YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY AMERICA REVISITED. AMERICA REVISITED: FROM THE BAY OF NEW YORK TO THE GULF OF MEXICO, AND FROM LAKE MICHIGAN TO THE PACIFIC. By GEORGE AUGUSTUS ^SALA, AUTHOR OF "A 0 CURSE Y DUE NORTH," "PARIS HERSELF AGAIN," "AMERICA IN THE MIDST OF WAR," ETC, ILLUSTRATED WITH NEARLY 400 ENGRAVINGS. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: VIZETELLY & CO., 42, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND. 1882. lokdos : BEADBUKT, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHlTEFRIAES. TO LADY LINDSAY (OF BALCARRES). Dear Madam, It was on board the good ship Scythia, Captain Hains, bound from Liverpool to New York, in November 1879 (and in very rough weather), that I finished a newspaper article commenting on an admirable Address on Art delivered in public by your accomplished husband. The remembrance of that circumstance, and of a hundred kindnesses besides, for which I am indebted to yourself and to Sir Coutts Lindsay, leads me to hope that you will look with some slight favour on this Book, which, with feelings of the sincerest admiration and respect, I dedicate to you. And I am very much your Ladyship's servant, GEOKGE AUGUSTUS SALA. 46, Mecklenbukgh Square, W.C., July, 1882. PKEEACE. King Charles the Second, urbane to the last, apologised to the courtiers who surrounded his death-bed for having been an unconscionably long time in dying ; and " America Revisited " needs, perhaps, to be made the subject of even more profuse apologies, owing to the apparently unconscion able amount of time which has been consumed in bringing the work out. Its publication indeed, has been postponed in conse quence of a variety of circumstances, with the enumeration of which it is not necessary to trouble the reader, beyond hinting that among the causes of its tardy solicitation of public favour has been my own absence from England on journalistic business during a considerable portion of the year 1881 : — first in Russia, whither I proceeded on the morrow of the assassination of the Tsar, Alexander IL, and next in Italy, where I was fain to rest during many weeks towards the close of the year, slowly recovering from a severe illness by which I had been prostrated in Corsica. The delay, how ever, has enabled my publishers to bestow the most elaborate care on the illustrations of these two volumes, which, from the pictorial point of view, will, I hope, be found worthy of 6 2 Vlll PREFACE. the same amount of public encouragement as was bestowed on " Paris Herself Again." With respect to my own share in the work — the writing of it — only a very few words of mine are needed. When I first went to the United States, in the year 1863, I was, com paratively speaking, a young man : — very prejudiced, very con ceited, and a great deal more ignorant and presumptuous than (I hope) I am now. When I landed in America, the country was convulsed by one of the most terrific internecine struggles that history has known. I took, politically, the wrong side ; that is to say, I was an ardent sympathiser with the South in her struggle against the North. In so taking a side, I was neither logical nor worldy-wise ; in short, I approved myself to be what is commonly called a Eool; but my partiality for "Dixie's Land " was simply and solely due to a sentimental feeling ; and at thirty-four years of age it is permissible to possess some slight modicum of sentimentality. My heart was with the South because I came on my mother's side of a West Indian family — and a slave-owning family — ruined by the Abolition of Slavery in the British Colonies ; and although I know per fectly well that I was altogether wrong in what I wrote poli tically concerning "America in the Midst of War," my heart is still in the South :— with her gallant sons and her beautiful daughters ; and the song of " Maryland ! My Maryland ! " yet stirs that heart like a drum, and will not cease so to stir it I hope, until it ceases to beat, for good and all. FREFACE. IX During my stay in the States in 18G3-4, I did not go farther south than Culpepper Court House, in Virginia. In order to penetrate to the extreme South I should have had to run the blockade ; and to do this would not have been agree able to the interests of the paper for which I was writing, the proprietors of which required two long articles a week from my pen. I might, indeed, have gone by sea to New Orleans, over which the Federal flag floated ; but General Benjamin Butler was in command in the Crescent City, and knowing that distinguished soldier and lawyer to be a very " thorough" personage, I thought (remembering that I had written sundry remarkably uncomplimentary articles about him) that it would be on the whole a prudent thing not to give him the chance of hanging me. Very possibly General Butler never heard of my name, and never read a line of what I wrote about him ; but it is always well to be on the safe side. I may fairly say that from the end of 1804, when I returned to England, to the end of 1879, when I revisited America, I was haunted by a yearning to see " the Palms and Temples of the South." That yearning was gratified just after the New Year 1880, when after passing many delightful days in Baltimore, Maryland, in Richmond, Virginia, and in Augusta, Georgia, I found myself in the charming city of New Orleans. In the capital of Louisiana my wife and I spent the Carnival'; and among the polished, amiable, and kindly society of a most interesting and picturesque city we made a host of friends who, X PREFACE. we hope, will not readily forget us. I am sure that we shall never forget them. Equal kindness and courtesy had been shown to us in New York, at Philadelphia, and at Washington, and were after wards extended to us at Chicago, at Omaha and at San Fran cisco. "Railway Kings," "Silver Kings," " Corn Kings," " Pork-Packing Kings," " Hotel Kings," were all kind to us. Photographers took our portraits for nothing ; theatrical managers offered us "the courtesies of the house"; I was made an honorary member of at least twenty clubs between the Atlantic and the Pacific ; we had invitations to balls and receptions innumerable, and even the " interviewers " were merciful to me, and forbore from publishing embarrassing par ticulars touching the total of inches of my circumference of waist, the precise hue of my complexion, or the exact number of front teeth which I had lost. In fact we found friends everywhere. We spent four and a half months in the States, and travelled twenty thousand miles ; and as the Ilecla, one sharp afternoon in April, 1880, steamed out of the Port of New York, the last of our friends who " saw us off" shouted from the wharf, " Good bye ; and be sure to come back again ! " We hope to go back again, if we are spared. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. i. pa an Outward Bound . .1 II. Thanksgiving Day in New York ... ... .19 III. Transformation of New York . 35 IV. All the Fun of the Fair ... 55 V. A Morning with Justice ... 72 VI. Fashion and Food in New York ... 86 VII. On the Cars ... . ... ... 100 VIII. The Monumental City . . . 117 IX. Baltimore come to Life again 133 X. The Great Grant "Boom" ... 144 Xll CONTENTS. XI. PAGE A Philadelphian Babel 157 XII. At the Continental 167 XIII. Christmastide and the New Year . . . . . 182 XIV. On to Richmond . 198 XV. Still On to Richmond . ... 209 XVI. In Richmond . .220 XVII. Genial Richmond 236 XVIII. In the Tombs— and out of them ... 252 XIX. Prosperous Augusta . . .266 XX. The City of many Cows 280 XXI. Pork and Pantomime in the South .290 XXII. Arrogant Atlanta om' LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. I. PAGE ENGRAVINGS. Custom-House Officers examining Passengers' Luggage at New York . Frontispiece. To face page The Cunard Company's Steamship "Scythia" leaving the Mersey for New York 13 The Cunard Company's Steamship " Scythia " at Sea 16 The Bay of New York 23 Making the Thanksgiving Pudding 30 Feeding Turkeys on a large Turkey-farm, Washington Hollow, Dutchess County 32 A Jam in West Street, North River, New York . .... 52 Caricatures of some well-known Types . 72 Rag-Picker's Court, Mulberry Street, New York 81 Female Fashions in New York ... 93 Raking for Oysters in Chesapeake Bay 97 Passengers Dining in a Pullman Parlour Railway Car . . . 114 Negroes on their way to Church . 120 In a Negro Church .... 126 On a Snapping Turtle-farm, near Annapolis : 139 Street. Scene in Philadelphia ... .... . . 144 The Rotunda at Washington 149 The Reception of General Grant at Philadelphia .... . . 160 Soiree given by Mr. G. W. Childs in honour of General Grant . . 172 The Colonnade of a large American Hotel .... . 180 A New York Drinking Bar 183 The East River Wharves, near Burling Slip, New York 189 Recumbent Statue of General Lee, designed for the Mausoleum at Lexington . 217 A Virginia Country Store ¦ 220 XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. To face page A Virginia Railway Station • 222 The Negro Exodus : Old and New Styles .... . . 228 "A Letter from de Ole Man" . 231 A Merry-go-round in the State Fair Grounds at Richmond . . . . 234 A Negro Funeral in Virginia 241 An American Horsebreeding Establishment ... . .243 A Negro Farmer returning from Market ..... . . 245 " Zebras " at Work on Blackwell's Island, New York 255 In the South . 275 ENGRAVINGS IN THE TEXT. Muster of the Crew of the " Scythia " . Acquiring the use of one's Sea Legs . Arrival at the Liverpool Landing Stage Going on board the Tender .... Passengers arriving on board the " Scythia . . . Lowering Luggage into the Hold The Saloon of the " Scythia " An Interesting Invalid Behind the Wheel House ... A Glimpse of New York . Making one's Toilet under Difficulties . " We's stuffed you long enuf " . New York from Fort Wadsworth ... Francesca in anguish-stricken quest of her Saratoga trunk A Roost on a large Turkey-farm Scalding, plucking, and plumping Turkeys for Thanksgiving Day Insane Asylum, Blackwell's Island Distributing Food at the Five Points Mission Washington Square and Fifth Avenue, New York New York from Brooklyn Heights ... Bowling Green and the commencement of Broadway PAGE 1 9 10 12 14 16 17 1819 222!) 313233 34 3538 39 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. XV PAGE Fifth Avenue Hotel, Madison Square • . . ... . . 40 The Corne^of Broad and Wall Streets 41 The Bowery Music Hall ... .42 Elevated Railway, Third Avenue . . . .46 Biddy McFlinn and Father O'Quigly .... 48 The Harlem River .51 Freight for Europe : a New York Wharf . . 52 Portico of Mansion in Fifth Avenue . . 53 View in Central Park .... . .54 A small American Girl-child 55 Arms of the New York Seventh Regiment . . . 58 A former Drum-major of the Seventh Regiment . . 59 The New York Seventh Regiment Armoury . . 60 A French Bakery, New York ... . .61 Hair-dressing Saloon, New York 66 Voting-bureau at the Seventh Regiment Fair . . . .69 Stalls at the Fair of the Seventh Regiment ... .70 The Seventh Regiment Memorial Statue in Central Park . . 71 Delinquents in custody of New York policemen . . .72 Lodging-room in Station-house ... . 74 At Shiloh Shelter ... .... 81 Sleeping arrangements in Shiloh Shelter ... 82 The Joneses and O'Flahertys at Jefferson Court-house . . 83 New York Fashions for Young Ladies .... . 86 Waiting for an Elevated Railway-train after the Mastpierade 89 Eating as a Fine Art ... 91 New York Belles . 94 On the outskirts of Washington Market . . 96 Oyster Boats, New York ... . . . . 96 Shad-fishing in Delaware Bay ... 97 Arrival of Game from the West : preparations in Washington Market for the Holiday Banquets 98 Market Waggons' Stand, New York 99 Inside a Pullman Parlour Car . . 100 Pictorial Railway Ticket. — Liberty Lighting up the World 103 , „ Cleopatra's Needle 104 XVI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. TACE New York and Jersey City Ferry-boat 105 North River Flotilla 106 Young Girls with Bouquets for sale at the Jersey City Terminus . . . . 110 An Artist in Rocks 113 ' Kin I tote yer Luggage, sah ? " 116 Servants' Office in an American Hotel 117 The Darkies' contingent at the Mount Vernon Hotel, Baltimore . . . . 122 The Contemptuous Chambermaid 124 A Fifth Avenue " Turn-out " 125 The Bibulous Loafer .... 128 The Battle Monument, Baltimore 130 View in Druid-hill Park 131 Washington Monument, Mount Vernon Square . . ... 132 Exchange Place, Baltimore 133 A Room in the Brice House 134 Some Members of the old Maryland Club 136 Three speechless Gentlemen in Rocking-chairs 138 Netting Terrapins 139 Shopping in Baltimore Street . 142 Independence Hall, Philadelphia 144 Entrance to Fairmount Park .147 A Sketch in Fairmount Park . 147 Coloured Passengers for the Washington Train . 151 Irish hack carriage driver at the Philadelphia depot 154 At a Street corner in Philadelphia 156 Street in Philadelphia 157 The Journeymen Butchers in the Philadelphia Procession 164 Drive on the Wissaheckon, Fairmount Park 166 Arrival of Travellers at a large American Hotel 167 The Continental Hotel, Philadelphia . . 169 Hall of an American Hotel # .172 Indian Corn at Breakfast .174 Absorbed in the New York Herald j-4 Mode of serving an American Hotel Dinner . j-g An American School of Cookery for Ladies . jyg Umbrella Bureau at the Continental .... jgl LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xvii PAOE New York Youngster posting a Christmas Letter 182 One who isjfi favour of Abolishing the Whiskey Tax 184 A Street arrest in New York 186 One of the Broadway Squad 187 " Doesn't he think he looks nice ? " 190 A Ladies' Favourite . . 191 New Year's Day. — The Morning Toilette 193 ,, The Finishing Touch . 193 The First Caller ...... . . 194 „ The Hostess . . 194 „ Floral Offerings 194 „ A Quiet Flirtation . 195 „ An Unlooked-for Visitor from Texas . . . . 195 „ The Irrepressible Poet . 195 The Italian Count 19G „ A Tete-ti-Tete .... .... 196 Selecting a Banjo .... . . 198 "Ole Dan Tucker" . 199 A Dejected dark Brother 200 A former Domestic Slave . . . 201 Negro Waiter at Wormley's 202 A Guardian Angel .... 202 " Takin' care not to drink 'um youself ! hee! hee! gorry" . . . 203 Breakfasting at Washington 209 Vision of a Foot and Leg in a Pullman Sleeping Car ... . 214 A Glimpse of Stonewall Jackson .... .... 218 Stonewall Jackson as he lay in Death 219 Earthworks on the Chickahominy, near Richmond 219 Coffee and Fried Chicken at a Virginia Railway Station . . . . 220 A Negro Cross-road Lounger ... 222 Injured Innocence 225 Coffee Calcalli and the little Yellow Boy .... 226 Negro Emigrants on their way to Kansas • 227 Westward Ho! - . . 228 Coloured Immigrants at Wyandotte 229 A Dilapidated Darkio ... 230 XV111 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE A "Readjustor" cajoling a Negro Voter 232 The Rev. Josiah Henson : the original of Uncle Tom . . .233 The Nation's Ward . . . . . . . 234 A Negro Labourer .235 The Washington Monument, Richmond . . ... 236 Basking in the Sun . 238 " Quashie rejoicing in abundant pumpkin " . . . 239 Captain John Smith . . .244 The Princess Pocahontas ... .... . 244 Captain John Smith's encounter with the Indians . . 245 View on the James River .... . . 246 The James River from the neighbouring heights . 248 Angling in the James River . . . 249 Waiting for a bite . . . 249 A Negro Flirtation . . ... . .251 American Convicts at work . . . 252 The Libby Prison, Richmond .... 253 Convicts returning from work at Richmond Penitentiary . 254 An Official of Jefferson Market Gaol ... .255 The Tombs Prison, New York .... 259 Buyers examining samples of Cotton . . . 266 Gathering Cotton in Georgia . . 269 A Cotton Gin ... .269 The Transatlantic Brush Fiend . . . .270 Fox-hunting in Virginia . . 272 A Hunting Party in Virginia ... . . 274 A Palm Tree Avenue, South Carolina . .... 276 Tired out ' 279 Monument to the Confederate Dead, Broad Street, Augusta . 280 On the Cow-Catcher . . . qgg Bullock-cart, Augusta ... ... 287 Rolling the Race Track . . . ogg Negro Woman and Children ... _ gon Coloured Juveniles squabbling at Augusta . . 9q0 A Fight between two " woolly headed cusses " interrupted . 901 A Stampede of Mules 2 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. XIX PAGE A broad-brimmed " Tile " 293 A Negro Farmer in a small way ... 294 Lost in admiration 296 At the Augusta Theatre— A British Grenadier pelted by small Yankee boy . 300 View of Atlanta 301 A Sylphide of the South . . 304 The Baggage-Master's Armoury . . . . 305 A Hot Axle-box 306 Kit Carson and Buffalo Bill . . . . 311 *** The publishers of "America Revisited " desire to acknowledge the great obligations they are tinder to Messrs. Harper Brothers, of New York ; to the proprietors of the New York " Daily Graphic ; " and to Messrs. Pettit & Russ, of San Francisco, for the courteous permissions readily given to copy from various publications belonging to them some of the more interesting illustrations contained in the present volumes. The majority of the letters comprised in "America Revisited," were originally published in the " Daily Telegraph " newspaper, and are now re produced by permission of the proprietors of that journal All of them, however, have been carefully revised and considerably amplified ; and the concluding letters from Salt Lake City and Chicago are altogether new ones. MUSTER OF TEE CREW OF THE SCYTHIA. AMEEICA REVISITED. Outward Bound. On Board the Cunard SS. Scythia, at Sea, Nov. 23, 1879. Sixteen years ago, at nine o'clock, on a foggy November night, I went away from Euston Terminus by the famous express popularly termed " the Wild Irishman." We sped to Holyhead, whence we crossed, in what seemed to me a terrible storm, but which was pronounced on competent nautical authority to be " only a capful of wind," to Kingstown. If I remember aright, we contrived to snatch some breakfast in Dublin ; and then we raced away by another express southwards to Cork, and so to 2 AMERICA REVISITED. Queenstown, where, with our luggage, a tender conveyed us on board the British and North American Royal mail steamer Arabia, Captain Cook commanding, bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Boston, United States of America. Well do I mind the ugly, gusty, iron-grey Sunday afternoon when I set foot on the Arabia's deck ; the too copious dinner which was served almost so soon as we had cast off the tender ; the forty-five lady and gentlemen passengers who, with beaming countenances, sate down to the repast ; the four or five gallant yet oscillating individuals who were all that remained at table by the time that the boiled mutton and caper sauce had succeeded the fried sole. How we tossed and tumbled during our ten days' voyage ! What desperate attempts did I make to acquire the use of my " sea legs " — attempts which only resulted, after infinite stagger ing about and "cannoning " against one's fellow-sufferers, in the humiliatingconviction that the legs which had been found tolerably efficient in the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, the Baltic, and the Black Sea, were miserably unserviceable in Mid-Atlantic. How strongly did I " make believe" in November, 1863, that I liked OUTWARD BOUND. M my trip, that I was enjoying myself immensely, and that I felt " awfully jolly : " the pusillanimously concealed truth being that I was intensely wretched, and that had a big fish come that way I should not have very much minded to have voluntarily played Jonah's part by way of a change. Oh ! the wearisome iteration of the remark, " How rough it was last night ! " Oh ! the intolerable monotony of the boiled mutton and caper sauce. There was of course plenty more to eat on board, (indeed you are rather over than underfed in a Cunard steamer) ; yet one always gravitated, one knew not why, to the salubrious yet somewhat insipid diet on which, it is stated, Lindley Murray composed his English Grammar. To be sure the distinguished Anglo-American grammarian (I am wholly unacquainted with the rules laid down in his book) was for many years a chronic invalid, and confined to his room : thus nothing more " choleric" in the way of meat than boiled mutton was allowed him by his physicians. How grateful I was on that first transatlantic voyage for the few hours' respite from pitching and tossing which we enjoyed at Halifax. One shaved, one posted up one's log, one scribbled complacent letters to friends at home, one paced the deck with a confident stride, as though one had been born with " sea legs." Vain pretender ! Next morning you could not have " toed a line " had it been as wide, even, as a church-door. There was a large military garrison — the " Trent affair " was then to the fore — at the Halifax of those days ; and the British " soldier officers " in astracan-lined pelisses, and escorting beauteous damsels in sealskin mantles and pork-pie hats of sable and beaver, came on board to peep at us as folks fresh from strange and fearful ex periences of the melancholy ocean. To me the sea is never sane. It has too much to do with the moon to be quite compos mentis ; and it is always either melancholy mad or raving mad, like Cibber's " Brainless Brothers." To be stared at when you come into port is at once the privilege and the purgatory of those who go clown to the sea in AMERICA REVISITED. ships. Grin and bear it ; that is the only counsel that I have to offer when such a contingency arises. It is your lot to-day ; it may be that of Alexander the Great to-morrow. Console your selves with such a reflection, ye unfortunates, who, landing at Folkestone from the Boulogne packet, are subjected on your way to the Pavilion Hotel to the coarse scrutiny and the ruffianly com ments of "'Any." "'Any "is all over the world. He is the same darkly covered curious Impertinent who asked iEsop what he had in his basket, and got his answer to the effect that the pannier was purposely veiled in order that fools should not know what was within it. He is the Fool of Scripture ; stripes are ap pointed for his back, and the correction of the stocks for his ancles ; but no amount of remonstrance nor of appeals to his better feelings will deter him from thrusting the tongue of vulgar impudence into the cheek of imbecile derision, and mocking his wretched little self of his betters because they happen to be dis hevelled and unshorn, and are looking pea-green after a sea voyage. But there is a Nemesis for " 'Any." Sometimes the creature goes to sea himself and is forced to run the gauntlet of criticism when he lands. Poor wretch ! A trip to Southend on a breezy day will suffice to convert him to the semblance and status of a sponge in a gutter and an oyster at the bottom of a barge. Sixteen years make a considerable slice out of a wayfarer's life. Try to count up the strange and wonderful adventures and misadventures, the hair-breadth 'scapes — were they even from the pedagogue's rod — the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows that were your portion up to the time when you were sixteen — and it seemed, when you had passed that age, that you would never be twenty-one. Sixteen years may mean, even the most precious period of life — the period when our scent is keenest, and our ears are quickest of hearing, and our eyes most widely open in the matter of men and cities — the period when, if we are ever to buy wisdom at the price of experience, we may purchase a vast stock of the first named commodity, OUTWARD BOUND. and lay it by for the invalid days when our travels are over, and we can behold fresh men and fresh cities no more. Any way, sifteen years are a large excision, a terrible shrinking of that " Peau de Chagrin," which all of us carry concealed about us, and the irreparable area of which we generally do our best to diminish every day of our lives. I arrive, not without some sadness — and not without some cheerfulness, too — at the recognition of that fact when, on a foggy November evening in 1879, I find myself standing on the platform of a Pullman car attached to the five o'clock express from St. Pancras to Liverpool. Once more I am bound for the United States ; but my bourne, this time, is New York instead of Boston ; and I am not by any means in so feverish a hurry as I was forced to be in 1863. Then I was on the War path ; now I am in quest of meek-eyed Peace. I mean to take things easily, for I am not a solitary traveller. I have somebody with me to part my hair (she can part it, even in a nor' wester) and take care of my money, and rally me when I am cross. There is no need to tempt the tempestuous billows of St. George's Channel, nor to race across the Green Isle. I am content to miss the chance of hearing those brilliant. repartees, full of mother-wit, for which the outside car drivers of Cork and Queenstown are so justly renowned. I escape the quadruple shipment and tranship ment of luggage. I elude the payment of much backshish to porters, and the possible loss of more valuable temper. I intend quietly to board the Cunard steamship Scythia, at Liverpool, to morrow (Saturday) morning, and I should be very glad to go tran quilly to sleep so soon as I enter my state-room, and to wake no more until the good ship arrives at Sandy Hook. Failing the desirable consummation of some skilful physician inventing a Temporary Animation suspender for the use of ocean steamer passengers, I must take the rough with the smooth and resign myself to the inevitable — the pitching and the tossing, the boiled mutton and the caper sauce. The Pullman car, which I consider for the nonce, as a "' AMERICA REVISITED. cheerful instalment of Transatlantic experiences to come — and a very comfortable and even luxurious instalment it is — conveys us to the great city of the Mersey ; and we find cosy quarters at the Adelphi Hotel — quite another Adelphi to the snug hostelry which I knew sixteen years syne ; tending somewhat to the caravanserai stage of development, with post-office, telegraph offices, hairdressers' shops, lifts, and other innovations on the premises, and excellently well appointed in every respect, and, in particular, providing you with a capital breakfast. Should you be slightly sad on the occasion of the last breakfast which you are to consume in your native land? Is a little melancholy permissible over the muffins ? Is a sigh quite out of place over the kippered herring, or the broiled ham and eggs 1 May you drop one tear into your tea % I think not. When Lord Byron went away from the Island of Naxos, he remarked (in verse) that, although not a tear in sorrow fell, nor a sigh in faltering accents escaped his bosom, the heart within him grew cold at the thought that the shores of Naxos he should never more behold. I utterly and deliberately decline to believe that Lord Byron's heart was affected one way or the other by his departure from Naxos, where his lordship only abode a very few clays, and which is an island mainly noticeable for its abundance of fleas, and for the quantity of resin with which the natives (who arc great rascals) doctor their normally nasty wine, which they still have the impudence to call " the wine of Bacchus " (/cpao-i rov Aiovocrov). I suspect that Lord B. pre tended to be so fond of Naxos, because it was there that Theseus (a strongly Byronic hero) behaved so unhandsomely to Ariadne. I do not know whether probity prevails as a rule on the occasion of every departure of a Transatlantic steamer from Liverpool ; but so far as my observation extends the neighbour hood of the landing stage in that superb city presents on a " Cunard Saturday " the aspect of a Rogue's Paradise and a Carnival of Knaves. The police do their best to keep the brigand baggage porters and the bandit newspaper-vendors in OUTWARD BOUND. ARRIVAL AT THE LANDING STAGE. something approaching tolerable order ; but you must have all your wits about you to avoid being fleeced at every step. The noise, confusion, extortion, and downright cheating going on are nearly as disgraceful as the chronic row outside the railway terminus at Naples. I dare say that the neighbourhood of our own docks in London is almost as unseemly ; but, save when we take the " Ankworks package," or Antwerp packet, as Mr. and Mrs. Jonas Chuzzlewit did, English tourists usually begin their voyage at Charing Cross or Victoria station, and not at the Docks. I have travelled a great many thousands of miles in strange lands in the course of the last five-and-thirty years ; but cannot remember that I ever started on a continental tour by steamer from the Thames save on one occasion, and that was when as a boy of ten the steam-packet Harlequin took me and my sister from St. Katherine's wharf to Boulogne, on our way to school in Paris. We escaped from the Liverpool landing stage condottieri by AMERICA REVISITED. the skin of our teeth, and with the loss of a considerable number of shillings ; and in due time we were bestowed on board the Scythia 's very lively little tender, appropriately named the Satellite. And it was on board that craft, steaming towards DOING OX BOARD THE TENDER. the great ship, that the philosophical side of the melancholy and muffins, the tear and teapot question presented itself to me. It is when there is nobody to bid you good-bye when you are starting on a long voyage that you feel sad. Our hands had been half shaken off our wrists ere we left St. Pancras. Dear' old friends of my youth had clustered round the Pullman car to bid us God speed and good luck. My clear old American friend; " Sam " Ward (then on a short tour in Europe) was among them. But there are half a million people, more or less in Liverpool the Superb, and Nobody that we knew. Stay! OUTWARD BOUND. 9 Sursum corda ! The heart was not to feel cold at the thought of being quite solitary among so vast a multitude. A familiar face, a Smelly hand presented themselves. Everything by the thoughtful politeness of Mr. George Behrend and Mr. Charles MTver had been made " right " for us on board the Scythia. Comfortable state rooms, seat at the captain's table, everything that courtesy could suggest ; nor am I infringing the laws of maritime etiquette, I hope, by tendering here my very warmest thanks to the authorities of the Cunard Steamship Com pany for the constant and obliging attention extended from the beginning to the end of the Scythia' s voyage to two very old travellers. The landing stage was covered with a frosty rime ; it was bitterly cold, and there was a sea-fog ahead when the Satellite left. But soon the air grew milder, the fog cleared off, and the PASSENGERS ARRIVING ON BOARD THE SCYTHIA. 10 AMERICA REVISITED. sun shone gloriously bright ; and a perfectly lovely day made all hearts glad by the time when we found ourselves in the midst of a wilderness of luggage at the gangway of the Scythia. Anxious moments, those, to all of us ! Wherever was the brown leather bag? What on earth — or rather on sea — had become of the dressing case? Had the portmanteau labelled "state 1 xtf^v^^'*"" ^hH »?> y^m^^, ?¦ '-f&W H^'^k 1 "^pjP wJW ' / / / • ¦< / / ••¦ room " got inadvertently lowered into the hold ? That way madness lay. Then you had to find your bed-room steward and " interview " him, and do your best to produce in his mind the impression that you were a rigidly exigent and austere person, always wanting something and sternly determined to have it, but who might possibly be mollified by unflagging attention to your wants into the administration of a " tip " at the conclusion of the voyage. I do not know whether all the 'tween-deck servitors of ocean steamers receive a gratuity from the passengers, but I am certain that the stewards, and especially the stewardesses, deserve one. How would you like to be called up at three o'clock in the morning, and in the middle of a heavy gale, to OUTWARD BOUND. 11 procure oranges and stewed prunes for a lady passenger who does not feel quite so well as she might? We Took in cargo up to the very moment of our departure ; and to the contents of the lighters which swarmed like wasps round our big black hull there seemed to be no end. All kinds of incongruous merchandise did the Scythia engulf in her huge maw. Pig iron and tin plates by the ton Avere hopefully reported by commercially-minded passengers ; and there was cheerful talk of the revival of trade and prosperity which was to inflate to immeasurable proportions. There was a rumour, likewise, that we carried boxes galore of oranges and lemons and grapes. What, indeed, might not be expected to form part of the cargo of a Cunard steamer ? Consider the prodigious quantity of coals which she has to carry. Ponder over the enormous aggregate of her stores, from the flour for her daily fresh-baked bread and pastry to her wines and spirits, her beer, and her aerated waters. We were about a hundred and twenty saloon passengers on board ; while forward, in the steerage, there were about a hundred more. Think on the enormous mass- of daily sustenance required by this great company of hungry people, and the provisions for the officers and crew, and the drinking water for all on board. Admiral Noah's purser may have had a hard time of it, and it is possible that the carnivora on board the Ark may have grumbled somewhat at being temporarily restricted to diet farinaceous or leguminous; but the human passengers in the saloon of that primitive craft were few : whereas, on board a Cunard steamer, the humans are many, while the dumb live stock has altogether disappeared. Each Cunarder, sixteen years since, used to carry a cow for the supply of milk for the saloons, to say nothing of a sheep or two, a pig sometimes, and numerous live poultry ; but since the rumours of rinderpest and pleuro-pneumonia have been rife in . the land, and the passing of the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, the great ocean steamers have carried no live stock for saloon consumption at all. On their return voyages the Atlantic 12 AMERICA REVISITED. steamships carry, however, some live stock on freight, in the shape of numerous barrels of American oysters, the pearls of Fulton market, which bivalves have been consigned by hospitable Americans to their friends in England. The milk on board the . Scythia is all condensed, or otherwise preserved, and we had plenty of it, and to spare. The supply of fresh meat, poultry, and eggs was seemingly inexhaustible, yet everything of that nature had been carefully packed in ice. Thus also was it with the lettuces, the beetroot, and the mustard and cress, of which healthy green-meat we had a regular, copious supply. Thus, too, was it with the tomatoes, and the rich abundance of fruit provided at dessert. As for the celery, it only " gave out," or became exhausted, thirty-six hours before the time forecast for THE SALOON OF THE SCYTHIA. OUTWARD BOUND. 13 arrival in port; and that last-named esculent only failed us owing to the astonishing avidity with which the American ladies on board munched celery at all times and seasons. Is there a belief prevalent in the feminine mind that celery is a preventive of sea sickness ? I have touched on the abundant nature of the " provand " on board a great ocean steamship of the present day, because I have a keen remembrance of what a ship's culinary arrangements were like, not sixteen but six and thirty years ago, when I first undertook a sea voyage of any duration. How astonished would be a saloon passenger at this time of day were he expected to dine at least four times a week on pea-soup, corned beef, fat salt pork — often rancid — and suet pudding without any suet in it ! He would be even more amazed if the captain were in the habit of getting drunk, swearing at his passengers, and threaten ing to put them in irons ; that the biscuit was weevilly, and the butter — when there was any butter — horribly tainted. But the last case of tin plates was dropped by the derrick into the big ship's hold, and I found myself humming " When I beheld the anchor weighed " from Balfe's " Siege of Rochelle." Good-bye, tender Satellite ! Good-bye, superb city on the •Mersey ! We drop down below the docks, " below the church, below the hill, below the lighthouse top." Only in the remote distance, now, we discern the fluttering of tiny white pennons from the tender's deck. Yes ; it is possible to put a deal of heart into a pocket-handkerchief. We wave our handkerchiefs in response to the last salute of friendship. Good-bye, England ! The bell rings for lunch, and there is at once an immense demand for chicken broth, than which there is supposed to be not a finer antidote for the mal de mer. Some experts recom mend dry champagne. Others pin their faith to bottled beer. Yet another section of suggesters boldly proclaim their belief in brandy and soda. There is, on the other hand, a sect of sea- quietists who assure you that all you have to do is to prostrate yourself flat on your face on the sofa in your state-room and 14 AMERICA REVISITED. remain there until the voyage is at an end. But how is an in dividual to remain prone on his bosom for eleven mortal days? The ordinary Atlantic traveller has little in common with the Greek monks of Mount Athos, who, as Gibbon tells us, used to pass years in one position, intently occupied with the outward contemplation of their stomachs. A good many travellers by sea it is true, forced to devote more of their time than is are. pleasant to internal stomachic contemplation. Poor Artemus AVard said that the two greatest difficulties which he had to encounter on a sea-voyage were to keep inside his berth, and outside his dinner ; and most of us have heard the story of the gallant officer in the American army, who when lie landed at New York from the steamer which had brought him from New Orleans, declared that he had " thrown up every thing except his commission." I am on the whole led to believe that the Americans are more subject to sea-sickness than we English are : and this I ascribe less to stomachic disturbances than to their excessive nervous temperament. American ladies as a rule suffer fearfully at sea ; and in many cases they are absolutely deterred from coming to Europe through the dread of sea-sickness. OUTWARD BOUND. 15 Another division of doctrinaires cry out " Nonsense ! hard biscuits, and an occasional nip of green Chartreuse are the only real panlfcea." Meanwhile, among the ladies, there are dark and distant rumours of chloral. And all this while the sea is like a millpond. My own belief concerning sea sickness is that the best way to deal with it is not to think anything about it. If you are going to be sick you will be sick ; and very often the sickness will prove a benefit instead of an evil, and after two or three days' agony will bring you np in the saloon again, smiling and with a prodigious appetite. But the very worst thing which, according to my thinking, a lady or a gentleman can do is to worry him or herself at the commencement of the voyage about what is going to happen, either in the direction of sea sickness or otherwise. All kinds of things may happen. You may be sea sick, or you may be shipwrecked, you may be captured by pirates — piracy is a great deal more prevalent than most people imagine — the ship may take fire ; you may " pig " right into the middle of an iceberg, as the Arizona did ; or you may see — or fancy that you see — the Great Sea Serpent. The best thing, I apprehend, that you can do is to take all things quietly and cheerfully, and to be thankful for all things, especially for the blessing of being in a place where neither news papers, letters, nor telegrams can reach you. The last of those inflictions we underwent at Queenstown on Sunday morning. At two o'clock in the afternoon of that day the Scythia' s Irish tender, also appropriately named the Jackal, came over to us with the mail bags and a few more passengers, who had chosen to under take the great race against time by leaving London on Saturday night and scampering across Ireland. Then there was more waving of pocket-handkerchiefs. Our screw began to make alarming noises — noises continued without intermission during the voyage. The tender Jackal diminished to a very small speck indeed ; the green shores of Ireland gradually disappeared below the horizon. We left the Fastness Rock behind us, and 16 AMERICA REVISITED. were off in right earnest on our way to a land which, when I first visited it, was in the midst of war ; but which I hope to find now in the full enjoyment of peace and returning prosperity. ?..~=Si top!! '"'Ah^i'V BEHIND THE WHEEL HOUSE. THE CUNARD COMPANY S STEAMSHIP SCYTHIA AT SEA. OUTWARD BOUND. 17 Nov. 26. Well, all things must come to an end ; and my third Atlantic voyage 1s over. We have sighted Sandy Hook ; we are in the beauteous bay of New York. The good ship, which in bygone A GLIMPSE OF NEW YORK. days would .have landed her passengers at Jersey City, now swings hetf enormous bulk into a comfortable berth at a pier on the North River in New York itself, and within an easy distance of the chief hotels of the Empire City. Ours has been rather an eventful voyage ; but my log of it would have been much longer had I been able to hold a pen or write a legible sentence during at least five-eighths of that voyage's continuance. We * have had a storm or two — a storm or six, so it appears to my darkened mind— since we left Queenstown. On the Monday- after our leaving the shores of Erin I deferentially asked an ancient mariner who was swabbing the Scythia s quarter-deck what he thought of the weather outlook. The reply of the ancient mariner was oracular in its ambiguity, but still it was 18 AMERICA REVISITED. much to the point: " Them as likes a good dinner?' quoth he," " had better get it to-day." I dined as heartily as I could that Monday ; but *on the' morrow came Chaos. How we pitched! How we tossed! How we rolled ! How we wallowed in the trough of the sea ! How some of us were bruised from top to toe by tumbling about our state-rooms and grovelling under our berths ! But it has all come to an end, and everybody on board the Scythia is shaking hands with everybody else, and exchanging congratula tions upon the " good time " which we have all had. Champagne is flowing ; healths are being drunk ; and from the smoking- room I hear the refrain of " For he's a jolly good fellow." And so say all of us ; and everybody pledges Captain Hains, our gallant and courteous commander. One terror only looms ahead — that of the New York Custom House. I wonder whether I shall lose my temper there, as I did at Boston sixteen years ago. But of my fiscal experiences I shall have to tell you in my next letter. MAKING. ONE S TOILETTE UNDER DIFFICULTIES. " We's stuffed you long enuf. Now you've got to stuff us.'' II. Thanksgiving Day in New York. New York, Nov. 28. Yesterday (Thursday) was Thanksgiving Day in New York; but, ere I discourse concerning that highly important celebration, I must say»something touching the manner in which we passed the terrific ordeal of the Custom House. Throughout the voyage of the Scythia the Custom House had been held up to me as the fearfullest of bugbears ; and it was not only the foreigners on board who were loud in denouncing the grinding tyranny* of the tariff and the inquisitorial proceedings of the douaniers. Those of my fellow-passengers who were Ameri cans were prompt to join in the chorus of indignant disparage ment of the fiscal system at present in force, and to indulge in O 2 20 AMERICA REVISITED. the most dismal prognostications, touching the treatment to which their trunks and themselves would be subjected on our arrival. Ladies turned pale with mingle4 horror and wrath, as they recited how the masterpieces of Worth — the exquisite textile frivolities which they were bringing home to rejoice the eyes, or make envious the hearts, of their female friends withal — . had been ruthlessly dragged out of Saratoga trunks, exposed coram publico on the dockhead, and ungallantly examined under the arms to ascertain whether the dresses had ever been worn ; and how, if they proved to be new, they had been subjected to exorbitant duties. Then uprose shrill complaints that renovated lace and cleaned gloves had been treated as unused articles of wear, and saddled with a charge of sixty per cent, ad valorem ; that the inhuman ¦ Custom House officers would not recognise the right of a lady to import, say, fifteen corsets — best "Duchesse" or " Swanbill" pattern, — eight Parisian bonnets — either of the " Gainsborough," the " Leonardo da Vinci," or the " Galette fleurie " fashion— with, say two dozen pairs of silk stockings, a couple of fans, a sunshade, and a box full of cambric handkerchiefs, trimmed with point d'Alen$on, for her own personal use. "As if toe wanteu to smuggle anything ! As if we were New York milliners and dressmakers, who crossed the Atlantic half-a-dozen times a year in order to smuggle ' dutiable ' articles into the States." At the vehement disclaimer of such an imputation, I noticed that a lady, presumably of French extraction, nodded her head in acquiescence with the sentiments just uttered, but, at the same time, turned very pale. The gentlemen on board were quite as excited, and took equally gloomy views of the prospects before. them. One passenger, presumably addicted to field sports, had brought with him a hunting suit of the most approved Melton Mowbray model, which he hoped to display at a meet at Rock- away Beach on Thanksgiving Day. He would have to " declare" that suit, he muttered. He would have to pay for his " pink," for his buckskins, for his tops, for his velvet cap — nay, even for THANKSGIVING DAY IN NEW YORK. 21 his new hunting crop. There was no way out of it. Articles not "declared," and found to be "dutiable" — the abhorrent word — were liable to peremptory seizure ; and the worst of it was, that it was impossible to bribe the Custom House officers. They are for the nonce immaculate. They are all inherently as incorruptible as the late Lord Bacon ; while, practically, their acts and deeds are, moreover, so narrowly watched by agents from the Treasury Department at Washington, flitting about in plain clothes, lurking round corners in the approved manner patronised by Mr. Chevy Slyme, peeping through chinks in parti tions, and taking notes of all they see, that the subordinate officials of the revenue could not be venal, even if they wished it. I listened to the dolorous forecasts of my fellow travellers and held my tongue, hoping for the best. I have seen some thing of Custom Houses — even to the most rigorous of those detestable anachronisms — and I never came to much grief. I cannot remember, out of the United States, ever to have paid any duty upon anything save on one occasion, when a French douanier at St. Jean de Maurienne, when I had crossed Mont Cenis, mulcted me in the sum of five francs, as an ad valorem duty on a plaster statuette of Garibaldi which I had brought from Turin. As regards smuggling — a recreation to which I never cared particularly to devote myself — it may be held to be like matrimony — a lottery. I remember, in the spring of 1864, sailing from New York to Havana and the Spanish Main ; and prior to our departure, the Custom House officers searched not only the baggage, but the persons of sundry of the passengers who were bound for St. Thomas, and whom they suspected of conveying contraband of war for the use of the Confederates. Symmetrically suspended to the crinoline of one particularly guileless-looking young lady, the female searchers found no less than twelve revolvers ; while in her toilet-bag was a rebel mail, in the shape of a large packet of letters, addressed to prominent personages in the South, and a very nicely-bleached human skull, labelled " Chickahominy," a trophy of warfare down by 22 AMERICA REVISITED. that river, I apprehend. Everybody was very much shocked when revelation was made of the trouvaille discovered on the guileless-looking young lady. Elderly gentlemen on board opined that she ought to be sent to Fort Lafayette. The Northern ladies sent their erring sister to Coventry. In par ticular was a tall gentleman, with an orange-tawny beard, and wearing an Inverness cape and a Jim Crow hat, scandalised by the escapade of the fair Secesh. " She oughter hev known better," he more than once remarked. When we were under weigh, and he had found out that I was an Englishman, he informed me confidentially, that he was an habitual blockade- runner, and that he was " all over quinine and spurs : " both being just then articles of prime necessity in Secessia. An odd time. I was told once of five-and-twenty thousand dollars' ¦ worth of smuggled diamonds being hooked, by a cautious superviser, out of a German lady's chignon. NEW YORK FROM FORT WADSWORTH, STATEN ISLAND. THE BAY OF NEW YORK. THANKSGIVING DAY IN NEW YORK. 23 It was after the Scythia had passed the fort on Staten Island — I do not know its name, but it is one of the most picturesque forts I ever saw — that we were boarded from a pretty little steam yacht by the much-dreaded officers of the Custom House. Everybody answering to the name of passenger trembled. Everybody seemed a galled jade, and our withers were all wrung. Wincing appeared to be universal ; and all placidly indifferent to doings of a fiscal nature as I had been, I remembered that, stowed away in a particular portmanteau, I had three pairs of new shoes. Why had I not had the soles shoded or roughened with a file before leaving my native land 1 But I consoled myself with the hope that somebody else might have taken the precautions which I had failed to take. Now was the moment to " declare " as to what you had in your belongings, and to make solemn oath as to the truth of your declaration. So, very weak with the mournful feelings and dejected mien of schoolboys on Black Monday, we descended to the saloon. The chief official — a benevolent old gentleman, with snowy hair — sat enthroned in state at the head of the table, at which Captain Hains had, during eleven days, presided with so much grace and urbanity. Some subordinate inquisitors and sworn tormentors sat by him ; and the table was littered with forms of declaration. I think that I was number three on the list of declaratory oath takers. I gave the chief inquisitor my name. He bowed gravely, and said that he had a communication for me. I felt slightly unnerved. What could the communication be ? An order to quit the territory of the United States forthwith ? Not at all ; it was an invitation from a valued American friend of many years' standing to dine with him at his beautiful country house at Glen Cove the next day. I felt reassured, and immediately affirmed to I am sure I know not what — for I am parcel blind and hard of hearing — quite cheerfully. Then I made way for a crowd of ladies and gentlemen, who with troubled aspect thronged round that terrible table. Some of the 24 AMERICA REVISITED. ladies subsequently dissolved into tears. Some of the gentlemen, more philosophic under tribulation, consoled themselves with those especially mild and balmy " cocktails " for the confection of which Robert, one of the saloon stewards of the Scythia, is so justly celebrated. There was, of course, a good deal of swearing gone through below ; but I incline to the opinion that there was a prodigious deal more swearing performed in an unofficial manner on the Scythia' s deck and in the dock-shed during the agonising period of baggage examination. Oaths of allegiance — we had to hear a disastrous deal about them during the English Parlia mentary session of 1880— are, no doubt, very important matters (Talleyrand, as is well known, swallowed thirteen of them), but, in my humble opinion, the American Custom House oath is a farce and nothing more : — a " screaming," not a solemn one. What happened to my companions I candidly aver that I do not know, and I am selfish enough to confess that I do not much care. In a Custom House examination it is a case of every man for himself; and given a grinding, rasping, indis criminate, omnivorous tariff, such as the present American one is said to be, I suppose that most persons strive to evade the duties as far as they possibly can, and that if everybody had their deserts few would escape the whipping in the way of surcharges. My own experiences were brief, simple, and eminently satisfactory. The enormous dock-shed into which we were turned loose from the Scythia' s gangway presented one of the most extraordinary spectacles that I ever beheld. Imagine the Long Room at the London Custom House brought into combination with the platform of the Midland Railway Terminus at St. Pancras. Throw in one of the huge corridors of the Bezesteen at Stamboul with a soupcon of the Agricultural Hall at Islington. Imagine this colossal area traversed in every direction by brawny porters wheeling towering masses of luggage on hand-barrows, and in the corners of the shed picture the powerfully-horsed wains of the Express Company ready to carry away the trunks and portmanteaus, so soon as they have THANKSGIVING DAY IN NEW YORK. 25 passed the Custom House, to the various hotels at which the owners of the luggage intend to stop. The transport of baggage in the United States has been reduced to a science, and entails the merest minimum of dis comfort to the traveller. There are very few hackney carriages, comparatively speaking, in New York, and the light and elegant coupes which you hire for a dollar an hour — the tariff at the steamboat piers is much heavier— cannot be expected to carry heavy luggage. Thus, you are thrown on the tender mercies of the Express Company. But the Express man takes no advantage of you. He is your guide, philosopher, and friend. You tell him where you mean to stay ; he whisks with amazing celerity your needments into one of his wains, and away he goes, down all manner of streets to the Brevoort, to the Fifth- avenue, to the Windsor, to the Buckingham — to anywhere in Manhattan that you choose to indicate. You may proceed to your hotel in a coupe, or by the Elevated Railroad, or by the street cars, and arrive at your destination laden only with a hand-bag or a writing-case ; but the Express man will not be long after you ; the hotel lift (in American invariably " elevator " °) will hoist your things to the floor on which your room is situated ; and by the time you are out of your bath you will find your trunks and portmanteaus in your bedchamber, unstrapped and ready for opening. The trouble and the travail * Although, it may seem a very petty point of detail on which to dwell I may point out that in their travelling as well as their official technology the Americans seem to show a preference for words of French or Latin derivation over words of Anglo-Saxon origin. Thus our " lift " is the American " elevator," a government office is often a " bureau," the word eating-house has almost entirely disappeared in favour of " restaurant " and " saloon ; " a doorkeeper is a " janitor ; " a dead-house a " morgue ; " a coffin a " casket," and a shroud a " robe." The system of railway nomenclature seems to have been designedly built on French instead of English lines. Thus our " station " is a " depot " (pronounced cZeepot) ; " luggage " is " baggage " (French bagage) ; the " guard " is a " conductor," the " driver " is the " engineer," and the " engine " the " locomotive." " Railroad " and " Railway " are with us convertible terms ; still, officially, we adopt the word " Railway." The Americans have adopted " Railroad." The " London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway" — the " Erie Railroad." In the latter is there not a slight assimilation" to the French " chimin de fer ? " 26 AMERICA REVISITED. lie in getting these said trunks and portmanteaus through the Custom House.0 The which, since I last strove to picture it, has undergone another transformation. Did you ever read Beckford's " Vathek ? " If you have ever perused that delightful romance, carry your mind back to the description of the Hall of Eblis, with its count less multitudes of troubled souls wandering hither and thither in two opposite tidal streams. As I contemplated the new aspect of the dock-shed, the locale of the Hall of Eblis seemed to have been transported to a pier on the North River, New York. There were the countless multitude of anxious souls, wandering up and down, hither and thither, in dolorous quest of their * The proprietors of the White Star Line of steamers wrote some weeks since to The Times to state that so early as 187:2 they introduced the check system in the treatment of passengers' luggage, but they were compelled to abandon the innova tion owing to " lack of co-operation, if not positive indifference and apathy, on the part of the carrying companies who formed part of the machinery necessary to accomplish successful development." There can be no doubt that the system of checking the luggage of travellers at the station of departure and transmitting the baggage by express waggon to the address indicated by the passenger is a practice productive of very great convenience and comfort to travellers in the United States. It is extremely questionable, however, whether the system could be successfully worked in England without a radical revolution in the construction of railway trains, and the substitution of gregarious travelling in cars for segregated travelling in compartments. In the United States the express agent, a short time before the train reaches a terminus or an important station, walks right through the chain of cars from the baggage-van to the locomotive, and, accosting each traveller, asks him whether he has anything to "express." If he have, the metal luggage-check is handed to the agent, together with an intimation of the hotel or the private dwell ing where the passenger intends to stay. He pays a fee — which in England would be thought a high one — according to the number of packages to be " expressed," and he has no further trouble in the matter. When he is at his journey's end he may jump into a street-car or walk to his hotel or his private dwelling ; and there within a reasonable time his luggage will be delivered in as safe and sound a condi tion as can be expected after it has been pitched out of the railway vans on to the platform or the stones of the street by the porters, who are so traditionally reckless that they are popularly known as " baggage-smashers." But what arrangements could be made on English railways for " expressing " luggage ? The checking at departure would be easy enough. It is, indeed, only metallic ticketing ; and, on long journeys, a ticket is pasted on the passenger's trunk and a counterfoil is delivered to him to facilitate his obtaining his 'impedimenta at the station of arrival. On the Continent the ticketing system is universal ; in England it is partial. Continental railway trains also have continuous footboards which would enable the, express agent to creep — as the guard does now — from carriage THANKSGIVING DAV IN NEW YORK. 2? luggage. I had been " fetched " by trusty emissaries from the Brevoortj and " Jerry," an old retainer of that establishment, and an old ally of mine, had, with the aid of certain stalwart porters, swiftly rescued what belonged to me from Chaos ; but all the " anxious souls " had apparently not been so fortunate. Inquiring countenances, perturbed countenances, despairing coun tenances, flitted by me. The scene became Dantesque and Gustave-Dore"-like in its intensity. Imagine Francesca di Rimini in anguish-stricken quest of her Saratoga trunk. This day she flirts no more. You might offer her chicken salad, stuffed tomatoes, Blue Point oysters, a Chickering piano, and a Tiffany bracelet, to say nothing of your hand and heart and all your New York Central stock, and she would not heed you. Where is her bonnet box ? Where is the coffer containing her robes a queue ? And echo answers, " Where ? " Stay, another echo, in the sonorous voice of an Irish porter, makes reply, " Shure it's here ; " and the bonnet box and the coffer with the long- tailed dresses are disinterred from the bagffao-e of a confirmed old bachelor, a Congressman from Wisconsin. A yellow ticket, bearing a number, had been handed to me when I signed my declaration. I was taken to an official, to whom I made the most diplomatic of bows that I could master after ten days' tumbling about the decks of the Scythia; and the authority handed my declaration and myself over to an elderly gentleman in private clothes, but who wore a brazen window to carriage window, to receive checks and take particulars of address. But an English express agent would be able neither to walk through a train, nor to make a Bottle Imp-Like appearance at window after window in quest of checks. In the case of a train coming from Brighton it would be necessary to stop the train, say at Clapham Junction, not only for the collection of tickets but for the express agent to do his work ; and the time thus lost, together with the additional delay caused by the uncertainty of some passengers as to the hotels at which they intended to put up, and the stupidity of others who had but an imperfect idea of where they really lived, would soon become intolerable, and would breed a mutiny among the general body of travellers. Moreover, we possess luggage facilities of which the Americans are destitute : a system, to wit, of cheap four-wheeled cabs, capable of carrying a large amount of luggage on their roofs. The minimum fare of an American hackney carriage is a dollar, exclusive of luggage ; while for a journey of three or four miles the hack-driver would probably charge five dollars. 