at Chicago early next morning, and transferred ourselves directly into our small express train, getting glimpses of the city of forty years, which within living men’s memory was a small Indian station.

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!”