28 AMERICA REVISITED. ^P , \-w~ ;;- A. FRANCESCA IN ANGUISH-STRICKEN QUEST OF HER SARATOGA TRUNK. badge, of the shape of a shield, at his button-hole, and who was the examining officer. My interview with this functionary lasted precisely seventeen minutes. We had some ten packages, large and small, to examine; and every package, down to railway rugs, and a sheaf of sticks and umbrellas, was opened and care fully scrutinised. The officer was scrupulously and, indeed, THANKSGIVING DAY IN NEW YORK. 29 amicably polite, and incidentally mentioned that his was far from an agreeable duty, but that he was bound to do it. I was not made to pay a single cent ; so I suppose that I had nothing liable to duty. As each trunk or bag was relocked, the side of the package was chalked ; and in another ten minutes the- Express Company had got my heavy luggage, and with my lighter encumbrances, I was safe and sound in the Brevoort coach, and on my way to that most comfortable of hostelries, " Well out of it," I thought. Still I could not help thinking that the much-dreaded and much-abused New York Custom- House is, like something else which you may have heard of,, not so black as it has been painted. Thursday was, as I have said, Thanksgiving Day — an anniversary of actions de grdce, or general expression of gratitude- for mercies received, the holding of which is appointed by solemn proclamation from the Governor of each State in the- Union. In the old Puritan days of Northern America, Thanks giving Day was probably a strictly religious celebration, with some moderate indulgence, perhaps, in substantial creature com forts when prayers, and preachments, and exhortations, were at an end. Notwithstanding Butler's scornful allusion to the ill- conditioned abstemiousness of the Puritans, in " Hudibras," who, according to the satirist's showing, hated all kinds of good cheer, opposed goose and fat pig, blasphemed custard through the nose, and even disparaged " their best and dearest friend — plum. porridge," I cannot help fancying that the Pilgrim Fathers were by no means averse to good living, when they could enjoy their cheer in a sober and serious manner. Did not her Highness the Protectress, consort of Great Oliver, write a cookery and house hold recipe book ? The Lady Protectress was as economical as she was skilful in culinary things ; for it is a matter of history, that when, one day at dinner, Oliver called for an orange as an accompaniment to a roast loin of veal on which he was intent, her Highness told him that " oranges were now oranges indeed" — England was on the eve of a war with Spain — and that she 30 AMERICA REVISITED. could not afford to let him have with his dish of meat that which would cost her at least a groat. Be it as it may, the modern solemnisation of Thanksgiving Day in New York, and, I suppose, all over the States, entails a gigantic amount of eating and drinking. It is, from a convivial point of view, our Christmas Day come just four weeks before its time. Turkey and stewed cranberries are the traditionally orthodox dish for the occasion ; but there is no law against ¦consuming as much as ever you feel inclined of plum-pudding and other dainties. Charity plays a conspicuous and a very beautiful part in the festivities of the day. Everybody who has "joined a •church" attends his own particular place of worship in the morning — be it Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Independent, Congregational, Universalist, or what not. Sermons galore were preached on Thursday, the discourses having mainly reference to abundant harvests and rapidly reviving prosperity. The rest of the day was devoted to pleasure ; and Broadway and Fifth-avenue became moving pan oramas of holiday-makers. From Fifty-ninth-street to Wash ington-square the side-walks were densely thronged ; and in the afternoon the roadway was crowded with carriages, bound to the exterior boulevards of the Empire City. In the leading thoroughfares all the great stores were closed ; but eatables, drinkables, and cigars could be bought at will in the side streets. All the theatres and other places of amusement were open at night, and at many of them afternoon performances were given. One of the New York papers published, on Thursday morning, a Thanksgiving Anthem, of which I append a portion : — In Sixteen Hundred and Twenty-one, When the Pilgrims' first year's work was done, When the golden grain and the Indian corn, And the wild fruits plucked from the forest thorn, AVere gather'd and stor'd 'gainst the winter's wrath Till the drift should lift in springtime's path, Far into the woods, on fowling bent. Four good men Governor Bradford sent. MAKING THE THANKSGIVING PUDDING, THANKSGIVING DAY IN NEW YORK. 31 A ROOST ON A LARGE TURKEY FARM. The fowlers went into the woods to shoot turkeys and gather cranberries for sauce. The Thanksgiving Song concludes : 32 AMERICA REVISITED. 'Tis now of years full thirteen score Since thus our fathers blest their store, But each recurring year has brought The blessings which our fathers sought- Rich harvests ripe with golden grain, And rarest fruits and turkeys slain, But still that pious " Let us pray " Is heard on each Thanksgiving Day. The cheerful piety of these grateful orisons Deing at once- conceded, it still strikes me that Thanksgiving Day is somewhat " rough " on the turkeys. That festive bird will have an equally hard time of it at Christmas, and especially at the New Year, SCALDING, PLUCKING, AND PLUMPING TURKEYS FOR THANKSGIVING DAY. But the turkeys have not been the only victims to the exigencies of Thanksgiving Day. The Massacre of the Innocents in the way of fowls and chickens was overwhelming in its vastness on Thursday. The poorest of the poor, the meanest of the mean, FEEDING TURKEYS OX A LAliGE TTJHKEY PARM, WASHINGTON HOLLOW. TlTITfllFSS r.rmicr-v\ THANKSGIVING DAY IN NEW YORK. 33 the lowest of the fallen, were regaled with succulent white meat. The destitute and the infirm, the prisoners and captives were abundarffly fed. One thousand eight hundred pounds' weight of poultry was dressed for consumption at the Almshouse and Penitentiary on Blackwell's Island, and not a morsel was left. INSANE ASYLUM, BLACKWELL S ISLAND. The Charity Hospitals and Lunatic Asylums enjoyed a similar feast, and even the gaol-birds in the Tombs had a " square meal'," and were further favoured by a volunteer choir, who perambulated the gloomy corridors of the prison, singing glees for the solace of the prisoners. The children in the reforma tories and the industrial schools, and the poor little urchins in the asylum of the Five Points Mission, all held high festival ; and to crown the blessings of Thanksgiving Day, the Indian summer shone with all its mellow brilliance on the 27th of November— the sun glittering in an atmosphere as elastic and as exhilarating as that of Athens, the sky a lapis-lazuli blue, just flecked with a few streaks of golden colour, like that great D VOL. I. 34- AMERICA REV [SITED. sphere of blue and gold above the altar in the Gesii Church at Rome. They tell me that there i% a great deal of misery in New York ; but, to all appearance, the Good Samaritan was out and about in every street of the Great City on Thursday, ladea with the good things of the earth, and sedulously seeking, for the poor folks to relieve their bodily needs, and comfort them with kind words. . DISTRIBUTING FOOD AT THE FIVE POINTS MISSION. WASHINGTON SQUARE AND FIFTH AVENUE. III. Transformation of New York. New York, Bee. 1. " Nothing is lost, nothing is created," wrote the illustrious French chemist. And a great many savants both before and after his time may have advanced a similar proposition. I know that Dr. Erasmus Darwin has done so in his beautiful verses on the decomposition of our bodies after death. I would not dare to gainsay a philosopher, much less a chemist ; but assuredly there are a vast number of things terrestrial which, without being absolutely and irrecoverably lost, have a way of getting mislaid, and for a time baffle all your attempts to regain possession of them. I noticed the other clay in the Academy that an ingenious French traveller employed in the Lorillard expedition for the discovery of Mexican antiquities had found an old Indian cemetery at a considerable height on the banks of Popocatapetl. From the memory of the writer of this interesting piece of information there had evidently been mislaid the fact that Popocatapetl is a D 2 36 AMERICA REVISITED. mountain and not a river, and has " sides " and not " banks." The name indeed of the colossal mountain which dominates the city of Mexico is not very easy to pronounce, and it is well to adopt the mnemonic formula invented by an American traveller (was it General Grant or the late Commodore Wyse ?) " Pop the cat in the kettle." There you have " Popocatapetl " in the twinkling of a tongue. The human memory, I take it, abides, not, as Simonides will have it, in a series of pigeon-holes, but in a nest of drawers, all duly fitted with locks and keys. "Memory," says Burton, " lays up all the species which the senses have brought in, and records them in a good register, that they may be forthcoming when they are called for by phantasy and reason. His object is the same with phantasy. His seat and organ the back part of the brain." The worst of it is that a man with the most sys tematic of memories sometimes forgets the whereabouts of his register, or loses count of the particular drawer at "the back part of his brain " in which a particular assemblage of facts is stored. Or, with a dim perception of where the drawer may he, he cannot, for the life of him, find the key at all. Or, finally, the lock may have grown rusty and the " Fors clavigera " results only in blank disappointment. Under these circumstances two courses are open to you. Either yield to the sorrowful per suasion that your memory has altogether decayed, and that you are becoming imbecile, in which case you should tranquilly retire to Bournemouth and a Bath Chair, and cease to trouble a work-a-day world with which you are no longer competent to cope ; or — and this is the better way — you should strive to leam as many new things as you can, and tabulate and register and put them away in fresh-made drawers ; and while you are doing this, if you bide your time and opportunity with patience and strong will, it will often mercifully happen that the Things Departed will return — that the lost will be found, and that Memory will come back to you as fresh and as green as the olive-branch that was borne by the dove. TRANSFORMATION OF NEW YORK. 37 When I first went to St. Petersburg, three-and-twenty years ago, I tried my hardest, during four or five months' sojourn, to learn a little Russ. I never got beyond a rudimentary knowledge of that difficult tongue, but I mastered the written character, and could make out the sense of a paragraph here and there in a newspaper ; and I could ask for what I wanted in the Slavonic vernacular from shopkeepers, and waiters, and such people. I went away; and for twenty years I had never occasion to speak one word of Russian. My familiarity with the printed and written character did not desert me, and I could still remember the melody, and repeat the words of the Russian song, " Vot na pouti celo balschoia," which I had learned by heart ; but the sense of those words had become utterly dark to me ; nor, to save myself from Siberia, could I have asked for a basin of soup or a slice of bread and butter in Russ. Circum stances led me, some two or three years since, not only to return to Petropolis, but to traverse the whole length of the empire, from the capital to the Black Sea. Altogether. I was not more than three weeks in the dominions of the Czar ; but every day that I abode there, and every day that I journeyed over the snowy steppes, long-forgotten Russian words and phrases came back in snatches, and wholly uncalled for, to my mind. Have you ever experienced the feeling of forgetting things and of their returning, quite unbidden, but, ah ! so welcome? I have been feeling such a sensation ever since last Wednesday afternoon, when I landed from the hospitable Scythia, Captain Hains commanding. The city of New York has come back to me. I have seen so many habitations of men in divers parts of the world since I was here in 1863-4 that I am not ashamed to own that I remembered the New Yorkers much more vividly than I did New York city itself. You do not forget your old nurse who alternately coddled and scolded you five-and-forty years syne ; but you are apt to have but a very dim and confused remembrance of the house and the street in which you dwelt, and even of the furniture of the room in which you used to play. 38 AMERICA REVISITED. I might dimly recall that the shape of Manhattan island was like that of a sole with its head at Harlem and its tail at Castle garden ; the backbone being represented by Broadway, and The continuous line of ships fringing the wharves along the East River and the Hudson River respectively figuring the lateral small bones of the fish ; but had you asked me to mark on a teQffi i ^ < - . J ' - wMMSMymmmti NEW YORK, FROM BROOKLYN HEIGHTS. piece ot paper, from memory, the relative positions of Brooklyn, Hoboken, Jersey City, and Staten Island, I should have bungled sadly, last October, over the task. But I could mark the plans, now, and well enough, of Stamboul, Pera, Galata, Scutari, the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, and the Sea of Marmora. Perhaps, in a year or two that faculty of remem brance may fade away — perhaps to be revived one day ; perhaps to be utterly engulfed in the Great Lethe when we shall remem ber nothing at all. TRANSFORMATION OF NEW YORK. 39 Had I been suddenly summoned on Wednesday, Nov. 26, 1879, Ijo, tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth concerning the great city in which, off and on, I abode for more than twelve months sixteen years since, I should have made answer that, with tolerable distinctness and minuteness, I could in my mind's eye picture the aspect of Broadway from the Bowling-green to the City Hall, to the Astor House and BOWLING-GREEN AND COMMENCEMENT OF BROADWAY. Barnum's Museum, and thence " up-town " to Union-square, where I think there was a wondrous restaurant called the Maison Dor^e. I think that I could have remembered Fifth-avenue from Washington-square by Eighth-street and the Brevoort House to Fourteenth-street, at the corner of the Eastern section of which was the " up-town " Delmonico's restaurant and cafe, and in the Western part of which I once occupied one of the few suites of furnished apartments which at that period were to let in New York. Upwards from Fourteenth-street I could have 40 AMERICA REVISITED. FIFTH-AVENUE HOTEL, MADISON-SQUARE. recalled to mind Madison-square and the Fifth-avenue Hotel, and two other then new caravanserais, the Albemarle and the Hoffman House. Of the old established hostelries, the New York, then chiefly frequented by Southerners ; the Clarendon, much patronised by Britons ; and the Metropolitan, I could of course have kept count. Wall-street and William- street, the head-quarters of the fiercest gold-gambling the financial world had ever seen ; Chambers-streeet, the habitat of the " down town " Delmonico ; Canal-street, Lafayette-place, Bleecker-street (the compositors who deciphered the crabbed manuscript which I sent home to the Daily Telegraph printed " Bleecker-street " as " Blucher-street,") were all tolerably fresh in my memory; "but of the theatres of New York I remembered nought, save that there was one called Wallack's, and another called Niblo's Garden ; that there was an Academy of Music where M. Max Maztzeke used to give performances of Italian Opera ; and that across the water, at Brooklyn, there was a very large opera TRANSFORMATION OF NEW YORK. 41 CORNER OF BROAD AND WALL STREETS— DREXEL'S BUILDING AND STOCK EXCHANGE. house, and a very large church where an eloquent minister named, I think, Beecher used to preach. Stay, I was also taken by my old friend Phineas T. Barnum to hear another eloquent divine, named Dr. Chapin, who belonged, if I remember aright, to the Universalist persuasion. There were some palatial clubs, too, that I used to know ; the Union, the Union League, the New York, the Manhattan, and the Athenaeum ; and on certain Satur day nights, at a reunion styled the Century Club, I have frequently met literature, art, and science in combination with stewed oysters and hot " whiskey skins." 42 AMERICA REVISITED. After this it would have been better, perhaps, if my sup posititious examination had not been persisted in. My replies would have been of the vaguest nature. The Central Park ? Well, I do remember the existence of such a place, but of its exact locality and appearance I had not the remotest idea. The Bloomingdale road ? Well, I fancy that there was a Lunatic asylum there past which I was once taken for a drive in a spider-like vehicle, all wheels and no bulwarks, and to which Avas harnessed one of the most appallingly fast-trotting mares. that a helpless Briton ever risked his neck behind. My friendly Jehu was, I remember very well indeed, the lamented Henry J. Raymond of the Neio York Times. The Bowery? I had BOWERY MUSIC HALL. quite forgotten where the Bowery Avas, and I don't know Avhere it is now. I intend to try and find out to-morroAv. The Five Points 1 My acquaintance with that quarter does not yet extend beyond Avhat I have read in Mr. Dickens's "American Notes" — you remember the description of the "break-down" dancing Juba Avho "Avinked with his boots;" but, for the rest, Mr. Dickens's description of New York, for any practical purpose which it would serve noAvadays, might as well be a description of ancient Persepolis ; and as for Mrs. TroUope, those " Domestic TRANSFORMATION OF NEW YORK. 43 Manners of the Americans," in depicting which she so good- naturedly revelled, apply about as closely to the usages and customs of the PotaAvotamie Indians as they do to the Americans of the present epoch.0 The " Points," hoAvever, must still exist, since I read in the New York Herald that there is a " Five Points Mission " and an industrial school there for some seven hundred poor young waifs and strays, who on Thanksgiving Day Avere feasted on poultry and pudding in the play-ground on the roof of their asylum. Pardon me if I once more revert to Thanksgiving Day in connection with poultry. To indulge in white meat on this festival is more than a national custom. It amounts to a passion. Two ladies belonging to the fortune-telling profession, and the husband of one of them, Avith two German and one Irish name between them, are just now in trouble for decoying and hocussing Avith morphine a simpleton Avhom one of the ladies met promiscuously on a steam-boat. Their object in administer ing the narcotic to the gentleman was to obtain his watch, chain, and loose dollars ; for as the husband of one of the ladies pertinently put it, " the shop-lifting line was played out, and he Avanted a man Avith money." One of the female fortune-tellers has turned, it seems, State's evidence, at least she Avas " on the stand," or in the witness-box for six hours yesterday testifying against her companions ; and, in the course of her revelations, she stated that, on the morning of the clay when he Avas hocussed (being Thanksgiving Day), the gentleman Avho was a simpleton * It may be noted as a very gratifying proof of the diminution of what may he termed " thin-skinnedness " and the increase of a good-natured toleration of the criticism of foreigners among a people who were once thought to be the most sensitive in the world that I have frequently heard Americans in good society frankly admit that very many of the Trollopian strictures on manners in the United States some forty-five years age were substantially true, and that their public expo sure did the cause of national refinement in manners a great deal of good. In particular have I heard it admitted that voracity in eating and uncouth behaviour in places of public resort were formerly conspicuous failings among Americans. It is droll that a critic of polite versus coarse manners should have been found in the authoress of "The Widow Barnaby," which, as regards style and diction, is a model of vulgarity. 44 AMERICA REVISITED. was invited to breakfast, and that one of the ladies and her hus band proceeded to Jefferson-market for the purpose of stealing a turkey to celebrate the day of jubilation withal. They returned however without the festive bird, and, sad to relate, " under the influence of liquor," remarking in broken accents that turkeys were plentiful in Jefferson-market, but there were also plenty of people about to take care of the feathered bipeds. Nothing discouraged, the simple-minded gentleman " stood " a turkey, and even went out himself for cranberries to iurnish sauce. After that they put some doctor's stuff in his beer. He is not dead, but " feels bad," and has been bound over to prosecute. These simple yet touching details carry the mind back to the idyllic incident of our Maria Manning — I had the privilege of seeing her and her husband hanged — basting the goose over the trench in the back kitchen which the precious pair had dug to receive the corpse of their guest, Mr. Patrick O'Connor. In such cases pleasure comes first and business afterwards. Turkey — or goose — Avith cranberry sauce first, and then murder. And was this all that I remembered only five days ago of a metropolitan city, numbering, Avith its outlying suburbs, some thing like a million inhabitants ? I repeat without shame that this Avas nearly all that occurred to me concerning the enormous hive of humanity which now covers from end to end the island of Manhattan. It is a far safer thing to underrate than to over estimate your knoAvledge of a place. In the first-named case you do not run much risk of being convicted half-a-dozen times a day of scandalous ignorance, and of having the finger of scorn consequently pointed at you. With the feAv exceptions of recollection, then, which I have named, my mind on my arrival in this most interesting city, which I should like to abide in and to study for at least a year, but which I am bound to leave at the expiration of ten days' sojourn, was virtually a sheet of blank paper. I declare that when, with the inqusitiveness of a traveller just arrived in a strange land, I began to look to this side and to that from the Avindows of the carriage— it was a TRANSFORMATION OF NEW YORK. 45 " high-toned " carriage, and bore a curious family resemblance to the " glass-coach," in which one used to go to weddings in EnglancT- — in which we were being jolted over the much tram- rutted thoroughfares, on our Avay from the Scythia' s berth on the North River to the Brevoort House, the most forcible impres sion on my mind Avas to the effect that that most frugal and in genious people, the Dutch, had been forced by the machinations of Prince Bismarck to evacuate Holland, and had suddenly colonised the purlieus of Paradise-street, Liverpool, which by some preter natural means or other had been transported across the Atlantic. The little red-brick houses, the high "stoops " or flights of wooden steps in front, the green "jalousie" shutters, the handi crafts and shop business carried on in cellars, the amount of mopping, and scrubbing, and scouring going on, the endless pro cession of open drays full of corpulent little kegs presumably full of schiedam, all at first bespoke the neighbourhood of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, or the Hague. But no ; I Avas not in Holland. Locomotives and passenger cars are not accustomed, so far as my remembrance serves me, to whizz through the ambient air 011 a level with the second-floor windows in the towns of the Low Countries ; and it was only when crossing one of the Avenues, — I am sure I forget which, but I shall learn all their numbers and attributes in time — that I began to realise the fact that I had reached the only country which as yet possesses that not very artistic-looking but still distinctly beneficial institution, an " Ele vated Railroad " — -America. A great many people abuse it— or rather them, for there are at least two lines — yet everybody travels by the "Elevated" to the immense facilitation of the traffic. To the complexion of the " Elevated " we may have to come ourselves some day in overgroAvn and congested London. I had scarcely, however, made up my mind that I was in the United States, Avhen a change came over the spirit of my dream, and I found myself murmuring that surely I must be in Germany. Those unmistakably Teutonic names over the shop fronts, those bakeries, barbers, billiard rooms, shops for the sale of " under- 46 AMERICA REVISITED. ELEVATED RAILWAY, THIRD-AVENUE, NEW YORK. Avear " (unterwakr ?) eating and drinking houses, lager-beer saloons, bowling alleys, and corner groceries — the whole redolent with a mild perfume of sauerkraut, sausages, and Bremen to? bacco, belonged obviously to the Fatherland — not, perhaps, so much to austere Berlin, or vivacious Vienna, or aesthetic Munich, or decorous Dresden, as to one of the Hanse Towns. The very people looked German, steady-going, sober-sided, taAvny-haired, passably phlegmatic, but on scant provocation willing to quaff multitudinous seidels of lager, in rivalry of the immortal toper (whose achievements have been recited in an English version of TRANSFORMATION OF NEW YORK. 47 the German ballad by the Herr Hans Breitmann, otherwise my good friend Charles G. Leland) who swigged beer for three Aviiole days at+he Black Whale at Ascalon, till he grew "stiff as a broomstick on the marble bench." Yes, I Avas in Germany ; and I waited in fear and trembling to hear the strains of the '" Wacht am Rhein," to see the warriors of Germania with their Invincible "pickelhaube" helmets and their irresistible needle-guns march by "in squadrons and platoons, with their music playin chunes," and to feel that I was a " Philister." Not a bit of it. We jolted round a corner. We passed by a Monte Testaccio of potatoes, of evidently Irish extrac tion. I saw Mike from Connemara smoking his dhudeen. Biddy M'Flinn was brushing up some blooming Newtown pippins with a corner of her woollen shawl, to make the fruit look spruce and tidy for market ; and Father O'Quigly the priest passed by sleek and smiling, Avith a broad-brimmed hat and a black broad cloth coat reaching down to his heels. Father O'Quigly flourishes here exceedingly, and New York abounds not only with stately Roman Catholic cathedrals and churches, but also with admirably appointed orphanages, schools, and other Catholic charities.* Every creed and denomination indeed seems to vie with its neighbour in tending the poor, the disabled, and the sick, and in training up fatherless and neglected children. I suppose that the professors of the various religions quarrel among themselves now and again — they would scarcely be human if they did not ; but, so far as information can be derived from the columns of the newspapers, the odium theologicum seems to be reduced just now to a minimum, and kindliness * In these orphanages numbers of young girls are trained for domestic service ; and multitudes of Irish immigrant girls are constantly going into service, generally as cooks, although they are incapable of cooking anything more recondite than a potato. Germany and Scandinavia also furnish a continuous and numerous con tingent of parlour-maids and nurse-maids, and in affluent families whose members, like " Mrs. Gen'l Gilftory," have " lived so long in Europe," it is not uncommon to find the care of the juveniles entrusted to French bonnes, whose smart aprons and dainty Normandy cauchoises make Fifth-avenue quite resplendent, and still further increase the decidedly Parisian aspect of some parts of New York. 48 AMERICA REVISITED. towards one's neighbour the chief doctrinal point insisted upon. I don't think that a journalist could make a very remunerative livelihood here by writing in a secular paper furious leading BIDDY M'FLINN AND FATHER O'QUIGLY. articles concerning the Thirty-nine Articles, the Athanasian Creed, and the Eastern Position. I am free, indeed, to confess that, as an old wrestler with wild beasts at Ephesus, and an inveterate grumbler, grievance- monger, and partisan, I am, up to this time of writing, TRANSFORMATION OF NEW YORK. 49 sorrowfully disappointed Avith the coolness, almost amounting to indifference, with which Americans of culture seem to be treating things in general. People talk freely enough about " H. M. S. Pinafore," the musical genius of Mr. Arthur Sullivan, the wit and humour of Mr. W. S. Gilbert, and the talent and bonhomie of Mr. Frederic Clay, all of whom are at present among the choicest lions of New York fashionable society ; and the " Princess Toto " they talk about, the millions of dollars which Mr. James R. Keene is reported to be continually making in Wall-street speculations ; Mr. Mapleson's opera coming is frequently discussed; people of culture and people avIio are " intime " discourse concerning Mr. E. Burne-Jones's pictures and Mr. Whistler's etchings ; but they have nothing to say on the Eastern Question ; and even the Nicaraguan Canal, Chinese cheap labour, the Customs Tariff, the chances of General Grant as a candidate at the next Presidential Election, Mormon polygamy, and the expediency of the gradual withdrawal of greenbacks from circulation fail, although touched upon in President Hayes's Message — which everybody had read two days before it was communicated to Congress — to excite anyr- thing beyond the most languid amount of interest. As for the Rebellion, as for the greatest and most momentous Civil War that modern times have seen, it is never made a subject of conversation in polite society. What ! never ? Well, scarcely ever. Now and then a Republican organ has a half-spiteful, half-bantering paragraph about " Confederate Brigadiers " and " the bloody shirt." Occasionally a Demo cratic journal recalls the exploits of the "carpet baggers," and " revenue sneak thieves," and the scandals of the " Freedmen's bureaux ; " but if a man talks too much about Antietam and the Shenandoah Valley, about the bombardment of Charleston, and Sherman's march to the sea, he will incur as great a risk of being set down as an unmitigated bore, as in the days of our youth those high-stocked old gentlemen used to be who, after dinner, were wont to recount the entire history of the Waterloo 50 AMERICA REVISITED. campaign, marking Mont St. Jean, Hougoumont, La Belle Alliance, and the forest of Soignies with morsels of biscuits and walnuts ; the nut crackers illustrating Bluchers advancing force, and a little old port wine being spilt in a stream on the mahogany to symbolise the hollow road of Ohain. Should the Rebellion Bore persist in invoking phantoms which had much better be laid in the Red Sea, the chances are that his indignant hearers will vote him a " cold potato" and " run him out." You see that the victors in the great struggle are quite content with the triumphant end, as well they may be, and do not care to inquire about the means by which that end was brought about. The vanquished down south have a variety of things to think about — the principal object of their preoccupation being the practiY cability of keeping a particularly gaunt and famished wolf from the door. But even in that distressful region things are looking up. Thus, having traversed in imagination Holland, North Germany, and Ireland, I arrived at length at my destination, the Brevoort House, an hotel situated in a region to Avhich I hesitate to assign a parallel in the way of locality. The truth would seem to be that within the last sixteen years the city of New York has become not only structurally but socially transformed, and that the Brevoort, although as comfortable and as aristo cratically frequented as ever, is no longer situated in a fashion able quarter. The Brevoort — it must be told in Gath — is now " down toAvn." To Avhat district in London shall I liken the quarter in Avhich it is situated? Russell or Bloomsbury-square? Portland-place ? Bruton-street ? Well, it is something between the three, taking " up town " in NeAv York to mean Belgravia and South Kensington on the one side and Tyburnia on the other. For the Central Park at New York you may take our Hyde Park, and the region surrounding the Fifth-avenue and Madison-square may tolerably well represent the Oxford-circus, as Union-square does the Piccadilly one. Beyond the Central Park the City continues to develop for miles and miles towards* the Harlem river, and beyond it laterally into West Chester TRANSFORMATION OF NEW YORK. 51 THE HARLEM RIVER. County. Suppose Ave compare the newly-settled region with the Regent's Park and the villa-covered acclivities of Belsize Park and Haverstock Hill. All this, I am perfectly Avell aware, is playing " confusion Avorse confounded " with the points of the compass, since a glance at the map will show you that there are no topographical features in common betAveen NeAv York and London. In the last-named metropolis the shipping quarter is so far distant from the fashionable districts of the city that there may be thousands of well-bred Londoners avIio, in the course of their whole lives, have never set eyes upon Wapping or Rotherhithe, Shadwell or Stepney ; and who, save when they condescend to go down by steamer to eat whitebait at the Ship or the Trafalgar at Green- Avich, have never passed through the Pool. Obstinate exclu- sives in London may even shut out such things as tramways from their serene view ; but the most patrician dweller in Fifth- avenue cannot ignore the tramcars which are plying in all the avenues and cross streets skirting his residence; and a Avalk E 2 52 AMERICA REVISITED. FREIGHT FOR EUROPE. A NEW YORK WHARF. down these cross streets either way must inevitably end in the not very remote prospect of docks, and piers, and wharves, and ferries, and all the hurry and bustle of a " Yo, heave ho ! " state of things. TRANSFORMATION OF NEW YO?JC. 53 When I came here first, Twenty-fifth-street was accounted as being sufficiently far "up town," and Fortieth-street was Ultima^hule. Beyond that the course of toAvn lots planned out and prospected, but structurally yet to come, was only marked by boulders of the living rock having weird graffiti eulogistic of the virtues of Drake's Plantation Bitters, the Night Blooming Cereus, the Balm of a Thousand Flowers, and Old Dr. Jacob Townsend's Sarsaparilla. What has become of those strange stencillings on the living rock'? Where I remember wilder nesses I behold now terraces after terraces of lordly mansions of broAvn stone, some " Avith marble facades," * others wholly * When a business man comes to financial grief in New York and is accused by his creditors of having lived extravagantly, it is generally urged against him that he lived in " a brown stone house with a marble facade, kept fast trotting horses, and gave champagne suppers to the "blonde belles of 'Black Crook' burlesque." 54. AMERICA REVISITED. of pure Avhite marble, gleaming like the product of Carrara in the clear blue sky, and lacking only a few palm trees and orange groves to surpass in beauty the villas of the Promenade des Anglais at Nice. Unless my friends in New York are laughing at me, this state of things architectural goes on up to One Hundred and Ninetieth-street. It may go on still further for aught I know, right into West Chester County, and so on, and still on tOAvards the Adirondack Mountains, until Niagara Falls be reckoned a tolerably fashionable " up-town " residence. Why not? London has come to Brentford, and means to go to Hounslow ; and some of these days "will take in Uxbridge. Only the other clay I Avas writing about Young London ; but the groAvth of Young Manhattan, as it is much more rapid, is also much more astonishing than our own metropolitan transformation. Growing London absorbs suburbs, villages, and towns. Grow ing New York has had nothing to absorb but the open. Its development almost belies the dictum of the illustrious French chemist. It does create. VIEW IN CENTRAL FARK, NEW YORK. IV. All the Fun of the Fair. New York, Dec. 3. I enjoyed, some years since, the friendship of a small American girl-child — I do not think that she was more than seven — Avho would occasionally permit me to join with her in a diversion which, just then, Avas frequently and passionately pursued by her elders. Throughout the Great Civil War, the Northern people maintained two admirably beneficent organisa tions, for the support of which many millions of dollars Avere cheerfully subscribed. One was called the Christian Commis sion, and ministered to the spiritual Avants of the Federal soldiers. This Commission, unless I am mistaken, likewise provided a supply of Sisters of Mercy for the service of the 56 AMERICA REVISITED. hospitals. Then came the Sanitary Commission, which was, perhaps, the more popular body of the two, and which looked after the physical needs of the warriors in the sky-blue gaber dines, supplementing their rations with the " goodies " of which Americans are so fond, providing them with extra articles of clothing, and, in short, making them comfortable in all kinds of Avays.* For the sustentation of the funds of the Sanitary Com mission, periodical festivals of a charitable nature were held all over the loyal States, and these were called Sanitary Fairs. I remember to have attended at least a score of them. There used also to be balls, pic-nics, masquerades, " surprise parties," " church oyster stews," and " clam-bakes," always in aid of the funds of the Sanitary Commission ; and so numerous and brilliant were these merry-makings, that a distinguished American statesman (he Avas on the Northern side, too,) Avas once led in a moment of irritation to declare that the war had been to the North " a gigantic frolic." But a terribly stern purpose underlaid that frolic. As for the Sanitary Fair, it may be defined as having been a combination of our English fashionable fancy fairs, the old " Avheel of fortune" bazaars at Margate and other English watering-places, and those philanthropic but eccentric Irish lotteries in which, Avith the praiseworthy object of raising money * Those communicative statists in the English morning papers who are so fond of enumerating how many thousands of pork pies, bottles of ginger beer, and penny buns are consumed at the Annual Foresters' F6te at the Crystal Palace, or the Police Orphanage gathering at the Alexandra, would open their eyes wide with astonishment were the statistics presented to them of the quantities of "candies forwarded to the valiant warriors of the Union by their affectionate friends in Northern cities. The army of the Potomac, I should say, ate more lollipops in the course of a month, than the ladies of the Sultan's • harem at Constantinople do in the course of a whole year ; and that is saying a good deal ; since we have all heard that the culinary department of the Commander of the Faithful comprises three hundred confectioners, whose sole duty it is to prepare " Lumps of Delight ' and other sweetstuff for the Hianoums of the Seraglio. The confectioners are all black, and they are made to sing Ethiopian melodies while at work to prevent their surreptitiously helping themselves to the boiling syrup ; if the superintendents have to leave their posts for a few minutes they always chalk the sweetmeat-makers lips in case of a sweet tooth getting the better of them. ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR. 57 for the support of St. Somebody's Roman Catholic Orphanage, you take a ticket in a raffle, in which the grand prizes may be an Alexandre harmonium, a billiard table, or a phaeton and pair. The winter of 1863, when Avar was in its bitterest stage of exacerbation, was marked by an unusual plenitude of Sanitary Fairs. " Calico Balls," " Patriotic Romps," and Sanitary Fairs were continuous throughout the States undesolated by fire and sword; and in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, there was plenty of fun. The children — the " small infantry " cannot be left out of account in any description of American social life, and, unlike Leigh Hunt's " small infantry," they do not habitually " go to bed by daylight," but, on the contrary, stay up to all manner of hours — were prompt to imitate the rejoicings in which their grown-up relatives and friends took so much delight. " Now," would the small girl-child to whom I referred — she is since married, I believe, to a wealthy speculator in Wall-street — say to me, " We play at Tanitary Fair. 'Oo keep a candy-store, and me buy candy of 'oo." So we used to sit down on the carpet and play at Sanitary Fair. Her ideas of the game were simple but peculiar. I was to provide an indefinite but tangible quantity of candy or sweetstuff of varying saccharine capacity, from the toothsome but toothache-giving cocoa-nut rock to the luscious chocolate cream. Did my stock- in-trade comprise a few marrons glaces, so much the better for my youthful patroness. You must understand that, in the days of which I speak, the national currency was in a very mixed and perturbed state. Greenbacks were the legal tender, the smallest one being for ten cents or fivepence ; but there was a multitude of other notes in circulation, the value of which you were apt to discover, when, at the railway depots, the clerks scornfully refused to accept in payment for fares the elaborately engraved promises to pay of the Ugly Mug Bank of West Wumscroggs or the United Freebooters' Bank of Kafoozlumville, Kansas. Boot blacks and barbers in those days used to issue their own 58 AMERICA REVISITED. currency ; and tokens inscribed " Good for one shave," " Good for one polish up," Avere not uncommon. Myr young companion, in the game of Sanitary Fair, also presided over a Bank of Issue of her own particular devising. Her notion Avas that a Blue Point oyster shell Avas equivalent to an ounce of toffy ; that a torn enve lope, bearing an obliterated inland postage stamp, represented three chocolate creams ; and that a piece of hardbake as big as your thumb Avas rather dear Avhen exchanged for a wooden doll of the same size, undraped, Avith one arm, one leg, and a damaged nose. As she was accustomed to insist, first that her currency should be returned to her at the end of each game, and next that I should bring a fresh stock of candy to the front at the begin ning of another — she used to beat me down frightfully in the sticky article known as " red hearts," Avhich succulent goodies I was constrained to let her have at the rate of four for one hair-pin — I need scarcely say that, at the conclusion of our transactions, the balance of trade was largely against me. Bearing in mind one's old pastimes, can you tell me of a pleasanter passage in Chesterfield's Letters than that in Avhich the highly moral and exquisitely polished essayist recalls his school days at Westminster, and the hop-scotch and chuck-farthing of his youth! It Avas with a keenly cheer ful interest that I noticed,- soon after my arrival in NeAv York, the announce ment of the holding of the Fair of the Seventh Regiment of New York State Militia, at their Armoury in Lexington-avenue.' ARMS OF THE NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT. ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR. 59 -<^v This Fair has iioav been in full action for the last ten days, and up to Thursday last, according to the neAvspapers, some £75,000 had been taken as gate-money — the price of admission to the fair being 50c. a head — and for shares in the innumerable lotteries organised Avithin the building. I eagerly asked an American friend AAdiether the Fair was really a " Boom," and Avhether I ought to visit it. I was told the Fair was a " Boom," aud no mistake. Now a " Boom," as I understand it, is the very reverse to a " fizzle," and the antipodes to a " fraud." A "Boom," whether it apply to the expected nomination of General Ulysses S. Grant for the next Presidency, the Nica- raguan Canal scheme, the Egyp tian Obelisk, Avhich (chiefly through the unwearied efforts of the Editor of the New York World) is to be brought from Alexandria and set np in NeAV York, obviously in order to bring- about the utter collapse of our Cleopatra's Needle, and make the Luxor at Paris feel " mean," the grain operations of Mr. J. R. Keene, and Mr. Vanderbilt's recent colossal sale of New York Central stock, those are all big- things that for the moment make a big noise, and they are all A FORMER DRDM-MAJOR OF THE SEVENTH REGIMENT. 60 AMERICA REVISITED. consequently entitled to rank as " Booms." After a time the' " Boom " has a tendency to go out with a splutter, and an unmelodious twang. When I inquired what the final cause of the " Boom " Avas, I learned that the Seventh Regiment, wdiich is a highly important and fashionable corps of militia, rivalling in efficiency of drill, discipline, and splendour of equipment the far-famed " Boston Tigers," had built a grand new Armoury upon THE SEVENTH REGIMENT ARMOURY. Lexington-avenue, for the performance of their manoeuvres and the storage of their weapons, and that the object of the Fair Avas to defray the cost of this edifice. Noav Lexington-avenue is a stately boulevard, which begins at Fourteenth-street, and extends north, between Third and Fourth-avenues, as far as the pretty ALL- THE FUN OF THE FAIR. 61 expanse known as Gramercy Park. From Gramercy Lexington- avenue is continued as far north as Hamilton-square, at Sixty- sixth-street, which existed not when I first came hither, and the name of which presents no link of purport or significance to my mind. But the huge brick building which forms the Seventh Regiment Armoury is, I think, at Sixty-third-street. If I blunder as to the exact numeral, who is to blame me, seeing that New York has increased in size full sevenfold since 1863? I ought to have mentioned, too, that after passing through Holland, Germany, and Ireland, on your way from the North River Pier to the Brevoort House, there is a densely populated French quarter, equally reminding you of the Rue St. Denis and the Rue Mouffetard, south of Washington-square ; Avhile at Madison-square, from the Fifth-avenue Hotel and Delmonico's, A FRENCH BAKERY, NEW YORK. 62 AMERICA REVISITED. are the central structures attracting strangers ; there branch at least half a dozen splendid counterparts of the Boulevard des Capucines, the Rue Scribe, the Avenue de l'Opera, the Rue du Quatre Septembre, and the Chausse'e d'Antin. I have given to these letters the general title of " America Revisited," but I have not seen America yet. I have only seen NeAv York, and very little of that. I must wait, I suppose, until I get to Baltimore, and especially to Philadelphia, before I really feel that I am on Transatlantic soil, and surely the sensation which I should properly have of being there has not been heightened by the aspect of the Empire City, which to me appears to be many degrees less American than Avhen I Avas here last. Meanwhile, it is not at all unpleasant to dwell in Cosmopolis, to have at one's disposal a Turkeyr-carpeted, bird's-eye maple and plate-glass lined elevator which conveys you to the one hundred and ninety-fifth storey of the Tower of Babel, if you live in one of the big hotels, and to hear a confusion of tongues going on around you, till you begin to ask yourself seriously of what nationality you may personally be, and AAmether that stormy voyage across the Atlantic, per Cunard steamship Scythia, Avas not, after all, a tempestuous dream. That I could not find my " sea legs " I owned in a former letter ; but I have as much difficulty in NeAv York in finding my land legs. My perambu lations are more of a perpendicular than of a horizontal nature. I am always going up and down in an elevator (not at the dear old Brevoort, where they have been thinking of having an " elevator " these seventeen years past, and have at length determined to have one, but it is not finished yet) ; and when I am free from the pleasant thraldom of the " lift," I find myself the slave of the horse tramway cars, or else scudding through space at an altitude of sixty or seventy feet above the street on the Elevated Railroad. Uncertain, however, as to the particular Elevated Railroad station to Avhich Sixty-third-street was nearest led me to patronise one of the neat little coupe's which now stand for hire in front of ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR. 63 the principal hotels in NeAv York. Americans in the full posses sion of^heir faculties rarely, I am told, use these handsome and commodious vehicles, of which the fare is one dollar, or four shillings, an hour ; and if your journey only extends to a hundred yards, or, as it may very often happen, a hundred paces, you will have to pay a dollar all the same. The New Yorker who is compos mentis jumps into a horse car, or ascends the staircase of the nearest Elevated station, and is, for a few cents, swiftly borne to his destination, however far up or far down toAvn it may be ; but the foreigner Avho docs not " know the ropes " — that is to say, Avho is crassly ignorant — must be, after a manner, topographically distraught. Americans should be tender to him, I think, for he knows not where he is, nor Avhat to do for the best. Under these circumstances the coupes at a dollar an hour are a smiling boon. The carriages are neat, clean, and even elegant, Avith rugs inside to keep you Avarm. Theyr are capitally well horsed, and the drivers are civil Irishmen. No pourboire is expected, although, of course, a trifle for " a drink " would not be refused ; the men drive quickly and cleverly ; and yrou may get over an immense amount of ground for your dollar. Altogether, a New York hack coupe is superior structurally, decoratively, and locomotively to one of our four-wheelers as a Havanna regalia is superior to a " twopenny smoke " at a suburban tobacconist's. But mark this: the London "groAvler," infected and unsavoury old vehicle as it undoubtedly is, and deserving all kinds of contemptuous disparagements, possesses two distinct advantages, of which the neat, pretty, and expe ditious coupe is destitute. The "growler" Avill convey four passengers instead of two, the coupe's complement; and its much-enduring roof will carry besides any quantity of heavy trunks, to say nothing of your portable bath, your perambulator, and your bicycle. We reached the Fair about nine o'clock in the evening, and found the thoroughfares surrounding the capacious and stately Armoury building flooded by the electric light; nor Avas this 64 AMERICA REVISITED. brilliancy by any means a superfluity, for the gas in New York seems to be somewhat weak ; and Avhen the stores are closed the lighting of the streets, although the lamps are very numerous, appears to leave much to be desired. An analogous objection will apply to the pavement. There is plenty of it — at least the sideAvalks are abundantly flagged ; but in the side thoroughfares ruts and fissures, and those viatorial complications which the Irish term " curiosities," abound. As for the roadway, it is so hopelessly cut up by the trams intersecting each other in every imaginable direction, that you scarcely know whether the middle of the street is paved or not ; and the discomfort of walking is increased by the circumstance that the inhabitants of the houses are still permitted to deposit ashes and other refuse in barrels placed at stated intervals along the kerbstone. In a free country the people have, of course, the right to "dump" their ashes wheresoever they please ; but when a stiff north-east wind is blowing, every ash-barrel becomes the centre of a little sirocco of its OAvn. The dust and other refuse perform "Sahara waltzes" of an erratic but distracting character, and you are half blinded by the flying particles. These observations do not, of course, apply to the fashionable thoroughfares, in which promenading is as facile and as pleasant as it is on the Paris Boulevards or in our Regent Street. It is only in the back streets that you feel from time to time that the Commissioners of something or another, or the Board of you know not what, might do something for the pave ment and the dust nuisance. But what American in his senses walks about the back streets of New York, unless he have some direct business on hand taking him to a specified locality? To my misfortune, I have been during twoscore years prowling about back streets all over the world, and taking note of them. The arrangements for setting down and taking up at places of public amusement in New York strike me as being admirable. There is no hurry, no confusion, no rudeness, no extortion, and no unnecessary delay. An adequate force of stalwart, intelligent, and obliging policemen is always on hand. I am perfectly well ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR. 65 aware that the New York police are being violently abused by the papers for the adclictedness to " clubbing " people — that is to say, to brain them on slight provocation with their truncheons : all I know is .that they did not " club " me, and that whenever I asked a question of a constable he answered me politely. When you alight from your coupe, a ticket bearing a number is handed to you. Another ticket bearing the same number is given to your coachman, who knoAvs where to take up his stand, and who promptly responds to the summons of the police when he is wanted. There is no frenzied shrieking of "Mrs. Smith's carriage " stopping the Avay. Nobody's carriage stops the Avay. Mrs. Smith is Number Sixty, or Number One Hundred and Ten, as the case may be, and when the carriage is called it comes. Such, at least, was my experience at the Seventh Regiment Fair ; and at the Academy of Music in Fourteenth- street, whither I went last night to hear Mademoiselle Marie Marimon in the " Sonnambula," the vehicular arrangements appeared to be of equal excellence. So we paid our fifty cents at the Armoury, the checktakers being ten privates of the Seventh Regiment in full uniform, who were not only imposing examples of the NeAv York State militiamen, but also, to my mind, very favourable specimens of a type of humanity Avhich, ethnologically as well as socially, is coming to the front in a very conspicuous manner — I mean the young New Yorker. According to Dr. George M. Beard, an eminent American physician, avIio has just published in the North American Review a remarkable paper on the physique of the two great sections of the Anglo-Saxon race, the type of Transatlantic virility consists in "chiselled features, great fine ness and silkiness of the hair, delicacy of the skin, tapering extremities," the whole attended by chronic and excessive nervousness. Now this seems to me — Avhen accompanied by a turn-over collar of large dimensions and a dreamily uplifted eye — to constitute what we used to recognize when we were young as the Byronic type ; and the number of Byronic sets of features VOL. I. 60 AMERICA REVISITED. that I have noticed, not only at the fair and at the opera, but among nearly every class of Avell-to-do New Yorkers, is quite astonishing. I may be laughed at by the unthinking among my own countrymen, when I say that some of the handsomest young fellows I have ever seen in my travels have been American hotel clerks, assistants in stores, and sleeping car conductors. Some adventitious aids to comeliness these Transatlantic Adonises may have, through their constant sacrifices to one at least of the Graces of the Toilette. Every American who does not wish to be thought "small potatoes " or a " ham-fatter" or a "corner loafer," is carefully " barbed " and fixed up in a hair-dressing saloon every day. The young clerk or assistant avIio in England either shaves himself or gets shaved in the (nearest and earliest) barber's shop for a penny or three half-pence, and who thnks four- pence quite enough for the raw and unskilful cutting of his hair, has no corresponding type of simplicity, or, if you will have it so, carelessness, in the United States. His congener in America regularly and punctually repairs to a hair-dressing saloon Avhere HAIR-DRESSING SALOON, NEW YORK. ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR. 67 his head is shaved and shampooed, where his hair is washed and anointgd and invigorated by bay-rum, where, if he likes, it is curled ; and where, in any case, it is carefully combed, brushed and " fixed," in a style which a young Englishman would either admire or sneer at as tonsorial dandyism in the superlative degree. To be sure an English clerk or shop assistant very rarely cherishes the hope of being one day Her Majesty's Ambassador at Paris, Chief Secretary of State for the Home Department, or Governor of the Bank of England ; whereas a juvenile American, earning a salary of say six dollars a Aveck, Avhose ideas run in the proper channels and whose head is screwed on the right way, rarely looks at himself in the glass, after he has been "fixed" by the barber, without seeing reflected in the mirror the features of a future President of the Uuited States or of a Minister Plenipotentiary or Judge of the Supreme Court, or a big hotel proprietor at the very least. Is it a good thing to be devoured by ambition ? I must leave the question to be discussed by young men just entering life. It strikes my limited intelligence that our young English business men are not ambitious about anything save in attaining excellence as cricketers, bicyclists and lawn-tennis players ; whereas the young American appears to be continually possessed by a settled purpose and determination to do something and become something " big." Dr. Beard says that the nervousness of the third generation of Germans who have become American citizens is full as remarkable as that of the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Irish natives ; and that young men whose parents on both sides were born in Germany, exhibit all the features of the American type as just set forth. That type is, to me, the Byronic — I mean the pic- torially Byronic — for people who knew the author of " Childe Harold " in the flesh have repeatedly warned me that he was not nearly so comely as he has been represented to be by the painters and sculptors. I shall see, it may be, a great many varying types of manhood before I leave this country. I am going South, and hope to go very far West ; but there need be 63 AMERICA REVISITED. no beating about the bush, and no paying of fulsome compli ments in saying that the young men of New York are an eminently good-looking race. One reason for this general come liness may be the abstemiousness of the modern American. I am bound to believe so distinguished an authority as Dr. Beard when he states that, " although the Americans are fast eaters, or used to be so a quarter or half a century ago, yet, in the quantity both of food and drink which they consume, they are surpassed both by the English and by the Germans .... The American of the higher class uses but little fluid of any kind. The enormous quantities of alcoholic liquors, including beer, used in the United States are used to a large extent by Irish and Germans, and by those Avho live in the distant West or South. There are thousands of Americans who, from year to year, drink no tea or coffee, and but very little water." It is refreshing to hear this concerning a people among whom, Avhen I first knew them, there was a terrible consumption of cocktails, and who even at irregular times of the day were accustomed to "take the oath." "Taking the oath" meant, when you paid a visit to a friend's house, accidentally finding a bottle of Bourbon whiskey and a pitcher of iced water in the recesses of a bookcase, or in a corner of the conservatory, or behind a statuette of Mr. Hiram Powers' " Greek Slave," and straightway sAvearing fealty to the Republic by " liquoring up." So far as my brief experience goes I can vouch for the strict accuracy of Dr. Beard's statement touching the temperance of Americans of the higher class. In the restaurant of the hotel where I dine at not one of a dozen tables have I seen any wine or beer served. With grief and shame also do I note Dr. Beard's strictures on English intemperance. " A number of years past," he observes, "I Avas present in .Liverpool at an ecclesiastical gathering composed of leading members of the Established Church, from the Archbishops and Bishops through all the gradations. At luncheon, alcoholic liquors were served in a quantity that no assembly of any profession in this country ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR. 69 could have desired or tolerated." This is bad; but worse remains behind. " To see how an Englishman can drink," remarks the writer in the North American Review, " is alone worthy the ocean-voyage. On the steamer a prominent clergy man of the Established Church sat down beside me, poured out half a tumblerful of whiskey, added some water, and drank it almost at one swallow. He was an old gentleman — sturdy, vigorous, energetic — whose health was an object of comment and envy. I said to him, ' How can you drink that ? In America, men of your class cannot drink in that way.' He replied, ' I have done it all my life, and I am not aware that I was ever injured by it.' " The Fair was as other fancy fairs : a kind of International 70 AMERICA REVISITED. Exhibition in miniature ; and it was replete Avith all the usual fun of the fancy fair in the shape of the fascinating and ravish- ingly-dressed ladies who kept the stalls, and strove their enchanting best to dispose of tickets in the lotteries, of Avhich THE NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT FAIR. the name was legion. I kept at a respectful distance from Scylla and Charybdis in the way of counters ; and, remembering that in 1878 I Avas asinine enough to purchase a hundred and odd tickets in the Paris Exhibition Lottery, and that I never won so much as a kilogramme of candles or a bottle of citrate of mag nesia, I prudently abstained, Avhile under the hospitable roof of the Seventh Regiment, from speculating in raffles by means of Avhich I might have Avon a T-cart and a trotting mare, a gold mounted rifle, a Chickering pianoforte, a Tiffany goblet of ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR. 71 oxidised silver, and, for aught I know, a Pullman car, a patent turnip-slicer, and an ice cream soda-making estab lishment complete. There was an enormous doll's- house, too, Avhich tempted me sorely, and a christening- party, composed of male and female dolls, arrayed at the summit of the neAvest Paris fashions. An excru ciatingly comic performer in the doll's comedy Avas a black footman, who had apparently got " tight " at an early stage of the pro ceedings, and who AAras reclining in a chair in a corner, in a wretchedly limp and Guy Faux-like condi tion, and with a copy of the New York Herald under his arm. But I preserved my strength of mind, and stood aloof from temptation in the way of lotteries. Altogether the "Boom" was as grand as brilliant illumination, martial music, and an immense crowd of well-dressed gentlemen and elegant ladies could make it ; and I came away from the Fair of the Seventh Regiment excellently well-pleased with my evening's entertainment. Mm , "^BBfe^-^=pahjj^ffij^PP^;^^jJP ips rjijiififl SB t^Ii^^t 1 IP^^iiiilPiB?^ l;Qfe! * ^4*~j^^1^e,yHi iliP^^ ^jh^^^hS^H wlm f ^*tH§" "¦¦*-*& BBbL ; iHfcf 'vfH iFMjiH fw/Km IB ITwl ffln 1 w't&SB' JJMBllMiJ ; 1 1HR i i B ¦ If yi 1 lfl»rM^ M-''j '""M»»iI;„) ^n(^P CAUICATUllES Of SOME WELL KNOWN TYPES. (From the Kee> York Daily Graphic), I. 72. A MORNING WITH JUSTICE. 73 surprising capital, by taking note of one morning's administration of criminal justice. It was my desire to behold Bow Street in Manhattan. A feAv years ago I beheld Bow Street on the Bosphorus ; that is to say, I sate on the bench by the side of her Britannic Majesty's Consular Judge at Constantinople, as he heard the night charges from Galata, and complaints from Scotch captains whose ships were moored in the Golden Horn against Irish sailors who had turned restive during the voyage from Odessa. When the court had risen, we went over the consular prison, Avhere we saw under a shed in the yard, a gentleman under sentence of penal servitude for forgery, grind ing in a very leisurely manner at the crank, and another gentle man in a cell, who looked gloomy ; and Avell he might, seeing that he Avas in hold on a vehement suspicion of murder, and that the probabilities were strongly in favour of his being tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by the consular judge, and of his being then comfortably sent to Malta to be hanged. It was odd, while listening to these purely British matters, to peep through the baned windoAvs of the prison corridors at the blue Bosphorus with its dancing caiques, and in the distance, at Seraglio Point, and the domes and minarets of Stamboul. From the Turkish to the English Bow-street, and thence to the cognate tribunal in New York, is a farther cry than to Lochawe ; but humanity in its scoundrelly aspect presents very strong points of similarity, all the world over rascals are your true cosmopolitans ; and in the course of the morning, Avhich I spent with Justice in New York, I Avas many times inclined to forget that I had crossed the " big pond," and apt to think that the sitting magistrate was Sir James Ingham or Mr. FioAvers, and that his worship was dealing, not with the frailties of the Bowery river and the aberrations of Greenwich-street, but with the nocturnal escapades of Seven Dials and the peccadilloes of Drury-lane. I must premise by reminding you that the courts of petty sessions in New York have a very extended jurisdiction, and deal with highly important, albeit somewhat repulsive, social 74 AMERICA REVISITED. matters. The total number of persons arraigned before the police courts of the Empire City during the year ending October 31, 1878, was 78,533, of whom 56,004 were males and 22,529 — a dismally large proportion— females. Out of this aggregate 51,786 were "held" for adjudication, and the re mainder were discharged. These included all cases of felony, misdemeanour, and summary trials, or what Ave term " night LODGING-ROOM AT STATION-HOUSE. In addition to the above, 243 male and 72 female persons were committed to the House of Detention " for witnesses.' This, Avhich at the first blush Avould seem to be a strange A-iolation of the liberty of the citizen, is the American substitute for the English system of binding over the Avitnesses for the pro secution in their own recognisances to appear at the trial. A respectable Avitness Avho can give substantial bail would not of A MORNING WITH JUSTICE. 75 course be clapped into gaol to await the finding of a true bill or otherwise by the grand jury ; but in the case of a witness Avhose antecedents are doubtful, whose social status is equivocal, and whose bona fides is vague, and who might in all likelihood " skip the town," or show justice a clean pair of heels before matters came to the consummation of Oyer and Terminer, American criminal jurisprudence very practically holds that the best possible recognisances that the future testifier can possibly give, are his own proper person. So they lock him up, in non-afflictive imprisonment — that is to say, he has unstinted opportunities for " loafing," during his detention until the time of trial. I suppose that this system, which is decidedly repugnant to our ideas of individual freedom — is found to work well in the States. In any case, it has undergone no material alteration since its prevalence was mentioned — and mentioned with reprehension — by Charles Dickens, in his " American Notes," more than five- arid-thirty years ago. On the other hand, bail on criminal charges, even to the most serious ones, is much more freely granted in New York — I am careful, you will perceive, to particularise one State, because I do not know what may be the practice . in other commonwealths of the Union — than it is in England, Avhere within recent times there has been a growing disposition among stipendiary magistrates to regard bail, not as what it constitutionally is in all cases save felony, a right, but as a privilege to be arbitrarily extended or withheld, according to the magistrate's opinion of the prisoner. This is specially noticeable in cases of assault. My experiences of a " Morning with Justice " would be also comparatively without value were I to omit a brief mention of the relative nativity of the various persons arraigned before the police-courts. Broadly speaking, I believe that I am not much beyond the mark in saying that, in point of population, New York is the first Irish and the third German city in the world. These are, indeed, portentous statistics. I have repeatedly heard it said that New York is the second Teutonic city ; but I 76 AMERICA REVISITED. wish rather to over estimate than under estimate a computation which can only be unerringly verified by the next census returns. Of the 51,786 persons " held to answer," fined, committed in default of bail, or sent to reformatory institutions, the several nativities Avere as folloAvs : 22,571 came from the United States, 19,021 from Ireland, 6,358 from Germany, 1,444 from England, 614 from Scotland, 379 from France, 406 from Italy, 981 from other countries ; and the nationality of 11 persons was not ascertained. There Avere only 719 males and 629 females of coloured extraction in the aggregate, but the very large proportion of female to male prisoners of African descent is certainly remarkable. In the way of fines, between the police-courts, the courts of special sessions, and the mulcts paid, after conviction, to prison warders, there were collected in 1878 some 53,000 dollars, say £10,600. For the purpose of equitably dealing out justice among this great army of misdemeanants, New York is divided into six districts. It was at the court held at Jefferson-market, a few- minutes' Avalk from the Brevoort. House, that I spent my morn ing Avith Justice, and the Csesar Avho sat in judgment on that particular morning, Avas Mr. Charles A. Flammer, the President of the Board of Police Justices, from Avhose fifth annual official report I have gathered the foregoing statistics. The office of police-justice — or stipendiary magistrate, as we should term it- is, like the majority of judicial appointments in the United States, an elective one, and is held for a term of years. The work is extremely hard — certainly harder than that of a London police magistrate — and demands the possession not only of a large amount of legal acumen, but also a reserve of strong common sense. The salary is about equal to that paid to our OAvn stipendiaries ; but it must be borne in mind that the post is not permanent, that the cost of living is much higher in New York than in London, and that there is no retiring pension to the veteran and Avom-out distributor of justice. I was pre^ sented to Mr. Flammer through the intermediary of a friend, A MORNING WITH JUSTICE. 77 who is the editor of a New York newspaper, and by a gentle man whom I had known in former years, not only as a con spicuous politician, but as District Attorney or Public Prosecutor for New York. Nothing could have been greater than the courtesy and kindness shown to me by the magistrate in placing me face to face Avith Justice, and explaining to me the inner mechanism of his tribunal, from the tabulation of the charges to the ultimate bourne of the prisoners charged. Jefferson-market Court-house, which adjoins a real market, overflowing with the good things of this life, is a very spacious and lofty building of red brick, with stone casings to the doors. and windoAvs. The pile is flanked by a lofty and imposing tower, the purpose of Avhich I shall presently explain. In fact, the entire structure is as commodious, and as handsome, as I trust that new BoAv-street Police Court will prove to be, Avhich the Office of Works are building in vieAv of the wretched and squalid structure over the Avay, which has so long been a dis grace to the administration of summary justice in the British metropolis.0 The police court-room at Jefferson-market is a * The new Bow-street Police Court is now an accomplished, fact. I leave the passage standing in which I mentioned the old and abominable den ; because I " hammered away " at it in the columns of the press for years, almost as sedulously as I hammered away at that other scandalous nuisance — Temple Bar. Persons of my profession in England have not much to be thankful for. The journalist is assuredly no favourite of fortune. We work desperately hard, and looking at the work we do and the immense fortunes which we materially help the proprietors of the newspapers to make we are but poorly paid. The English journalist has no definitely ascertained social position. The courts of law do not even consider him to be a professional person — much less a "gentleman" fit to serve on the Grand Jury ; and he is liable at any moment to be summoned on a petty jury, and to- sit day after day at the Old Bailey or the Middlesex Sessions trying pick-pockets and pot stealers ; while his next door neighbours in the street where he lives — the solicitors, the surgeons, the architects and surveyors are excused from serving. He may have an extended knowledge and experience of politics, and he may be a fluent and sensible speaker, but seats in parliament being marketable commodities usually fall to the share of the highest bidder. The doors of the House of Commons are partially closed against the journalist ; if he has had the means or the opportunity in early life of getting called to the bar, he may possibly when he is bordering on fifty years of age, obtain a County Court Judgeship, or the post of a. stipendiary somewhere in the manufacturing districts ; but if he be not a barrister,, 78 AMERICA REVISITED. lofty, well-ventilated, and generally comely apartment, with fittings of some dark wood very tastefully carved. Eight across one extremity of the room runs a high raised partition or bar, behind which is the bench, a roomy, carpeted area ; in the centre of Avhich the police justice is throned in a comfortable arm-chair, his clerks being seated at desks on either side of their chief. This arrangement obviates much inconvenience, and loss of time, in handing up official documents to the magistrate, who has all his judicial apparatus, from a volume of statutes to a commitment warrant, at hand and at command ; and, irreverent as may be the simile, the magistrate, behind his high counter, assumes the guise of a kind of Ehadamanthus " bar-tender," who mixes you precisely the sort of " drink " Avhich he thinks most suitable for you — from a " short " drink of ten days in the City the very most which the chief of the political party to which during half his life he has done yeoman's service, can do for him, is to fling him, very much as though it was a pennyworth of cat's-meat — a vice consulate at Caqueville-sur-Mer, or a consulate in the Cruel Islands. And, unless he fails to obtain either a County Court Judgeship, or a consulate, he dies, in harness, and when it is discovered that he has not left £50,000 invested in the elegant simplicity of the Three per Cents, and that his wife and children are comparatively destitute, many heads are dolefully shaken over the extravagance and lack of thrift of literary men ; and if a public subscription be made to assist those whom he has left, the usual sneering allusions to " sending the hat round " are indulged in. I should have mentioned that the journalist if he happens to achieve eminence in his calling, is expected to contribute largely to miscellaneous charitable institutions, and that he is the pre}' of all the begging letters in London ; nor should it be omitted (for the benefit of foreigners, and especially of Americans), to hint that however eminent an English journalist may be, there is not an idiotic, hirdling, nor a smooth-faced sub-lieutenant in a inarching regiment, who does not consider himself fully justified in calling the writer in a newspaper " an anonymous scribbler," or a " wretched penny-a-liner." This is the ordinary fate of the follower of a vocation in which the lacks are many and the halfpence few ; but there are consolations and compensations for my brethren and myself. AYe possess the power to redress grievances and to serve good and useful purposes. We have the opportunity for " hammering away " at nuisances and misfortunes, to denounce the jobbing minister, to expose the nefarious speculator, to shame the intolerant priest, to rebuke the unjust judge : and, on the other hand, to plead the cause of the poor and oppresssed, the fainting and feeble folks. We are foiled and baffled sometimes: — witness that hideous insult to propriety and good tasle, the Griffin in Fleet-street ; but I mean to keep on "hammering away" at that disgrace to the city, as I "hammered away" at old Temple Bar, and old Bow-street police court ; and I hope, before I die, to see the Griffin in the gutter. A MORNING WITH JUSTICE. 79 Prison to six months on "the Island," Avhich is decidedly a " long 'idrink. Between the magisterial dais and the body of the court there is another space, securely railed off from the section set aside for the public, and having lateral access to the dep6t for prisoners. In this space, I suppose, are situated the dock, the solicitors' and counsel's table, and the witness-box, or " stand," as the place of testimony is called on this side the Atlantic. I say that I suppose ; but I really cannot tell with accuracy — first, because my organs of vision are lamentably faulty, and, next, because the order of procedure in a New York police-court is very peculiar, and amounts in substance to the following : — A stalwart policeman brings the prisoner's body forward, but with out, in any way, hustling him or " dragging him along." He merely seems to present the individual in trouble to the magis trate, with an air as though he were asking, " Now, what do you think of this specimen of humanity, your honour?" A very choice specimen of humanity the prisoner usually turns out to be. The prosecutor stands cheek byjowlAvith the person whom he accuses, and the Avitnesses for and against the defendant are all close at hand. There is a crier or usher, who administers the oaths to Avitnesses ; and now and again the head of a gentle man — generally well bearded and eye-glassed — is popped out of the group, and the head proves to belong to the attorney, or the counsel for the prosecution or for the defence. Anything more informal, and, indeed, at variance Avith our cut-and-dried traditional notions of the administration of justice, it would be difficult to imagine. But it is from beginning to end highly practical. Half-a-dozen times during the hearing of a case the foreigner begins to be nervous lest the witnesses on either side should fall foul of one another — they do indulge, it is true, in violent personal recrimination — lest the prosecutor should " go for " the prisoner, or vice versa, or lest the lady or gentleman in trouble should suddenly take it into his or her head to emulate the 80 AMERICA REVISITED. exploit of Jemmy O'Brien, as recorded in the stirring lyric of " Garry OAven," by leaping over the dock, "in spite of the judge and the jury." It is true that there is no jury, unless a concourse of the sovereign people who fill the benches in the body of the court can be taken as representing the " twelve honest men," multiplied to a considerable extent. Yet this seemingly " higgledy-piggledy " manner of doing things seems to me, in the long run, to be eminently sensible and business-like. There is a sufficient number of policemen at hand to take good care of the prisoner should he exhibit premonitory symptoms of turning " ugly," or of " raising Cain and breaking things." The magistrate, on his high da'is, is tolerably safe from the peril of having a leaden inkstand or an iron-heeled shoe flung at him by an irate defendant — dangers to which English stipe ndaries are not unfrequently exposed — and has besides the inestimable advantage of hearing every word that the parties have to say and of looking at them all " straight between the eyes." In most police cases, all over the world, there is, I take it, an immense amount of lying. Sometimes the mendacity is on the part of the complainant, sometimes on that of the defendant, and occasionally it is on the side of the police, who have so far the better of their adversaries in the circumstance that their experience in mis-statement and prevarication is lengthened and varied ; and in the telling of fibs, as in most other things, practice makes perfect. Now, the main object of a police-magistrate is to get at the truth, and to find out who is stating the thing which is not ; and the system pursued at Jefferson-market Court ap peared to me peculiarly calculated to bring about such a desirable consummation. For example, one of the cases turned on an " interfamiliar " row in a tenement house.0 Mrs. Jones accused w The New York " tenement house " corresponds with the lower class unfurnished lodgings of London. Its occupants are chiefly the poorer mechanics, labourers and their families, foreigners and the like. It is considered almost disreputable to live in one of them, and the native-born clerks and artizans who cannot afford a housS of their own, seem to prefer the " boarding house " and its sempiternal " hash " to the comparative freedom which the " tenement house " affords. One of the most p.. llAOrlCKERS COURT, MULBERRY STREET, NEW YORK. 1,81. A MORNING WITH JUSTICE. Mrs. O'Flaherty of breaking into her bed-room where she Avas lying sick, and proposing to pour a pailful of boiling Avater over her. Mrs. O'Flaherty made a counter-accusation against Mrs. picturesque and at the same time unsavoury blocks of tenement houses, is situate in Mulberry-street, near the Bowery and is known as "Rag-picker's court " from the calling pursued by the bulk of its inhabitants. A cellar in the front house opens to the street, and peering down one sees a score of men and women half buried in piles of dirty rags and paper which they are sorting and packing for the mill. The place serves as a general depSt to which the rag-picker brings his odds and ends for sale after he ha-s sorted them. Two passages running through this and the neigh bouring house, lead into a small badly paved courtyard which separates the front buildings from those in the rear. Looking up, the spectator beholds rags to the right of him, rags to the left of hirn^ on all sides rags, nothing but rags. Lines in the yard are strung with them, balconies festooned with them, fire-escapes draped with them, windows hung with them; hi short every available object is dressed in rags of every possible size, shape, and colour. Some have been drawn through the wash-tub tosget rid of the worst of the dirt, but for the moat part they are hung up just as they ^ire taken from the bags, and left for the rain to cleanse and the sun to bleach them. The yard is in an abominable condition, and the rooms, the upper of which are reached by external staircases, are but little better. Every inch of the walls and ceilings is as black as ink. Against this dark back-ground are hung old hats of odd colour's and odder shapes, musical instruments of various kinds, pots, kettles, pans, joints of raw meat, strings of sausages, women's gowns and big pipes. The beds are al most invariably covered with old carpets retain ing something of their original colours. None of the chairs have backs and hardly any of them four legs. Seated on these uncertain sup ports, or oftener on an empty box, or upturned boiling pot, are the rag pickers sorting old rags, or cutting up old gar ments that are too rotten to wear, and stuffing the bits into bags for the marine store, or "junk" dealer, as he is styled in New York. In some of the rooms the horri ble odour of rottenness is sufficient to knock VOL. I. AT SHILOH SHELTER. 82 AMERICA REVISITED. Jones, first of having called her " out of her name in a most bare faced and onlady-like manner," next of having, without any reasonable cause, violently "spanked" three of her, Mrs. O'Flaherty's, children, and finally of having incited one Mr. one down ; and only those habituated to such pestilent smells could exist in the place. These rag-pickers are mostly Italians. They might certainly find cleaner — if not to their minds more comfortable— quar ters, a little way off in the poor man's lodging house known as " Shiloh Shelter," at the corner of Prince and Marion-streets. The building was formerly a church, but in 1875 a philanthropic merchant, Mr. C. H. Dessart, rented it, fitted up the pews and oenches as bunks, and erected frames of timber from which hammocks were slung, so as to afford accomodation for some 450 lodgers. At first the lodgings were free, tickets being distributed at the police stations with requests to give them to respect able but destitute men. It was found, however, that the privilege was abused and now a nominal charge is made for a lodging ; a bunk in a pew costing three cents a SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS IN SHILOH SHELTER, NEW YORK. night, and a hammock five. In the morning a breakfast of boiled "mush," a kind of porridge, is served, and every one can have as much as he wants for a couple, of cents. Towels, soap, hot water in abundance, buttons, needles and thread, are also provided free. The " shelter " is opened at eight in the evening and closed at ten. At six in the morning the lodgers are called, and by half-past seven the place is cleared of all who are not working, or washing their clothes. During the winter, it fills every night, but in the summer the demand for bunks' is not so brisk. The annual deficit is made up by Mr. Dessart who personally superintends the place. A MORNING WITH JUSTICE. 83 Timothy O'Gallagher, a lodger in the same house, to revile and " bate " Mr. O'Flaherty while that last-named gentleman Avas " thick with the dhrink." Mr. O'Flaherty, who seemed rather thin than thick from the effects of the maddening wine cup, was then heard in aggravation of his wife's statement ; but Mr. Jones, a pauper-looking boot-clicker with a black eye, testified some what to the conclusion that Mr. O'Flaherty had run amuck in the tenement house, and ever since Thanksgiving Day had been " stoking with whiskey, and busting fire and flame all around." All these good folks said their say at the very top of their voices and eventually the magistrate remarked that, "judging from what he had heard, and from the general appearance of the litigants, he liked Mrs. Jones's side of the house better than he did Mrs. O'Flaherty's." Then he sent complainants, defendants and litigants, all about their business. g2 84 AMERICA REATISITED. It fared harder Avith the habitues of the charge-sheet — the topers who had been arrested by the police either in a drunk and disorderly or drunk and incapable condition. The ordinary fine inflicted in these cases was ten dollars, or two pounds sterling. " Lying dead drunk on the side-walk " was the usual formula of the police indictment. One of the defendants Avas an old lady with wavy hair, who was seemingly not far from sixty, and who Avas quite respectably dressed in a serge dress and a Paisley shawl. She did nothing but wag her head in a disconsolate but comically penitent manner, mumbling some incoherent sentences, the end of which Avas that " Satan was in the street cars." The Enemy of Mankind, Ave all know, is ubiquitous, but I Avas un aware that he was specially addicted to travelling per street car. Then there was an Irishman, who had been arrested at the suit of his Avife for "bating" her when "thick with the dhrink." She did not Avant to have him punished, she said, but he must swear a " big oath " before the judge that he would never touch liquor more. The magistrate had to tell her that he had no power to compel the man to swear any oath, big or little, in his court to abstain in future from strong drink ; but on the toper expressing repentance, he was advised to go forth Avith to his Koman Catholic priest in ordinary to " SAvear off," and Avas discharged Avithout any fine. One very humorous defendant appeared in the person of a Frenchman, very sAvarthy of complexion and with a singularly shaggy head of black hair. He described himself as a Avood engraver, and I fancy that he must have come from Marseilles or somewhere in the Midi. He had been picked up in his shirt sleeves and Avorking apron on the side-walk, insensibly intoxi cated, at nine in the evening. When called upon to say what he could for himself, he grinned a most dolorous grin, showing the Avhitest of white teeth, and, holding his shaggy head between his two hands, declared that it felt " comme un tonneau "—like a hogshead. He was let go Avith five instead of ten dollars fine. A sadder fate befell two pretty brazen girls from Green- A MORNING WITH JUSTICE. 85 Avich-street : the Colleen Bawn and Kathleen Mavourneen "gone wrong." Poor things! They were "sent doAvn" for ten days. Several Germans, a Dane, and an Italian Avere arraigned, the services of a police-constable sworn as an inter preter being occasionally called into requisition ; but of one defendant, a bearded creature wearing a serge blouse and a fur cap nearly as large as an English grenadier's " busby," neither the Court nor the interpreter could make anything. I think that he must have been a Moldo-Wallachian. Perhaps he was one of the " heroic Lazes," Avho had taken shipping at Erzeroum, and turned up, somehow, at NeAv York. It Avas instructive to remark that, out of seventeen night charges to Avhich I listened, only one referred to a native-born American. That was a case, and a very bad case, of burglary ; and the detectives employed in the affair made a most dramatic display of "jemmies," skele ton keys, and other housebreaking implements, on the magis trate's desk. The man accused of burglary — a skeleton key had fallen from his pocket when he was arrested on the staircase of a house in Broadway — was remanded for further examination. He looked a poor, destitute creature enough, Avith barely suffi cient rags to cover his back ; but he had sufficient dollars, it Avould seem, to procure legal advice, and had retained a fashion ably attired young gentleman learned in the law to defend him. I wish him — the prisoner — a good deliverance ; but if ever a man had a " Sing Sing " face he had. Let me conclude this im- perfect record of a Morning with Justice by mentioning that the magistrate took his seat shortly after eight a.m. At noon there is a " recess " of tAvo hours ; and thereafter throughout the after noon so long as may be necessary the magistrate continues to sit, patiently and conscientiously plodding through the Avarp and woof and weft of the Seamy Side of NeAv York life. VI. Fashion and Food in New York. New York, Dec. 5. The Seamy Side ! I saw something of it in Paris, in 1878 ; and wretchedly seamy indeed was the side which revealed itself when only one small corner of the tapestry on which were figured all the luxury and the splendour of the Exposition Universelle was lifted. I have been in New York only ten days, yet, for all the brevity of my sojourn, I have experienced, these three days past, a strangely uneasy longing to behold the Seamy Side of the Empire City. You may opine that such a desire on my part, savoured of the discontented and ill-conditioned. " Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." That choice maxim of poetic paradox — perhaps the neatest example of epigrammatic clap-trap extant — was taught us many years ago by Mr. Thomas Gray. Why should I not be content to remain in blissful ignorance of the " seamy " side of the poverty, and vice, and crime of New York ? Why could I not let well EASHI0N AND FOOD IN NEW YORK. 87 alone ? To the tourist well supplied with letters of introduction, and Avith plenty of money in his pocket, Manhattan is, at the present moment, perhaps, with one exception, as enjoyable a metropolis as could be found in the whole world over ; the exception of which I speak is the potential occurrence when the frost is apparently at its hardest, and promises to last some Aveeks longer, of a Thaw. Then, everything, in an out-of-doors sense, goes to wrack. Slush is triumphant ; crossing Fifth- avenue is wading through a Malebolgian mire, and perambula tion is, to a lady, next door to the impossible. But, if you can afford to keep a carriage, or to hire a hack coupe*, you will find New York between the end of November and the beginning of March, gayer than Paris, and almost as gay as St. Petersburg was before the Nihilist revolts. The fashionable season is beginning, and society is brilliant, varied, cosmopolitan, refined, intelligent, and almost totally free from prejudice. Politics are wholly tabooed from polite conver sation,* and people talk no more about the Eastern Question * This was written before the beginning of the Electoral " Campaign " for the Presidency ; and (so far as I can judge from the " Campaign '' articles in the news papers) ^he contest would appear to have been carried on, from first to last, with much less than the customary acrimony. One of the most heated of the " Cam paign " utterances that I came across in the States was the following choice excerpt which I cut from the Olcolona Southern States : — "A STRONG GOVERNMENT" — HOW THE INFANDOUS IDEA HAS BEEN SERVED IN AMERICA, AND HOW IT WILL BE SERVED AGAIN. "A strong Government. " So says the Stalwart Saltimbanco of the New York Tribune, in his issue of the 14th ult. ; And the remark is being quoted by the Re publican press with many commendatory com ments. The old Continentals had " A strong Government " Prior to 1776 ; But they read the law of liberty to The palace-born whelps of St. James, And they rammed it down the throats of his soldiers, With a seasoning of saltpetre. That was the way our fathers served " A strong Government ; " And their sons haven't forgotten the trick. The Confederate Commonwealths were sub jected to " A strong Government " From 1865 until 1875, But a storm kept brewing and blowing up through all that Dark Decade. It broke in Blood and Flame,And our people Sabred and Shot-gunnedTheir way to liberty. The questards for ' ' A strong Government " Can learn a salutiferous lesson by conning these precedents, and committing them to memory, For just as surely as Jehovah Holds this planet in the hollow of His hand, Just that surely will our people 98 AMERICA REVISITED. than they do about the Alabama Claims. Hospitality is as unstinted as it is splendid ; and masquerades are not looked upon as they are with us as shockingly wicked things, to be repressed with the most wrathful rigour of which the Middlesex magistrates are capable. I don't know what Avould be thought of the Middlesex magistrates in this city, where public music and dancing are a recognised feature in the amusements of the people. The "serious" classes here go their own Avay — and a very useful and beneficent way it is — but they do not strive to coerce their non-serious fellow citizens into Avays of asceticism and gloom. The truth is, that in New York there is room enough for Everybody ; whereas in London, huge as it is, there Spot The first man that undertakes to inaugurate ' ' A strong Government " On our soil, And crack his infernal neck on the gallows- tree. They will do it, If they die for it — They will do it if they have to paint the mid night sky with a fret-work of lire, and wash the high-wayS and by-ways of the land with the life-blood of the Catilines and Conspirators. ' We thought that the Infandous idea of "A strong Government" was dying out with the despotisms beyond the Atlantic. Europe is leaping into a New,Freer, and Transplendent LifeUnder the magic touch of liberty, And is being Redeemed, Regenerated, and Republicanized. Are we to drop back into the Dark Ages, As the Eastern Hemisphere heaves upward into the light that was first quickeued and kindled on our soil ? Shall we introduce the Trumpery and FiligreeOf Imperialism, Together with its Janizaries,Bastiles, and Chains, As the Old World discards these Relics of barbarism, And transforms her subjects into sovereigns.? Never ! By the Holy Trinity ! Never ! NEVER ! ! But this is the ultimity of Stalwartism. Therefore Stalwartism Must and ShallDie the Death. This Union is a Loose and TemporaryLeagueOf Sovereign Commonwealths. They are their own lords and masters. No central power will be permitted to usurp one solitary Right or FunctionThat is guaranteed to them by the royal sign-manual of God Himself. The people of Mississippi, for instance, are a Separate, Distinct, and Sovereign People ; They propose to do precisely as they please, whether the citizens of the other States like it or not, And the sooner that this fact is understood, Once for all, The better and The safer It will be for the unhung scelerats who are brawling in behalf of ' ' A strong Government. '' FASHION AND FOOD IN NEW YORK. 89 WAITING FOR A TRAIN ON THE ELEVATED RAILWAY AFTER THE MASQUERADE. is not sufficient room for Anybody. Our houses, our interests, our idiosyncrasies, our creeds, our habits and modes of life are continually jostling and conflicting with each other ; and the natural result is that we are ahvays snarling and grumbling and bringing actions against our brothers and sisters. A significant example of the placability of the Americans, is that the columns of the newspapers are almost entirely devoid of letters from out side correspondents fiercely protesting against social grievances. "' A Subscriber from the First " is not accustomed vehemently 90 AMERICA REVISITED. to inveigh against the disgraceful conduct of the proprietor of the Great Bonanza Hotel, in the matter of the quality of the maple syrup supplied with the buckwheat cakes at breakfast* nor does " Amicus Justitise " fight furiously in print with " Paterfamilias " on the disputed question of hot air flues versus anthracite stoves for heating apartments. On the whole there seems to me to be far less social friction in modern New York life than is the case on our side. People here do not trouble themselves much about things calculated to arouse embittered controversy ; and in this respect the New Yorkers closely resemble the Viennese. La Bagatelle appears for the moment, to be triumphant. There are a multitude of cheap and well-managed theatres open, playing mainly the most frivolous and nonsensical pieces it is possible to conceive ; and they are all crowded nightly. Hoav many tens of thousands of dollars a week Mr. Delmonico is clearing I do not know, and it is surely no concern of mine to inquire; but his palatial establishment, as well as scores of the restaurants and cafes, continually overflow with guests. I dined at Delmonico's hard by the Fifth-avenue Hotel, a few nights ago ; and among the dainties which that consummate caterer favoured us with, was an entremet called an " Alaska." The " Alaska" is a baked ice. A beau mentir qui vient de loin ; but this is no traveller's tale. The nucleus or core of the entremet is an ice cream. This is surrounded by an envelope of carefully whipped cream, which, just before the dainty dish is served, is popped into the oven, or is brought under the scorching influence of a red hot sala mander ; so that its surface is covered with a light brown crust. So you go on discussing the Avarm cream souffle till you come, with somewhat painful suddenness, on the row of ice. E'en so did the Shepherd in Virgil groAV acquainted with love, and find him a native of the rocks. When I was here last the fashionable or "up town" Delmonico occupied a large building at the corner of East Four teenth-street, and Fifth-avenue. But East Fourteenth-street THI ITALIAN CPNTiWN ••n-ro" MKH F0»!»T,NO,A BOHi»«NJ> EATING AS A FINE ART. {From tlw " New York Daily Graphic") 93 AMERICA REVISITED. f is now " doAvn toAvn," and the existing Palazzo Delmonico fronts Broadway, Fifth-avenue, and Twenty-sixth-street. The furniture and hangings are splendid, but very quiet and refined. The establishment comprises an immense cafe", and a public restaurant of equal dimensions, while on the second floor (reached of course by a lift or " elevator ") there are first a magnificent saloon which can be used as a ball room or as a dining hall, and next a series of handsome private rooms for select dinner parties ; on the upper floors are a limited number of furnished apartments for gentlemen. You may dine, I have been told, very modestly indeed at Delmonico's for about five dollars, including a bottle of light, but drinkable claret. I state this merely on hearsay, because the good people Avho took us over and over again, to Delmonico's to dine, are in the habit of paying the dinner bill themselves, and refusing to show it to us afterwards. But I may hint (also on hearsay) that a first rate dinner at Delmonico's is a very serious affair in the Avay of dollars. Next in renown to Delmonico's is that of the Hotel Brunswick which is " diagonally opposite " Delmonico's (I am quoting that abundant repertory of information " Appleton's Dictionary of New York and its Vicinity "). Here the viands and courses are quite as recherches as they are at Delmonico's. The prices are also recherches. The Brunswick presents an additional attraction of a large garden in the rear, and here, in summer, meals are served under a canvas aAvning. Described as " strictly first class " but a trifle inferior to Delmonico's and the Brunswick, are the restaurants attached to the Golsay House, Broadway (at Twenty-sixth-street), the St. James's Hotel (Broadway and Twenty-fifth-street), the St. James's Hotel (BroadAvay and Twenty-sixth-street), the Hoffmann House, Broadway, between Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth-streets; and the Rosmon Hotel (in Broadway at Forty-second-street). On the lower rungs of the social ladder are the so called "fifteen cent houses," Avhere for sevenpence halfpenny you may be served with a cut from a hot joint Avith bread, butter, potatoes and pickles. FASHION AND FOOD IN NEW YORK. 93 The florists, the dry goods storekeepers, the confectioners, the silversmiths, and the French milliners ought all to be making gigantic fortunes. There is a tidal wave, just now, of matri mony, and of fashionable Aveddings there is no end. Old St. Mark's Church- — the late Mr. A. T. Stewart's place of worship — Avas, the other morning, the scene of a most superb wedding, the young couple being the representatives of two very ancient Manhattan families. The bride was exquisitely attired in a costume consisting of a long train of rich brocaded satin trimmed Avith " point Duchesse " lace. Her veil Avas of old point, which had been in her family for more than a century. It was fastened with a magnificent spray of diamonds, which also held a few natural orange blossoms. Her necklace was of diamonds upon a band of black velvet ; and she carried a gorgeous gold and velvet bound Prayer Book in lieu of a bouquet. The bride's mother wore a primrose satin, " of slight, pretty, delicate, lilac shade, Avith a rosy flush to it, which has of late become fashion able." Elsewhere I read of a " seven hundred dollar dress," just completed for a lady leader of fashionable society, and which consists of a long train of ruby-red brocade, edged with a pure gold cord as thick as the index finger. " The entire front Is of solid cloth of gold, with gold embroidered lace let in, and striped insertions of superb bronze beading on lace." Dresses of equal splendour are to be worn at a ball to be given at Delmonico's this evening, for the purpose of introducing a charming young debutante to society. I may just quietly hint that all these fine things are not so enjoyed without the expenditure of a vast amount of money. I suppose that luxurious life in New York is at the present moment about the most expensive of any life in any city in the world. Paris during the Exhibition season was costly enough, in all conscience ; this city is dearer than St. Petersburg, dearer than Madrid. I am constrained to have a private sitting room in addition to a bed room, as I have a great deal of writing to do, and I pay seven dollars a day, or twenty-eight shillings, for 94 AMERICA REVISITED. accommodation which I could certainly obtain at the Hotel d' Angleterre at St. Petersburg for six roubles, or fifteen shillings, and at the Fonda de los Principes at Madrid for an Isabellino or twenty shillings per diem. Yet the cities on the Neva and the Manzanares are proverbially quoted as phenome nally expensive capitals. Good wearing apparel here is surpris ingly costly. Two dollars and twenty-five cents., or nine shillings, are charged for a pair of Dent's kid gloves, which you FASHION AND FOOD IN NEW YORK. 95 could purchase in Piccadilly for four shillings and sixpence. Ladies^ gloves are proportionately expensive. You cannot obtain a Havana cigar Avorth smoking for less than ninepence ; and tAvo shillings is thought to be quite a moderate price for a Regalia Britannica. There is no drinkable champagne under three dollars or twelve shillings a bottle. Claret is almost equally dear. In fact, so far as my experience goes, I have found that the purchasing power of the dollar in New York does not exceed that of an English florin ; just as in analogously expensive Holland the tourist finds, to his dismay, that the Dutch guild en does not go further than an English shilling. This condition of things financial is all the more productive ot consternation to me, since when I was last in America gold was at from one-fifty to one-eighty per cent, premium — that is to say, for every hundred dollars I got from two hundred and fifty to two hundred and eighty dollars in greenbacks ; and I cannot recall to mind that things in New York Avere so very much dearer in 1863-64 than they are now in 1879. I re member, indeed, being once sharply, yet pertinently, told by an American gentleman, with whom I was having a political dis cussion, that, under any circumstances, I had no right to grumble, since, as he put it, "I was living on my exchange ; " nor am I prepared to deny that there was some admixture of truth in his assertion. The truth of the matter is that several experienced lady housekeepers gave me to understand that the necessaries of life, properly so called, may be bought in the numerous and ex cellently provided markets of New York at prices which, estimating them by comparison with our own, Ave should be] entitled to consider as ridiculously cheap. Thus very good beef is procurable at from eight to ten cents — fourpence to fivepence — a pound. The choicer parts do not go beyond twenty-four cents. Mutton ranges between fourpence halfpenny and eight- pence. Pork is a little lower. Butter commands about the same prices as with us. Cheese is wonderfully cheap. Sugar 9G AMERICA REVISITED. OUTSIDE WASHINGTON MARKET, NEW YORK. OYSTER BOATS, NEW YORK. FASHION AND FOOD IN NEW YORK. 97 is dearer than ft is in England, varying between fourpence and fivepwnce. In London good moist sugar may be bought for threepence a pound. Coffee in New York fluctuates between ninepence and fifteen pence a pound. Oysters of every size and variety of flavour are as cheap as oranges are at Havana — that is to say they may be bought for " next to nothing." Fish is amazingly plentiful, delicious, and inexpensive. The New York markets provide delicacies of the deep— striped, bass, Spanish mackerel, sheep's head, kingfish — positively unknown to us ; the SHAD FISHING IN DELAWARE BAY. cod is superb, but the sole is non-existent. There is a kind of plaice that professes that he is a sole, but he is not to be believed. He is a " fraud." Smelts abound. The vegetables are prodigious in size. I never saw such gigantic cabbages and caulifloAvers out of Valencia, in Spain ; and they are cheap in market overt. There is an inexhaustible plentitude of tomatoes, of " squash," and of the health-giving celery ; Avhich American diners almost incessantly nibble from the beginning to the end of their repasts. Of other salads there is uo stint. VOL. I. 98 AMERICA REVISITED, Venison is excellent and cheap ; and the Americans have the good sense to eat it when it is fresh, and not rotten. A. perfectly PREPARING FOR THE HOLIDAY BANQUETS IN WASHINGTON MARKET ON THE ARRIVAL OF GAME MEATS FROM THE WEST. fresh steak of boiled vension beats all the chateaubriands in the Avorld. Poultry is abundant, and may be quoted " all round" at FASHION AND FOOD IN NEW YORK. 99 tenpence a pound. Ducks are multitudinous : but a canvas- back ^Juck at a restaurant costs you three dollars ; and a man with a healthy appetite can scarcely dine off a canvas-back duck, seeing that it is only the breast of the bird that is eatable. , On the other hand, I find from a carefully compiled table of prices and rates of wages in a New York paper that bricklayers here earn from twelve to fifteen dollars — from £2 8s. to £3 a week— that the hebdomadal wage of a mason or a plumber is from twelve to eighteen dollars, of a tailor from ten to eighteen dollars, and of a day labourer from six to nine dollars. In a country where food is so abundant and so cheap, and where labour is so amply remunerated, there ought scarcely to be any Seamy Side. MARKET WAGGONS STAND — NEW YORK. A PULLMAN PARLOUR CAR. VII. On the Cars. Baltimore, Dec. 7. It is always hard to leave. New York — first, because, as a stranger, you probably find more friends there than in any other part of the Union ; and next, because foreigners frequently cherish a preconceived notion that the Empire City is the head quarters of Avhat Europeans usually consider to be refinement and comfort ; and that, once out of New York, you must expect nothing better than pork and beans and Indian pudding, or hog and hominy if you go South ; the whole Avashed down by rough cider or molasses and Avater — 'tis only the Germans and Irish, I am told, avIio drink lager beer and whiskey in the America of to-day. In any case, it is certain that temperance — even to total abstinence — has made enormous strides within the last feAv years in the States ; and, but for a kindly and thoughtful ON THE CARS. 101 tolerance of the bad habits of foreigners, whom they ask to dinner and whom they still insist on regaling with the rarest of ¦vintages, I am assured, in some quarters, that the custom of wine drinking would speedily fade out altogether from good society in America. I had, in transatlantic parlance, such a thoroughly " good time" since I landed from the Scythia, that I found it doubly grievous to quit, even temporarily, a city where I had found so many dear old friends, and made so many new ones. But busi ness is business ; and the entries in the feuille de route, which I had proposed to myself when I started on this expedition, had to be, so far as circumstances would permit, duly attended to. I was clue at Baltimore, in the State of Maryland, on the evening of Saturday, December 6, so on Friday I sent round my pasteboard " P.P.C's ; " and the next day, at noon, one of the comfortable coup6s of the Brevoort conveyed me, per Jersey City ferry, to the terminus of the Pennsylvania Railroad, by means of which, via, Philadelphia and Wilmington, I was to reach Baltimore. We left Jersey City at one p.m., and I wish to be tolerably minute in recording even the trivial incidents of a seven hours' journey of about 200 miles, in order to show- how, since my last coming to the States, the disagreeable features of a formerly dreadfully uncomfortable railway trip have been reduced to a minimum. In the Avar time it was my frequent and unhappy lot to travel, at least once a fortnight, between New York and Washington by the way of Philadelphia and Baltimore ; and on the eve of every departure, I was filled with gloomy pre-occupation at the thought of the miseries which I was about to endure. But I have no wish needlessly to renew the memory of bygone- dolour. Let me draAv a veil over the melancholy past, and record only the cheerful present. At the same time it may be stated that it required rather a plentifully .permanent stock of animal spirits to be cheerful, on Saturday morning, seeing that it rained heavily, and that the steady vertical downpour ceased not during the Avhole day and evening. 102 AMERICA REVISITED. Still we contrived, systematically, to baffle the wrath of the elements. Mark in what manner. In London, one would have driven, say from home to Euston- square, in a four-wheeler. Act the first : Loading the roof of the four-Avheeler with the heavy baggage ; curses both loud and deep on the part of a rheumatic and rum-odorous cabman; appearance on the scene of the "odd man," who turns up fortuitously, to assist in loading baggage, and wishes to know whether I consider myself a gentleman, on his receiving what he deems an inadequate remuneration for breaking one of the Avindows of the vehicle with one of the iron clamps of a trunk, and letting a lady's bonnet-box tumble in the mud. Act the second : Arrival at Euston terminus ; fearful row with the cab man about fare and luggage ; exciting chase after porter, who has snatched up your small articles, and fled with them you know not whither. Another hunt after porter, who has wheeled away your heavy trunks ; discovery that you have gone through the wrong door, and got on to the Liverpool platform instead of the Birmingham one. Eventual finding of the ticket office, where your purchase of the necessary billet is delayed by the inability of the deaf old lady in front of you, — first to find her porte-monnaie, and next to make up her mind as to what class she means to travel by. Culminating confession of the deaf old lady that she wants to go to Norwich, and that the Great Eastern, not the London and North- Western, is the line by which she ought to travel. Tableau: the bell for departure having begun to ring. Fearful scene on the platform ; almost by a miracle, so it seems, you get your luggage labelled, fill your pocket-flask Avith — well, say orangeflower water, at the refreshment buffet, buy your morning papers, and, asking for a smoking carriage, get bundled into a compartment with two Quakers, a lady Avith a cough, a nurse, and a baby. Act the third: — N.B. In the interval betAveen second and third acts, you have had four minutes' liberty to scald your throat with some soup or some tea — you scarcely remember which — to half ON THE CARS. 103 choke yourself with a sandwich, and to cultivate an acquaintance with all "the Painful Family of Death, more Hideous than their Queen," beginning with the indigestion which lurks in the geological formation of a pork pie. — Arrival at your destination ; grand salmagundi of luggage on the platform. Your favourite valise undiscoverable for fifteen minutes ; it is fished out at last from the remotest corner of the van. Your luggage-label has been converted by the rain into a little pellet of yellow pulp ; possibly you have lost it altogether. If you are so fortunate as to get all your luggage hoisted on to the roof of another four- wheeled cab, fresh brawl with the other cabman when you arrive at your hotel. Compensation : You have been travelling at the rate of forty miles an hour. My experiences of a journey to Baltimore on a hideously Avet PICTORIAL RAILWAY TICKET. 104 AMERICA REVISITED. day were very different from the foregoing. Persistently as it poured, not once did I have to unfurl my umbrella. The obliging gentlemen in the clerk's office at the Brevoort purchased bur raihvay tickets for us, together with a couple of fauteuils in the Pullman " parlor "—or, as it is called in England, " drawing-room car " attached to the train. On PICTORIAL RAILWAY TICKET. arriving at Jersey City ferry we alighted, under cover, at a commodious booking-office; and our luggage was at once hoisted on to a high counter to be " checked." There was plenty of it (the baggage) ; but no charge was made -for excess weight. On a French raihvay I should most assuredly have been surcharged at least 50 francs " pour excedant de bagage. The checking consisted simply in buckling a strap, to which was ON THE CARS. 105 attached a brazen disc bearing a number, to each of our trunks, and handing me an equal number of brazen circular counters bearing corresponding numbers. Provided with these I needed to trouble myself no more about my belong ings. The porters who conveyed the baggage from the waggon which lad folloAved us from the Brevoort did not ask for any gratuity, and the waggon and our oavii coupe had been duly new york and jersey city ferry boat. charged for in the hotel- bill before we left. After about five minutes passed in a neat waiting-room, the doors swung open and we stepped on board the Jersey ferry boat— a huge steam-launch with a 106 AMERICA REVISITED. hurricane deck and a comfortable cabin for ladies, in which no smoking Avas permitted. We glided easily and almost noise lessly across the North River, Avhich was veiled in one dun white shroud of rainy mist, hiding shore, docks, houses, NORTH RIVER FLOTILLA. shipping, everything from the view, to Jersey City. Landing — still under cover — we found ourselves in a spacious, well- warmed, and tastefully decorated salle d'attente, almost Swiss chalet-looking with its prettily carved decorations and inlayings in fancy woods. In the old time an American railway dep6t Avas little better than a log cabin on a large scale, and between ticket-hunting and luggage pursuing you lost your temper about twice in every three minutes. I know that I lost mine so thoroughly that I never found it for nearly thirteen months. The waiting-room at Jersey City — perhaps a trifle too well warmed with anthracite coal, so as to produce the impression on your mind on a wet day that you were so much barley that had been Avell sprinkled and had germinated, and were noAV being roasted, as malt, in a kiln — was provided with all kinds of travelling comforts. There was a drinking fountain, yielding inexhaustible supplies of iced water. There was a bookstall well ON THE CARS. 107 provided with newspapers and illustrated periodicals ; a kiosque where cigars, cigarettes, smoking and chewing tobacco, could be obtained — the quid has still a few votaries left — and you may be sure that there was a very grand " candy " stall, overbrimming with those lollipops so irrepressibly dear to the American palate. " Candy " and '' caramels " are " institutions " in this country. Swiss confiseurs, German conditorei keepers flock over here and make fortunes. The latter, also, have the lager beer trade wholesale and retail, almost entirely in their own hands : indeed from banking to barber-shop keeping, from lithographing to leather dressing there is no department of trade or commission in which the thrifty and laborious Teuton does not make himself felt — and make money to boot. I like him not, personally — nor his boorish ways, nor his arrogant insolence of demeanour since Sedan, nor his (to me) hideously uncouth language which T have been trying to speak fluently these forty years past, without even a modicum of success ; still the German in America, looking at him corporately fills me with admiration. Honest, capable, frugal and industrious, peaceable and law-abiding : — he is the model of a good citizen. And boorish as he is (or rather as he seems to me) who am of the Latin race and whose tongue is hung on a Southern belfry, the German in America has done a vast deal to improve the element of picturesqueness, now of an aasthetic, now of a convivial character, into the manners of a people who, nominally, are the most unpicturesque of any people on the earth's surface. " Santa Claus " is of Dutch origin, and I will not rob the knickerbockers of their due ; but the German has imparted carnival balls and masquerades, processional pageants, the fachel tanz and the fachelzug, choral unions, glee societies, and in fact social music in any form, and he gets on so well in the United States, learns English so quickly, and associates himself so thoroughly to the political and social usages of his new home, that I am only surprised that there should be any Germans, to speak of, left in Germany at all. I suppose that it is patriotism keeps a tolerably dense popu- 108 AMERICA REVISITED. lation there ; but in the way of being able to talk German and read German newspapers, and keep np German customs they can be quite as patriotic in Minnesota, or Nebraska or Ohio, as in Pomerania, or Silesia or Brandenbourg, and in America they are free. No gendarmes, no press-laAvs, no conscription, no addle* pated " Vons " to sneer at and bully the "Kauffmann." Why don't they leave the Fatherland to the " Vons," and the drill sergeants and the polizas and make a new Germania of their own in the West ? They have already done so, to a considerable extent, but a very much larger clearing out of oppressed nation alities (so some people think) to the New World is necessary before the governing classes in the despotically governed countries of the Old World can be made to understand that the millions do not intend any longer to be their slaves and thralls, — to toil and work for them, and see them pampered with luxuries, bedizened with stars and crosses, and demanding homage to be paid to them on account of the rank Avhich they have no right to possess and the tom-fool titles Avhich the ignorance of the masses have allowed the " Vons " to arrogate to themselves. In old times, such like fools used to be burnt by the common hangman. There is a book that wants burning by the common housemaid — the house maid of common sense — very badly indeed, that book is the " Almanach de Gotha." Nevertheless — pardon that little digression about the German conditorei keepers — candy tempers the bitterness of scandal, and mollifies the exacerbation of political controversy. It even counteracts, to some extent, the deleterious influence of Pie- pronounced "Poy"— which is the Transatlantic incubus, and clings, with its doughy legs, over the shoulders of Columbia like an Old Man of the Sea. Almost everything that I behold in this Avonderful country bears traces of improvement and reform —everything except Pie. The national manners have become softened — the men folk cheAv less, expectorate less, curse less ; the neiospapers are not half so scurrilous as our oxen* ; the Art * The modern American press seems to me to offend only against good taste in ON THE CARS. 109 idea is becoming rapidly developed ; culture is made more and more jjnanifest ; even " intensity " in< aesthetics is beginning to to be heard of and Agnosticism and other " isms " too numerous to mention find exponents in " Society," and the one absorbing and sickening topic of conversation is no longer the Almighty Dollar — but to the tyranny of Pie there is no surcease. It is a Fetish. It is BoliAvani. It is the Mexican carnage god Huitch- lipotchli, continually demanding fresh victims. It is Moloch. Men may come and men may go ; the Grant " Boom " may be succeeded by the Garfield " Boom ;" but Pie goes on forever- The tramp and the scallawag, in pants of looped and Avindowed raggedness, hunger for Pie, and impetuously demand nickel cents AvhereAvith to purchase it ; and the President of the United States, amid the chastened splendour of the White House, can enjoy no more festive fare. The day before we left New York one of the ripest scholars, the most influential journalists (on the Demo cratic side) the brightest wits and most genial companions in the States lunched with us. He would drink naught but Chateau Yquem ; but he partook twice, and in amazing profusion of Pumpkin Pie. They gave me Pie at the Brevoort, and I am now fresh from the consumption of Pie at the Mount Vernon, Baltimore. Two more aristocratic hotels are not to be found on this continent. I battled strongly against this dyspepsia-dealing pastry at first ; but a mulatto waiter held me with his glittering eye, and I yielded as though I had been a two-years child. The worst of this dreadful pie — be it of apple, of pumpkin, of mul berry or of cranberry — is that it is so very nice. It is made delusively flat and thin, so that you can cut it into conveniently- sized triangular wedges, which slip down easily. Pardon this digression ; but Pie really forms as important a factor in American civilisation as the pot-au-feu does in France. There is no dish at home by which we nationally stand or fall. The their omnivorous appetite of interviewing celebrated or notorious individuals, (and the interviewing nuisance has become common enough in England) and in their fondness for filling their columns with brief personalities sometimes very quaint, but usually almost childishly frivolous and quite harmless. 110 AMERICA REVISITED. " roast beef of Old England " sounds very well to the strains of Mr. Dan Godfrey's band at a dinner at the Freemason's Tavern; but sirloin of beef is fourteen pence a pound, and there are hundreds of thousands of labouring English people who never taste roast beef from year's end to year's end — save when they happen to get into gaol or into the workhouse at Christmastide. There was a handsome restaurant attached to the waiting- room at the Jersey City terminus, and I have no doubt that pie galore was to be found in the bill of fare ; but I had newly breakfasted, and could defy the voice of the charmer. More pleasant and more novel was it — on American soil — to contem plate the trim little maidens tripping about offering bouquets for sale, or " boquets," as, 1 know not why, the Americans persist in pronouncing and spelling the French noun, which surely has the ON THE CARS. Ill vowel U in it. The French do not speak of a lady's " boche," or a gentleman's " mostache." This, however, to my ear, is not so aggravating as the " theater," which American purists in orthography have substituted for our time-honoured theatre. It stands to reason, by analogy at least, that if " theater " be correct, the Latin accusative " theatrum tectum " should be "theaterum tecterum," which leads us by an easy incline to the rhythmic dictum of the dark lyrist : " Dere was a poor man whose name was Luzzarite, 0, bless de Lor', Goary Hallelujerum ! " No, it cannot be. I firmly protest against " theater," and against " boquet." Fancy the " boquet " of Chateau Lafitte. There was nothing, happily, to protest against in the railway time-bills arrangements at Jersey City. At a few minutes before one wide portals again swung open ; and without any crowding or fluster we passed from the salle d'attente to the platform. There Avere plenty of polite conductors and ticket collectors in neat uniform, with gold-braided caps, about; and we Avere at once directed to our particular Pullman car. This handsome and comfortable caravan needs no description on my part. You have seen it in full working order, both as a sleep ing, a drawTing-room, and recently as a restaurant car on the Midland, and as a drawing-room car on the London and Brighton Railway. We were duly inducted in our numbered fauteuils, while our wants, intellectual and physical, were sedulously ministered to by itinerant " car-wallahs," who perambulated the whole line of carriages offering for sale all the New York papers — Harper's Weekly, The Daily Graphic, Frank Leslie's Chimney Corner, Puck, Scribner, Lippincott, and so forth — together with Malaga grapes, California pears, and the inevitable candies and caramels. There was plenty of drinking-water on board the Pullman, which Avas fully warmed by means of steam- pipes; and at one end of the vehicle was a luxurious smoking room. Touching the journey between New York and Baltimore, I can say but little. Torrents of rain never ceased descending ; 112 AMERICA REVISITED. and Ave could see but little from the windows, Avhich presented only so many large rectangles of fretwork in watery beads. However, I shall be going and coming with tolerable frequency over this line between now and the New Year ; and shall be able to tell you something concerning the aspect of the regions through Avhich Ave sped. For the nonce my business is with the inside, and not the outside of the cars. So far, nevertheless, as I could make out through the persistent rain and mist, the country between Ncav York and Philadelphia is densely populous, and to a very great extent manufacturing. The train seemed to pass right through the main streets of a large number of thickly- inhabited towns ; and the perils of level-crossings were indicated by significant reminders on the signposts by the way, u Look out for the Locomotive," and by the gruesome pealing of a bell on the locomotive itself. Another faint impression de voyage which I got through the rain-clouds may very possibly be, like most hastily-formed notions on the part of travellers, an erroneous one ; still, I give it for what it is worth. In clays long past I used to be told that the Board of Directors of the Camden and Amboy Railroad were lords paramount in New Jersey, but so far as my limited observation extended, not only the State of New Jersey, but those also of Pennsylvania and Dekware right up to the borders of Maryland, have fallen under the dominion of one Schenck. Schenck's proclamations to the million were on every Avail, every paling, every fence, every tree-stub and rock-boulder for miles and miles around. There Avas no field Avithout its printed or stencilled portent of Schenck and his Avares. His pulmonic syrup, his gargles, and his many varieties of pills, met you at every rood and furlong of your course. Does he go on like this, even to the Rocky Mountains and the Yosemite Valley, and so on to the crack of doom ? In the environs of New York Sozo- dont ran him hard, and in Pennsylvania his supremacy was combatted by the Iron Bitters — one bottle of Avhich has just restored an old lady of ninety-two, belonging to one of the first ON THE CARS. US Revolution families, to the comeliness and vigour of sixteen — and especially by the " Rising Sun Shoe Polish " — when I go home I mean to patent the Aurora Blacking — but in the long run Schenck was triumphant. Somewhere in Pennsylvania I had a AN ARTIST IN ROCKS. view of Schenck's saAvmills. I can dimly fancy him sawing up primeval forests to make his pill-boxes withal. A wonderful man.5 I was revolving in my mind the various turns of fate below, and what might possibly happen to me if I were to devote my self for a regular and systematic course of Schenck, when a hand Avas laid affectionately on my arm. The hand was that of the con- I got into terrible trouble at a dinner party at Baltimore by confounding Schenck of the Pills with a popular preacher of the same name. VOL. i. i 114 AMERICA REVISITED. * ductor of the Parlor Pullman, who considerately apprised me that refreshments could be served on board the car on our arrival at Wilmington, in the State of Delaware. The bill of fare was simple, but sucpulent and sufficing. There was a choice of beefsteak and porksteak, fried oysters, and ham and eggs, with tea or coffee, Philadelphia ale, and lager beer. Our dessert we had already laid in, so far as Malaga grapes and California pears went. We elected to try fried oysters and beefsteak as an evening collation, and the decision was telegraphed from the next station to Wil mington. It was raining more pitilessly than ever when we reached that important city (does not Senator Bayard hail from Wilmington, Delaware ?), and the platform, with the restaurant dimly visible beyond was filled by a dense, surging crowd, sable in garb, steaming with moisture ; altogether unattractive to look upon. A railway platform in Lancashire on a soaking December evening — that was the kind of aspect presented by Wilmington. Still, in our Parlor Pullman, our Avithers were unwrung. Once more the train started ; and anon a slim youth made his appearance in the car, bearing a towering pile of deep quadran gular baskets of the " picnic " kind. One of them he deposited in front of us. Straightway the careful conductor, unlocking a cupboard, produced a stack of Avell-polished mahogany planks. One of these he brought into an horizontal position, and by means of a symmetrical arrangement of pegs and holes, dexter ously "hitched " one side of the plank to the wall of the car. From the other side a flap-leg was let down ; and at once a table Avas improvised. The well-packed picnic basket being opened, the board straightway " groaned under the delicacies of the season." The fried oysters were a great success. They were a little shorter than French sabots, and not quite so wide as the knife-board of an omnibus ; but they were very toothsome. The steak was well broiled, tender, and juicy. Moreover, there were fried potatoes, crisp and hot ; good Avhite bread, fair butter* * Not from one end of the United States to the other, have I ever tasted any butter equal to our Cambridge " best fresh," or to the butter of first class Park PASSENGESS DINING IN A PULLMAN PARLOUR. RAILWAY CAR. ON THE CARS. 115 tolerable coffee, and excellent lager beer, sparkling, exhilarating, and non-intoxicating. Stay, there were also table-napkins, fine of hue and gauzy of texture. They were not much bigger than postage-stamps ; still they served. When our repast was con cluded, the picnic baskets were repacked, and the slim youth, bearing a pile of them much taller than himself, disappeared from view. He could scarcely have quitted the train, seeing that it Avas in full motion, but had possibly sought fresh fields and customers neAv. It was the conductor Avith Avhom Ave settled. The entire charge for our collation was one dollar and fifty cents — say six shillings — including the use of the table, which could be afterwards utilised for the purpose of indulging in the mirthful ecarte or the innocent picquet. About a quarter before eight there was a cry of " luggage for Baltimore." One of the Express Company's familiars took me, in a friendly manner, into custody at once. How many packages had I ? Where did I mean to stay ? With lamb-like resignation I surrendered my brazen checks. With becoming meekness I mentioned that I intended to alight at the Mount Vernon. The familiar of the Express Company vanished noise lessly. Did I Avant a hackman to drive me to the hotel ? the conductor asked. The porter who was to carry our minor packages and rugs and convey them to the carriage, at once grew up, as it Avere, from the floor of the car, just as if he were the ghost of a Corsican Brother. Did I mind two ladies, avIio were bound in the same direction, sharing the carriage with us ? Not the least in the world. They proved to be most charming ladies ; and one of them told us that on Monday we should be just in time to see the " Frog " Opera, and hear the " Polly wog " Chorus, Avhich extravaganza is just noAv rivalling "H.M.S. Pina fore " in popularity. By half-past eight we were snugly installed at a very clean, restaurants. The very best American butter tastes more or less of salt ; and butter should be sweet. American housekeepers will probably vehemently dispute my contention. l 2 116 AMERICA REVISITED. quiet, and beautifully furnished hotel called the Mount Vernon. No bachshish had been demanded from us at any stage of the journey; but, the obliging hackman avIio drove us from the station charged us a dollar and a half for what in England would have been an eighteen-penny drive ; and for a modest bed room on the third floor of the Mount Vernon I am now being mulct at the rate of four dollars or sixteen shillings a day, ex clusive of board. Never mind, I had rarely made so comfortable a railway trip, except in Russia, where railway comfort and even luxury have been brought almost to perfection. So I went to bed with a clear conscience at the Mount Vernon, Baltimore, in the beauteous State of Maryland, and dreamt that I Avas listening to the Polly wog chorus, to the accompaniment of the booming bell and the hoarse fog-horn of the locomotive. KIN I TOTE YER LUGGAGE, SAH '( " SERVANTS OFFICE LN AN AMERICAN HOTEL. VIII. The Monumental City. Baltimore, Md., Dec. 10. When I awoke at the Mount Vernon Hotel, Baltimore, to find that the mercilessly drenching Saturday night had been succeeded by a Sunday morning glowing with sunshine, and with a sky of cloudless cobalt blue, it Avas with no small curiosity that I stood at my casement to take a first peep of the newest city that was to be revealed to me. The town was hilly ; the undulating sky line made that fact at once prominent, and pleasantly so ; for there is no use in disguising the fact, that the unvarying flatness of New York makes it, after a time, dis tressing to the eye. But Baltimore has not yet been graded to a dead level ; and its surface presents a most agreeable variety of ups and downs. When looking straight ahead from my window, I beheld an amphitheatre of handsome villas, with 118 AMERICA REVISITED.. b green jalousies and shining steps of white stone in fisont of the houses ; and especially Avhen I noticed that the pavement of the side-walks was of red tiles, that the rain had completely dried up, and that there Avas not a symptom of mud to be seen anywhere, it occurred to me, in that confusion of ideas to which the freshly awakened traveller in a strange place is liable, that I was in the reanvard and upward regions of Brighton — say at Montpelier. Then, extending my range of vision, I noted gentle acclivities crowned by groups of really stately mansions of red brick and someAvhat in the Queen Anne type in archi tecture. Surely, I reasoned, this must be Bath — where, by the bye, I have never been — the Crescent must be close by ; and after breakfast I must ask my way to the Pump Room. But by degrees, first through hearing the distant jingle of a tramway car bell, and next from observing the passage to and fro on the side-walk of a number of American citizens of African descent and of both sexes, most of them in their Sunday best, and very gay and sparkling is that " best," I can assure you, I began to understand that I was neither in Brighton nor in Bath, but in Baltimore, in the State of Maryland — the " Capua " of poor Guy Livingstone, Avhence he set forth on his " Border and Bastille " expedition : he lingered too long on the Border, else he might never have got into the Bastille of the Old Capitol Prison at Washington — and one of the comeliest, the most sociable, the most refined, and the most hospitable cities of the United States. More than that, I was on the shore of the beautiful river, the Patapsco — all the rivers hereabouts have pretty names, as Southey found out long ago, when he proposed to emigrate to the Susquehana merely because it had such a musical sound — and I Avas in Dixie's Land. Yes ; Dixie. I mind how, in the old dark days of war, Iioav often I used to sit in the great cafe* of the Dominica at Havana, listening to a cracked fiddle and a Avheezy clarionet discoursing " Dixie," the " Bonnie Blue Flag," and the " Homespun Dress the Southern Ladies Wear," for the delectation of the "Secesh" exiles in THE MONUMENTAL CITY. 119 Cuba. But anon a consumptive accordion and an asthmatic harp of Federal tendencies would join issue with the Southern minstrels ; and the Dominica Avould be made cacophonous Avith the Northern dities "John Brown's Body," "The Sky-blue Coat," and " When this Cruel War is Over." Then some strong Federal voice Avould intone " We'll hang Jeff Davis on a Sour Apple Tree !" to Avhich Confederate lungs Avould responsively roar, " I hear the distant thunder hum, Maryland ! my Maryland ! The old lion bugle, fife and drum, Maryland ! my Maryland ! " Then mutual scowls Avould be exchanged between the Nor therners and Southerners present, culminating perhaps in " a fite," happily innocent of shooting episodes, but resulting in the destruc tion of several rush-bottomed chairs and Panama hats, Avith perhaps the coming to grief of the cracked fiddle, and the ignominious expulsion from the premises of the asthmatic harp. It is very different days now, thank goodness ! The hatchet is buried, and a new line of railroad is being built over the place of the obliterated war-path. Humbly following the example of the illustrious Knight of La Mancha, I have ever striven to be the earliest of risers ; but on this particular Sunday morning I OAvn — perhaps the hot house-like atmosphere of the Pullman drawing-room car had something to do Avith it — -that I should have liked to remain an extra half-hour between the sheets. I was constrained, however, to rise by the persistent booming of the church bells. They rang me into nervousness, they rang me into consternation and prae-cordial anxiety ; they rang me into a most irreverent and un-Sunday-like state of exasperation, and they rang me temporarily very nearly mad. There may have been a good many people sick unto death that morning in Baltimore ; -arid the incessant clanging and jangling of the bells may have been as effi cacious as the old "Mrs. Gamp," pulling the pillow from beneath their heads in order to terminate their sufferings. I suppose 120 AMERICA REVISITED. that campanology is a science, and I wish its votaries joy of it. I can understand the zeal of the "College Youths" and other amateur bell-ringers who ring "triple bob majors" by the ten thousand ; because at the conclusion of their labours they are sometimes regaled Avith a leg of mutton and "trimmings" for supper ; but I do seriously think that the time has arrived for quiet people all over the Avorld to unite in a protest against the senseless, cruel, and barbarous practice of jangling bells in order to invite the public to attend divine worship. The bell-ringing nuisance is nearly as offensive in England as it is in America ; and in both countries the practice is equally needless and wantonly indifferent to the requirements of those who need rest and quiet. Surely a man knows to what religion he belongs, and at what hour the services at his particular place of worship begin. Yet the sexton goes on tugging at his bell as though Christians had altogether lost their memories, and as though there were no clocks and watches in the world. More over, how is the churchgoer to discriminate between the different bells when they are all brangling at the same time ? Here in Baltimore, a city of 300,000 inhabitants, there are about 200 churches, besides a number of halls used by different religious sects and societies. There are cathedrals and churches belonging to the Roman Catholics, the Protestant Episcopalians, the Baptists — this persuasion has one vast marble church in EutaAv-place, with a bell-to Aver 187ft. high — the Methodist Episcopalians, the Independent Methodists, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians — one of the churches of this estimable religious body has a church with three towers, the principal one being 250ft. high, the English Reformed, the Independents, the Unitarians, the Society of Friends, the " Christians," the United Brethren, the Universalists, and the Swedenborgians, or New Jerusalemites. There are 12 JeAvish synagogues; and there are numerous places of worship for the 50,000 coloured people who inhabit Baltimore, many of whom, however, are communicants at churches frequented by white Avorshippers. With the ex- THE MONUMENTAL CITY. 121 ception of the. Quakers' meeting-houses — I am not certain about the synagogues — all these churches — chapels you never hear of —are dimply provided with bells, which boom and brawl from sunrise to sunset, as though they were so many hotel gongs, calling guests to theological meals. I want to know — in the interest of the sick and nervous — what good these bells do anywhere ? Do they render anybody more serious, virtuous, or devout? Or are they only a survival of uncivilised ages when savages felt bouud to make some kind of noise before their idol or their fetish? I recommend the campanological nuisance to the attention of all sensible physicians. Robinson Crusoe, according to CoAvper, longed for the sound of " the church-going bells." He should have come to Baltimore ; and I fancy that after a single course of Sunday bell ringing in the Monumental City he would have been ready to join the Monastic Quietists of Mount Athos, who ring no bells, and sing no services, and preach no sermons, but let their beards groAv, and " fash " themselves about nothing in particular, passing the major portion of their lives in the placid contemplation of the pits of their stomachs. The Mount Vernon Hotel, to Avhich I had been urgently re commended by American friends in England to sojourn, is situated in. Monument-street, hard by Monument-square, in that which I was told is the most fashionable, and which is certainly the most sequestered portion of the Monumental City. The Mount Vernon was formerly the town mansion of a Avealthy Maryland magnate, and retains many traces of having been the residence of an affluent private gentleman of taste and culture. To meet the needs of a large number of guests, a spacious structure, to serve as a restaurant, has been added to the original edifice ; but the private dining room of the original owner has been preserved intact— a spacious apartment Avith a painted ceiling of the Verrio and Laguerre type, an elaborately sculptured marble mantle-piece, and Avails covered Avith stamped and gilt Cordovan leather. From this proceed a suite of lofty 122 AMERICA REVISITED. parlours and Avithdrawing rooms, richly furnished with Brussels and Aubusson carpets, crystal chandeliers, handsomely framed mirrors, amber satin and white lace Avindow-ourtains, tapestried portieres, and console tables adorned Avith bronzes, marble stat: uettes, and Sevres and Minton china. The Maryland gentleman's library, affluent in carved oak book-cases, is over against the drawing-rooms, across a marble-paved hall. The library now serves as a smoking-lounge and reading-room, while a contiguous boudoir has been converted into a clerk's office, Avith the usual apparatus of telephones and electric bells, and the usual display of placards and time tables relative to railroad routes all over the enormous area of the Union. In the dark background of the clerk's sanctum looms the inevitable appendage, the Fire Proof Safe. In the marble hall dwell a continuous contingent of dark servants, THE MONUMENTAL CITY. 123 all very civil and serviceable fellows. If you look pleasantly at them^they immediately begin to grin from ear to ear : Avhich puts things in general on a good-humoured footing. Besides the public entrance to the hotel, there is a handsomely-carpeted side entrance for ladies. The baggage department is under the charge of a strong-armed colossus from Chicago, .Avho exhibits slight traces of Irish ancestry, and is as obliging as he is strong. The clerk allotted us a capital " alcove " bedroom on the third floor, expensive in price, but handsomely furnished, and really serving all the purposes of bed-room and sitting-room. The bells were promptly answered, so far as the negroes were concerned ; but the chambermaid (who wore a " Princess " robe, with puffs and frills all down the skirt Avhich Avould have photographed admirably, but, in textile truth, was of printed calico) turned out, from a sociable point of view, a failure. This young person was White ; and it had seemingly occurred to her at an early period of life that she was at the very least a Duchess. The attitude towards us was throughout one of inveterate hostility and un mitigated scorn ; and the firmness with Avhich she declined to make any response to the salutation of " good morning," when we chanced to pass her on her stairs, merited commendation if only on the score of its consistency. Of course she wore her hair, and a great deal of it, or of somebody else's, en cheveux, and " fixed up " according to the latest modes presented in " Harper's Bazaar ; " but this, I am told, is not the inexorable rule with American girls when they condescend to be " helps." An advertisement was pointed out to me the other day in a New- York paper, in which a young lady who wished to obtain a domestic appointment distinctly proclaimed herself to be an American, and as distinctly announced her Avillingness to " Avear a cap." Is this a hopeful sign, or the contrary? American ladies, who have been accustomed to live in Europe, complain bitterly on their return of the difficulty which they experience in obtaining " helps " of native extraction ; but on the other hand, there may be many uncompromising Republicans Avho 124 AMERICA REVISITED. fffii/y*:^ \i THE CONTEMPTUOUS CHAMBERMAID. hold it to be derogatory for a Daughter of the Gracchi to wear a cap, and otherwise submit to the little descents from personal dignity which, in antiquated and still semi-feudal Europe, we expect from lovely Avoman when she accepts the functions and the wages of a housemaid or a chambermaid. The philosophy of the matter, as it seems to me, is that, as regards domestic " help," England is becoming rapidly Americanised, whereas America is becoming slightly European- THE MONUMENTAL CITY. 125 ised. The Baltimore chambermaid, as beseemed the denizen of a'-Monumental City, was phenomenally self-conscious and stuck up ; but at the Brevoort, at New York, Ave had a female attendant, who was as attentive and deferential as a chamber maid at a first-class English hotel could be. I noticed, too, a vast number of gentlemen's grooms and coachmen in Fifth- avenue and in the Central Park, clad in livery and wearing crest buttons, and even cockades in their hats. In the old time a gentleman could certainly procure the services of a " help " Avho, for a consideration, would drive his carriage for him ; but in very feAv instances would the " help " in question deign to wear anything approaching a livery. Remember, I am not prepared to make an affidavit that the retainers in the handsome liveries and the cockaded hats are native Americans. I am yet raw and unfledged as a tourist in this country ; and everything that I record must, as the lawyers say, be taken " errors excepted." But I have beheld the liveries and the cockades — rivalling as they do, in their plenitude and their splendour, the brilliance of Hyde Park-Corner at the height of the season. In 126 AMERICA REVISITED. concluding this digression on domestic servants, I may just vindicate that which I said concerning the rapid " Americanisa- tion " of England by asking any English lady, long accustomed to keep house, Avhether five-and-twenty years since she would have allowed her female servants to dress their hair precisely as they chose, or to be called " Miss " on the letters addressed to them through the post? "No ringlets," at the distance of time to which I refer, Avas a Median and Persian law imposed on English parlourmaids and housemaids ; but if ringlets were fashionable now-a-days Avho Avould dare to gainsay Sarah Ann if she appeared with her tresses laterally corkscrewed out even to the similitude of Ninon de l'Enclos or a Blenheim spaniel ? Sunday in Baltimore proved, from a theological standpoint, to be unexceptionably admirable and amiable, but in a secular and sociable sense it was undeniably most deplorably and desperately dull. I had plenty of letters of introduction ; but I hesitated to deliver any of the credentials with which I was furnished on the Sabbath. I made up my mind at starting to tread on as few toes as ever I possibly could on this vast continent ; and for ought I could tell Sunday observance might be a very soft corn indeed in Baltimore. Nevertheless I endured all the agonies of intense boredom. Beyond church-going there Avas nothing to do ; and one could scarcely go to church morning, afternoon, and evening. Let me remark, once for all, -4 that the observance of the Sabbath in some parts of the United States is a substantial, stringent, inflexible, but doubtless beneficent reality. It is more than Scotch in its severity. We all know how vastly serviceable to the cause of morality and virtue the strict observance of the Seventh Day has been to our brethren beyond the TAveed, and how " proper" SabJbath-keeping Statutes make them a model people in the way of ethics and abstinence from intoxicating liquors. Similarly, righteous respect for the sanctity of the Sunday has evidently been ' productive among the Americans of that rapidly growing J IN A NEGRO CUURCH. THE MONUMENTAL CITY. 127 temperance, frugality, and law abidinguess, and that surprising development in political purity and commercial probity which no foreign visitor to their country can fail to observe as being eminently characteristic of the nation. It may not, perhaps, matter much what we do during six days of the week, so long as we keep Sunday with proper rigour ; and should Ne\v York, for example, be afflicted with a multitude of sins, they Avould all be covered by the exemplary manner in AA'hich the Sabbath commandment is kept. Baltimore is not behindhand in the Spartan strictness of its Sabbatarianism. I was wicked enough to wish to get shaved ; but the sable barber of the Mount Vernon had, bolted and barred himself up in his den in the basement of the building, and informed me through the keyhole that it Avould be against the law of the State for him to shave me then and there, but that he was shortly about to come upstairs for the purpose of " barbing " Number Sixteen, and that as soon as he was " through " he Avould come and " fix " me. He did accordingly " fix " me in my own apartment, and charged me 25 cents, or one shilling, for the " fixing," which, considering the trifling " gettin' np stairs " which he had gone through, Avas not greatly in excess of the normal rate for shaving, which is 15 cents. Another illustration of Sunday strictness Avill be afforded should you happen to require, before dinner, such an " appetiser " as a glass of sherry-and-bitters, or that even more pungent whet, a whiskey-cocktail. I am ready to grant, for the sake of argu ment, that it is sinful to drink sherry-and-bitters, and that a cocktail is perdition. Now, in the underground regions of the hotel there is a bar, Avhere from Monday till Saturday, from early in the morning until late at night, you may obtain as many cocktails, cobblers, juleps, brandy smashes, and gin-slings, as you may choose to order. But on Sunday, and during the whole of the Sabbath, from midnight till midnight, the LaAV of the State inexorably closes not only the dram shop, but the 128 AMERICA REVISITED. hotel bar. You can obtain nothing Avhatever that is potable, either in or out of church-time. From the locked and bolted bar you are sent away thirsting ; but there is not the slightest necessity for your being thirsty in your bedroom. You have but to ring your bell, and signify your wishes, and in a few minutes a smiling attendant Avill bring you whatsoever you require in the Avay of stimulants. The same toleration extends to the dinner table. It is the bar only that is sealed ; and the Sunday taboo was, I have no doubt, prompted by a laudable desire to exclude THE BIBULOUS LOAFER. the bibulous loafer from without. How the bibulous loafer gets on in an American city on Sunday, I have not as yet the slightest idea. THE MONUMENTAL CITY. 129 We hired an open carriage and pair from the hotel at three in the afternoon — driving, for pleasuring on the Sabbath has fortunately not been prohibited by the Laws of the State— and made the circuit of the smiling city. I could not help being struck with astonishment by the perfection to which Sabbath- keeping had been brought in Baltimore. Not a cigar shop, not a fruit or candy or cake store, or ice-cream saloon, was open. All the petty branches of commerce which flourish in London on Sunday were entirely suspended. The solitary exception made was in the case of the pharmacies or drug stores— the chemists' shops, as we should call them. Many of these are very large and handsome establishments, and aerated and mineral waters are among the articles which they vend. I Avonder whether it would be against the Law of the State to enter a drug store, and call for a certain febrifuge well known in military circles in England, and compounded of seltzer water, sal volatile, syrup of ginger, and gentian. It is called, I believe, the " Steel Battle- axe Pick-me-up." Would the Baltimore druggist be stricken with horror wrere he asked for the unhallowed tipple ; or, on the contrary, might he not possibly suggest that quinine wine and Vichy water was an agreeable tonic, or that Apollinaris and " iron bitters '' had been found, under circumstances of alcoholic stress, refreshing ? We drove by the chief architectural attractions of the Monu mental City, including the really grandiose and imposing columnar monument to George Washington, with the nobly simple inscription, " By the State of Maryland." The column stands on a beautiful eminence, formerly called HoAvard's Park, but noAV rechristened Mount Vernon-square, a hundred feet above the level of the Patapsco at high tide. The pillar, which with the base is nearly two hundred feet in height, is surmounted by a colossal statue of the Father of his Country, represented in the act of resigning his commission as commander-in-chief of the armies of the United States. Only one lunatic has thrown him self from the top of that monument ; that was in 1875, and the 130 AMERICA REVISITED. madman, of course, was instantaneously killed. We drove by the famous "Battle Monument," erected to commemorate the citizens who fell in defence of Baltimore during the engagement at North Point and the bombardment of Fort M'Henry by the British forces in September, 1814. An Englishman can never think without bitter chagrin and vexation ot the veterans of the Pe ninsula campaigns, the flower of Wellington's conquering legions, frit tered away in one of the pettiest and most pur poseless Avars that was ever concerted by a knot of unusually stupid statesmen. We saw the Oddfellows' Monu ment and the memorial erected over the tombi of the fiery youths, Daniel Wells and Henry G. M'Comas, who killed the British General Ross at our attack on Balti more in 1812. The fiery youths Avere themselves immediately afterwards slain by the British. Finally we drove to Druid-hill Park, one of the handsomest pleasaunces to be found, I should say, in any city of the United States. The site of the park Avas formerly the estate of the Rogers family. It comprises about five hundred acres, and was first laid out, more than . a century ago, in the style of English landscape gardening then in vogue. It was not, however, until 1860 that the property Avas purchased by the city of Baltimore for the sum of $500,000. It occupies the highest point of land THE BATTLE MONUMENT. THE MONUMENTAL CITY. 131 VIEW IN DRUID HILL PARK. in the immediate vicinity of the city, and commands magnificent vieAvs of stately Baltimore and the Bay beyond, doAvn to Kent Island and Annapolis. Here are splendid thickets of trees, of great age and magnitude of girth — catalpas, Lombardy poplars hickories, and white oaks ; here are a cascade and a lake, verdant lawns, umbrageous bosquets — Sleepy Hollows and lovers' walks, for aught I knoAV. There are herds of grace ful deer ; in fact, almost everything was visible in Druid-hill Park, this particular Sunday, except Humanity. Comparatively K 2 132 AMERICA REVISITED. speaking there was nobody about,, either on foot or on wheels. Outside the park, the avenues leading therefrom were traversed by tramcars ; but the passengers were few and far between. The fair city of Baltimore seemed to be lying dead in its smooth, shining, silent, Sunday sarcophagus. Where were the three hundred thousand inhabitants of the Monumental City ? All at church, I suppose. I began at last to feel guiltily uncomfortable. Conscience reproached me with Sabbath-breaking, as we sped through the still streets homeward to the Mount Vernon ; and then came darkness, and the bells began to jangle again for evening service. THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT, MOUNT VERNON SQUARE. . afcafeamna n^s i lip" llfl 'IJii "' '" T*ife fP^sCUs, MM Hf EXCHANGE PLACE, BALTIMORE. IX. Baltimore come to Life again. Baltimore, December 13. That you should "sleep upon it" is a very excellent piece of advice, the common-sense of which, as applied to most of the affairs of mankind, has made the counsel proverbial. " Sleeping upon it," then, I arrived, after a night's rest, at the conclusion that Baltimore was not so like Tunbridge Wells, or Brighton, or the Bath, which I had never seen, as it was like York ; and that impression grew upon me as I reviewed the scenes, so charming yet so socially depressing, of the day before, and recollected the jangling bells Avhich had so distracted my nerves on Sunday. There are, I believe, in the venerable city of Constantine, exclu sive of the Minster, fifty churches belonging to the Establishment alone. Make allowance for the difference of population, and add your churches of other denominations — Americans are too lofty- minded to acknowledge such edifices as chapels, although they 134 AMERICA REVISITED. sometimes speak of "going to meetin'" — and you have an ecclesiastical aggregate for which our York may be accepted as a tolerably close parallel. There is, moreover, a decidedly Eboracan appearance about the first-class dwelling-houses in that which I should call the capital of Maryland, did I not timeously remember that the State capital — that is to say, the seat of the Legislature — is at Annapolis. These tall, grave, and dignified mansions in Baltimore, Avith ROOM IN THE BRICE HOUSE. their casings of white stone, these shining Avindows of plate glass, and the steep flights of stone steps in front, have a strikingly Georgian look ; and many of these edifices are hand some enough to have been built by that much maligned but really very capable architect, Sir John Vanbrugh. There are plenty of such houses in York, and in imagination I peopled the steep flights of steps in Baltimore with bevies of pretty English girls — you knoAV how charmingly pretty are the maidens in the City of the Five Sisters — on their way to or from church, all BALTIMORE COME TO LIFE AGAIN. 135 carrying handsomely bound prayer-books, and escorted either by porthynammas of that amplitude of figure Avhich the amiable Nathaniel HaAvthorne erroneously assumed to be peculiar to the British matron, but which, I rejoice to observe, is not by any means uncommon among the mothers of the American Gracchi in 1879, or else accompanied by auburn-bearded and athletic brothers, exemplarily devout and demure-looking, as beseemed Sunday, yet in Avhose guise there was a lurking and latent Something which hinted that on Monday and the remaining days of the week they knew a great deal on the subject of a horse, and Avould be prepared to express their opinions concern ing the Doncaster St. Leger if called upon to do so. Nor would it at all have astonished me had I met, trotting along the red-tiled side-walks of Baltimore, a number of plump personages whose rosy gills, clean-shaven chins and upper lips, and neatly-trimmed side whiskers, no less than their shovel hats and black gaiters, proclaimed them to be dignified clergymen of the Church of England. I was quite prepared to meet an Arch deacon " performing archidiaconal functions " in the chief city of Maryland. I think that, without collapsing, I could have supported even the spectacle of a Rural Dean. The city looked, not only ecclesiastically but municipally, like York. I had green turtle and venison steak for dinner on Sunday. My bosom swelled with patriotic pride within me as I partook of callipash and callipee ; and I had nearly screwed my courage to the sticking-place to sally forth and ask the way to the Mansion House, with the intent of interviewing some rubicund personage with a gold chain, whom I might deferentially address as My Lord, and of whom I might inquire when it would be convenient for me to pay my respects to My Lady Mayoress. To tell the truth, I had been in desperate conversational straits all day Sunday. I had a sheaf of letters of introduction in my satchel ; but I dared not commit a possible breach of etiquette by presenting any of those missives on the Sabbath. I had been promised by friends in England a hearty reception at 136 AMERICA REVISITED. the Maryland Club ; but on Dead Sunday I was as the Peri at the Gate of Paradise— if you can imagine a corpulent and elderly Peri in a carriage and pair, raging in his inward heart because he found himself in a city renowned for its courtesy to strangers— a city of 300,000 inhabitants— without anybody to talk to. Inside the Baltimore Club House were no doubt some of the grave and reverend seigniors of Maryland — those at least SOME MEMBERS OF THE OLD MARYLAND CLUB. of their number who Avere not at church — to say nothing of the jeunesse doree, the gay young bloods of the city. That there toere some gay young bloods in Baltimore I Avas certain ; for on Sunday evening, accidentally peeping into the stately Cordovan leather-hung apartment, which had been the gentleman's dining room when the Mount Vernon Hotel Avas a private mansion, I saw a table laid, in approved Delmonico style — bouquets, ferns, silver candelabra, crystal, and so forth — for four. The sable BALTIMORE COME TO LIFE AGAIN. 137 waiters were bringing in the Blue Point oysters on the " half shell '^when I fled disconsolate to the desolate public dining- room, Avhere, save the waiters and ourselves, there Avas nobody but a clergyman, Avho was taking his tea and a liberal allowance of stewed oysters in a silent hurry, having doubtless to preach a sermon later in the evening, and a gentleman Avith a snuff- coloured beard, whose vesper repast consisted of a baked apple, a quantity of uncooked celery, and a glass of iced water. I very much feared that there was something the matter with him, or that there would be shortly. For the sake of con versing with somebody or anybody (for I Avas growing- desperate), I Avould have addressed the vegetarian unintroduced, and advised him for his stomach's sake to try some of the medicaments of the wonderful Schenk, Waywode of Pennsyl vania, Hospodar of NeAv Jersey, and Kaimakan of Delaware — say his Pulmonic Syrup or his Mandrake Pills — but my com panion besought me to be quiet. The mulatto waiter was a most civil and obliging creature, but, conversationally, he Avas a failure. The bar, as I have already stated, was closed, else I might have renewed my acquaintance Avith a very genial old gentle man Avith whom I had conversed late on Saturday night. He was good enough to adopt the hypothesis — I was in travelling garb of a shaggily woollen texture — that I was " a captain of one of them big ships that was taking grain to Europe ; " and he confidently expressed his opinion that Great Britain was not in a position to pay for the bread-stuffs Avith which she proposed to feed her starving population. We had got no money, according to the genial old gentleman, " Nary cent." He offered to treat me to a " hot whiskey skin," in compassion, I presume, for my insolvent and destitute condition. But he wTas not accessible on Sunday. Nobody was accessible. I went after dinner into the apartment in front of the clerk's office which served as a smoking room. Three speechless gentlemen occupied three rocking chairs. They read news papers, they smoked, they expectorated, and they said nothing. 138 AMERICA REVISITED. One side of the room Avas nearly filled by a huge book-case, splendidly carved ; but the shelves Avere protected by plate glass, and the case was locked. I felt too dejected to ask for the key, and only peeped through the glass at the library store Avithin, which, so far as my dim vision could aid me, appeared to consist of Reports submitted to Congress on the Ku-Klux outrages in the Southern States, in three hundred and sixty-five volumes. I never before beheld such a mass of " outrageous ' literature collected under one head. Behind the counter was a very paragon of mutism in the shape of an hotel clerk. I tried him on all kinds of subjects — on the weather, on the trains southward, on the price of grain BALTIMORE COME TO LIFE AGAIN. 139 at Chicago, on the addresses of people on whom I wished to call. For a long time he was dumb ; then he became respon sive, but only monosyllabically so, and in a voice that came as it seemed from the Tombs. I would have asked him if he had ever tried one of Schenk's ©uratives, but I was fairly afraid of this mute man, so I sate, and smoked, and felt as though I were turning into stone. But my sense of hearing became painfully acute. I could hear every pulsation of the hotel clock. I could hear every rustle of the leaves of the hotel ledger as they were turned over by the speechless cashier ; and, worse than all, I could hear the distant laughter of the four guests in the Cordovan leather-hung dining room. Ah! they Avere having " a high old time of it " for certain. Terrapin a la Maryland as a matter of course. Extra dry Verzenay, no doubt. Regalias, Imperiales, probably.0 * In Maryland a stringent Act exists which protects diamond-back terrapins in the waters of the State. The fishing opens on the first of November and terminates NETTING TERRAPINS. 140 AMERICA REVISITED. On Monday morning— and a delightfully mild and radiant Monday it was — Baltimore, to my infinite delight, Came to Life again, and proved to be a very vivacious and cheerful city, full not only of commercial bustle and activity, but of social amenity and refinement. I set out for a long ramble, and found that the principal streets extending through the city — which has a circuit of twelve miles — were Baltimore-street (formerly called Market- street), Lombard, Batt, Frederick, Gay, Holliday, North, South, Calvert (a dim reminiscence this of the Calverts Lords Balti more, proprietaries of the colony of Maryland), Light, St. Paul, Charles, Hanover, Sharp, Howard, and Eutaro. Exchange- place in Lombard-street is the focus of the heaviest business : the Merchants' Exchange, Post Office, and Custom House being all in this locality. South and Second-streets close by, are croAvded Avith banks, many of which are really palatial structures ; and with the offices of insurance companies, stock brokers, and real estate agents. The real estate agent is a very important personage in a country where house property in cities, otherwise known as "toAvn lots," possesses such an enormous value. I was told that Baltimore-street was not only the chief emporium of retail business, but also the principal promenade of female beauty and fashion ; and here I was gravely informed I might " determine on the comparative beauty of the Baltimore ladies." I resolved to survey this notable thoroughfare, under its double aspect of commerce and come liness ; and, as regards the latter, I own that I had formed high, exalted expectations. Feminine fashions in Baltimore are serious matters. I had been reading that morning in one of the local journals a most on the 31st of March. It is unlawful to catch any terrapin of a size less than five inches on the bottom of the shell, or to interfere with or destroy the diamond-back terrapin's eggs. Thirty years ago the dealers found it difficult to sell terrapins at $6 a dozen, and now the difficulty lies in obtaining them at even $38 a dozen, owing to their increasing scarcity. The male terrapin is known as the " bull," the female as the " cow," the lady being more in request on account of her thirty eggs, which are used to garnish the delectable dish. BALTIMORE COME TO LIFE AGAIN. 141 portentous column of items, headed " For the Ladies." May I A'enture to hope that some of my lady readers in England may be edified by the announcement that, in the genial city of Maryland, " hoops threaten to come once more into fashion, and satin cashmere is a new dress material " ? Further on I learned that "the new shade of purple is called 'dahlia,'" that " epin- geline " is " a novel name for uncut velvet," and that " new plaid stockings have the checks set diagonally." This I hold to be a decided advantage, since many years ago, Avhen the exuber ance of crinoline occasionally led to indiscretions in the revela tion of ankles, I remember seeing a lady the rectangular black and Avhite checks on whose hose suggested to an irreverent omnibus conductor in High-street, Knightsbridge, the profane remark to the driver of the vehicle that he would " werry much like to 'ave a game o' draughts on that gal's legs." Then, again, I gathered that, " to be fashionable, one must have a leopard skin muff," and that the " Derby hat " is very much Avorn by young coloured girls. Subsequently I came to the mysterious statement that " au innovation in underwear is seen in the fine pink and blue flannel, beautifully embroidered with flowers in white floss." " White skirts," the oracle went on, " are no longer worn in the street ; black satin or Japanese blue, scarlet or olive green satin or flannel, take their place." After this I concluded that it Avas time to retire from the perusal of the column for the ladies. Even the writer seemed to have grown terrified at his own audacity, for after the allusion to the black satin " underwear," he became slightly trite and jejune, con tenting himself with remarking that " wool plaids in plum-colour, black, and gold are patronised by the most fashionable school girls," bidding those young ladies " Avho have no sealskin sacques cheer up, for the doctors say they are very unhealthy," and drifting at last into the mere platitude of advising girls who wished to have small mouths to repeat, at frequent intervals during the day, " Fanny Finch Fried Five Floundering Frogs For Francis Fowler's Father." 142 AMERICA REVISITED. As a matter of fact, I found Baltimore- street and Charles- street, by which last-named thoroughfare you descend from the fashionable district of the city, full of well-dressed ladies intent on shopping. Sealskin " sacques " or jackets Avere plentiful, but, according to a critical authority by whom I was accom panied, the American ladies patronise a sealskin which is dyed almost black instead of a rich chestnut hue, and they have con sequently a somewhat sombre appearance. The " Derby " hat is simply what Ave call a " pot," of black felt ; and it had need to be patronised by young ladies of colour, for it is inexpensive. Imitations of our " Devonshire," " Gainsborough," and, indeed, every kind of " hard " and turned-up hats for ladies, Avere numerous. So far as I could obtain information from the price tickets affixed to tasteful Paris bonnets in the shop windows, a lady's chapeau here, as, indeed, throughout the States, is an BALTIMORE COME TO LIFE AGAIN. 143 inordinately costly article. A very pretty article with an em broidered crown and trimmings of black velvet was priced five- and-twenty dollars, or five pounds ; a tiny little baby's straw bonnet with a plain white cap was ticketed seven dollars, or one pound eight shillings. In Oxford-street it would have been dear at half a guinea. For these astounding prices, which rule not only every department of male and female apparel, but almost every appliance of Avhat we call civilisation, Americans have to thank the Tariff — that Tariff Avhich not only imposes an almost pro hibitory duty on imported commodities, and thereby encourages an inconceivable amount of smuggling, venality, and corruption, but which, notwithstanding the assertion of the doctrinaires and the interested, also seems to have the effect of paralysing native industry. We are content in England to pay a high price, say four shillings and ninepence, for a pair of the very best kid gloves ; but " 'Any " can purchase at hundreds of London shops a shilling's worth of " bow-wow," that is to say, a pair of strong, serviceable so-called dogskin gloves, for twelvepence sterling. The American must pay, thanks to the Tariff, two dollars four, or eight shillings, for a pair of kid gloves, and those not of the first quality; and I should be very much obliged if any one would tell me in what American city, and at what kind of store, I can buy a pair of strong leather gloves, simulating dogskin, for five and twenty cents, or one shilling. Yet the Americans have plenty of leather, and are expert mechanics. Why should they not make their own gloves, as they are making their own watches — which are coming to be of surprising excellence — and their own seAving machines ? You must excuse my occasional references to the Tariff. It is the Bottle Imp of American life, and people have not yet " learned to love it." INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA. N. The Great Grant " Boom." New York, December 20. I have just returned from an interesting although brief sojourn in Washington and Philadelphia ; and have first of all to narrate some personal experiences in the City of Brotherly Love in connection Avith the grand parade held in Philadelphia on Tuesday, the IGth of December, in honour of General Ulysses S. Grant. It Avas from the Quaker City that the ex-President of the United THE GREAT GRANT "BOOM. 145 States took his departure some two years since, amid universal manifestations of respect, to make a tour round the world. He travelled, indeed, far afield ; and, like that other Ulysses that we wot of saw men and cities innumerable ; and, as his brilliant pilgrimage was to come to a close in the self-same place where it had begun, the General's admirers in Philadelphia — and their name is apparently legion — determined to make the penultimate week preceding the Christmas holidays the occasion of the very grandest festive patriotic demonstration, with General Grant for its hero, that it was possible to organise. The " Great Grant Boom " is now gone and past — it is a " played out " boom so far as festivity is concerned, and must noAV give place to the Christ mas boom and Santa Claus, and the approaching masquerade ball at the Academy of Music. My business is only with the events of Tuesday, the 16th instant, and that immeasurably grand parade of which I will once for all frankly admit I was an involuntary and a miserable spectator. I have suffered much since last Tuesday, and the Great Grant Boom has entered into my soul. It is rather late in the day to observe that the government of the United States of America is strictly and irrevocably a Republican one ; and that, in the whole Union, there is not a more sternly loyal commonwealth than Pennsylvania, the " Keystone " State, nor a more intensely Republican centre than the city among whose monuments of the past the historic Inde pendence Hall is the most proudly conspicuous. Philadelphia, nevertheless, rejoices, so far as the refinements of society are concerned, in a King, by the name of Mr. George W. Childs, the proprietor of a very well-known daily newspaper, called the Public Ledger. Mr. Childs, it is universally acknowledged, comprises in his individuality the attributes of a man of Ross, a Maecenas, an Amphitryon, and a Herodes Atticus. His activity is indefatigable, his public spirit indomitable, and his hospitality inexhaustible. Mr. Childs' proprietorial Sanctum at the office of the Public Ledger is a marvel of art furniture, decoration, and VOL. I. L 146 AMERICA REVISITED. * tasteful brie d brae ; aiul he makes it a pundonor, as the Spaniards say, to present every lady who visits him with a piece of rare porcelain specially imported for him from the Old World by the famous Tiffany, of New York. When Mr. G. W. Childs is not engaged in entertaining his friends and the strangers that are within the gates of Philadelphia at luncheon, dinner, or tea, he presents stained-glass windows to Westminster Abbey, or indulges in some other delass&ment of cosmopolitan munificence ; and some of those days it may be confidently expected that he will give the finishing architectural touch in the Avay of a spire a couple of hundred feet high, to Boston " stump," in Lincolnshire. Mr. Geo. W. Childs is, in fine, a highly representative American in general and Phila- delphian in particular ; that is to say, a thoroughly courteous, hospitable, and generous gentleman. I had no knowledge of him, save by repute, when I arrived in America ; but he was good enough to offer to shoAv me all the episodes of the Great Grant Boom, which was to last an entire week, and during which I Avas to be his guest. Mr. Childs' own house was to be entirely devoted to purposes of feasting, and General Grant and his suite were to be lodged on the first floor of the colossal establishment in Walnut-street, called the Continental Hotel. In that same gigantic caravanserai, apartments, I was informed, had also been secured for me and mine. When Americans are on hospitable cares intent they are not accustomed to do things by halves. They come down on you, figuratively, " like a hundred of bricks " in the way of kindnesses and courtesies ; and during the fortnight when I was staying betAveen New York, Baltimore, and Washington, the United States mails were conveying to me premonitory reverberations of the Great Grant Boom, in the guise of biddings to participate in the rejoicings of the memorable Aveek AAdiich was to begin on the IGth and to end on the 23rd. First came a prodigious glazed card bearing a large corporate seal and an engraved heading, Avhich at first made me somewhat uncertain as to THE GREAT GRANT "BOOM." 147 MH^ ENTRANCE TJ FAIRMOUNT PARK. whether I Avas surveying a United States Five-tAventy bond or a certificate of member- ^a^^g-^^fc, ship of the Ancient .^^SilSifcafe. Order of Foresters. This .^^^^SSi&^^tt proved to be a general invite signed by the clerk of the Collected Com mittees of Councils to partake during seven days of "the hospitali ties of the City of Phila delphia." I promptly ac cepted the liberal offer; but I felt slightly un certain as to the nature of these hospitalities and where I Avas to find them. I asked American friends, and they smiled. Would the prodigious glazed card enable me to occupy an al fresco bench all night in Fair- mount Park, or to ride gra tuitously in the street cars, or to "shin round the free lunches," or to get shaved the coming Sun- A SKETCH IN FAIRMOUNT PARK. L2 148 AMERICA REVISITED. day. When I Avas young a favourite diversion on the 1st ot April was to forward to our friends and acquaintances cards of admission to the Tower of London for the purpose of " seeing the lions washed." Would the invitation to enjoy the "hospitalities of the City of Philadelphia " prove as derisively delusive as the lion-washing permit ? But the invitations continued to pour in. Cards for recep tions and soirees, issued always " to meet General and Mrs. Grant," from influential private citizens of the Chess Board City, it would be obviously indecorous to particularise ; yet of such cards I had a pack. Then the Union League of Philadelphia wrote on hot-pressed Bath post, surmounted by an elaborately- engraved vignette of the American Eagle gazing at the rising sun and holding the star-spangled banner in his talons, to say that I was expected to meet General Grant on Tuesday, the 23rd. Subsequently, and still through the medium of copper-plate engraving, the Worshipful Mayor of Philadelphia signified to me that on a given evening he should be at home to receive General Grant ; and then, on a prodigious placard of Bristol board covered with chalcographic effigies of eagles, thunderbolts, stars, stripes, St. Andrew's crosses, sabres, and cannon balls, the " Grand Army of the Republic" informed me that they would hold " a grand camp fire " at the Academy of Music on the 18th, with the object of welcoming " Comrade Ulysses S. Grant." Likewise was I told that, on a certain afternoon, and at this same Academy of Music, twelve thousand schoolgirls would go through a variety of recitations, musical performances, and calisthenic exercises: always in the presence and in honour of General Grant. Finally came from Mr. Childs a triumph of chromo-litho- graphyin golden blazonry of the flags of all nations, surmounting the bill of fare of a " quiet little dinner " to be given on Tuesday, the 16th, at the proprietor of the Public Ledgers private residence in Walnut- street, to a select party of guests, including General and Mrs. Grant, General Sherman, the Hon. .Hamilton Fish, 149 General Sheridan, Mr. A. J. Drexel, Senator Cameron, the Hon* Edwards Pierrepont, sometime United States Minister to the CourW)f St. James's, the Hon. John Welsh, also an ex-" plenipo " to London, and the Hon. George S. Boutwell. These are names of European as Avell as of American renoAvn ; and that is why I enumerate them. Places at this distinguished board were re served for your obedient servant and partner. It was a Avonder- ful menu. Blue Point oysters — they are almost as small and as delicate in flavour as our English native, and are thus grateful to the palate of the uncivilised foreigner who cannot relish the genuine American bivalve, AA-hich is a trifle smaller than a coal barge and a " wee bit " larger than a roller-skate — green turtle soup, fried smelts and striped bass, filet of beef with mushrooms, spinach with cream, ponche d la Romaine to " cut the courses ; " terrapin and celery, canvas-back duck, and a wilderness of sweets and ices. Alas ! We had been bidden to dinner in Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, on Tuesday, the 16th, at the house of the most hospitable, the most accomplished, and the most brilliantly conversational of Democratic Senators. He would not have been thought Democratic (in one sense of the political term) in England. He would as to his manners and culture have been pronounced decidedly (that is to say naturally) aristocratic. We Avere congratulated on our good fortune in being invited to the " quiet and select " dinner party at Mr. Childs', for as a matter of course the bill of fare and a complete list of 1he guests had been published in all the newspapers. Woe is me ! I dreamed golden dreams. Was there a possibility, I wondered, of obtain ing a divorce swiftly and cheaply in the convenient State of Indiana — where growling at the amount of a wife's millinery bill is said to be recognised as legal cruelty — and marrying the daughter of a Grand Vizier, or at least of a Billionnaire from Nevada, a Croesus from Colorado, or a Petroleum Plutus from Oil City ? I dreamed of giving " surprise parties " at Delmonico's, and of purchasing all the repousse silver ware at Tiffany's. 150 AMERICA REVISITED. Alnaschar ! "What had I in the basket of my brain ? Nothing but some brittle glass and fragile crockery. The morning of Wednesday dawned somevvhat cloudily and coldly, but I Avas up Avith the lark, or, at least, with the screech- oavI, one of the sable attendants in the lower regions of Wormley's Hotel, Washington, having recently caught a lively ¦specimen of the species just named, which used to perch on the marble counter of the bar all day and hoot as though he were a Vice-Chancellor about to commit a refractory defendant for contempt, or a discontented shareholder at the annual meeting of a joint-stock company. The screech-owl, together with a mock ing-bird occupying a cage in the clerk's office, and which was the most discordantly derisive bird that I ever came across, used to have " a high old time " of it at Wormley's Hotel ; and when the screech-OAvl was at his shrillest and the mocking-bird at his harshest, there Avas only needed the horrible disturbance made by the steam-heating apparatus, which began to fonctionner about five in the morning to split the ears and rend the nerves of the guests. How is it that the Americans, whose nervous system is, according to physiologists, so exquisitely sensitive, and who are, until they have been introduced to you, so distressingly taciturn, seem to be so completely indifferent to the noises made around them ? They tolerate on the collars of their horses those bells which in London are prohibited by the Police Act. Of the maddening nuisance of the church bells 1 have already spoken. An American Avorkman makes much more noise at his work than an Englishman does. He bangs and slams, rams and jams about as though the by-passers had no drums to their ears. A baggage porter " dumps " trunks and portmanteaus down on the pavement as though he were delighted Avith the noise they made in falling. Yet a car full of travelling Americans is about the quietest company in Avhich you could possibly find yourself; and an American croAvd, unexcited by whiskey, is a model of placid good behaviour. One noise, years ago productive of infinite anguish to me, I have not yet become re-acquainted THE GREAT GRANT ' BOOM. 151 with. I have not heard it in New York ; nay, nor in Baltimore, nor Washington, nor Philadelphia. I wonder how far down South*! shall get ere I meet Avith that appalling engine of torture, the Hotel Gong. In travelling from Baltimore to Washington — a short trip of some eight-and-thirty miles, and in view, I suppose, of the brevity of the journey — the train was unprovided with a Pullman. The clerk, however, who sold me my tickets civilly directed me to take the " third car to the left" when I reached the platform. This proved to be virtu ally a first-class car, since, although the doc trine of "equal rights" is legally established throughout the United States, I found that all the coloured passengers (of whom there were many in the train) es chewed the "third car to the left," and settled down quietly in other compartments. It did not appear to me that they were in any manner coerced into thus segregating themselves from their white brothers and sisters. They seemed to keep themselves apart as much from choice as from custom ; and this I have noticed many times during my stay in this country. It Avould be mischievously idle to assert that the negro — his thorough political enfranchisement notwithstanding — "goes into society" in the Reunited States. He does nothing Avhatever of the kind. Nobody grinds him to the wall, nor is unkind or uncivil to him — so far as I have yet seen ; but he, on his part, does not seem very anxious to mingle socially with the race who, of 152 AMERICA REVISITED. course, at this time of day, neither dislike nor despise the black man, but who, perhaps, feel as uncomfortable in his company — as a social and political equal — as he does in theirs. But, perhaps, I am prematurely broaching a subject on which I shall probably have to say a great deal by and bye. There Avas nothing to remark about the car, substantially a first-class one, save that midway on each side of the vehicle there was a small rack, in which was placed a Bible, with the printed memorandum beneath, " Read and return." I saw the sacred volume read and returned many times in the course of the journey ; and this constant familiarity with the Scriptures — you meet Bibles and Testaments at every turn all over the land — should surely have a very beneficial effect on the morals of the population. It may be (on the other hand) that their minutely intimate acquaintance Avith Holy Writ occasionally betrays the Americans into some slight amount of irreverence, not to say profanity. For example, at a public dinner lately in New York, I heard a reverend gentleman who was a Doctor" of Divinity, and a deservedly popular preacher, tell a highly comic story about Daniel in the lion's den. In the course of this apologue he incidentally remarked that if the lions had carried out their " programme " the prophet would, at least, have been safe from the afflictive contingency of making an after-dinner speech. Remembering one of the most moving of Scriptural dramas — remembering Mr. Britton Riviere's weird and mys terious picture of Daniel — I confess that I could not see anything very funny in the notion of the prophet being called upon to make an after-dinner speech. But the Americans have their OAvn notions about religious reverence, and we have ours. On a recent Sunday night there was given in this city of New York an entertainment which began with the " Stabat Mater" and ended until a ball; and I notice that next Thursday, being Christmas Day, there are to he morning performances at several of the fashionable theatres. And yet a barber may not open his shop, nor a barrowman sell THE GREAT GRANT "BOOM." 153 pop-corns or ice creams, on a Sunday* These are the things which perplex foreigners, and occasionally provoke them into making ill-natured remarks — not designedly ill-natured, since the remarks are mainly attributable to the foreigner's ignorance of American feelings in the matter of fasts and festivals. As we wonder at their secular celebration of the Feast of the Nativity, so may they think our shutting up of the theatres on Ash Wednesday — when few people fast and nobody puts ashes on his head — a detestable piece of hypocrisy. Pullman the beneficent did not fail, however, to be vehicu- larly manifest on the train which conveyed us from Washington to Philadelphia on the momentous morning when the Great Grant Boom was to be " inaugurated ; " and Pullman's luxurious accommodation was all the more welcome since, as the day matured, it grew colder and colder. We left the Federal capital at 9.30 a.m. The train was an express one, and kept admirably punctual time ; and precisely at 1.15 p.m. Ave were in Phila delphia. The railway depot bore a singularly deserted look. I had duly " expressed" my luggage, and handed in my checks ; but there were no express waggons at the station. There were but two hack carnages waiting for fares. One I straightway engaged. I told the driver, a good-humoured Irishman, Avith a moustache that would have done honour to a captain of British Heavy Cavalry, that I wished to go to the Continental Hotel. How much would it be? "Two dollars," he made answer. Eight shillings for a two miles drive ! I own that I thought the price a little stiff; but then Great Grant Booms do not rever berate every day, to paraphrase the sage remark of the Hampshire innkeeper in 1814, when he charged the allied Sovereigns half-a-guinea apiece, all round, for their hard-boiled eggs. The good-humoured driver added that he would take us as near to the Continental as he could, but that we had much better go to the Colonnade Hotel, which was a most " iligant house." I mildly informed him that I was bound to go to the Continental, as apartments had been taken for us there ; 154 AMERICA REVISITED. whereupon he whistled, and mounted his box with an expression of humorous resignation on his confiding countenance. Something was evidently Avrong. What that something was the driver of the other hack obligingly volunteered to inform us. We should never get to the Continental, he consolingly remarked — at least not until there was a " month's Sundays, or there were five Fridays in a February. In consequence of the Great Grant Boom business for the day was entirely suspended. General Grant had arrived early that morning, and Avas then sitting in his carriage Avitnessing the march-past at a given point of the Grand Parade, which was eight miles long, and Avould certainly not be over until four o'clock. It was THE GREAT GRANT "BOOM." 155 noAV half-past one. The main streets had been all carefully roped in by the police ; the street cars were abroad, but the traffiaPAvas wholly stopped, and altogether Ave had about as much chance of reaching the Continental Hotel by any route, direct or indirect, as we had of reaching the North Pole by Avay of West WeehaAA'ken, Jericho, Hong Kong, Communipaw, and the Straits of Bab-el-Mandel. Our driver, nevertheless, set off at a leisurely trot; but, so soon as he reached the vicinity of the Colonnade Hotel he stopped, dismounted from his aerial perch, flung open the carriage door, and, in expressive American par lance, " dumped " us down on the pavement, saying that he could do no more for us, and that to go any further Avas an " onpossibility." It was by this time two p.m. We had breakfasted early and slightly, and the nipping cold had made us fearfully hungry ; so before pursuing our pilgrimage on foot — we were encumbered with minor luggage in the shape of wraps and hand bags, in addition to the heavier articles which I had " expressed " — I deemed it politic to enter the Colonnade in quest of lunch. The clerk behind the office counter, whom I had never seen before in my life, was very glacl to see me, and shook hands with me quite cordially. I told him my tale, and that I did not Avant a room, but only something to eat and drink. He sympathised Avith our sorrows, and himself most obligingly led us to the dining-saloon. On our Avay thither Ave passed through a suite of prettily decorated parlours, in one of which I noticed a grand pianoforte, and a young couple, who, seemingly newly-married and quite indifferent to the attractions of the Great Grant Boom, were singing "La ci darem la mano," from " Don Giovanni " in splendid style. Happy, happy, happy pair ! We got some lunch : oysters, cold chicken and ham, apple pie, and a pint of Mumm's extra dry; all very good, and nicely served. The price, I need scarcely say, was as stiff as the broomstick to the rigidity of which was brought the man Avho, in the German student's song, " swiped " beer for three days in succession at 156 AMERICA REVISITED. the Black Whale at Askalon. We were charged four dollars and sixty cents, nearly a sovereign, for our refreshment. Then Ave adventured again into the streets. We found our selves in the thoroughfare called Chestnut-street, which was almost entirely deserted by pedestrians. Nearly all the stores were closed; and all the doors and windows were veiled by garlands of evergreens and fasces of United States flags. This I had noticed in every thoroughfare through which we had passed. Proceeding a few blocks up Chestnut-street I came upon a line of street cars, empty and motionless. This looked ominous, and the omens soon became fertile in direful result. The given point of the march past was in Broad-street, intersecting Chestnut- street, close to a magnificent pile of unfinished marble buildings, which are to serve, I am informed, as the new Post Office. We made for this given point; and there we contrived to get wedged in the midst of a huge crowd, in which we remained utterly powerless to move from half-past two until half-past five in the evening. But Avorse remained behind. STREET CORNER IN PHILADELPHIA. STREET IN PHILADELPHIA. XI. A Philadelphian Babel. New York, December 22. Some days may have elapsed in and about that audacious tower*which was builded in the plain in the land of Shinar, with brick for stone and Avith slime for mortar, before the people that had jounieyed from the East, and who had heretofore been of 158 AMERICA REVISITED. one language and of one speech, began fully to realise the fact that they did not understand one another. The breaking up of Babel must have been a marvellous spectacle,. I Avonder whether the Continental Hotel in Chestnut-street, Philadelphia, is any thing like Avhat the Babel of old was. I am inclined to think that it may be. I told you in my last letter how, on the first day of the Great Grant Boom, we were for three bitterly cold hours hopelessly wedged up in the midst of a compact multitude thronging every inch of the side-walk, Avhile the Grand Parade, eight miles long, filed through the intersecting Broad-street. We saAv as much as Ave could of that Parade, making allowances for the fact that Ave Avere half " perished " by the cold, and that ever and anon Ave Avere all but carried off our feet by the tempestuous swaying to and fro of the mob. For one full hour we could see little of the procession beyond a chaotic bobbing past and up and down of banners bearing devices to which the celebrated inscription, " Excelsior," was quite tame in the way of strangeness. Now, the contemplation of banners may, for a brief space of time, be as interesting as that of " the 'oofs of the 'osses " may be to the little country joskins who, lying prone on their stomachs, peep beneath the canvas drapery of a travelling circus, and satiate themselves with the sight of sawdust and the lower extremities of the noble animals : the entire performances of which the exiguity of the small rustic's purses will not permit them to behold. Still, such gratuitous and restricted entertain ment is apt to groAV eventually monotonous ; and this I found to be the case after Avitnessing for sixty minutes the incessant flapping of flags. Even our Lord Mayor's show, under analogous circumstances, would pall upon the sense, but that your attention is from time to time diverted by the frequent attempts of the larcenous among the spectators to pick your pocket or snatch at your watch chain, and by the ruffianly behaviour of that foulest of all foul scamps, the London Blackguard, whose delight it is on all public occasions to gratify his instincts of mischief and A PHILADELPHIAN BABEL. 159 cowardice by squirting dirty water over the garments of females by means of abominable little syringes called " Ladies' Tormentors," the manufacturers of which ought certainly to be indicted for a constructive breach* of the peace. Fortunately the many-headed at the corner of Chestnut and Grant-streets Avere not, in the main, tall-hatted. " Stove-pipe " or " chimney-pot " beavers were few and far between ; and when Ave once contrived to struggle from the back settlements of the side- walk, and to take up a position alternating between the second and the third ranks of the spectators, Ave obtained, owing to the general lowness of headgear of those in front of us, a tolerably good vieAv of one of the most remarkable assem blages of humanity on which I have ever set eyes. Bear in mind that I was Avitnessing it against my will ; that this was not by any means the show Avhich I had bargained to see ; that I Avas the victim of circumstances over which I had no control ; and that my mind Avas full of anguish at the rapid evanishment of all prospect of dining Avith General Grant and the statesmen and diplomatists bidden to the Apician board of Mr. Geo. W. Childs. Premising thus much, I trust that I shall not be treading on any American corns, nor irritating any American skin, figura tively speaking, by hinting that the mob in Avhich I involuntarily found myself a member for the nonce did not, in its outward aspect, iu any way represent the respectable citizens of Phila delphia. Quite the contrary, I should say. To put it plainly, I was in the thick of a "populacho" that howled and that expec torated freely, and that used language which was the reverse of choice, and that was not, in its Aviiole length and breadth, quite sober. The reason for this became at once obvious. The respectable citizens of Philadelphia Avere either taking part in the Grand Parade, or, -with the ladies of their families, were Avitnessing the defile of the procession from the banner-hung and evergreen-festooned AvindoAvs in Broad-street. Fully to understand the purport of the Great Grant Boom, it must be 160 AMERICA REVISITED. realised that the whole adult, valid, arms-bearing population of a great American city had turned out to do honour to a representa tive American soldier and statesman. The aged, the infirm, the ladies, and the children, Avere at the windows, or were seated in stands of tribunes specially erected for the purpose along the line of march. Only tag, rag, and bobtail — only the populace — Avere on the foot-pavement : and we were of it. To place the aspect of the show and its components clearly before the unimpressed British mind, I will just ask my compatriot reader to imagine this : first, a strong contingent of regular troops, followed by seamen and Marines of the National Navy ; a prodigious volunteer force, some of them clad in sober uniforms of blue or grey, others rejoicing in a garb so brilliantly fantastic as now to remind you of the Preobanjinski Guards of the Emperor Alexander, and now of the Vieille Garde of Napoleon I. These were, I apprehend, the Militia of Phila delphia. Then came contingents of the Grand Army of the Republic, representing, I presume, old soldiers who had fought in the Federal ranks during the Great Civil War ; and they were apparelled in their historic and battle-stained sky-blue gaberdines, which led their foes on the other side of Mason and Dixon's line to speak of them as " Blue Bellies." They retali ated by nicknaming the Confederate soldiers " Graybacks." What more ? Regiments more, Brigades more, Divisions more. The Tenth Legion multiplied by Ten and Standard Bearers in* numerable. The Union League Club, marching I do not know how many abreast, with gorgeous rosettes of velvet and gold at their button-holes. All the fire companies of Philadelphia, with engines, hose, hooks, and ladders complete. The war-charger of General Meade, bearing the scars of twenty-six distinct bullet wounds. Four old tattered flags, which had Avaved over the Ninth and Eighty-seventh Regiments at Gettysburg, borne by a veteran comrade with a wooden leg. Thirty-nine hundred citizens, representing the textile manufactures of Philadelphia, This section of the Parade comprised a hundred and fifty A PHILADELPHIA^ BABEL. 161 operatives from the Germantown Mills, bearing "regalia" com- posed of different oils and avooIs. They were followed by a huge wagon laden high with Avoollen fabrics, and surmounted by au abnormal banner in the shape of a Brobdingnagian stocking woven in the device and colours of the Stars and Stripes. An ingenious device, truly. But are Ave Englishmen to be less patriotic than our Transatlantic brethren? Will no public- spirited manufacturer of Nottingham or Coventry register a " Union Jack stocking" ? It would be a sweet thing in fleecy hosiery for British ladies' winter wear. Another textile trophy, consisting of an omnibus heaped Atlas-high, with " dummy " blankets, informed an amazed world that the annual product of the Manayunk Mills amounted to twelve millions of dollars. 0 glorious art of Advertising, thou Avert not forgotten, even amidst the most patriotic throes of the Great Grant Boom! I noticed, that on their banner, the Ridgway Upholsterers declared that they " would see it out on this line if it took all winter." I began with inward dread to opine that I should have "to see it out on this line," and that it "Avould take all winter" to see it. Room for the West Philadelphia Republican Club! Room for the Twen tieth Ward Hoyt Club, five hundred strong, and carrying a banner with " the five-hundred-dollar portrait of Governor Hoyt," heroic to look upon and cheap at the price. Then there Avas a club — I forget its precise designation — three hundred strong, who varied the monotony of civilian attire by all wearing bright yellow gauntlets. The Old Reliable Club was composed of American citizens of African descent. The Delmonico Assembly — Avho never perform out of Phila delphia — also numbered two hundred coloured members, and an omnibus. For some mysterious reason quite inscrutable to me, the Consumers' Ice Company figured as a political organisation in this astounding Parade. These Hyperboreans had Avith them a wagon laden Avith effigies of eagles, cannon, and a huge bust of General Grant, all made out in solid ice. This Arctic art 162 AMERICA REVISITED. Avas shocking to me. wedged as I was, in the centre of the cold crowd, and so hideously did my teeth chatter that I could find it neither in my heart nor in my cachinatory muscles to grin when a number of garishly-painted and gilded chariots tottered by crowded with strange beings in masquerading attire ; kangaroos and baboons, clowns and crowned kings. What did these mummers here 1 What political organisation did they typify? Mystery. The Iron and Steel Delegation, 2,450 strong, all Avearing purple badges. That stalwart Delegation I could very well comprehend. Trucks bearing forges in full blast, with " smutty smiths " at their anvils. Trucks full of minstrels Avith tin horns — most sincerely do I hope that they never perform out of Philadelphia, playing airs from "Fatinitza" and " H. M. S. Pinafore." A crane-beam christened after General Grant, forged by an enterprising Philadelphian firm for the Russian Government, fifteen feet long, weighing one hundred and twenty thousand pounds, and claiming to be the biggest crane- beam in the world. Twelve hundred shipwrights, bearing axes, mallets, tar-mops, and other implements of their calling. Machinists, boiler-makers, carpenters, sail-makers, and figure head-carvers, all displaying trophies technically emblematic of their respective trades. The Ancient Carpenters, the House Furnishers, and the Schumachers' Pianoforte-making Company. The brickmakers, the gas-manufacturers, and the soap-makers — the latter Avith the effigy of a Red-skin plentifully lathered Avith soap, and bearing the superscription, "Settling the Indian Question." It is assuredly not with soft soap that the Indian question, so far as the troublesome Utes are con cerned, is being settled. Then, may it please you, came a cavalcade of five hundred journeymen butchers mounted, accompanied by the Washing ton Greys' Band, the musicians in a circus chariot drawn by eight coal black horses. Attendant on the butchers were first, a dilapidated vehicle, labelled, I know not why, the "Great London Mail Coach," and last, a poor little shivering beast put up in a A PHILADELPHIAN BABEL. 1G3 cart, and reputed to be " the smallest bullock in the Avorld." This diminutive specimen of the bovine species, Avhich Avas about** the size of an average Alderney, did not look at all flattered by its liliputian reputation. Two hundred master butchers in barouches closed the cortege of the marrowbone- and-cleaver fraternity. It is something to have seen and to be able to remember with pity two hundred master butchers in barouches ; but I am afraid that did an English mob gaze upon so numerous and so prosperous an assemblage of retail slaughterers and vendors of butchers' meat, dark thoughts would come over the hungry multitude touching leg of mutton at a shilling and rump-steak at eighteenpence a pound ; and those thoughts might be succeeded by a burning desire to string them, the master butchers, up to the nearest lamp-posts. The butchers Avere not clad in what Ave traditionally consider to be the professional blue. They Avore over their black broad cloth flowing Avhite gaberdiues or smock-frocks. To them succeeded the milkmen and the buttermen of Philadelphia. What came next I know not, for dusk had been succeeded by darkness ; the procession Avas probably " Avhittling down to the fine end of nothing ; " and, for the first time in three weary hours, the police slackened the ropes Avhich had been stretched across the intersecting thoroughfares, and allowed the public to cross Broad-street. How eagerly did I rush across the road. We might be happy yet ! It Avas only half-past five, and by superhuman efforts one might manage to dress in time for dinner. Wretched I ! wretched Ave ! I had not proceeded two blocks up Chestnut-street before I found myself in the midst of a denser mob than ever. The Continental Hotel, so far as its accessibility went, might have been ten thousand miles away. Inspired by what seemed to me to be a purely demoniacal impulse, it had occurred to the five hundred journeymen butchers on horseback, to the two hundred master butchers in barouches, and to the niilknien and buttermen of Philadelphia in vans, shandrydans, drays, and milk-carts, escorted by the Phoenix brass band of M 2 164 AMERICA REVISITED. Phoenixville, the Washington Greys, and other contingents of brazen instrumentalists, all armed with shawms, psalteries, and Chaldean trumpets, all powerful enough to blow down the Walls of Jericho and affright the New Moon from her propriety, to make a detour after marching past the new Post-office-build ings, and, swooping down upon Chestnut-street, serenade Mrs. General Grant at the Continental. --!', &% iff 1 1 *;Wr-.:'!-iO ,!; ~ Beshrew those journeymen butchers! How they pranced and curveted in their snowy bedgowns! Some of them Avhooped and howled for patriotic joy. It must have been A PHILADELPHIAN BABEL. ]65 patriotism. Bourbon and Old Rye had nothing to do Avith it. The jir was innocent of the odour of cocktails — I would have given a dollar for one, so cold was I ; — but the croAvd Avhooped and howled as lustily as did the butchers on horseback and the butchers in barouches. Yelling, we all know, is contagious. I remember once, that after listening for three-quarters of an hour to the Howling Dervishes at Constantinople, I felt a passionate yearning to join in the chorus of ululation ; and I frightened my English travelling companion half out of his wits by warning him that in another minute I proposed to begin roaring like a very bull of Bashan. But I had no wish to howl in ^Chestnut-street, Philadelphia, in the midst of the seething crowd. You do not howl when you are cold and hungry, you collapse in mute despair. The clock struck six ; and in mine eye there stood a drop of "unfamiliar brine," as I remembered that the last chance of the gala dinner was gone. It Avould be unjust, while recording as I must needs do the boisterousness of the immense throng which crammed the thoroughfare, certainly at this point not broader than Cheapside, but as long as two Cheapsides joined end to end, to omit mention of the fact that the mob Avas eminently good-humoured ; that wherever it was practicable courtesy and kindness Avere shoAvn to the weaker sex, irrespec tive of colour ; and that Avhen, in my immediate vicinity, women began to shriek and children to exhibit symptoms of suffocation, strenuous efforts were made by the brawnier members of the throng to secure a little breathing-room for those who Avere fainting. I never witnessed such a fearful " scrouge " in my life, and, quite apart from the deep respect and sincere admiration Avhich I am bound to feel for General Grant as a gallant soldier and an upright statesman, I most earnestly hope that I shall never Avitness — save from the secure coign of vantage of an upstairs window — such another " scrouge " again. It lulled at about a quarter-past six. Remember that we had arrived in Philadelphia at a quarter-past one. When the 166 AMERICA REVISITED. last of the mounted butchers, in his snow-Avhite bedgown, and the last of the buttermen and milkmen had clattered doAvn the stony street, the thickly-packed concourse began to break up ; and by dint of infinite elbowing and shoving we reached the Continental Hotel, there to be received with all possible kindness and courtesy, and to be straightway conducted to the elegant apartments which had been prepared for us. But it Avas Too Late. Ah ! fatal Avord. Our " expressed " luggage did not make manifest the expression of its appearance until long past seven ; and by that time we remorsefully thought Mr. Geo. W. Childs and his distinguished guests Avould be well "through" Avith their ponche a la Romaine, and well "on" with their canvas-back ducks. DRIVE ON THE W1SSAHECKON, FAIRMOUNT PARK, PHILADELPHIA. TRAVELLERS ARRIVING AT A LARGE AMERICAN HOTEL. XII. At the Continental. New York, December 24. Gentlemen from the West in general, and from the State of Ohio in particular, who are apt to regard pork-packing and grain-elevating as about the most important factors in the re generation of humanity and the bringing about of the Millen nium, have frequently assured me, lately, that the most wonder ful hotels in the Avhole world, both for size, splendour, and luxury in accommodation, are to be found at Chicago."" I have usually noticed that this assurance has been given me in the presence of gentlemen from New York, and in somewhat of a humorously defiant manner ; Avhence I have been led privately to infer that not only in commerce, but also in most institutions representing the progress of civilisation, there exists a chronic and steadily growing rivalry between the Atlantic metropolis and the won drous Phoenix-City of the Lake Shore. I hope to touch Chicago * As a matter of fact, the most magnificent hotels on the American continent, and, perhaps, in the whole world, are the United Palace and Grand Hotels, of which Mr. Sharon is lessee, at San Francisco. 16S AMERICA REVISITED. before I have done with this continent (during a second trip — I should like to make a third or a fourth, but I am growing old and stupid), and to judge of its hotels, as well as of other things, for myself; but, so far as my observation up to this pre sent time of AA'riting extends, I should certainly say that the most Avonderful caravanserai that I have yet beheld in the United States is the Continental Hotel, Philadelphia. You must bear in mind that I am as yet a mere babe and suckling in respect to Transatlantic hostelries. I know nothing as yet of the Windsor and the Hotel BrunsAvick in "up town" Manhattan. The hotels in Avhich I have hitherto found "ease " — the Brevoort, NeAv York ; the Mount Vernon, Baltimore ; Wormley's, at Washington — are all comparatively small and quiet houses, conducted on Avhat is called the "European" system, that is to say, so many dollars a day for your rooms and a restaurant cl la carte, and resembling residential club houses more than hotels proper. I have yet to travel forth into the wilderness, and to fight with Avild beasts at Ephesus. Whereso ever I have been as yet, I have been expected, and known, and kindly welcomed. I have yet to find myself in a hotel many sizes larger than Noah's Ark, a total stranger, and bound to take the rough Avith the smooth, and to find perchance that the rough predominates. Hitherto I have been petted and spoiled in the way of comfort and luxurious living. It may be that in hotels, as in many other concerns to me as yet unrecked of, I am a young bear, and that all my troubles are to come. Arriving, as I did, at the Continental at Philadelphia, foot sore and half frozen, on the first evening of the Great Grant Boom, my earliest impressions of the establishment Avere of a tripartite nature. First, I was impressed by the idea that I Avas on the basement floor of that ToAver of Babel to the resuscitation of Avhich on American soil I have already hinted ; next, that I was in the 'tAveen decks of the Ark of Noah just mentioned above, and that the animals, having been fed, were going to be watered ; and, finally, that I Avas in the midst of Bedlam broke AT THE CONTINENTAL. 169 loose. Stark, staring, raving madness seemed to me to be pre valent every where. The male portion of the mob that had packed Chestnut-street so densely during the passage of the jubilant butchers and the festive buttermen and milkmen had poured, with all their brothers, and all their cousins, and all their wives' relations, into the pillared marble halls which form the ground floor of the hotel. Colossal as is the edifice, it is not, at first sight, externally imposing as an architectural mass : — resembling as it does in this respect the Grand Hotel, Paris. It is of the street, streety, forming one huge many-storied block of building pierced by innumerable windows. The Americans are TMK THE CONTINENTAL HOTEL, PHILADELPHIA. not, in the north, at least, a balcony-loving people, and the ab sence of the stone or iron excrescences to the first floors, which in England look so light and handsome, and Avhich are, in the estimation of our Chief Commissioner of Police, so eminently conducive to the perpetration of burglaries, give to American house-fronts rather a flat and monotonous aspect. In the case of the Continental, however, I am not speaking by " the card." It is possible that it may possess ever so 170 AMERICA REVISITED. many tiers of balconies, and that on Tuesday, the 16th, I beheld not these adornments for the reason that on the evening of the Great Grant Boom nine-tenths of the facade of the Continental and of every other house in Chestnut-street were concealed by flags, banners, festoons of evergreens, and brilliantly illuminated transparencies — the last representing General Grant in every conceivable attitude and costume, from his full military uniform to a Roman toga, and under every conceivable circum stance of Apotheosis. In particular Avas I called upon by an enthusiastic Grantite to admire a radiant effigy of the General, painted on linen, and exhibiting him, according to my informant, " mounted on an Arabian charger, in the Shenandoah valley, up to his pant-knees in blood and glory : — a wavin' of a crooked sabre above his head, and ladlin' out Tophet among the Con federate Brigadiers." I might easily have missed the Continental also — being short-sighted — as it possesses no lofty portico, and no commanding flight of steps at the entrance. The name only of the world-famous hostelry is inscribed on a couple of lamps flanking the entrance, a circumstance Avhich again reminded me of the Grand Hotel, on the Boulevard des Capucines, the carriage entrance to which is so ingeniously on a level with the side-walk that you risk being run over by an omnibus laden Avith heavy luggage Avhile you are tranquilly crossing from the shop Avhere the French Government retail at extravagant prices the worst Havana cigars to be found in Europe. But there the resemblance between the Continental and the Grand Hotel ends. The Philadelphian caravanserai has no glass-roofed courtyard into Avhich carriages drive, and on the perron of which the ladies sit en grande toilette when the table d'hote is over. Not a female form was to be seen in the roar ing lower halls of the Continental ; and the absence of the fair sex from the business section of an hotel constitutes a peculiar feature in purely American hotel life. The Americans entertain so great — and 1 believe so sincere — an admiration and a rever ence for Woman that they shrink from exposing her to the AT THE CONTINENTAL. 171 possible contact of rough male humans, endowed Avith uncourtly manne», using occasionally uncourtly language, and in particular given to the consumption at all times of tobacco. The Ameri can ladies abhor, as a rule, the Indian Aveed ; and cigar smoke is in particular distressing to them. The other day a lady in New York, who had inadvertently entered a tramway car set apart for smokers, was so justifiably incensed by the conduct of a male passenger who persisted in smoking — in a smoking car — that she beat him violently about the head with her muff; and the more refined portion of the New York press has been affected almost to tears by the ungallant conduct of the per sistent smoker in prosecuting the muff-wielding lady for assault. We in England are singularly impolite in this respect ; and it would be beneficial to the cause of chivalry, perhaps, if we remembered the Virginian dictum, that " a smoking car ceases to be a smoking car Avhen once a lady has entered it." Thus, to obviate the occurrence of such disagreeable incidents as muff-fights in public resorts, Avhere the guests are numerous and miscellaneous in their habits and their social status, the thoughtful courtesy of American hotel-keepers has led them to provide elegant side-entrances for the sex to Avhom they pay such well-deserved homage. A lady travelling in the States is not called upon to undergo the trying ordeal of passing through a tumultuous hall filled Avith men smoking as fiercely as Strom- boli, and talking about the price of grain and New York Central.* The carriage Avhich brings her from the Erie depot lands her at a private door in a side street. She ascends a handsomely carpeted staircase ; courteous attendants communi cate her arrival to the clerks beloAv, secure a room, and bring her a key ; and, according to the floor on which she is to be domiciled, the " lift " conveys the lady to the Earthly Paradise at so many dollars per diem which is her sphere. * There is a notable exception to this rule at the splendid St. Charles Hotel, New Orleans, where long processions of ladies habitually traverse the central hall of the j^otel before and after meal times ; and they seem to like it. m AMERICA REVISITED. HALL OP AN AMERICAN HOTEL. Meanwhile the ears of the groundlings below are split by a tornado of tempestuous talk. The propos des buveurs in Rabelais, the tohu-bohu of the Paris Bourse in full blast of Mammon yell, and Aldridge's yard on a Saturday afternoon, Avould be as Quakers' meetings in point of noise compared with the halls of the Continental. I managed to elbow my way through the chaotic throng to the clerk's counter, and found a pile of letters and telegrams waiting for me. I was handed my key, and Avas kindly told that I Avas bound to dine with Mr. Childs, and that I must " hurry up " to do it. Hurry up ! Mr. Childs kept telling me to hurry up every ten minutes in hastily pencilled messages, brought by almost breathless couriers. But how Avas one to hurry up Avhen one had no luggage and no Avedding garment ? A very quiet, mild, unobtrusive-looking gentleman advanced and accosted me. He sympathised with my sorrows ; he said— which Avas simply the truth — that accidents happened e\Tery day, and that they could not be helped ; and he offered to assist me in any manner practicable under the circumstances. To SOIREE GIVEN BY MR. G. W. CHILDS IN HONOUR OF GENERAL GRANT. AT THE CONTINENTAL. 173 whom, I asked, was I indebted for such prompt and unsolicited politeness ? The mild and unobtrusive-looking gentleman made answer^hat he was the proprietor of the Continental Hotel. The proprietor of the Continental Hotel, Philadelphia? The Admiral commanding Noah's Ark, the Landlord of the Mam moth Cave, the " Boss " of the Tower of Babel and the Hanging- Gardens of Babylon, rather. Why Avas he not one hundred and twenty feet high, at the very least ? Why did he not have a guard of halberdiers, or of Varangian cross-bowmen ? Why was he not accompanied by a Grand Vizier, a Kislar Aga, a Sheikh - ul-Islam, and several Bimbashis? I declare that the salaried manager of a second-rate hotel at a third-rate English watering- place would have given himself more airs than did this Lord of a Thousand Bed rooms — this monarch of an Immeasurable Table d'Hote. We refreshed ourselves amply but cheerlessly enough in our own apartments that evening, thinking of the vanished dinner at Mr. Childs' ; but on the morrow, both at breakfast and dinner, I tried the Immeasurable Table d'Hote. I have seen nothing like it in Europe, in Asia, or in Africa, to say nothing of England, which is a country sui generis, and one which differs in its dining, as Avell as its other social arrangements, from the rest of the world. There are tAvo immense refectories on the first floor of the Continental Hotel. " Full board " is charged so many dollars a day. I am not, in this particular case, qualified to say how many : seeing that, in our own individual case, " the hospitalities of the City of Philadelphia," as privately supervised by Mr. G. W. Childs, Avere conducted on the old Spanish prin ciple of "Esta pagado, Senor." How often, in bygone days, have I received that pleasing information from the muchacho, or waiter, in the Dominica at Havana ! A courteous Cuban had entered, espied you, seen that you were a stranger and a pilgrim, paid for your ices or other refreshments, and vanished without making himself known to you. During our sojourn at the Continental I did not, with the 174 AMERICA REVISITED. exception of a few fees to servants, who made no sign of ex pecting to be fee'd, pay a cent to anybody. For whatever the tariff at the Continental may be you are entitled to consume five ample meals in the course of every four-and-twenty hours — breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, and supper. The Continental would surely have tried the fortitude of Bernard Kavanagh, the Fasting Man ; nor, without thinking tAvice, should I like to turn a Trappist, or even a vegetarian, loose in these halls, since all the meals, I am given to understand, include flesh meat. I will speak, however, only of the repasts with which I became personally ac quainted — breakfast and dinner. For the first- named collation, Avhich is served from six in the morning — for the conve nience of passengers by early trains — until ten or eleven, there is a bill of fare comprising such dishes as boiled, fried, poached, " dropped," and scrambled eggs, omelettes in every style, fried, stewed, and roasted oysters, hashed codfish Avith cream, fish-balls INDIAN CORN TtnfH AT THE CONTINENTAL. 175 dried and smoked salmon and herrings, salt mackerel, fresh fish in season, mutton chops, beefsteaks, pork cutlets, sausages, ham, VJacon, cold meat, chicken, tea, coffee, and chocolate, a variety of fancy bread, including " waffles," muffins, and those buckAvheat cakes so inexpressibly dear to those avIio are venturesome enough to eat them without thinking of the immi nent perils of dissolution through indigestion, and, to crown all, a copious dessert — remember, we were in mid-December — of apples, Californian pears, oranges, fresh Malaga grapes, and bananas. There is no limit whatsoever as to quantity. You may order as many dishes as you please. For dinner, Avhich Avas served from two until five and from five until seven p.m., the menu is more varied. At least half a dozen varieties of soup, the same of fish, turkey with chestnut or Avith cranberry sauce, salmis of chicken and game, beef, mutton, veal and pork, roasted or fried, three or four kinds of wild fowl, a Avilderness of vegetables, including, in addition to our ordinary English esculents, sweet potatoes, fried bananas, " succotash," " squash," Lima beans, oyster plant, egg plant, preserved corn, and steAved celery, plenty of salad, and a dessert even more abundant than that which you enjoyed at breakfast. I noticed that the almost exclusive beve rage partaken of at dinner was iced water. Symptoms of beer or of wine were almost altogether wanting ; and, whatever may be the modes and whatever the times of the Americans sacri ficing to Bacchus, it is certainly not at their meals that they seek to propitiate the rosy god. The simultaneous feeding of hundreds of guests in an hotel so vast as the Continental is not altogether devoid of drawbacks ; and, seeing that these drawbacks are complained of quite as bitterly by Americans as by foreigners, they may, I hope, with out offence, be slightly glanced at here. Against the quality of the food, be it animal or vegetable, there is not one word to say Touching the manner in which that food is cooked, I will not say that it equals the cuisine of Delmonico, of the Cafe Anglais, or no AMERICA REVISITED. of a London Pall-mall club; still, an American hotel dinner com prises an immensely greater variety of dishes than au English hotel dinner does, and in the way of sauces and seasoning the American chefs are a long way ahead of their British brethren ; but the temperature of the dishes Avhich are brought to you — not consecutively, but en masse — is uniformly tepid. The art of serving a dinner in courses seems to be utterly ignored, and dish covers to be utterly unknoAvn. You order a heterogeneous assortment of viands, and the waiter brings ,them to you in a series of little oval dishes — which he carries, by means of some indiscriminate dexterity of muscle, on one arm — and he "dumps" down the dishes before you to pick your way through the wilder ness of esculents as best you may. AT THE CONTINENTAL. 177 This system Avould seem to afflict not only public but private dinner tables, and is beginning to be denounced by the Americans themselves — at least, so I am entitled to opine from the following significant passage in the New York Tribune: "The time is fast coming Avhen the ' medley dinner,' will be a thing of the past. By the ' medley dinner ' you are to understand a meal served in one course. It is all summed up in the remark which some people will no doubt remember having heard made by a kindly oldfashioned hostess, ' You see your dinner.' And a bountiful table it probably was, with a good dinner utterly ruined for lack of a little judgment in serving. Soup, a chicken pie, a dish of pork and beans, a roast, four or five vegetables, pickles, preserves, pastry, pies and fruit, are all crowded together, leaving little room for your own plate, and none for your appe tite. It is a common saying of housekeepers that it is all very well for French people to serve their dinners in courses, their servants are used to it, know how to do it, and do not rebel ; but that you cannot train a green Irish girl for instance — and most American housekeepers are subject to that kind of aid in their kitchens — to serve a dinner, nicely, in courses. Noav the result of actual experience is that either a green Irish girl or a clever American girl can be taught to serve a dinner in the best style, and learn to appreciate the fact that it is on the Avhole the most convenient and least perplexing manner in Avhich any meal can be served." Thus far that eminently serious and practical authority, the New York Tribune ; and the reform which it advocates could probably be carried out Avithout much difficulty at private and middle-class American dinner tables. * The affluent and refined classes dine, it is almost needless to say, precisely as people dine in Europe, and in many particulars, * AVhile on the subject of dinners and dining, in the States, I may take the opportunity of mentioning that Schools of Cookery for young ladies are becoming prevalent in the principal cities of the Union. At many of these establishments, the half-dozen members of the highest class, which includes married as well as unmarried ladies, enjoy the privilege on stated occasions, of each inviting a gentleman to partake with them of the dinner which they have previously prepared. The VOL. I. N 178 AMERICA REVISITED. notably as regards oysters, a great deal better than we do in Europe ; but, I gravely doubt the practicability of serving a great AN AMERICAN SCHOOL OF COOKERY FOR LADIES. guests not unfrequently however, make their appearance long before the appointed time, and finding their way into the kitchen, occupy themselves in passing approving- judgments on the soups and sauces beforehand. AT THE CONTINENTAL. 179 hotel dinner to two op three hundred guests at a time, in duly following courses. The utmost that the waiters seem to be able to do is to bring your soup and your ice cream — I omitted the ice cream in my list of dishes — separately : and the soup is often as cold as the ice-cream is warm. In the first place, the distance, as Charles Dickens put it in the memorable case of " A Little Dinner in an Hour," is far too great between the kitchen and the tables. In the next place the bill of fare is, to my mind, far too varied. Be it. generosity, or be it a desire to appear " splendi ferous " and outshine all rival hotels, the Transatlantic caterer seems to offer his guests the choice of at least twenty more different preparations of food than they actually require. As it is, there is a superabundance of everything ; and superabundance is apt to beget satiety. * After all, the minds of mankind are more various than their appetites. There are certain edible things which some people like, and others dislike ; but strike an average all round, and the number of generally accepted eatables will not, I apprehend, be found to be very numerous. The American bill of fare, as it at present stands, reads as though it were designed to meet the antagonistic tastes, of a motley assemblage of Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, and Chinamen, and an infinite variety of, Hindoo Castes, all perti naciously declining to eat wdiat other castes eat. The result in my own case has sometimes been comparative starvation in the midst of plenty ; for I have found so many good things offered to me in print that I have not known what to order, and have found myself at last dining on some lukewarm soup, a boiled onion, a couple of pig's feet fried, and a vanille ice. Surely, in colossal hotels of the Continental calibre it would be feasible to provide what is known as a diner du joui — a bill of fare of moderate dimensions, comprising, say, a couple of soups, four or six entries, a couple of roasts, with vegetables, sweets, and dessert in proportion. As regards the service at the gigantic hotel, there is no cause whatsoever for grumbling. At the Continental the table N 2 180 AMERICA REVISITED. d'h6te waiters are all either negroes or mulattoes ; they are scrupulously attentive and polite, and need only the encourage ment of a smile and a cheery word to be effusively kind. I do not think that they are so from a mercenary point of view. You may " tip " an obliging servant if you like ; but your omission to " tip " him makes him neither sullen, impertinent, nor inattentive. Down stairs the " help " is all done by white men. The luggage porters are usually brawny Irishmen, Avilling and good-humoured fellows. The luggage " lift " brings your trunks to your floor noiselessly and expeditiously, and in a surprisingly short space of time strong-armed facchini bear the heaviest coffers into your room and unstrap them, ready for opening. Nor have you the slightest trouble about your luggage when you depart. In the same block with the hotel there is an office where you may buy railway tickets and Pullman coupons to any part of the Union. Then and there your luggage will be checked, and the brass counterfoils handed to you. Anything that can possibly be done to reduce personal incon venience to a minimum has been done in the colossal American hotel. If the weather be inclement, or yourself sick or infirm or lazy, there is no necessity for you to quit the hospitable root of the Continental for a whole month together. Plenty of walking exercise may be obtained by a lady in perambulating the softly carpeted corridors. There are suites upon suites ot luxuriously furnished draAving rooms in Avhich visitors can be received, and where grand pianofortes are to be found. There are reading rooms, and there are boudoirs. Downstairs there is a monster bar, should you need the refreshment of occasional cocktails, and where you can smoke, and " loaf," and learn by electric " tape " the last quotations from Wall-street and the Grain Exchange. Rocking chairs are scattered about, in viting the meditative and the idle to take their " kef," as the Muslims phrase it. Should you Avish to be shaved, or to have your hair cut, you will find a superb tonsorial establishment attached to the hotel. THE COLONNADE OF A LARGE AMERICAN HOTEL. I. ISO. AT THE CONTINENTAL. 181. Do you need a cigar, tobacco in every form is to be obtained in the hajj, Do you want to read, there is an inexhaustible store of newspapers and periodicals for sale. There is a telegraph office, whence you may despatch messages to the uttermost ends of the earth. There are places where you can purchase postage stamps, and mail your letters ; and, should the day be a rainy one, and you feel inclined to sally forth to see how things are looking in Chestnut-street, you will find always within the halls of the Continental a modest bureau where umbrellas are lent on hire for five-and-twenty cents a day. I wonder if they lend evening dress clothes at that bureau, If such was the fact, I might have hired a " claw-hammer " coat in which to attend that never-to-be-sufficiently-regretted dinner. XIII. Christmastide and the New Year. New York, January 2. " Shut, shut the door, good John — I mean Jerry. — I pay no visits and I receive none," I sternly said, on the morning of the First day of January, 1880. I am thoroughly conscious that by omitting to make the customary New Year's calls on the ladies with whom I have the honour to be acquainted I subject myself for the remainder of the twelve months which are christmastide and the new YEAR. 183 just now beginning to run their course to the very direst infliction of soc^jal ostracism. Never mind social ostracism. Major Pendennis asked his nephew Arthur, after the latter had been plucked at Cambridge, Avhether " it " — meaning the plucking — had " hurt him much." I have a strong idea that to be ostracised, under certain circumstances, does not break any bones, and that, with a healthy, sanguine temperament, and the mens conscia recti under your Avaistcoat, you may in time recover from any amount of " ostrafication." Besides, what would my personal call or my humble visiting card have been among so many ? A mere drop of water in an ocean of politeness. Thus did I meditate on New Year's Day, as I resolved to sit at home and write about Christmas and the New Year instead of arraying myself in mourning weeds and a white cravat and hiring a coupe" at a dollar an hour, making calls and dropping cards at the residence of persons, half of whom might languidly wonder at my impudence in calling, Avhile the other half would be totally indifferent as to whether I did not put in an appear ance at their elegant mansions. There are other reasons, too, which might impel sensible people to stay at home on the first day of the year in New York. In the most conspicuous portion of the Herald this morning, between the important announce ment that Mr. Secretary Sherman Avishes to purchase more U.S. Bonds for the Sinking Fund and a magisterial leading article on the arrival per steamship Scythia of Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell, M.P., I read this portentous announcement: — " A man who would canvass the city to-day with headache cures and temperance pledges could do a lively business in both." Coupling this significant hint with sundry appalling- yells and shrieks which I heard in the dead of last night, I am inclined to think that in some quarters the festivities of the New Year failed to terminate in a manner which would have met with the entire approval of the United Kingdom Alliance or the Church of England Temperance Society. 184 AMERICA REVISITED, I notice that, in a recent speech at Rochdale, England, Mr, Thomas Bayley Potter testified to the pleasing fact that during the Avhole iL of his stay in the United States he had only seen four drunken men; and in more than one of my own letters I have been enabled to bear humble Avitness to the un deniable and the steadily progress ing growth of habits of sobriety among the Ameri can people. At the same time it must be borne in mind that Christmas comes but once a year ; and that pleasant truism applies Avith equal force ONE WHO IS IN FAVOUR OF ABOLISHING THE WHISKEY TAX. , f^a-m Ypar's Day. It may be that we in England are apt to indulge slightly to excess in the good things — or the unAvholesome things — of life at Christmastide. The New Yorkers begin their conviviali ties a little later ; but they certainly display much alacrity in making up for lost time. For example, a most delicious " scrimmage " took place on NeAv Year's Night, or rather in the small hours of the present morning, between a squad ot police belonging to the Eighteenth Precinct and a mob of about CHRISTMASTIDE AND THE NEAV YEAR. 185 fifty roughs, in East Twenty-third-street, between First and Second Avenues. Officer Hogan found the mob, "all of whom had partaken freely of liquor," surrounding one Mr. Daniel Sullivan, who was using "boisterous language" towards a fellow-countryman from the Green Isle of Peace and Parnell. Threatened with arrest if he did not cease from cursing, Mr. Sullivan showed fight, and, expressing an opinion that the Avhole police force of New York were not strong enough to "take him in," closed with the officer, and knocked him down. The New York constabulary have, apparently, no rattles to spring. Their way of summoning assistance is to strike their clubs on the pavement ; and in answer to this signal three additional policemen appeared on the scene of the rixe. But these reinforcements were insufficient. The mob got the entire mastery ; and Mr. Sullivan was rescued by a select circle of friends, who dragged him into the hall of a house and locked the door. Officer Hogan, however, determined not to be baulked of his prey, set his stalwart foot against the street door and burst it open. He " went for " Mr. Sullivan, and Mr. Sullivan for him* while the three other policemen did their best to keep the crowd of roughs at bay with clubs and levelled revolvers. Eventually police reserves arrived from the station-house ; and Mr. Sullivan was overpowered and removed to strong lodgings for the night. A like fate befell Mr. Francis Callaghan, a compatriot of the captive, who strove to raise another riot, but Avas promptly arrested : his head being cut open by a terrible blow from a police club. The police did their best to take others of the more conspicuous roughs into custody ; but they only succeeded in capturing Messrs. Sullivan and Callaghan, who, it is to be feared, Avill be debarred from taking part in the grand Parnell demon stration at the Madison-square garden next Sunday evening. Their absence will be mourned by their oppressed country, if by nobody else. As for officer Hogan, he emerged from the fray triumphant, but minus his hat, and very badly bruised all over his valiant body. 186 AMERICA REVISITED. It may be noted here that the personnel of the New York police force are specially selected for their size and courage, and that physically the New York policeman (pronounce the first syllable long) combines the aspect of an English Life Guardsman Avith one of Messrs. Barclay and Perkins's draymen. His salary might, at the first blush, seem to us a splendid one. It is a thousand dollars, or two hundred pounds a year; but this stipend is subject to considerable reductions by the " assessments" made on the policeman by the committees of the political organisation of which he may happen to be a member, in aid of the funds necessary to provide banners, brass bands, and other " regalia," for torch-light processions, mass-meetings, and other party mani festations inseparable from the. life of a democratic community. These assessments, together with other incidental surcharges of CHRISTMASTIDE "AND THE NEW YEAR. 187 a public and private nature, are so heavy that the net income of a New York constable cannot be estimated at more than six ONE OF THE BROADWAY SQUAD. hundred dollars a year— say tAvo pounds ten shillings a Aveek. His life is an exceptionally arduous one ; and he has to cope with 1S8 AMERICA REVISITED. some of the most amazing ruffians that the whole world of ruffiandom probably could furnish. Yet officer Hogan, Avho may himself be fairly assumed to be of Hibernian extraction, did not, it may be, pass through the trying scenes of the " scrimmage " of New Year's Night without a certain sense of enjoyment. It was a brawl wholly devoid of bad blood. Pray observe that not a single knife was drawn, and that, although the police presented their revolvers, they did not use those weapons ; while on the part of the mob not a single shot Avas fired. Indeed "firing free," as the indiscriminate use of the six-shooter used to be called in my time, seems to be going rapidly out of fashion in New York — about the other States I am not yet qualified in this regard to judge — and a certain family of roughs named Scannell, who have long been notorious for their fondness for putting bullets on slight provocation through other people's bodies, and the last surviving member of which, Mr. EdAvard P. Scannell, is now in the Tombs for pistolling a casual acquaintance in the back room of a groggery, have come to be regarded as quite an abnormal and monstrous race, whom it is expedient sternly to stamp out and abrogate. The " scrimmage" of New Year's Night was just a fleeting survival of Donnybrook Fair, when the irrepressible Pat capered about at random, waving his sprig of shillelagh over his own head, and feeling for other people's heads which might be palpable to touch beneath the canvas of the tents. When he came upon a cranium suit able to his taste he whirled his trusty bit of blackthorn in the air and swiftly cracked the invisible pate. Not by any means, however, is it to be supposed that " scrimmages " are the only social observances which take place in NeAv York in honour of the New Year. Goodness knows that Ave have enough and to spare of riotous disturbances in the neighbourhood of every one of our own London dramshops at Christmastide ; and, indeed, my principal object in mentioning the brawl in East Twenty-third-street was to show that many of the more revolting features of an English bra\v], such as kicking, CHRISTMASTIDE AND THE NEW YEAR. 189 biting, and jumping on the prostrate forms of the guardians of law and order, were absent from the New York riot. Mean while, not so many blocks westward, fashionable society was gaily supping at the magnificent restaurants that surround Madison-square. In New York the Tarpeiah Rock is. uncom monly close to the Capitol, and the Gemonian Steps are within a stone' s-throw of the Golden House of Nero. Fifth-avenue is probably the handsomest street in the whole civilised Avorld, taking it in the sense of comprising in its prodigious length more structural splendour and richness of internal decoration, and re presenting a larger amount of wealth, than are to be found in any thoroughfare in any European capital; but Fifth-avenue is intersected throughout its length by streets at right angles, which terminate to the eastward in a Wapping, and to the west ward in a Wapping and a Whitechapel combined. To that com plexion of the lowest waterside life you must come at last if you Avalk long enough. But the Americans are not a walking people. Carriages, horse cars, and the trains of the Elevated Railway carry them swiftly through or over the unlovely portions of their Empire City ; and they hasten to forget its unloveliness, con tiguous as squalor is to the very doors of their broAvn-ston,e houses with marble facades. It was only of the handsome houses that I took note yester day, for, as I have already mentioned, I did not leave the house until late in the evening ; but the windoAv of my sitting room overlooks Fifth-avenue, close to Washington-square ; and from north to south I could enjoy a lordly sweep of vista of many- storied mansions inhabited by the magnates of society of Man hattan. I called on nobody myself; but I watched the arrival and departure, from noon until sunset, of numerous contingents of the great army of " callers." I had previously derived much edification from the study of a code of New Year's etiquette recently promulgated and made public by some occult but doubt less potent arbiters of fashionable society in this city. In this code (scarcely inferior as it is to the Blue LaAVS of Connecticut in rigor- 190 AMERICA REVISITED. ous explicitness), I read that the hours designated by the beau monde for. the reception of visitors on the First of January are from noon to ten p.m. Cards of invitation are sent to gentlemen. No visitors are admitted without a card. If the ladies are in full dress, the house is lighted up as for an evening NEW YFAR's DAY. " DOESN'T HE THINK HE LOOKS NICE 1 " CHRISTMASTIDE AND THE NEW YEAR. 191 reception. Callers should not remain longer than ten or fifteen minutes. Directly after the interchange of sentiment suitable for the day, the servant offers refreshments. If the room be crowded Avhen the visit is concluded, a formal leave of the A LADIES' FAVOURITE. 192 AMERICA REVISITED. hostess is not necessary. Gentlemen who are not able to call send their visiting card enclosed in an envelope. Gentlemen AATho call, but do not enter the house, send in their cards with the right-hand upper corner folded down, Avhich indicates that the gentleman has presented the card in person. Gentlemen should visit in full evening costume, and leave overcoat, hat, and card in the hall before entering the parlour. Refreshments may be very elaborate or quite simple ; or there may even be no refreshments at all. The majority of ladies do not approve of offering Avine to their visitors on this day, and prefer coffee, bouillon, and chocolate instead. Thus far the code. I am bound to say that its enactments did not meet, when published, with general acceptance, and that in many quarters it was denounced as so much " hide-bound snobbishness " and " poppycock display." What " poppycock " may be I clo not know ; but the word is certainly a forcibly expressive one. On the other hand, it was rumoured that certain of the most socially influential of the New York clubs had issued a fiat strictly prohibiting the assumption on New Year's Day of evening costume by morning or afternoon callers. There is a kind of crusade going on against that sable garb of custom which Ave term the SAvallow-tail, but which, from its caudal bisection, is more appropriately designated by Americans the " claw-hammer " or " steel-pen " coat. It was resolutely repudiated yesterday in Philadelphia by gentlemen callers, but in New York, so far as my personal observation extended, sumptuary conservatism prevailed, and the " Avar paint " worn Avas of the orthodox undertaker's tint and waiter's cut. The white necktie was de rigueur, the AA-hich, combined with the asperity of the weather — it was fine overhead, but desperately frosty beneath and slippery on the side walks — and the fact that from my window I could perceive group after group of dandies in evening dress removing their goloshes or being disrobed by sable servitors of their fur-lined great coats and sealskin caps in the halls of the mansions where they. Avere visiting, gave to CHRISTMASTIDE AND THE NEW YEAR. 193 Fifth-avenue an aspect curiously suggestive of the aspect of some fashionable street in St. Petersburg — say the Great Morsljfkia. The re semblance Avas ma terially aided by the plenitude of claw hammer coats and Avhite cravats. The Russians are, I should say, the only people beside the Americans Avho pay morning visits in evening dress. I did not notice any blinds dravvn down, nor any symp toms of lighting up in the mansions visi ble to me over the way; but you must remember that Washington-square and Clinton-place, at the corner of which last is the Brevoort House, which were " up town " when I first came here, are as much " doAvn town " as Long's Hotel, Old Bond-street, is now " down town "in London, in com parison Avith one of the grand new fashionablehotels at South Kensington. Per haps fashionable New York yesterday began to draw VOL. I. NEW YEAR S DAY : THE MORNING TOILETTE. THE FINISHING TOUCH. 191 AMERICA REVISITED. THE FIRST CALLER. THE HOSTESS. down its blinds and to light up about the vicinity of Gramercy Park, which is about midway between " up " and " down" town, and so continued to be artificially noc turnal to far beyond the new and as- toundingly palatial Windsor Hotel. As to the re freshment question, a really animated controversy has been for some time in progress in NeAv York society and in the NeAv York press. I never made but one round of New Year's Day visits in New York. That was on the First of January, 1863. I was young in the land, and did not know very many families. I hired a two-horse ve hicle, closely re sembling a hack ney coach, which cost me six dol lars ; but, ah me ! gold was then at a hundred pre mium, and six dollars meant, not twenty-four, but only twelve shil lings — and I FLORAL OFFERINGS. CHRISTMASTIDE AND THE NEW YEAR. 195 made, if I remember aright, about five-and-twenty calls. It Avas hard work — desperately hard work. The snow lay deep in the roadway, and Avhere it had been scraped aAvay from the side-Avalk a fear ful slipperiness pre vailed. The high "stoops" before the houses were also glacially glassy as to surface. The house doors Avere mainly on the swing. You needed no card of invitation. You were received in the hall by an affable negro man in a striped jacket. You grinned patronisingly. He grinned with an ex- A QUIET FLIRTATION. AN UNLOOKED FOR VISITOR FROM TEXAS. THE IRREPRESSIBLE POET. O 2 196 AMERICA REVISITED. pression in which obsequiousness and patronage were mingled : for the sable child of Africa has his own notions of etiquette, and they are rigo- ¦iijJlfM *jw f'i| ?")J rous. A lady in ' :: ' ^^ fe?W' Washington lately told me that, hap pening to mention incidentally to her mulatto serving maid the name of some family of Se natorial rank, the coffee - coloured damsel, after cogi- THE ITALIAN COUNT. tating for a mo ment, remarked in quiringly, " I'se never heerd on 'em before. Bo we visit 'um?" If the sable servitor in the striped jacket was pleasantly satisfied that you visited him as well as his em ployers, he speedily inducted you into a handsome parlour, where the lady of the house, surrounded by other ladies, of every nuance of youth and grace, sat perpetually bowing, smiling, and shaking hands. You bowed and you smiled. The room was full of gentlemen bowing and smiling. Negro attendants, smiling, flittered around with silver trays laden with sandwiches, plum cake, and rare Avines ; and in the A TETE-A-TETE. CHRISTMASTIDE AND THE NEW YEAR. 197 dim distance of the extensive parlour there Avere visions of oysters and cold turkey and ham. I -will not be certain whether there was pumpkin pie or not ; but most assuredly there Avere cut glass decanters containing the whiskey of Bourbon the Festive and the cognac of Gaul the Vivacious. So you went from house to house, all through the live long day, bowing and smiling, and being bowed and smiled at, until there was some danger, when the shades of night had fallen on Manhattan, of your bowing to one of the slippery steps of a " stoop " — bowing Avith your nose and not getting up again — or of your smiling in the open fire grate, Avith your head in the coal-scuttle, whence you emitted cordial but scarcely articulate aspirations for a happy New Year to all and sundry. This Avas the old-fashioned or Knickerbocker mode of keeping New Year's Day ; and during the last feAV years a reaction has set in against the convivial custom. The coffee, chocolate, and bouillon system is naturally strongly favoured by advocates of total abstinence, and by not a few hospitable but not over-affluent persons, to whom the heavy price of foreign wines must be a serious consideration ; wdiile the really stingy section — a very small one, for the Americans are the least stingy people in the world — pin their faith to the maxim of " No refreshments at all on New Year's Day." I cannot help fancying, nevertheless, that the old and time-honoured Knickerbocker fashion had, in the main, the best of it vesterdav. SELECTING A BANJO. XIV. On to Richmond. Richmond, Virginia, January 4. Long, long ago — not precisely " ere heaving belloAvs learned to blow, and organs yet Avere mute " — but really a good many years since, Avhen the voice of the banjo was young in the land, and Mr. Pell, the "Original Bones,"* was only just beginning * Pell, Harrington, AVhite, Stanwood, and Gormon, were the original quintett of '¦' Ethiopian Serenaders " who appeared at the St. James's theatre, London, in 1846-7. For years before that period, however, Mr. T. D. Rice had "jumped Jim Orow " with immense success in the British metropolis; and in the interval between his departure and the coming of Pell and his brethren, several isolated " burnt-cork minstrels " (one, I remember, in particular named Sweeny, who played the banjo at the Princess's about 1S43) visited London. ON TO RICHMOND. 199 to instruct the small boys of England in the art of making a novel ^nd diabolical street noise — in the days when we first eagerly listened to the lyrics which told of the joys and sorrows of Lucy Neale ; of the delights of going " Ober de Mountain ; " of the cheery life of the Boatmen " Sailin' down de ribber on de Ohio ; "which so pathetically deplored the decrepitude of " Uncle Ned," and so piously ex pressed the aspiration that " he was Gone where de Good Niggers Go ; " which ecstatically proclaimed the culmination of " a Gittin' up Stairs and a Playin' on de Fiddle ; " which passion ately implored the Buffalo Gals to Come out and " Dance by de Light ob de Moon," while they sternly warned the too impetuous " Mr. Coon " that he Avas all too Soon, seeing that " de Gals dey won't be ready till To-morrow Afternoon," and Avhich, finally, cautiously in quiring " Who's dat Knock- in' at de Door ? " derisively added that there was no entrance for him who knocked, seeing that his hair did not curl : — In that remote epoch of primitive "Ethiopian" serenading, I remember to have heard a simple strophe reciting how A wray down South A Nigger in the water Was standin' in a millpond Longer than he oughter. yLD DAN TUCKER. Full five-and-thirty years had I been waiting to see that nigger 200 AMERICA REVISITED. standing in that millpond. I saw him in all his glory and all his grimy Avretchedness at Guinneys, in the State of Virginia, the clay before yesterday. But I must tell Iioav I came to Guinneys, on my way from New York to Richmond. I OAvn that for some days past the potential African " standin' in de millpond longer than he oughter " had been lying somewhat heavily on my conscience. My acquaintance Avith our dark brother since I arrived in this country has not only been necessarily limited, but scarcely of a nature to give me any practical insight into his real condition since he has been a Free Man — free to work or to starve; free to become a good citizen or to go to the Devil, as he has gone mundanely speaking in Hayti and elsewhere. Coloured folks are feAv and far between in New York ; and they have never, as a rule, been slaves, and are not even, generally, of servile extraction. In Philadelphia they are much more numerous. Many of the mulatto waiters employed in the hotels are strikingly handsome men; and, on the Avhole, the sable sons of Pennsylvania struck me as being industrious, well dressed, prosperous, and a trifle haughty in their in tercourse with white folks. In Baltimore, where slavery existed until the promulgation of Mr. Lin coln's proclamation, the coloured people are plenti ful. I met a good many ragged, shiftless, and gene rally dejected negroes of both sexes, who appeared to be just the kind of waifs and strays Avho Avould stand in a millpond longer than they ought , ON TO RICHMOND. 201 to in the event of there being any convenient millpond at hand ; Jaut the better-class " darkies " who had been domestic slaves in Baltimore families, seemed to retain all their OAvn affectionate obsequiousness of manner — a kind of respectful familiarity that is only feasible between seigneur and villein. There is an exquisite crystallisation of this feudal entente cordiale in La Fon taine's tale of"Le Baiser Rendu." On such terms Avere the Muscovite nobles and their serfs when I first went to Russia. Now all is changed in that respect. The emancipated moujik is usually a sulky felloAV ; and, when he dares, he is insolent. Again, in Washington, the black man and his congeners seemed to be doing remarkably well. I saw stalwart negro policemen doing duty in Pennsylvania Avenue ; and at one of the quietest, most elegant, and most comfortable hostelries in the Federal capital, Wormley's Hotel, I found the establishment conducted by the proprietor, Mr. Wormley, a coloured man, of gentle manners and great administrative abilities — many an Under-Secretary of State Avould break down over the task of "running" a first-rate American Hotel- — all of whose employes, from the clerks in the office to the Avaiters and chambermaids, were coloured. At Wormley's, perhaps, the negro and negroid Avere seen at their very best. They had been slaves, or were the children of slaves. I found all the coloured people with whom I came in contact not only invariably civil and obliging, but in many cases very bright and intelligent. Our chambermaid Avas quite a de lightful old lady, and insisted, ere we left, that we should give 202 AMERICA REVISITED. her a recipe for "a real old Eng lish Christmas plum pudding." I wrote her out the only recipe for the goodness of Avhich I cared to vouch — seeing that it was my mother's — but Avhen I came to the item " a wine glass and a half of the . best brown brandy " I ventured to add, parenthetically, " taking care not to drink it yourself." Aunt Phoebe — suppose Ave call the ebon chamber maid Aunt and Phoebe — was im mensely tickled by this piece of A GUARDIAN ANGEL. advice, and was frequently over heard, while in tent on her do mestic duties, to repeat, " Lorful sakes. Not drink 'um youself! Takin' care not to drink 'um youself ! hee ! hee ! gorry." But these were not the millpond folk of whom I was in quest. They were of the ON TO RICHMOND. 203 South, as an Irishman in London is of Ireland, but not in it. I had a craving to see whether any of the social ashes "TAKIN' CARE NOT TO DRINK 'USI YOUSELF! HEE ! HEE! GORRY.'' of slavery lived their wonted fires. A " way down South " Avas the real object of my mission ; and in pursuit of that mission I came, on the Second of January, on to Rich mond. The day following the festive First is known as Ladies' Day. On the Second the leaders of fashion, who have undergone so dire a martyrdom in sitting to receive male visitors throughout the First, have their " clay out," and 201 AMERICA REVISITED. make a round of visits to each other, mutually exchanging experiences, comparing notes, and ascertaining how many neAv and eligible additions, in the shape of British peers and baronets, silver-mine millionnaires and Wall-street quadrillionnaires, each lady has made to her visiting list. The British baronet is usually pretty plentifully "on hand." The British nobleman just at present is rather scarce in the market ; and his absence is accounted for by his inability to obtain any rent from his starving tenantry, and consequent lack of funds to pay his passage money to New York. The Italian count is not in much request ; and the German baron has too frequently been found "a fraud;" although Italian tenors and German pianistes are always sure of a hearty welcome, even if they do not happen to possess handles to their names. If there ever existed a people Avho have gone music mad that people are the Americans. Chickering and Steinway are Kings ; and I should mention, if I omitted to do so before, that the march-past of the Philadelphian parade, in honour of General Grant, Avas enlivened by the strains of no less than one hundred and twenty brass bands, among Avhom German instrumentalists predominated. " When Music, heavenly Maid, Avas young," she only played "Yankee Doodle" upon a humble fife; but Mr. Gilmore's new national anthem, " Columbia," is performed to the strains of hundreds of instruments, and is sung by thousands of voices. This country is rapidly becoming the paradise of fiddlers. Ladies' Day in New York Avas a drippingly wet one, and it Avas through a fine black sea of slush that our carriage had to flounder and splash, at half-past nine at night, on our way to the Jersey City ferry. I feel tolerably certain that the New Yorkers will not be very angry Avith me — nay, I cannot help feeling that they should be, on the contrary, grateful to a stranger — for hinting that the streets of the Empire City are, throughout the Avinter, in an inconceivably neglected and filthy condition. When a heavy fall of snow has occurred the servants belonging to each house SAveep just so much snow as concerns them from .ON TO RICHMOND. 205 the side walk into the kennel, where it is allowed to accumulate in huge mounds. Meanwhile the authorities of all the horse- railroaas hasten to strew the tramways with salt, which, mingling with the snow, produces a rich icy slush, and which can be warranted to permeate the stoutest boots and the thickest sock, endowing the wearer forthwith with all the gifts that catarrh can give or that bronchitis can bring.* Our London omnibus companies know something about the art of salting the streets in snowy weather ; but in New York the practice has been brought to a degree of perfection unknown in other capitals. It is scarcely worth mentioning, perhaps, that street pickling has been explicitly prohibited by the Legislature of the State. There are so many things which are prohibited by the Legislature — cockfighting, for example, a sport which still goes merrily on — that the multiplicity of prohibitive statutes is haply too much for the popular memory. The ordinances, if any exist, touching the cleaning of the streets seem in particular to have slipped the recollection of those entrusted with the duty of looking after the " sedility " of the Empire City. The garbage-boxes or ash- barrels on the side-Avalks, in Avhich receptacles the inhabitants deposit their household refuse, are still the same unsightly and unsavoury nuisances that I remember them to have been seven teen years ago ; and in windy weather the miscellaneous contents of these "hopeless Pandoras " are distributed by the bounteous blast in unstinted profusion over the garments and into the eyes of passers-by. In winter, when a thaw takes place no combined efforts of any kind are made to cleanse the streets ; and when a heavy black frost supervenes on the thaw — which, with un pleasant frequency, is the case, the winter in New York being subject to continual mutations — no systematic action is taken to clear the pavement from ice, much less to sand it. * Without, ¦ scarcely, the variation of a word, this brief description of municipal carelessness would apply to the scandalous condition of the streets of London during one whole fortnight of the Great Frost of January, 1881. 206 AMERICA REVISITED. Of course it is whispered that the large sums of money which are periodically voted by the City Council for street cleansing purposes are not as a rule applied to the exact purposes which they were intended to serve. The consequence of not sanding or otherwise obviating the glossy slipperiness of the side walk, is that the pedestrian is perpetually performing involuntary " cellar-flaps " and unwelcome back sommersaults, ending in un- prepared-for " break-downs," conducive, no doubt, to the delec tation of the small boy who is passing, and of glee to the surgeon, to whom broken bones, in others, is as milk and honey, and somebody else's fractured skull a thing of great price, but which can be productive only of modified enjoyment to the person who wishes to perambulate the streets of a great and most interesting city without being tripped up by the treacherous ice or foot- soaked by the saline slush. It is, however, principally foreigners who are the victims of the honible incuria which makes of every thoroughfare of New York either a Slough of Despond or a Via Dolorosa. The natives, wise in their generation, do not walk, save in the very finest of weather. Why not imitate the wisdom of the natives ? Simply for this reason : that it is difficult, if not impossible, to study the manners and customs of the people of a gigantic metropolis by merely passing to and fro in or over their thoroughfares by means of tramway cars and Broadway stages. The New Yorkers, it is but fair to observe, grumble much more bitterly about the state of their streets in winter time than I have ventured to do ; but I rejoice to note that a turn to their complaints in this respect seems to be approaching, and that the Avinter of their discontent is to be made glorious summer by the sun of Captain Williams. This eminently energetic public functionary Avas formerly the captain bold of a police precinct in NeAv York. He had but one failing — an excess of that zeal against which Talleyrand so strenuously warned youthful diplo matists. Captain Williams, being armed with his " locust " or truncheon, seemed to have deemed it to be his bounden duty to ON TO RICHMOND. 207 smite everybody on the head — Avith the vieAv of mending their morals, and never minding the injury which he inflicted on their heads «nd limbs. New York was to him one vast Crackskull Common, and he roamed about continually in quest of crania to crack. In fact, Captain Williams, in his conscientious but excessive zeal, " clubbed " so many people, the majority of whom had not deserved clubbing at all, that at length the popular wrath was excited, and the enthusiastic clubbist was in dicted for assault. He was acquitted ; but the Board of Police Commissioners, possibly thinking that Captain Williams had done enough for fame in the way of " caving in " the heads of the citizens of NeAv York, removed him from the command of his police precinct, and appointed him an inspector of street cleaning. By the time that I return to the shores of Manhattan I hope to find the streets very clean, indeed. The distance between New York and Richmond is certainly under four hundred miles, and in Great Britain an express train would have accomplished such a journey in less than eight hours. We made the run in thirteen hours and a half, which I consider to be, on the AAdiole, very good time. Once for all I may observe that, for any practical purpose to be served there by, it is quite idle to compare English Avith American rates of speed to the disparagement of the latter. Their railway system is a very different one from ours, and a good deal of time is often unavoidably lost in shunting from one line of raihvay to the other. Taken altogether, the arrangements leave little ground for complaint; and the improvements in transit and traffic which have taken place since I came here last are really Avonderful. It used to be a standing ground of complaint against the constructors of the permanent Avay on American railways that they did not " fish their joints ; " but this technical griev ance has now been definitively abolished; and the almost universal introduction of steel rails has added much both to the safety of the trains and the comfort of those riding in them. The only serious annoyance to Avhich the traveller is sub- 208 AMERICA REVISITED. jected on a lengthened journey is that arising from the frequent collection of tickets. The " conductor," or guard, seems to be always "at you." For example, between New York and Rich mond I was asked to show my ticket, or rather to pay fragments of fare — for circumstances over which I had no control debarred me from booking right through — first at Jersey City, secondly at Philadelphia, thirdly at Baltimore, fourthly at Washington, and fifthly at Quantico, a little riverside station between Alex andria and Richmond. Dozing off into slumber, composing yourself to read, subsiding into meditation and the enjoyment of a cigar, it was all one. The inevitable conductor, a glaring lantern in his hand, ruthlessly woke you up, or implacably inter posed between yourself and your cogitations, and demanded 3rour ticket. This is not done Avith the slightest wish to cause annoyance to travellers, and is due only to some mysterious clearing-house exigencies. It may be that, in the course of such a journey as I undertook, betAveen New York and Rich mond, lines belonging to half-a-dozen different railways had to be travelled upon ; and each company had its OAvn conductor, who was bound to look after the interest of his employers by collecting the tickets, or the equivalent cash, from all passengers passing over that particular line. The result is not the less annoying, and it sometimes approaches the verge of the distract ing ; but there is much consolation in knowing that, come Avhat may, you are not compelled to leave your Pullman car. The car in which I Avas a passenger was available for travelling in as far as Augusta, in Georgia — whither I am going presently— a distance of five hundred miles from Richmond. CiR BREAKFASTING AT WASHINGTON. XV. Still On to Richmond. Richmond, January 6. More than once I have taken occasion to observe that the Pullman Parlour Car — commonly termed a " chair " car — is a decided boon to railway travellers in America. Equally bene ficent are the arrangements which permit you to take luncheon or dinner on board the car. Touching the sleeping accommoda- 210 AMERICA REVISITED. tion provided by the thoughtful Pullman, it has hitherto im pressed me more from the point of view of its extreme ingenuity than from any amount of actual comfort which I have derived from it. I have not yet mastered the art of going to sleep in a sleeping car — I suppose that I shall acquire it after having travelled a few more thousands of miles; — but I have not the less regarded the process of converting a railway compartment into a dormitory as a highly amusing one. Indeed, the " tricks " and "transformations " through which the vehicle passes before you are entitled to sing — sotto voce, of course — "Bonsoir, Signor Pantalon," are much more diverting than an ordinary "comic scene " in a Christmas pantomime : which last is, I take it, next to a public dinner, about the most wearisome entertainment conceivable. We were half Avay between New York and Philadelphia when the negro attendant in the Atlanta car in which we were passengers began to " fix up tings for sleepin'." First he divested himself of his jacket, and appeared in a blue-checked overshirt or guernsey, which gave him a curious resemblance to a theatrical scene-shifter. Then, at his leisure, he "prospected" the car, as though slightly uncertain as to what section he should first set about "fixing," in a somniferous sense. 'Meanwhile he softly jingled a bunch of electro-silvered keys, and murmured to himself some bars of a little song. I tried, but unsuccessfully, to catch the words. What Avere they? Perhaps some snatch of a hymn familiar to him in his dusky childhood. Per- adventure, AVhen de brimstone's ladled out, 0 ! 0 ! de moanin' ; Den de white folks howl and shout, 0 ! 0 ! de groanin'. But de cullered folks sing out, " No more de moanin'." The " white folks " generally experience rather hot weather in Ethiopian hymnology. The negro attendant was full six feet in height, coal-black, shiny, and with a magnificent set of white STILL ON TO RICHMOND. 211 teeth. Do you remember the stalwart Ethiop Avho, apparelled in a gorgeous costume of scarlet and gold and a splendid tur ban, used to play the cymbals in the band of one of our Guard regiments 1 I remember when I was a small boy I used to gaze with particular awe and admiration on a very curious device in gold embroidered on what the Americans would euphemistically call the "hinder stomach" of the black cymbal-player's panta loons. Many years afterwards an officer in one of the Guards' regiments told me that this golden glory was technically known as the " dickey-strap." The negro cymbalier and his " dickey- strap " have alike faded out of our service. The Pullman bed-room steward avouIc! have made an admir able cymbalier. With proper training he might have performed Othello. Had his lot been cast in another age, and under other auspices, he might have been a Jugurtha, a Toussaint l'Ouver- ture, a Soulouque — que saisje? As it was, Fate had appointed that he should make the beds for the ladies and gentlemen on board a Pullman car. Well ; it was better, perhaps, than toiling in the rice swamps or the cotton fields, or Avasting his opportu- tunities away down South, standing in a millpond longer than expediency demanded or decorum required. After he had taken his survey of our car, he pitched upon the section immediately opposite our OAvn as the one on AA'hich to commence operations. A " section " is made up of two crimson velvet-covered benches containing four seats at right angles to the wall of the car; and this section was occupied by tAvo ladies, mother and daughter, bound to Savannah, a favourite health resort for delicate Nor therners during the winter months. Fortunately the car was not by any means full, or the ladies would have been compelled to stand in the gangway or passage between the rows of seats while their beds were being made. As it was, they bestowed themselves on two vacant benches, while the athletic homme de chambre deliberately proceeded — so it seemed to my unaccus tomed eyes — to pull the Pullman car to pieces. At least he broke up that particular section very small indeed. His electro- 212 AMERICA REVISITED. plated implements apparently included a "jemmy," a crowbar, and a whole bunch of picklocks. He tapped this, he unscrewed that, and he took a " nut " out of something else ; and the im mediate results Avere collapse and disintegration, speedily followed, hoAvever, by thorough reconstruction. One touch of his magic wand, or screwdriver, and the roof of the " section " came down bodily. It did not, fortunately tumble on his head, for its descent Avas arrested in mid-air, ana out of it successively " cascaded," so to speak, a mattress, a blanket, a counterpane, and a pair of pillows. Then the sable athlete solemnly stalked to the end of the car and applied one of his shining keys to the centre of a panel of ornamental wood, ornamented with pretty carvings and inlaid work. The interior of a Pullman Palace Car is, I may mention parenthetically, as tasteful and as puzzlingly complicated as a box made of Tun- bridge Wells ware which has gone through a course of Elkington in the w?ay of electro-silver adornments. The variegated pauel being tapped, a cupboard Avas revealed, from which the athlete, humming his little song the Avhile, abstracted a store of snowy- white bed linen. Again, parenthetically, I am bound to note that all the appurtenances of a Pullman Sleeping Car are spot lessly clean. By dexterous sleight of hand, and holding one corner of the linen sack between his teeth, the attendant, who might have been Jugurtha, or Mungo in " The Padlock," at the very least, contrived to get each pillow into its proper case. He would then have converted the " section " into an upper or a lower berth, steamboat fashion ; but the ladies gave him to understand that one berth would suffice for them both, and that he might dispense with the ceremony of placing bedding on the upper shelf. At this he grinned solemnly, and a fresh feat of legerdemain on his part sent the disintegrated roof of the section back to its original position. A great necromancer this. By magic art he had produced from unknown regions sliding panels Avhich served as a top and a bottom to the bed — the edification of Avhich Avould have been STILL ON TO RICHMOND. 213 Avatched with the most intense interest by Messrs. Box and Cox — and, finally, this wizard of the rail spirited up, from some vasty deep to me unknown, a pair of highly ornate tapestry curtains, which buttoned all the Avay up, like the front of a modern lady's dress. Happy thought, those buttons ; yet are those snugly-closed draperies pervious to the Tarquin-touch of the ticket-collector. Macbeth murdered Sleep in the days of old. That act of assassination is now performed by the railroad conductor. How the ladies managed to go to bed I know not. Of course I Avas as discreet as the youth in Thomson's " Seasons ; " and while the beauteous Musidoras of the train were retiring to rest I fled to the little cabin at the extremity of the car where smoking is permitted. When I returned our own section had been taken to pieces and put together in the guise of a bed, curtains and all ; and about one in the morning — somewhere between Wilmington and Baltimore, I fancy — I crawled into my berth, to toss and tumble in uneasy slumbers until five. But during that broken sleep — rendered additionally feverish by periodical visits from the ticket-collector — I Avas haunted by the fearsome vision of a Human Foot and Leg, quite guileless of stocking. Whose Foot and Leg were they ? Mine ? Mystery. Next door but one to the opposite section there was a tremendously tall gentleman, with a sandy beard and a widely-flapped hat. He drove the negro attendant to the verge of distraction, first by persistently refusing to go to bed until an unholy hour, and subsequently by declining as pertinaciously to get up the next morning. He had the longest legs that I have set eyes upon since I landed on this continent ; and he placed outside his curtains the largest pair of square-toed boots that I ever remember to have Avonclered at. Did the Foot and Leg, the semblance of which haunted me, belong to that gentleman ? It mattered little. I continued to toss and tumble, fitfully dreaming — now that I was a student in a Life Academy, and that my tibia and fibula were out of drawing, and my metatarsal bones hopelessly wrong, in the 214- AMERICA REVISITED. study from the human model Avhich I was making in Italian chalk ; and now that I was a corn-cutter condemned for mal- adroitness as a chiropodist to undergo the mediaeval torture of the " boots." On the Avhole, a sleeping-car, hoAvever admirably appointed, may be said to be adapted to all purposes save those of sleeping. Man, nor Avoman neither, Avas not born to go to bed on Avheels. Very many persons Avill disagree with me on this head ; yet I venture to adhere to my OAvn opinion, and to the regularly made-up bed. I prefer the fauteuils with moveable backs, STILL ON TO RICHMOND. 215 forming couches, on which you may recline, with which the cars on thej^iilroad between St. Petersburg and Moscow are provided. You may recline there at full length. You have ample elbow room and space overhead. You cover yourself up with rugs and furs ; you place your dressing bag under your head, and you sleep the sleep of the just. The berth in a sleeping-car cannot, on the other hand, be occupied Avithout a more or less immediate sense of suffocation. Obviously these remarks apply only to comparatively short journeys. On such a trip as that from New York to San Francisco, occupying as it does an entire week, the Pullman Sleeping Car may be an unmitigated blessing to travellers. When the run is one only of three or four hundred miles you need not, I take it, be so very particular about going to bed and the pleasantest features in a Pullman car under these circumstances are the gentle motion and the abundant acces sories of elegant comfort and convenience. But the case, I have very little doubt, assumes a Avidely different aspect when the journey is one, not of so many hundreds, but of thousands of miles. Then it becomes a matter of importance to health that you should assume, once at least in every twenty-four hours, that which Mr. Carlyle expressively terms " the horizontal position," and then you will indubitably appreciate with all clue gratitude the facilities of a Pullman Sleeping Car. So at about six in the morning Ave came to Washington, where there was a halt of some five-and-twenty minutes for refreshment. I was puzzled to knoAv Iioav the ladies and gentlemen who had gone to bed in right earnest Avould contrive to get any breakfast. Manifestly they would have no time wherein to rise, perform their toilette, descend from the car, enter the restaurant, and partake of a collation ; and as mani festly a picnic of ladies and gentlemen, more or less in the costume of Amina in the " Sonnambula," Zerlina in " Fra Diavolo," and the late Mr. William Farren in the farce of the " Double Bedded Room," regaling themselves with hot rolls and 216 AMERICA REVISITED. coffee in the gangway of the car, was not a thing to be thought of. Much exercised in my nojnd in this respect, and being, moreover, fully dressed, I thought that I might as well pay a visit to the restaurant and see how things were looking in the direction of breakfast. I had scarcely entered the spacious marble hall serving as a refreshment room, before all my doubts were resolved by an obliging waiter in a Avhite jacket, but facially and manually as black as the Ace of Spades. Break fast ? He would " fix " it for me " right away." Lady in the car ! What would " the Madam " — the lady who is with you is always " the Madam," and is treated with as much deference as though she were- the Queen of Sheba — like ? Ham and eggs ? Beefsteak ? Porksteak ? Hot cakes ? French coffee ? English breakfast tea? Hominy? Everything was " on hand," and was procurable " right away." This pearl — there are black pearls, and precious ones — of a waiter proceeded to perch me on a high stool, where I felt for a moment as though I were a junior clerk in an attorney's office, at a salary of eighteen shillings a week. The waiter's brother proceeded to supply me with hot coffee, hot bread and butter, hot muffins, hot eggs, and iced water. The waiter him self took my order for the lady in the car ; loaded a tray with the required refreshments, and stepped away with the alacrity of an ebony Ariel. Then his uncle (presumably) presented me with a piece of crimson pasteboard inscribed with the number of cents which I Avas to pay — it Avas under a couple of shillings — and this card, with the necessary cash, I handed to the waiter's grand father — his suppositious grandsire, at least — who .sate at the receipt of custom in a little Avhite marble niche, looking like some ancient idol of Mumbo-Jumbo ; and then I hied me back to the sleeping-car, where I found that one lady, at least, had had her breakfast in bed very comfortably. Hoav she received it I have not the remotest idea. I retired to the smoking compartment, and stayed there, talking to a cheery old farmer from Rhode Island and an affable gentleman from Philadelphia, who men- STILL ON TO RICHMOND. 217 tioned in the course of conversation that he was a lineal descen dant of, John of Gaunt, and that his uncle was in possession of " time-honoured Lancaster's " own walking-stick. When broad daylight set in, I returned to the sleeping-car to find that another transformation had taken place. The beds and bedding and the tapestried curtains — with but one exception, the " instal lation" of the obstinate gentleman who was averse from retiring to rest, and reluctant to rise — -had all disappeared, and the dormitory on wheels had resumed its diurnal aspect as a drawing room. We sped, all too rapidly for me, through a deeply interesting country. We were traversing a hundred miles of most momen tous History. From Washington we crossed the. Long Bridge into the State of Virginia, and ran down seven miles in a parallel course with the Potomac to the city of Alexandria. Thence to Quantico, whence the train took the track of the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad, and entered a broken and desolate-looking region, famous to all time as " The Wilder ness," which was the scene of some of the most terrible battles fought in 1863 and 1864. Twenty-one miles beyond Quantico, we halted at the quaint-looking old town of Fredericksburg, on the south bank of the Rappahannock, and near which was fought a bloody engagement, in which the Federal General Burnside was routed by the heroic Confederate Commander Robert Lee. The graveyard of the gallant dead who fell in that strife is fully visible from the cars. Eleven miles west of Fredericksburg the battle of Chancellorsville was fought. There " StoneAvall " Jackson was mortally wounded. He died at the little hamlet called Guinneys, which I have more than once spoken of, and his last words were, " Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees." " Stonewall " Jackson ! I mind how, in the summer of '64, being at Niagara Falls, on the British side, one of the Confederate Commissioners, who had come to the frontier to try to treat for peace, showed me a pencil draAving of the face of " Stonewall " 218 AMERICA REVISITED. Jackson as he lay in death. The Confederate Commissioner kindly lent me this relic for an hour, that I might make a tracing A GLIMPSE OF STONEWALL JACKSOX. of it, and that tracing I have now in an album at home. Leaving Fredericksburg, we came to Hanover Junction, where, in May, '64, another doughty battle Avas fought between General Grant and General Lee. A very cock-pit, this country ! A tilt yard of heroes. The trees are very young and slim, and grass grows very richly hereabouts ; but the land, they tell me, the desolate "Wilderness" always excepted, is beginning to smile again, STILL ON TO RICHMOND. 219 STONEWALL JACKSON AS HE LAY IN DEATH (After a tracing by the Author from an original sketch). and, this last harvest time, was teeming with grain and tobacco. May it so teem through unnumbered harvests ! The old State of Virginia has surely seen enough of the dreadful realities of war, and to spare. EARTHWORKS ON THE CHICKAHOMINY, NEAR RICHMOXL. COFFEE AND FRIED CHICKEN AT A VIRGINIA RAILWAY STATION. XVI. In Richaiond. Richmond, January 8. " Agricultural labour in the State of Virginia is supplied chiefly by the negro ; and he has no superior as a farm labourer. ' Is not the negro idle, thriftless, and thievish ? ' ' Do not judge a Avhole class of people by a few street-corner or cross-road loungers. The negro is to some extent superstitious ; but we will do him the justice to say that, in Virginia at least, he is im proving in morality and industry, and that the charge of larceny against him is a very rare thing in our criminal records. The price of farm labour varies according to the work required. It IN RICHMOND. 221 ranges between eight to ten dollars a month, Avith rations." It must be considered as fortunate for the cause of impartiality that, oefore addressing myself to the task of writing anything concerning the social position of the manumitted African in the Southern States, there should have been put into my hands the lucid and exhaustive " Handbook of Virginia," recently compiled and presented to his Excellency Governor Holliday by the State Commissioner of Agriculture, Mr. Thos. II. Pollard. The Handbook contains a mass of varied and valuable information respecting the agrarian, mineralogical, and metallurgic resources of the " Old Dominion ; " but, for the present, that little admoni tion to foreigners touching the negro has been of the greatest service to me. At a dozen places lately, travelling to this fair city, did I come across the "cross-road lounger." He has been standing at all the street-corners ever since I have been in Richmond itself, and a most appalling spectacle he is. But for the kindly caution in Mr. Pollard's work, I should have mis taken this gruesome loafer — this amazing tatterdemalion — for the average type of the enfranchised negro. Let us take the Lounger in the country first. Take him at a wayside railway station — I beg pardon, I should say " dejpot." The rural depot is certainly not a very imposing edifice. An American writer of note, Mr. Richard Grant White, says of it : " It is surely the height of absurdity to give the name to a little lonely shanty which looks like a lodge outside a garden of cu cumbers, and a staging of a feAv planks on which two or three people stand like condemmed criminals on a scaffold." But then, it has been pointed out, the American loves big names, and ere long he is quite sure the depot will become what the name indicates, so rapid is the growth of the country, and so marvellous the power of railroads in developing its resources. Just now the Virginian roadside railway halting-place is in the very earliest stage of development. It is, in truth, a Avretched little hole, presenting a dismal contrast to the trim English station, with its nicely kept platform, its tiny refreshment room 222 AMERICA REVISITED. and well-stocked bookstall, and its snug residence for the station master, with perchance a pretty little garden laid out by the side of the line. You must expect nothing of this kind in Virginia, nor, indeed, in any part of rural America. The age of trimness and neat ness is not come, yet. Everything for the present is in the rough. A CROSS-ROAD LOUNGER. The ordinary accessories to the roadside shanties are dwarf vegetation, broken fences stencilled over with advertisements of nostrums for coughs and indigestion, and the "cross-road lounger,'' who, in Virginia, is black. What is he like 1 Well, take Don Caesar de Bazan in the guise in which he makes his fiist appear ance in " Ruy Bias." Then, out of Callot's " Habits and Beggars " select the most hopelessly tattered and villanous looking mendicant to be found in that astonishing gallery of ragamuffins. Add the wardrobe of a London rough as he infests Fleet Street on a Lord Mayor's Show Day, or Hyde Park on some Sunday when there is a political meeting at the Reformers' Tree. Sprinkle in an admixture of a Parisian rddeur des barri'dres, and complete your amalgam of raggedness and wretchedness with the costume of an Irish bogtrotter neAvly landed in England, and just setting \ il'flllllllSl IN RICHMOND. 223 out on his first hop-picking expedition in the county of Kent. Having by dint of great perseverance gotten together such a miscellfhy of rags and tatters, it might be as Avell to shred them all somewhat fine in a sausage machine, and then to fasten them together again Avith pins, or skewers, or crooked nails, or frag ments of tape or string, or, indeed, anything that came handy ; and then, having rolled the mass in the mucl and roughly dried it, the whole might be shaped into the rude semblance of a coat, vest, and pantaloons. About the shirt there is no need to be very particular — almost anything will do : a scrap of canvas sacking or a couple of discarded dishclonts. Well, it is possible to be good and kind without a shirt. The Happy Man had no shirt. The Emperor Marcus Antoninus had none. The boots should be of the " canoe " pattern, several sizes too large for any pair of human feet smaller than those of the Colossus of Rhodes. They should be quite innocent of blacking and desti tute of string ; and there should be a decided solution of con tinuity between the soles and the upper leather. The hat — - the " cross-road lounger^ always wears a hat, and rl^dains a cap quite as much as an Eton boy could do — utterly baffles my feeble powers of description. It is something like an in verted coalscuttle without handles, and pierced by many holes. It is something like the bonnet of a Brobdingnagian quakeress, supposing that there Avere any female members of the Society of Friends in Brobdingnag. It is huge and flapped and battered, and fearful to look upon : that is the most that I can say about it. Hang all this equipment on the limbs of a tall negro, of any age betAveen sixteen and sixty, and then let him stand close to the scaffold-like platform of the d^pot shanty, and let him " loafe." His attitude is one of complete and apathetic immo bility. He does not grin. He may be chewing; but he does not smoke. He does not beg ; at least, in so far as I observed him, he stood in no posture and assumed no gestures belonging to the mendicant. He looks at you with a dull, stony, pre occupied gaze, as though his thoughts were thousands of miles 224 , AMERICA REVISITED. away in the Unknown Land ; Avhile, once in every quarter of an hour or so, he woke up to the momentary consciousness that he Avas a thing neither rich nor rare, and so wondered how the Devil he got there. He is a derelict — a fragment of flotsam and jetsam cast upon the not too hospitable shore of civilisation after the great storm had lashed the Southern Sea to frenzy and the ship of Slavery had gone to pieces for ever. Possibly he is a great deal more human than he looks ; and, if he chose to bestir himself and to address himself to articulate discourse, could tell you a great many things about his Avants and his wishes, his vieAvs and feelings on things in general, which to 3rou might prove little less than amazing. As things go, he prefers to do Nothing, and to proffer no kind of explanation as to why he is standing there in a meta phorical millpond very much " longer than he oughter." And so I shall find him standing, I am told, all the way down South. Sir John Falstaff would have clapped him on the shoulder and enlisted him at once as a full private in the Ragged Regiment- A London police-constable would have bidden him to " move on," and, in default of his so moving, would have " run him in." He runs himself in voluntarily, they tell me, sometimes. When he begins to feel the Avintry weather somewhat too keen to suit his looped and Avindowed raggedness, or when he grows tired of standing at the cross road or at the street corner, and wondering how the dickens he got there, he pays a nocturnal visit to some neighbouring farm-yard, or he drifts into a grocery store and pilfers something. Then they lock him up in the Penitentiary for a while ; but he lies warm and snug in gaol ; he is well fed and not too hardly Avorked, and he does not mind it, much. I am happy to be told that the "cross road lounger" is in a decided minority among the freedmen of the South. A grave problem — somewhat of a distressing problem — this ragged black enfranchised bondman, living, but making no sign — excrescent to, rather than part of, the body politic — having nothing to do Avith the public grounds save in so far as the IN RICHMOND. 223 public mud and the public dust-heaps are concerned. What is to be done with him ? Perchance no more than he does with himself: that is to say, Nothing. Yet who shall say that long, long ago there may not have been all the making of an excellent felloAV in this most de plorable and unsightly castaway ? More than once have I drawn at tention to a wayside station called Guinneys. The name of the place dwells in my mind chiefly, perhaps, be cause there I made a tolerably careful study of the raggedest and most dejected of the black Virginians that it has been as yet my lot to behold. The poor creature looked like some Coffee Calcalli in irremediable difficulties, grey, dis crowned, " gone up," " busted," and " played out," mourning in sackcloth and ashes the loss of his umbrella. Yet was there about him a touch of Human Nature, to me very sorroAvful and1 pathetic. Snuggling by his tattered side — "freezing" to him, as; the Americans phrase it — Avas a tiny yelloAV boy of some eight years. The urchin Avas a bright mulatto. His eyes Avere very- full and sparkling, his hair was straight and silky, his mien full of infantile grace and sprightliness. He was as ragged as a robin ; indeed, when I say that he Avore a badly-patched trouser — one leg of the pair was almost entirely gone — suspended by some subtle contrivance over the shoulder of the dolefullest INJURED INNOCENCE. "Do you took me for a Thief? Do you see any Chickens 'bout me ? Go 'way dar, white man ! Treat a boy 'speetable, if he am brack ! " 226 AMERICA REVISITED. apology for. a checked shirt that I have ever beheld, and that his head-gear consisted of the fragment of an old cast-off mili tary shako (a relic, may be, of Spotsylvania or Chancellorsville), with the peak gone, I think that I have enumerated all that there Avas of his apparel. The elder negro, the umbrella-bereft Coffee Calcalli, was holding one of the little fellow's pale yellow hands in his own osseous and corrugated black paw ; fitfully he would press the small hand and fondle it, as though he cherished the child, very dearly. But he did not turn his gaze upon him. His dusky eyes were looking far away, " away down South," in the direction of the Gulf of Mexico and the islands of the Carib bean Sea. A strange couple. What Avas the bond ¦ of union between them ? The features , of the child were regular and IN RICHMOND. 007N|V( delicate ; while those of his companion Avere of almost brutish Ashantian or Dahomian ruggedness. For some time past an exodus of coloured people from the State of North Carolina to Kansas and Indiana has been going on to a very considerable extent ; and the magnitude and continuity of this " stampede " have so perplexed and perturbed politicians NEGRO EMIGRANTS ON THEIR WAY TO KANSAS. all over the Union that the " North Carolina Emigration "—an emigration seemingly quite shiftless and objectless— formed the subject lately of a debate, at which I was present, in the Senate of the United States. I was curiously interested to find the exodus mentioned and warmly deprecated in a letter written to the New York Evangelist by a Presbyterian minister in the South, himself a person of colour. Remarks this respectable gentleman : " The North Carolina exodus is a most miserable mystery. It is nothing but tramping instead of toiling by people who are the drones of the coloured race, who find more pleasure 228 AMERICA REVISITED. in wandering from place to place than ' in working from day to day, and who are ignorant of the fact that God has said, by the pen of Moses and Paul, ' In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread,' and ' If any will not work neither shall he eat.' Here (in North Carolina) the coloured people have a good chance and a good climate ; yet some Avant to go to Indiana to freeze to death for want of clothing, food, and Avork. Christian friends, pray against this exodus." It would appear then from the above authority, that this tattered Coffee Cal calli, shorn of his umbrella and other regalities, is not a person deserving of much compassion.* WESTWARD HO ! * According to a writer in Scribner's Magazine, the first band of negro emigrants to the AVest made its unexpected appearance at AVyandotte in Kansas on board one of the Missouri steamers one April morning in 1879. It comprised several s«we of coloured men, women and children, bringing with them divers barrels, boxes, and bundles of household effects. The garments of the new-comers were terribly tattered and patched, and there was in all likelihood not a dollar in money in the pockets of the entire party. They were speedily followed by new arrivals, and before a fortnight had elapsed, their number had increased to upwards of a thousand, all of them pitifully poor and hungry, many of them sick, and not one with any future plan of action before him. On being questioned as to the reason of their coming to Kansas, they were reticent and evasive in their replies, although they resolutely declared with convincing emphasis that nothing would induce them to return to the South, and as for what lay before them — " Well, de good Lord could be trusted." Later on they explained their grievances to consist in there being no security for their lives and property in their old homes, that the laws and courts were alike inimi cal to them and their interests, that their exercise of the electoral franchise was THE NEGRO EXODUS : OLD AND NEW STYLES. I SJi. IN RICHMOND. 229 Speaking only of the State of Virginia, there is not the slightest necessity for the negro to stand " longer than he obstructed and made a personal danger to them, that no facilities were afforded or permitted them for the education of their children, and above all that they were so unjustly dealt with by white landowners, employers, and traders, it was impossible for them to make a living. On the other hand numbers of them gave as their sole reason for leaving the South, that the times were dull, and that they hoped to better themselves elsewhere ; Jand they freely admitted that most of the misfortunes of their fellows were mainly due to their own folly, imprudence and cowardice. Temporary shelter was speedily provided for these unexpected and helpless visitors, food and the facilities for cooking it were furnished them, and local philanthropists hastened to devise measures to secure them homes and employment. As this influx of coloured immigrants continued without cessation, a more organized system of dealing with it soon became a positive necessity. Few of the new-comers had so much as a single article of furniture, or any kind of bedding, their wearing apparel was scant and threadbare, the men were mainly without coats or a change of underlinen, and most of the women owned merely a single gown. Half of the children were barefooted, and clad simply in a single cotton garment. Under suck conditions much sickness was necessarily prevalent. 230 AMERICA REVISITED. oughter " either in a millpond or at the intersection of cross roads, or at the corners of the streets. There is plenty of work A State Freedman's Relief Association having been formed, the contributions forwarded to it sufficed for the purchase of food and clothing, and the securing of homes for the immigrants. Barracks were constructed for them and farming imple- WV; -¦ ..'uy '¦if'-K sii§ A LETTER FROM DE OLE MAN. IN RICHMOND. 231 for him to do in the country and in the city of Richmond itself. The great iron Avorks, the flour mills, the tobacco and cigar manufactories of the Virginian capital are all willing to employ negro hands at good wages ; and from ocular experience I can vouch for the fact that coloured mechanics and labourers are largely employed in all the great industries which are rapidly making Richmond a city as great and prosperous as she is. beautiful. The blacks and mulattos ply their calling by the side A of white workmen, and seem to live in perfect harmony with j them. They labour under no kind of political disability ; and there is a select band of coloured delegates in the Lower House of the Virginian Legislature, in which honourable assembly the advantage of their presence is, perhaps, problematical, seeing that they are the mere tools and stalking-horses of the Extreme Radicals or " Readjustors," who are "readjusting" State matters by turning old and valuable public servants out of office to make Avay for their own friends, and by coolly proposing to repudiate the State Debt — a debt of Avhich the obligations are largely held by foreigners. There, however, the black legislators are, and there, in the presence of Equal Rights and Universal Suffrage, they must remain. Naturally the white owners of property— manufacturers, storekeepers, and the like — people in ments supplied to them, and the experiment of founding a colony was commenced under rather hopeful conditions. By the end of the autumn their number had swollen to upwards of 15,000, and winter with its ice and snow and piercing winds was looked forward to with dread. Fortunately, however, the season proved an unexpectedly mild one — " God seed dat de darkies had thin clothes," remarked one of their preachers, " and he sone kep the cole off." At the present time it is estimated that the number of negro emigrants to the West is not far short of 50,000, a considerable proportion of whom have found employment in the towns, whilst a much larger number are engaged in farming operations on their own account ; others being employed in a desultory way, work ing for white farmers and herders, and getting on as best they can. Some thousands have been drafted into the neighbouring States, in many instances, on solicitation from the authorities, shewing that there are openings for these immigrants and a disposition to give them a chance, if they will really work. It is commonly believed that the prosperous agricultural States east of the Mississippi, where pro ductive land is largely rented and farm hands . are never too numerous could absorb them in thousands and convert them into a positive benefit. 232 AMERICA REVISITED. A " READJUSTOR " CAJOLING A NEGRO VOTER. short, who have Avhat Ave term " a stake in the country " — com plain, not without bitterness, that these sable delegates are sent to the Legislature by the votes of negro electors, too often influenced by the so-called "Readjustors," and who are generally steeped to the lips in ignorance, and pay few taxes, if they pay any at all. But le vin est tir6, et il faut le boire. Manumission cannot " go bail " upon itself. The Virginian gentlemen with whom, during more than a week's sojourn in Richmond, I have conversed — and during that time I have had the honour to meet nearly every gentleman of political or social note in the city — are perfectly candid and tolerant in the expression of their opinion on the negro question. IN RICHMOND, 233 Of their Lost Cause they speak with becoming sadness and dignity ¦ — a dignity all the more noble when you remember that almost every gentleman of middle age Avith whom you meet — be he go vernor, lawyer, merchant, journalist, or trader — has fought in the Confederate armies ; but they have acquiesced in the Inevitable ; and their children, while they are proud of the heroic record of their sires, are being educated in principles of loyal adherence to the integrity of the Federal Union. The elder generation hold liberally practical views on the subject of the freedman and his descendants. Not once have I spoken Avith a Southerner avIio has defended slavery in the abstract. All but unanimous has been the verdict which I have listened to, that slavery Avas a social curse and leprosy, and that it is a good thing that America should be rid of it. From the charge of general inhumanity to their slaves, the Virginians M' t ^llfe-i, are too proud to defend themselves. They treat such accu sations with contempt. There is no use in continuing a contro versy as to Avhat might or might not have been done in the past ; or whether " Uncle Tom's Cabin " was a plain and unvarnished narrative of facts or a tissue of isolated cases of cruelty and oppression, skilfully selected, dexterously exaggerated, and woven together Avith consummate art. The business of the white Southerner is not with the past but Avith the present, and Avith the negro Avhom he THE REVEREND JOSIAH HENSON (THE ORIGINAL OF UNCLE TOM). 234 AMERICA REVISITED. is anxious to employ, and to whom he is willing to pay good Avages. Mr. Pollard, in his official Hand-book, puts the negro question almost within the capacity of a nut-shell. " The labour system of Virginia," he points out, " as Avell as that of the whole South, has been unsettled by the Avar and its results, and along with this unsettled condition of labour has come the loss of capital — the lever with which to utilise it properly, not to control i t improperly, but to pay it fairly and make it efficient. On our farms there should be no conflict betAveen labour and capital, and there is none. The great difficulty Avith which the farmer has to con tend is to obtain money whcreAvith to pay his labourer promptly and sufficiently for the sup port of himself and his family. We have the negro as a portion of our permanent population, as far as we can see at present, and he has to be supported from the soil ; and our policy, as far as possible, is to make him a profitable producer, and not to permit him to become a drone and mere consumer. It has become too much the custom to denounce him as thriftless and lazy. Among this population there are some who will not Avork, and this is the case with most races ; but if the negro is promptly and fairly paid enough, good labourers can be obtained from among them to till our farms properly. Our policy is to elevate and encourage this race in every proper manner ; not to debase and abuse it. We are forced to employ the negro, for the present at least, and have no choice." I thoroughly believe that the common-sense vieAV of the case here enunciated by the Commissioner of Agri culture is one that is shared by almost every educated Virginian. THE NATION S WARD. IN RICHMOND. 235 The negro is, from many different aspects, a bad job ; but the Southerners are trying hard to make the best of him ; and it is gratifyTng to know that the ragged and umbrellaless Coffee Cal- callis constitute only a sprinkling among the coloured race in Virginia. it^ l#^- MONUMENT TO WASHINGTON AT RICHMOND. XVII. Genial Richmond. Richmond, January 10. The meteorological amenity of the capital of the Old Domi nion has failed, during the greater portion of my sojourn, to correspond with the acknowledged and traditional social geni ality of the inhabitants of the City. In fact, I have been more than once mildly reproached by a host of newly-found friends* * I had not been two hours in the city before I received cards of admission to the privilege of membership of three principal clubs. The ladies most distinguished in Richmond society hastened to call on my wife ; and His Excellency Colonel Holliday, Governor of the State of Virginia, was so kind as to call on us and ask us to breakfast. I had brought but a single letter of introduction with me, and the gentleman to whom it was addressed had come to see me before I had time to pre sent it. I cannot help fancying that one little circumstance contributed very strongly to the exceptionally kind reception with which we met in the whilom Confederate Capital. It was noised about that I was a friend of William Howard Russell and GENIAL RICHMOND. 237 with having brought "real English weather" with me. The Virginians have a strong and really affectionate liking for most things Hmglish, and rival the people of Baltimore — which is say ing a great deal — in expressions of kindly sympathy for the " Old Home ; " but I can scarcely quarrel with them when they object to the importation on the banks of the James River of a sorry imitation of the weather to which at this season of the year the dwellers on the shores of the Thames are, for their sins, liable. I have done my best to assure my good friends in Rich mond that their simulation of an English January is, at its very strongest, only a very feeble one. It has not snowed once these ten days past ; and the early mornings' frosts have been inter mittent and slight. On the other hand, the chief characteristics of the temperature have been rawness and dampness, unplea santly provocative of bronchial disturbances, and thereby condu cive of great glee to the vendors of pectoral nostrums. I have been in and out of the druggists' stores almost ever since my arrival ; and I have quite a collection of lozenges, wafers, poAvders, and SA/rups, which make you sick, and do not make you well. " Gen'lm don't take to his board kyndly," I heard one coloured waiter observe to a colleague yesterday in the dining hall of the Ballard House and Exchange Hotel. I should take very kindly indeed, very kindly, to the ample and wholesome meals provided by Colonel Carrington, the esteemed proprietor of the hotel, for his guests ; but how are you to enjoy your dinner — to say nothing of your breakfast, luncheon, tea, and supper (for five meals a day are the rule in Richmond) — when you have been swallowing lozenges and wafers, syrup of squills, extract of poppies, and syrup of toulu all day and nearly all night long ? Then we have had a succession of Scotch mists — not downright straightforward rainfalls, but insidious environments of moisture which enwrap a man all round like a damp plaid, and chill him to the bones. Finally, we have been favoured, late in the even- Francis Lawley, and those names are towers of strength throughout the South, even from the James River to the Gulf of Mexico. 238 AMERICA REVISITED. ing, with a couple of fogs — Avhite, not orange coloured, in hue. But, all our discomfort notwithstanding, the asperity of the weather in Richmond certainly does not exceed that common in London at the beginning of October. Moreover, we had a glo riously warm and sunny day at the beginning of last week ; and now, when I am Avriting, the sky is deep blue, without a fleck of cloud ; the sun shines with dazzling brightness, and the tempera ture is suggestive of the "merry month of May " — when May was a merry month, if it ever were so in England. The sunlit aspect of Richmond, even in mid-winter, was charming, and quite unlike that of any other American city that I had seen. You felt at once that the South had begun. Its aspect was palpable, even at the railway dep6t, in the shape of a general and picturesque untidiness and "go as you please" appearance of things. The dolce far niente Avas beginning to -^S:i.sMn>"' assert itself. Wherever a broad ray of sunshine illumined the road the black man was basking in it. But he was not the GENIAL RICHMOND. 239 "Quashie rejoicing in abundant pumpkin," so imaginatively portrayed by Mr. Carlyle. Quashie was either the wretched, losel in frowsy tatters, and with no pumpkin at all to rejoice in,' 240 AMERICA REVISITED. whom I have already dwelt upon ; or he Avas Quashie at work,, taking things easily it is true, and not toiling and moiling to an extraordinary degree of exertion, but still doing his spell of labour, and getting his dollar a day for it. Yes, the black man,, for labour Avhich can scarcely be called skilled, earns his five- and-twenty shillings a Aveek in the to\vns of Virginia. As a mechanic he receives much higher wages. His remuneration as an agricultural " hand" Avithout wages I have already touched upon. Such food as he requires, and Avhich is most appetising to him — Indian corn, molasses, and a little pork — is abundant and cheap ; but even the industrious and laAv-abiding negro in the South has to the foreign eye a poverty-stricken look, because he is so wretchedly clad. This is no fault of his. It is the fault, free traders say, of an aggressive and vindictive Protective Tariff, which grinds out the commercial body and soul of the South, cripples the West, exasperates the foreigner, and only enriches a fraction of Northern and Eastern speculators and monopolists.* It is someAvhat consolatory, nevertheless, to reflect that, in a region Avhere the climate is usually temperate in winter and tropically hot in summer, much Avearing apparel is not needed. The negroes are probably much better off than they look, from a sumptuary point of vieAv ; and in fact I fail to see that * There is no country in the world in which "gentlemen" dress more hand somely, and " ladies " (I am using the terms in the European sense and assuming the existence of castes which the Americans fully know to exist in their society, but the existence of which they vehemently deny) dress more richly and more hand somely than in the United States ; but the attire of the section of the community answering to our middle class is, as a rule, extremely shabby. Female attire, in particular, is " dowdy " in the extreme. The reason is that clothes of all kinds are, owing to the tariff, inordinately dear ; and such home-made fabrics as my wife- pointed out to me in the windows of the dry goods stores seemed to be either coarse or " sleiv.y." There are many excellent dressmakers (mainly French), and tailors {mainly German), in the American cities ; but I suppose that I shall not be con tradicted (save, perhaps, by some archaic journalist say at Hoshkosh, Michigan) -when I remark that an American gentleman of fashionable standing generally obtains his clothes from London, while a lady in' a corresponding grade of society buys her dresses in Paris. GENIAL RICHMOND. 241 they have very much to complain of, except that when they die their remains are apt to be stolen by the professional body^ snatchers. From the negro portion of the cemetery in this fair city of Richmond scores and scores of coloured corpses have lately been filched. The Resurrection Men are no mere " black mailers." They are not moved by that splendid cupidity which led to the grave of the late A. T. Stewart being rifled. They are simply unlicensed servants of the healing art, who, for the consideration of so many dollars per " shot," or human body, undertake to supply subjects for dissection to the anatomical^ schools throughout the States. They prefer, it is said, coloured to white corpses, for a very ghastly but practical reason. Dying, in the case of a white man, in this country, is a very expensive affair. The first thing the undertaker does with our dear brother departed is to pack his frame into a receptacle full of ice and salt. When the body is frozen stiff it is placed in a more or less sumptuously-adorned " casket " — such is the euphemistic name given to a coffin — and this coffin is hermetically sealed. Of course, Avhen the casket is consigned to the earth, the body thaws, and rapid and dreadful corruption sets in beneath the gorgeous envelope of hermetically sealed ebony and electro- silver. The poor negro is not interred in so luxurious a fashion. His body is easily removable from its plain pine-wood shell; ,^and the remains are naturally in a better state of preservation, and fitter for the dissecting table, than the mortal coil of the white Dives. The " shots " of the Richmond resurrectionists are headed up in casks as petroleum, and are so transported by railway to their different destinations. The whole business seems a very shocking one ; yet it is obvious that the requirements of the medical schools must be supplied in some manner or another. There can be evidently no Anatomy Act applicable to the Avhole Union. There is not, and there cannot be (from the Federal nature of the Constitu tion), any general Poor Law ; and medical science is thus unable to depend upon Avhat in England are her chief sources for supply- 242 AMERICA REVISITED. ing bodies for dissection : the Hospitals and the Workhouses. In American infirmaries and asylums for the destitute the number of unclaimed bodies is comparatively small ; and although the corpses of murderers are still liable in some States to be "anato mised," it is, throughout the Union, far more feasible, as a general rule, to commit a murder than to hang the murderer. What with points of law reserved, motions to stay proceedings, motions for a neAv trial, and alternate appeals and re-appeals, the most flagrant of assassins may usually reckon upon from six to fifteen months' surcease of execution — if he ever gets executed at all ; and he very frequently escapes with a fewT years' incarceration in the States prison for a crime for which in England he would most inevitably swing. The number of assassins who annually cheat the gallows in this country is to an Englishman who is not an advocate ot the total abolition of capital punishment simply amazing and disheartening ; and the uncertainty of the criminal law actually gives not only an aspect of " wild justice " but of practical common sense to the occasional interference of the public at large and the invocation of the ministrations of Judge Lynch. Lynching assassins does not, however, serve the interests of the medical schools, which require a constant and regular supply of bodies. They must be obtained, of course, somehow, else science would languish ; but the danger of winking at a surreptitious traffic in human remains will be plain Avhen we refer to our own experience in this regard. Body-snatching leads in the end to burking. When Messrs. Burke and Hare and their London compeers, Messrs. Bishop and Williams, were no longer able to procure "shots" by the comparatively fair means of rifling the grave-yards, they took to obtaining subjects by means that were foul ; that is to say, by clapping pitch-plasters over the mouths of helpless old women and by suffocating friendless Italian boys. This is, I must admit, someAvhat of a grisly prelude to the geniality of Richmond ; but the dark deeds of the Ghouls in the 0HB(SC HCO« O W-l?_ Thunder and Belleisle «J '_- -_- ^vt i J"l --'.- Avere devoted to similar purposes ; but all that has long since been at an end. The renowned Libby has been converted into a tobacco ware house. Only a feAV iron bars before some of its tall narrow Avindows remain to remind the passer-by of its bygone use ; and as for Castle Thunder, it has been pulled, or as they say in this rapidest of countries " torn " down alto gether; and its site, now desolate as that of our own " Bench," will soon be covered by some new mill or factory. There is a gigantic red brick penitentiary in the western THE LIBBY PRISON, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA. 254 AMERICA REVISITED. suburb of Richmond, and there is a handsome gaol to boot ; but I have resolutely declined to enter these correctional institutions, A man's main business in life, I take it, is to keep out of prison as long as he possibly can ; but so mutable are the affairs of this world that you can never be quite certain Avhen you are visiting the place of durance, as an amateur, that the authorities will let you out again. It is true that I made an ocular acquaintance lately with some of the gentlemen Avho are involuntary guests at that very extensive hotel, the Richmond Penitentiary. Driving to a rocky eminence called Chimborazo — the site for a nascent public park, and from which a magnificent view of the city and the James River can be obtained — I noticed, digging and delving among the Avhite and coloured labourers, a proportion of cleanly- shaven men attired in loose jackets and trousers of some light Avoollen stuff, covered with horizontal bars of a dingy blue. They Avere noticeable not only on account of this strange garb, but CONVICTS RETURNING FROM WORK, RICHMOND PENITENTIARY. also from the circumstance that they seemed to be taking things very easily, and to be doing much less Avork than the ordinarily IN THE TOMBS — AND OUT OF THEM. 255 dressed labourers. "Those," observed the friend Avho had brought me to Chimborazo, in answer to my inquiry, " are some of our^Zebras." For awhile I was puzzled ; but he Avent on to explain that a " Zebra" was a humorous nickname for a convict ; and then I remembered that when Charles Dickens saw the convicts at Blackwell's Island, New York, who are barioles in a fashion closely resembling the costume of the Richmond gaol birds, he christened them " faded tigers." I tried hard when in New York to avoid both the gaols and the graveyards. To the latter I Avas fortunately able to give the widest of berths ; but a darker fate befell me in the matter of the prisons. The obliging gentleman who introduced me some weeks since to the police magistrate at Jefferson-market Court insisted that, after having passed a morning with Justice, I should make a regular criminal day of it, and see the cele brated Prison of the Tombs. Not to be behindhand in hospi tality, his Avorship the police justice himself pressingly urged me, before I went doAvn toAvn, to have a peep at his own par ticular gaol in the Jefferson- market house. For a while I feebly resisted these invita tions ; but when an American has made up his mind to "put" a stranger "through," he means business, and is not to be deterred from carrying out his programme to the very letter. So, as an ante chamber to the lombs, I took AN 0FFICIAL 0P jefferson-market gaol. a cursory view of the Jeffer son-market Gaol, which occupies a very tall toAver of brick and stone in the Italian Gothic style of architecture. The /&' 256 AMERICA REVISITED. cells are airy, and not by any means cheerless : the inmates being permitted to read the newspapers and to smoke. But I should be discounting that Avhich I have to say concerning. American prison discipline Avere I to say more on the reading and smoking heads in connection Avith the Jefferson-market Gaol. The detenus AArere chiefly the " drunk and incapables " and the "drunk and disorderlies," who had been committed for short terms in default of payment of their five and ten dollar fines. Some of them were not placed in the cells at all ; but were locked up in association in a large room, down each side of which ran a single tier of open wooden cribs or bunks furnished Avith a blanket and a coverlet, and where, chatting together quite gaily, they did not seem one whit more uncomfortable than the steerage passengers whom I had seen on board of the good ship Scythia.0 Revenons d nos moutons, of Avhich "Let us return to our black sheep " may be accepted as a tolerably close translation. There was a room in the gaol where peccant ladies were held in durance ; and there, sitting up in a bunk which they occupied in common, I recognised the two poor Irish girls, Kathleen Mavourneen and the Colleen Bawn gone wrong — " tAvin cherries on one stalk." A very sorry stalk. The Colleen, her feet stretched out, was admiring a pair of new bronze boots, which contrasted rather conspicuously Avith the otherwise imperfect state of her attire. As for Kathleen, she " made believe," when I passed her cot, to cover her face, for shame, with a corner of a gaudy plaid shawl. But the pretence was a transparent one. She was obviously making fun of us from behind that shawl ; and I am even afraid that she put her tongue out. Some of the female prisoners Avere doing " chores," or light house-work, about the gaol, Avhich was altogether very clean and comfort- * I am glad, by the way, to note, in a .recent number of " Macmillan," that,; in his "First Impressions of the New AVorld," the Duke of Argyll has done graceful justice to the excellent qualities of the Scythia as a seaboat, and to the good seaman ship and kindly courtesy of her worthy commander, Captain Hains. IN THE TOMBS — AND OUT OF THEM. 257 able-looking, and the strangest feature about Avhich to me Avas that it was provided with a lift or elevator passing from tier to tier <3f cells. I mention this structural improvement for the benefit of the architects and surveyors of her Majesty's gaols in Great Britain. I was sincerely glad to emerge out of Jefferson-market Gaol, and as sincerely grateful that during my brief sojourn with in its walls nothing had turned up of a nature to warrant Mr. Justice Flammer in detaining me. There has been dwelling on my mind a paragraph which 1 read lately in a New York paper concerning a gentleman who was suspected of dealing in counterfeit trade dollars. The paragraph recited that the gentle man " skipped the town to avoid further judicial complications,?" Right merrily did I " skip " Jefferson-market Gaol ; and then "I skipped — literally so — up an iron staircase some thirty feet high, and into Sixth-avenue, and so into one of the Elevated Railroad cars, which, in a few minutes, deposited me at a point close to Broadway, crossing which I found myself at the distance of a fevv " blocks " from my destination. The Tombs — rarely has so appropriate a name been bestowed on a prison — is a really remarkable and grandiose specimen of Egyptian architec ture ; and but for the unfortunate position of the site it would be the imposing public building in New York. The structure occupies an entire block or insula, as an ancient Roman district surveyor would phrase it, bounded by Centre-street on the east, Elm-street on the west, Leonard-street on the south, and Franklin-street on the north ; and it is thus in the very heart of the lower or business quarter of the Island of Manhattan, and within a few minutes' walk of that astonishing Wall-street, in the purlieus of which so many speculative individuals are so persistently and so continuously qualifying themselves for an ultimate residence in this grim palace of the felonious Pharaohs and Ptolemies. The really striking proportions of the building are dwarfed into comparative insignificance by its unfortunate structural 258 AMERICA REVISITED. -disposition, which is in a hollow so deep that the coping of the massive wards of the prison are scarcely above the level of the adjacent Broadway. The site of the Tombs was formerly occu pied by a piece of water known as the Collect pond, which was connected with the North or Hudson River by a swampy strip, through which ran a rivulet parallel with the existing Canal- street. The Collect pond Avas filled up in the year 1836 ; and within the two years following, the Tombs Prison was built on the reclaimed land. The marshy soil was ill-calculated to support the weight of an edifice so colossal ; and although the foundations were laid much deeper than is customary, some parts of the Avails settled to such an extent that the gravest apprehen sions were for a time felt for the safety of the entire building. Possibly, if the clerks and warders could have been extricated in time, no great harm would have been done had the ponderous Avails settled altogether, until the Tombs and all the rogues Avithin it had been comfortably embogued in the swampy bosom of the bygone Collect pond. As it is, the dismal fortress has stood for a third of a century without any material change, and is considered perfectly safe. Who gave it the name of " Tombs '' I am unable to say, since it is legally the City Prison — the Gaol of Newgate, substantially — of New York; but the criminal stronghold earned its appellation, I should say, from its general funereal appearance and its early reputation as a damp and un healthy place. Its lugubrious aspect, it should seem, ought to have made the Tombs a terror to evil-doers ; but such, I fear, has not been the case. The prison is generally full ; and the crop of murderers is, in particular, steady and abundant. Externally the building is entirely of granite, and appears to be of only one storey, the windoAvs being carried* from a point about two yards above the ground up to beneath the cornice. The main entrance is in, or, in Transatlantic parlance, "on," Centre-street, and is reached by a flight of Avide, dark stone steps, through a spacious portico supported by four ponderous columns. The external walls of the remaining three sides are IN THE TOMBS — AND OUT OF THEM. 259 more or less broken up by columns and secondary doors of entrance, thus infusing some degree of variety into the oppressive monotony of the pile, the remembrance of Avhich hangs heavily THE TOMBS PRISON, NEW YORK. upon you afterwards, like a nightmare on your soul. I was accompanied on my visit to this abode of misery by a gentleman Avho had been formerly Mayor of New York ; and a word from him acted as an " open sesame " to the most recondite penetralia of the prison. The chief warder, who took us in charge, was a " character." He had been a custodian of the Tombs for more than a quarter of a century — a wonderfully long spell for an office-holder in America — and he was, if I mistake not, an Irish man. At least he was endowed Avith a brogue as rich and melodious as though he had only left the county Cork the day before yesterday. He was a wag, too ; but in every line of. his honest countenance there beamed one unmistakable and prevailing expression — that of benevolent pity. He was very careful to show us first of all the gate by which the prisoners' van — called here, as on the other side of the s 2 260 AMERICA REVISITED. Atlantic, the " Black Maria "—entered the prison-yard, and then he conducted us to the quadrangle where executions take place. We saw the places for the posts of the gallows, and the hooks and staples in the wall for fixing the grisly apparatus of death. The culprit, the halter being placed about his neck, is at a given signal run up to the cross-beams of the gallows by means of the liberation of a counterweight, Avhich is put in action by a simple piece of mechanism touched by the foot of the sheriff or his assistant. No hangman, strictly speaking, is thus employed; but the services of several persons are nevertheless required to get the condemned wretch ready for being put out of the world. On the day when I visited the Tombs there were no less than twelve men under sentence of death in the cells. Not one of them (at this time of writing) has yet been executed ; and it is highly probable that at least two-thirds of the number may eventually cheat the gallows. As I have hinted on a previous occasion, it is an extremely tedious and difficult process in this country to give a murderer his due. If the Avretch have a clever lawyer he may fence with justice not only for weeks but for months and months together ; nor is it ahvays imperatively necessary that he should be well supplied with funds in order to carry his case from tribunal to tribunal. Legal costs in the States are not nearly so afflictive as they are with us ; and even if the murderer be absolutely penniless, he Avill be out of luck indeed if he fail to find some sharp and promising young lawyer who will take up his case for the mere honour and glory of the thing. As for the criminal law itself, it seems to be endowed with a whole host of contrivances either indigenous to the soil or borrowed and modified from our old legal procedure, by means of which the action of justice can be stultified ; but the result of all these multiplied facilities for staying proceedings, suing out writs of error, and obtaining new trials, seems to me to be rather of a double-edged nature, and not wholly conducive to the well-being of the commonAvealth. So many are the checks and the counterchecks, the easements IN THE TOMBS AND OUT OF THEM. 261 and escapements, available to the condemned person, that it appears close to a moral impossibility that any innocent person in the State of New York should suffer the punishment of death. On the other hand, the multiplication of facilities for delay by appeals and rehearings, renders it equally possible for a vast number of manifestly guilty people to obtain a commutation of their sentence, or to escape punishment altogether. Internally, the Tombs is rather a series of prisons than a single structure. The cells rise in tiers one above the other, with a separate corridor for each tier. There is a grating before each cell, between the bars of which the visitor can converse Avith the prisoner within. Throughout the day the inner, or wooden door, of the cell is left more than half open. Beyond the circumstance that the AvindoAv — which admits plenty of light — is barred, and is high up in an embra sure of the Avail, there need be nothing Avhatever dungeon like about a cell in the Tombs. The prison furniture is necessarily scanty in quantity and simple in quality ; but the prisoner more or less blessed hj affluence is at liberty to supplement the equipment of his apartment by any such fittings and decorations as the length of his purse and the refinement of his aesthetic taste may lead him to adopt. Mr. Edward Stokes, it will be remembered — he is now, I believe, in California, enjoying himself* — when "in trouble" for shooting Mr. James Fiske to death, furnished his cell in the Tombs in the most luxurious manner. He had his books and pictures, his Persian rugs, and, while prosperous, his wine and cigars, and lived altogether like a gentleman. One cell did I see in the course of my visit which had been converted by the culture and liberal expenditure of its occupant into quite a BoAvcr of Bliss. The floor was richly carpeted; and the trim little camp bed was covered with a dainty counter- * I afterwards sate at the same breakfast table with him at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, where, I believe, he is engaged in some financial business and is doing very well. :262 AMERICA REVISITED. pane of quilted crimson silk with an overall of lace: frilled pilloAvs of course. The Avails were entirely covered with chromo-lithographs, Mora's photographic album portraits, and the tasteful Christmas cards of our Delarues and Marcus Wards, for which there is a prodigious demand in the United States. The Epicurean occupant of the Bower of Bliss Avas smoking a remarkably fragrant Havana cigar when I Avas introduced to him. He shook hands with me warmly, and .remarked that he hoped I should enjoy my visit to America. He knew England, he said, very well, and liked it very much. So much, indeed, had he liked it, my conductor whispered, that .it was only through the agency of an extradition warrant that he had been induced to quit the hospitable shores of Albion, whither he had repaired in consequence of being " Avanted " in New York, either for forgery or for taking something out of a bank safe. I forget the precise nature of the charge ; but it was a matter of some score of thousands of dollars. A lady in a sealskin mantle, very deeply veiled, and bearing a pretty little basket, probably containing something nice to eat, advancing to the grating at this conjuncture, I Avas glad to bid the inhabitant of the Bower of Bliss good-bye, and to wish him well out of his little difficulties. Shall I ever meet him again, I wonder? Possibly ; but AAdiere ? In the Gold Room at Monte Carlo, or at the Central Criminal Court ? At Delmonico's, or at Sing Sing? Somewhat reluctantly I proceeded to follow my obliging conductor to a range of cells, familiarly dubbed by the authorities "Murderers' Roav." These cells were tenanted by the men condemned to death. I only took a fleeting vieAv of one — an Italian by the name of Balbo — who Avas in his shirtsleeves, and Avas gesticulating violently after the " altro " fashion made familiar to all English people by the description of Cavaletto in " Our Mutual Friend." Balbo had been cast for death for the murder of his Avife. To most English minds his guilt would seem to be palpable, and his crime an exceptionally ferocious and dastardly one ; but, since leaving NeAv York, I have read in IN THE TOMBS — AND OCT OF THEM. 263 the papers that Balbo's able and energetic counsel had succeeded in obtaining, on some purely technical point, a new trial for him. <»I read, furthermore, that he Avas " overjoyed at the news," and forthwith asked the condemned murderer in the next cell, a negro named Chastine Cox, for a light for his cigarette. When I saw Balbo he did not by any means look overjoyed. He looked the rather like a hyena, Avho, for once in a while, did not feel inclined to laugh, but was contenting himself by gnashing his teeth, and throwing his limbs about. The kind Italian priest, Avho had undertaken the task of administering ghostly comfort to Balbo, had fitted up for him in his cell a little altar, gay Avith scraps of lace and coloured ribbons, tapers, and artificial flowers. The doomed wretch, the gaolers told me, ap parently took great pleasure in "fixing" and unfixing this altar, and in lighting and extinguishing the candles — operations Avhich . he would repeat half-a-dozen times in the course of the day. It may be that he will have leisure to amuse himself with his toys, and to smoke, and to gesticulate in the " altro '' fashion for several months to come. It is not until the last motion to stay execution has failed, and the last appeal has been rejected, that the doomed murderer is Avatched night and day, as is the case in England. Then the sheriff places two of his deputies, who are relieved at stated intervals, at the cell-door ; and the convict is never out of official eyesight until he is led out into the quadrangle, to be hanged. Chastine Cox, the black assassin, would surely swing, they told me. I hurried away from "Murderers' Row," feeling very sick; nor shall I readily forget one miserable man who, when his cell-door Avas opened, flung himself face forward on his bed and lay there groaning in a muffled manner, horrible to hear. Is it merciful to allow these doomed creatures to smoke and to read illustrated newspapers and magazines and the like ? That is a subject to be debated, but this is not the place wherein to debate it. I only take note of what the practice is in American gaols; yet I do not remember that any special mention was made of these indul- 264 AMERICA REVISITED. gences at the last International Prison Congresses. The pro moter of these congresses, a philanthropic American, called Dr. Wines, died only the other clay. I hope that I shall never see " Murderers' Row " again, but I may make passing mention of the fact that a feAV days after I visited the Tombs the twelve men sentenced to death were " interviewed " seriatim by a zealous reporter of the New York Herald, Avho endeavoured to elicit from them their respective views as to the expediency of capital punishment, and the par ticular form of death which they would prefer, supposing that they admitted the punishment to be expedient. To speak by the card, there were only ten catechumens actually awaiting strangulation, as the sentence on tAvo of their number had been commuted to imprisonment for life just before the reporter arrived. Two more of the miserables refused point- blank to answer the questions put to them ; but the eight re maining Avere explicit enough. They were all dead against hanging. One man said that if he must needs be put to death he should like to be drowned, and another avowed a partiality for being shot ; a third wanted to be poisoned ; another suggested electricity, "or something scientific of that kind;" while yet another modestly hinted that he thought all the requirements of his case might be met if he were " sent to the mines." Their opinions as to the justifiability of their having shed the blood of their fellow-creatures was not taken. Curious to relate, the two murderers whose sentence had been commuted to life-long im prisonment were strongly in favour of the death punishment, and unanimous as to the appropriateness of the galloAvs as an. engine of execution. Murderers, they held, should be hanged " right aAvay," and very high indeed. The corridors of the Tombs are, to my thinking, somewhat overheated by stoves piled high with anthracite coal, a substance which gives out a dry heat, highly efficient in roasting malt in a kiln, but rather too poAverful, I should say, when used for the slow baking of prisoners. It was a great relief to emerge into IN THE TOMBS — AND OUT OF THEM. 265 the fresh. air again, and walk by the side of the benevolent Irish chief warder, who had plenty of stories to tell, and told them Avith miJch quiet humour. I declined to see the female side of the prison — surely there is no wretcheder sight in the world than a woman in a prison cell, and the women in the Tombs must be infinitely more appalling sights than the poor Colleen Bawn and Kathleen Mavourneen gone wrong — but I was intro duced to the prison matron, who had been in the service of the Tombs almost, if not quite, as long as the chief warder. She was a cheery old lady, and her attire was certainly more in harmony with the fashions of the year 1836 than with those of the year 1879. I should have liked to bring away a photograph of her truly remarkable bonnet. She was a very good old soul, I was told, indefatigably kind and humane to her dreadful charges, and was universally beloved and esteemed. There was a bland old gentleman, too, with a Avhite beard, philanthropically trotting about in connection with the Prisons Mission or the Prisoners' Aid Society. Finally the chief Avarcler took us to his garden, Avhere there Avas a vine trained against the wall, with a pigeon-cote amply stocked, and a pretty little pond bordered by turf and flowers. The chief spoke in terms of humorous regret about the disappearance of " a grand old frog," erst the delight and ornament of the Tombs garden, but who, in the course of the last fall, had eloped to realms unknown. Where is that frog now? Croaks he in the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia — which, by the Avay, is not by any means a dismal region — or is he going about the States, emulating the Frog Opera, and singing counter-tenor in the Pollywog Chorus ? I shook hands with the benevolent chief warder and bade him farewell. To my great joy I found that nothing had turned up against me while I .had been in the Tombs. The authorities had no warrant for my detention ; and by two o'clock in the afternoon I Avas standing in Centre-street as free as that " grand old frog" who, for reasons unknown, had shown the Tombs a clean pair of heels. I do not mean to go there again if I can help it. BUYERS EXAMINING SAMPLES OF COTTON. XIX. Prosperous Augusta. Augusta, Georgia, January 17. There is a river in Macedon and a river in Monmouth— we have Captain Fluellen's authority for that geographical fact— and, according to Messrs. Appleton's very lucid and comprehensive "General Guide to the United States and Canada," there is a city of Augusta in the State of Maine, another city by the same name in the State of Wisconsin, and yet a third bearing a similar designation in the State of Georgia. The Wisconsin Augusta, I am given to understand, is as yet only in the big-village stage of development. It is Avithin a feAv miles of a spot called PROSPEROUS AUGUSTA. 267 hy some old voyageur settlers Eau Claire— a pretty appellation corrupted by subsequent settlers (presumably of Hibernian sym- ,pathies)*into " O'Cleary." An analogous philological liberty has been taken elsewhere with Bois Bruld, which has been anglicised as " Bob Ruly." As for Augusta, the capital of the celebrated Liquor Law State, you in England must have heard a great deal about it during the last few Aveeks in connection with the Maine Election Troubles, ex-Governor Garcelon, Governor Lamson, General Chamberlain — and, for aught I can tell, the Capulets, the Montagues, the Guelphs, and the Ghibellines ; since, as a stranger and a pilgrim, the local politics of the State of Maine concern me no more than the parish affairs of St. Paul, Covent Garden, concern the Supreme Court of the United States. It is with Augusta, in the State of Georgia, that I have at present to deal. Let it be premised that Augusta is the third city in the State, and that its population exceeds thirty thousand ; that it is at the head of the navigation of the beauti ful Savannah river ; that it is a very busy and prosperous place, ¦enriched by divers important manufactories using the fine Avater- poAver afforded by the Augusta Canal, nine miles long, which brings the upper Avaters of the Savannah to the city at an elevation of 60ft. It is almost unnecessary to state that Augusta like wise possesses a handsome Masonic Temple, a building devoted to the Young Men's Christian Association, a commodious " Grand Opera House," two spacious and Avell-provided markets, and a beautifully picturesque cemetery. All, or nearly all, institutions are to be found in every town in the United States, even to the youngest. Stay ; I should add a number of admirably-conducted free schools, an orphan asylum. half a dozen banks, and as many fairly comfortable hotels. They are just a little " countrified," to me a very delightful •change. The guests at the table d'hdte made no scruple of talking to you without being introduced ; Avhereas, in the gigantic caravanserais in the large cities rigid taciturnity among 268 AMERICA REVISITED. strangers is the rule. Ere I had been twenty-four hours in Augusta I was on speaking terms with two Judges, a Notary Public, a fire-proof safe "drummer," several Colonels, and a " Fire Adjuster." * I am at the Planters', the general aspect of which bears out its name, for gentlemen in broad-brimmed, loAV-crowned hats almost rivalling the Mexican sombrero in amplitude of circum ference, abound in the hotel ; and their conversation is mainly * A " Fire Adjuster," is a gentleman employed by an Insurance Company, who is continually going to and fro one end of the United States to the other "adjusting" claims for losses by fire. The "adjustment" may possibly, in some few cases, take such a form as the following : " You claim fifty thousand dollars : supposing we say ten — which would you like best ? Ten thousand dollars, or ten years in the Penitentiary? " The "adjuster" whose acquaintance I had the pleasure to make at Augusta was one of the pleasantest, most intelligent, and most com panionable gentlemen that I met with during my tour. He hailed from Petersburg in Virginia, and was good enough to tell me that the citizens of that historic town of the Old Dominion thought it " right mean " that I had not come to see them. But I remembered that the citizens of Vicksburg, in the state of Mississippi, had expressed an opinion that I had been " rough on them. " by not putting in an ap pearance among them ; and that it was impossible to accept invitations from every body. A "drummer" is a commercial traveller; and of the quality of the fire proof safe drummer the following stanzas will afford a graphic illustration : — THE RIVAL DRUMMERS. A Legend of the Road. It was two rival drummers The merits that did blow Of safes were in St. Louis made And safes from Chicago. Thoy chanced upon a merchant Who fain a safe would buy, And in praise of their houses' wares The drummers twain did vie, Each striving to see which could construct The most colossal lie. Up spake the St. Louis drummer, ' ' Once a man a cat did take And locked the animal in a safe Of our superior make. " They made a bonfire round the safe With tar and kerosene, And for four-and-twenty hours it blazed With raging heat, I ween. ' •' The fire went out, the safe was cooled, And I will forfeit five Hundred good dollars if that cat Did not come out alive." Then mild upspake and answered him The Chicago safe agent : ' ' With our safe one day we did essay The same experiment. ' ' We placed the safe selected on Of coals a fiery bed, And pitch-pine we heaped in coal-oil steeped) Till the iron glowed bright red ; And in forty-eight hours we ope'd the safe, And, alas ! the cat was dead ! " " Was dead ? Aha ! " his rival cried, With a triumphant breath ; But the Chicago man replied : ' ' Yes, the cat was froze to death 1 " No word the St. Louis drummer spoke, But silent he stood and wan, While the Kansas merchant an order gave To the Chicago man. PROSPEROUS AUGUSTA. 269 GATHERING COTTON IN GEORGIA. connected with cotton. Of course I have visited the principal cotton mills ; and have been, physically, in a state of fluff and Hue ever since my arrival. At least half a dozen times a day, returning from expeditions in quest of cotton, I have been fain COTTON GIN. 270 AMERICA REVISITED. to deliver myself up to the tender mercies of the attendant who throughout the Union goes by the name of the " Brush Fiend." He is the American cousin of the ragged " red jacket " who on English racecourses hastens, Avhen you alight from your car riages, to brush you down, which feat he accomplishes with an ordinary implement made of bristles, indulging himself mean- Avhile Avith a cheerful hissing noise as though he were rubbing doAvn a horse. The Transatlantic Brush Fiend does not brush you "down." He brushes you "off;" and while he urticates you he utters a Ioav crooning murmur very much akin to that of the mosquito singing his song of triumph as he drinks your blood. The fiend uses, not a brush proper, but a kind of whisk PROSPEROUS AUGUSTA. 271 or short broom made of some dried grass or another. He not only urticates, he hurts. He touches up the nape of your neck and the15acks of your hands. The more you tell him to leave off the more furiously does he continue his virgal assaults ; and it is only when you assume a decided attitude and, looking the Brush Fiend fixedly between the eyes, tell him that you will " go for," strangle 'him if he does not hold his hand, that the unsworn tormentor desists. This demon haunts the entrance halls of hotels and restaurants, and especially barbers' shops. In the North, he is generally young, gaunt, and hungry-looking ; and it is rumoured that he and his brethren are secretly retained by the woollen manu facturers of Massachusetts and New Jersey to do their best to destroy the nap on gentlemen's coats, and otherwise disintegrate the substance of their vests and pantaloons, so as to force them to purchase fresh supplies of store clothes, thus stimulating the sartorial craft, and encouraging native industry in the production of textile fabrics. In the Cotton States the Brush Fiend is generally black. He is a very lictor, and belabours you un mercifully. When he is middle-aged I imagine him to have been a slave, and to be avenging himself on your body for the potential cowhidings of his youth. You are for the nonce Legree; and he is Uncle Tom, manumitted and possessing equal rights. And then I fancy a "carpet-bagger " in a corner, slily Avhispering to the sable imp that you OAve him arrears of wages dating from President Lincoln's Abolition Proclamation, and counselling him to lay the brush well on, and to get meal if he cannot get malt. In reality the black Brush Fiend in the South is, apart from his somewhat too vigorous " brushing off" exercitations, a civil and willing fellow enough, and is effusively grateful for a gift of five cents. Augusta is some four hundred and seventy miles further south than Richmond, but I made the journey from the old Confederate capital to the Cotton City purposely Avithout " laying over " or stopping on the way. Under certain circumstances of travel it is more desirable that your career should resemble that of the 272 AMERICA REVISITED. plummet than the pendulum. I remained nearly a fortnight in Richmond, and there I was treated Avith so much kindness, and I made so many friends, that I feel confident that I could have passed at least six of the very pleasantest of months in the State of Virginia alone. Please to remember that the Old Dominion is no "one- horse" State. Its divisions of Tidewater, Middle, Piedmont, Blue Ridge valley, and Appalachia comprise an area of 40,000 square miles. Its acreage is about twenty-seven millions, and the population so far back as 1870 was nearly a million and a quarter. It possesses all the requisites of a healthy region — an equable temperature, a rolling, Avell-drained, splendidly rivered country abounding in natural products. Even the stories of the un- FOX HUNTING IN VIRGINIA. PROSPEROUS AUGUSTA. 273 healthiness of the Great Dismal Swamp must be taken as mythic' since sea-going ships prefer to take in their Avater from Lake DrumHond, which is in the very middle of the swamp libellously hight " Dismal." The Virginians are hardy, robust, ruddy, and long-lived. 'They are mighty sportsmen and fox-hunters. The soil yields gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, granite, limestone, marl, plumbago manganese, brick, and fire clays, wheat, oats, buckwheat, Indian corn in profusion, fruits and vegetables in plenty ; and the Dominion is the native home of tobacco. Live stock of every kind is reared. The taxes on real and personal property are not one-eighth of the amount levied in and about New York City, and not above half the amount levied in newly-settled Nebraska; and farmers desirous of purchasing homesteads in Virginia can buy land there at a cheaper rate than they can purchase it out West ; and instead of bare prairie, can procure improved farms, with all the necessaries and comforts of life close at hand. This ancient State, to sum up, offers the fairest possible inducements to emigration to the people of the Old World seeking neAv homes, and to the people of Northern and Middle States seeking a milder climate and a richer soil, than they can find in their own parts. Writing more than tAvo hundred and fifty years ago Captain John Smith said of Virginia that " Heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation." Why ¦not abide six months in a country so enthusiastically lauded by the protege of Pocahontas ? I had a score of invitations to visit different districts in the State. I was promised fishing, duck shooting, fox and deer hunting — all kinds of rural delights. I was " wanted " at Staunton, at Norfolk, and at Farmville. The Richmond clubs vied with each other in showing me graceful and cordial hospitalhy. So I thought that under these circumstances the best thing that I could do was to quit the State of Virginia altogether, and to drop, plummet-wise, right through ' North and South Carolina into Georgia. Thus behold me in Augusta. Not lightly do I call her prosperous. The city is bustling, 274 AMERICA REVISITED. Avell-built, and well-organised. Its stores are amply stocked Avith the material comforts and luxuries of existence. It escaped A HUNTING PARTY IN VIRGINIA. direct occupation and devastation during the Civil War, and was neither raided, requisitioned, nor " burnt up." It is a great cotton mart. The railroads place it in direct communication with the adjoining South Carolina, and with the whole of Middle Georgia ; and the cotton collected from these districts is trans ported by rail to" Savannah for shipment. It is, moreover, an agricultural centre, like our own good and handsome old town of Maidstone in Kent ; and the farmers from all the country round ride or drive into Augusta to dispose of their produce, and to take back groceries and clothing from the well-stocked stores of the thriving place. The most noticeable feature in the railroad journey from Richmond Avas the gradual disappearance of winter, and the gentle induction of the traveller into a green and sunny land. It had been snowing pretty freely during one of the nights of IN THE SOUTH. PROSPEROUS AUGUSTA. 275 my stay in Richmond ; and, although the snow swiftly disap peared from the side Avalks, there was plenty of it on the roofs and in^he back-yards of the city when I left. So in the country. The soil round about Richmond is a rich loam, and the James River runs nearly as ruddily as the Stour does in autumn in our city of York. Thus the sno\v lingering in the ridges and declivities of the country side as surely suggested to the eye the icing of a plum cake as did the powdered head of Tim Linkin- Avater as portrayed by his affectionate spouse, nee La Creevy. But by the time Ave reached Danville, a town on the borders of North Carolina, the last vestiges of the mantle of winter had entirely disappeared. I can scarcely say that I Avoke up the next morning, because, being in a sleeping car, I failed to go to sleep ; but when the darkness of the night gave Avay to a most glorious sunrise, I found, looking from the outside platform of the car, on Avhich nobody is allowed to stand, and Avhere everybody persists from time to time in standing, that the whole aspect of the landscape bad been transformed, and that I Avas indeed in the South. Wherever the eye turned the 'horizon was closed by mantling forests of pine. The balsamic odour of the palm tree was Avafted to you as the train glided along ; some arboretic kindred beautiful feathery tree which has given to South Carolina her proud sobriquet of the " Palmetto State " began to assert itself ; and water-oak and aspen, gum and cedar, black Avalnut and persimmon, hickory and maple, with a host more trees than my scant sylvan vocabulary can enumerate, made the land glorious. Hoav you lament that your early rural education has been neglected when you are journeying in a strange land ! An English country boy, trained as William Cobbett was, in the fields and among the hedgerows, could have given a name to scores of trees and shrubs that were to me only vividly green, or delicately pink, or brightly yellow in their foliage. The little bumpkin Avould have been wrong now and again in his guess work — the kinsfolk of the palmettos, I apprehend, Avould have T 2 276 AMERICA REVISITED. A PALM TREE AVENUE, SOUTH CAROLINA. puzzled him — but in the main he Avould have construed correctly enough this glorious page from Nature's album ; for here, in almost every tree and shrub, wholly strange to him, he might have found some British analogue. There are the cries ot strange birds, too. The English farmer's boy would have likened them to the songs of his own home-birds — birds the melody of not one in a dozen of which is familiar to one whose business it has been to journey from city to city and to mark the ways of men. There Avas not much to mark in that direction, scudding on a railroad track, through the Carolinas, North and South. Little villages with pretentiously Avide streets bordered by little wooden shanties, little pepperbox cupolaed churches, oxen not much bigger than the Alderney breed, and here and there a contemplative pig desperately searching for something edible from a heap of fallen leaves, and sloAvly grunting, so it seemed " root hog, or die " as he searched. So we came in the early morning to a station hard by Aiken, a sandy and normally barren place on a plateau some 700 feet above the sea level, PROSPEROUS AUGUSTA. 277 but which American ingenuity and enterprise have converted into a^charming health resort, which of late years has become very fashionable. Careful culture and the liberal use of fertilisers has studded the toAvn Avith gardens well-nigh as delicious as those which surround the houses of the foreign merchants at Tangiers. Thickets of yellow jasmine, rose bushes, olive, fig, bamboo, and Spanish bayonet are everywhere visible at Aiken ; and Ioav bush and surface flowers make her pathways gay. The plateau on Avhich the pretty place stands is encircled by a thick belt of dark pines — pines such as Turner loved to paint in his Italian pictures ; but between the trees and the garden-studded toAvn there is a waste of sand as white as the sand of the seashore. I confess that by this time I Avas possessed by a very unromantic feeling: that, indeed, of a most ferocious hunger. Leaving Richmond shortly before noon on the previous day Ave had had no dinner. At about nine at night, and at a place called Greensborough, there had been provided, at a charge of fifty cents, per head, a supper, Avhich I have not the slightest doubt was very much relished by those who like South Carolinian suppers. To me it was, from the toughness of the meat and the badness of the cooking, simply uneatable ; but I managed to sup on some buckAvheat cakes and maple syrup. There was nothing to drink but tea and coffee. At least I saw nothing stronger than those beverages, and some very bad water ; and I was ashamed to ask for a glass of beer or half a bottle of claret, lest I should be told that the supper room was not a "bar." Perhaps the "Local Option Law" — a laAV after Sir Wilfrid Lawson's OAvn heart —prevails in this section of the Carolinas. In any case, I am rapidly arriving at the conclusion that the Americans have become a nation of total abstainers, or that they are the profoundest hypocrites that the sun ever shone upon. I hope that the former assumption is really the correct one ; and yet scarcely a day passes without my being desperately perplexed to decide Avhether Americans of the 278 AMERICA REVISITED. better classes really abstain, or only pretend to abstain from strong drink. When you go out to dinner you see hock, sherry, champagne, madeira, claret, and burgundy on the table; and after dinner the servant brings round the liqueurs. Hosts pride themselves, Avith justice, on the choice vintages in their cellars; and even " Thirty-four " and " Fifty-seven " ports are occa sionally produced. But in the hotels, from the grandest to the humblest, iced Avater, and nothing but iced Avater, is the almost invariable rule at meal times. Noav and again a guest may ask for a glass of milk ; but that is all. After a Avhile the foreigner accustomed to drink a little Avine, for the reasons mentioned by St. Paul, Avith his lunch or dinner, ceases for very shame to ask for anything to drink of a fermented nature. Is the end of all this temperance or hypocrisy ? The exces sive costliness of European Avines may of course have something to do with this Avidely-spread abstemiousness ; but it has not everything to do Avith it. The beer of the country is good, and it should be cheap. Yet not one guest in tAventy drinks so much as half a pint of lager beer Avith his dinner. I have some times thought that this excessiA'e temperance at meal times is due to the Avonderful courtesy shown by the Americans towards the fair sex. They very rarely even smoke in the presence of ladies ; and, as the ladies are really and unmistakably, as a rule, total abstainers, and look on our drinking customs Avith sheer horror, it may be that an American gentleman thinks it un- gallant to drink anything stronger than water in a lady's com pany. Of course I am not speaking of New York in this regard. New York is Cosmopolis ; and a genuine New Yorker Avith plenty of money would drink pearls dissolved in nectar or rubies boiled in ambrosia if Mr. Delmonico kept those articles on hand. We did manage to obtain some breakfast at Graniteville, about eleven miles from Augusta, and one of the prettiest little village toAvns that, in the course of many thousands of miles of varied travel, I have gazed upon. Graniteville is said to be a PROSPEROUS AUGUSTA. 279 busy and prosperous place, containing a number of granite works and cotton mills, giving employment to several hundred workpeople, who constitute the bulk of the population ; but I prized it mainly for the exquisite prettiness of the surrounding scenery, and most of all for the circumstance that at a quiet little hotel, closely resembling an English Avayside inn, we breakfasted simply but copiously on excellently grilled chicken, ham and eggs, mutton chops, and a pleasing variety of hot cakes and AArhat we term " fancy " bread. There Avere unstinted supplies of new milk, and the butter was capital. There Avas plenty of hominy for those who liked that farinaceous food, and the charge — the usual one of fifty cents — Avas certainly not too much for an ample, well-cooked, and wholesome meal. Another half hour's ride brought us to Prosperous Augusta. MONUMENT TO THE CONFEDERATE DEAD, BROAD-STREET, AUGUSTA. XX. The City of many Coaa's. Augusta, Georgia, January 19. I was reading, the other day, of a traveller very far indeed out West, who arrived at a nascent city — say Ursaminorville — and who was received in the most hospitable manner by the leading authority of the place : its Judge, liquor dealer, or grocery-store keeper, possibly. This gentleman undertook to drive the traveller around to see the principal sites of Ursaminorville. During a progress of many miles, as it seemed, the tourist beheld THE CITY OF MANY COWS. 281 nothing but spacious avenues, plenteously " snagged," pierced through the heart of the primeval forest. At length they reached a kind of rond point, where several of the spacious avenues converged. At this conjuncture a huge wild cat sprung at the throat of one of the carriage horses ; while the flank of the other was fastened upon by a voracious Avolf ; and, in the dusky covert, several grizzly bears were visible and audible, huskily clamouring. The Judge rose in his waggon ; indicated Avith his. whip, divers points of the compass ; particularised, " the Post Office, the Corn Exchange, the Board of Trade, the National Bank, Grand Opera House, Insane Asylum, the Young Men's Christian Association, Masonic Temple, Washington's monu ment, and the City Prison ; " and concluded, with pardonable pride, "You are now, sir, in the very Centre of our City." Mind I read this in an American, and not in a British, and consequently calumnious newspaper. Now, Augusta, in the State of Georgia, has already obtained all that Ursaminorville probably will have in the course of the next twenty years or so — perhaps much sooner ; yet gazing on the astonishingly broad thoroughfares of this prosperous, cheerful,, comely, cotton-growing town, I could not help wondering at and admiring the prescience of its founders, Avho foresaw that in America the most straggling of hamlets Avere bound to become, not in the due course of time, but in a phenomenally brief efflux thereof, great and important centres of population. Such prescience Avas denied the original settlers of NeAv Amsterdam, of Boston and Philadelphia, Avho, timidly following European models, built their streets narroAv and close together. The modern American does not precisely build for posterity, since he is quite content, in the first instance, to run up a humble wooden shanty for his habitation : leaving it to his descendants to erect six-storeyed mansions of marble, brick, or iron, with mansard roofs ; but he has thus much regard for the interests of posterity in ordaining that it shall not be crowded into those dark and tortuous courts and alleys Avhich are the opprobrium of the 282 AMERICA REVISITED. Old World ; so he lays out the streets and avenues of the village: Avhich is to become a city on a scale of vastness which Sesostris, could he " unmummify " himself, might admire, and which Semira- mis might envy. The hanging gardens of Babylon were, no, doubt, very fine things in their way ; but the apparently immeasurably broad, incalculably prolonged, and faultlessly straight, well graded, well lit, and horse-car traversed thoroughfares of a youth ful American city, Avhich thoroughfares need only a decent pave ment and a continuity of habitable residences to make them mag nificent, present to my mind a far more interesting feature of civilization than do any descriptions of the monuments of anti quity that I have read. The structures of old Egypt and Nineveh, and Persepolis, seem to have been the work of a race of giants Avho came doAvn from some unknown planet, their draw ings and elevations and scantlings all prepared, their tools all ready : whereas an infant American city reminds me of some Kindergarten for juvenile Colossi. They are but babies just at present. So far as architecture goes they can only make mudr pies ; but in a very short space of time, growing gigantic them selves, they will proceed to erect cities the like of Avhich Avould rather have astonished the Titans. Augusta can scarcely be called a baby city : it is athletically adolescent ; but it is a very long Avay off from being middle-aged; and, looking at its capacity for development, Avhat it will be like in another fifty years simply baffles calculation, and puts conjecture to the rout. Destitute of a single structure which could by any elasticity of terminology be termed venerable or romantic, the chief thoroughfare of Augusta — Broad-street — is nevertheless one of the most picturesque streets that I have ever come across. To begin Avith, it is one hundred and sixty feet wide and two miles long. Think of that, you who are disposed to think the Avenue de rOpera in Paris grandly imposing or our own Regent-street a somewhat handsome thing in thoroughfares. The side-Avalks of Broad-street, Augusta, are flanked Avith splendid old trees;. THE CITY OF MANY COWS. 283 and, moreover, nearly all the facades of the stores have projec tions of timber or canvas, supported on posts, and serving as arcade^ These are certainly not so architecturally pleasing as the Procuratie in St. Mark's Place, Venice ; but they supply plenty of shade, and that is the grand desideratum in the Sunny- South, both in summer and in winter. Here, in mid-January, the weather is as Avarm and bright as it Avould be in a well- behaved English June, and as it should be, at this season, at Nice. But between the climate of this favoured region and that of the Riviera there is the important difference, that in Nice, in winter, hoAvever warm and even sultry it may be in the sun, it is generally bitterly cold in the shade ; and, again, you are con tinually in peril of the lung-piercing and throat-cutting mistral. At Augusta it is genially but not oppressively warm in the January sunshine ; but the shade is cool rather than bitter ; and there is no mistral. In the mid-watch of the night and at early morn it is decidedly chilly. It is prudent at all times to wear 'woollen clothing. The same rule obtains in that abode of flowers and perpetual spring, the Valley of Mexico, where there are nine months of early June to one of April and two of September ; but at noon-tide in Augusta the sun is so powerful that you will find most of the jalousies of the windows closed, while in the more shaded stories the windows are all open, and the clerks are at Avork in their shirt-sleeves. The foot-pavement — in American, " side-walk " — of Broad- street is as wide as that of the Boulevard des Italiens, and of the old Brighton material and pattern — that is to say, red tiles set hening-bone-wise : an excellent pavement in a place where streets seem to be seldom if ever cleaned. I have not yet visited Boston this journey, and consequently am unable to pronounce how the " Hub of the Universe " fares in the matter of street- cleansing ; but in all the other American cities that I have yet explored, such cleansing appears to me to be rather of a potential than of a palpably existent nature. In the very fairest weather an American street rarely fails to wear an aspect of untidiness, 284 AMERICA REVISITED. extremely distressing to the rate-and-tax-paying eye. The mud1 may have dried up, and the merciless Avind may have relented at last, and finally scattered the nauseous contents of the ash-barrels: into the Infinities ; but the pavement is never what we call "tidy." The side-Avalk is always littered with shavings, wisps. of straw, bits of orange-peel, and especially with scraps of paper.. What are those scraps ? Protested cheques, torn-up notes on< " Avild-cat " banks, circulars announcing the proximate arrival of the " Original Midgets, General Mite and Major Atom ; " or advertisements of Professor Dulcamara's Lever Regulator, or Mrs. Dr. Quackenbosh's Non- Alcoholic Stomach Bitters ? Did you ever ramble (shuddering and pressing a handkerchief to your face) over a recently-fought field of battle ? The dead have been buried ; the underwood, set on fire, has been charred to ashes ; the neighbouring peasantry have pilfered all the broken arms- and accoutrements lying about; but there always remains an inconceivably voluminous litter of scraps of paper. Upland and lowland, hedge and ditch, ridge and furrow are full of these scraps. What are they? Regimental "states" non-commis sioned officers' memoranda ; letters to the dead from sweethearts- and wives, mothers and sisters — letters full of infinite love and tenderness, but disdainfully flung aAvay by those whose business- it was to rifle the bodies of the slain, and to get over that little business Avith promptitude and despatch. Less moving, per chance, are the paper fragments so lavishly strewn over an American side-Avalk ; but still I cannot help thinking that it might be made part of the shopboy's duty to sweep up the pave ment a little, after he has sanded the sugar and watered the rum, and before he joins the family at prayers. "HaAre some wine? — there ain't any," such averment, if I remember aright, is the hospitable invite of the Dormouse to the Hatter, in " Alice in Wonderland." Of the pavement roadway in Broad-street, Augusta, it may be simply said that there "ain't any." The hundred and forty feet more or less of thoroughfare — allowing the balance for the side-Avalk — are merely a hundred THE CITY OF MANY COWS. 285 feet of fine dust several inches deep, which, from the fact of the toad being traversed here and there by narrow causeways of timber^I conjecture, must be converted during the rainy season into a hundred and forty feet in width, and two miles in length, of very rich mud. The depth of the mud I do not venture to calculate ; but I surmise that it would be Malebolgian. The dust does not trouble us much now, as the morning and afternoon breezes are of the very gentlest character ; and the horses and mules seem on the Avhole to prefer a soft track to a hard one. So is it Avith the pigs, which roam about in the freest and most independent manner imaginable. They are either the most idiotic or the hopefullest pigs ever farrowed ; for they are continually rioting in the dusty depths of Broad-street, as though they expected to find provand there. "The actions of the just," the poet tells us, " smell sweet and blossom in the dust ; " but hopeful ness is enlarged to the verge of fatuity when a pig expects to find nourishment in the powdery waste of the Augustan thoroughfares. The coavs have a much better time of it. Scattered about this village-city are plenteous plots of greensward, real green turf, as verdant as that of Mecklenburgh- square, London, W.C. — I live there ° — which is saying a great deal ; and wherever you find a piece of greenery in Augusta, there also do you find a cow. I never saw so many cows in my life — at least in the streets of an inhabited town. The clean village of Brock, in * Why should a man he ashamed to say where he lives 1 There is a story told •of old Mr. Arnold, the original proprietor of the English Opera House or Lyceum Theatre, that once upon a time he received notice that a newly married Royal Duke and Duchess purposed to visit his house. Mr. Arnold determined, in the first place, that the National Anthem should be sung t>y the entire company ; and next that a new verse should he added especially in the Duke and Duchess's honour. But who was to write the stanza required ? The " stock author " was not to be found ; the leader of the orchestra did not see his way to composing rhymes ; and poetry was not in the master carpenter's line. Eventually old Mr. Arnold determined to write the required lines himself. They ran thus— " Heav'n bless the Happy Pair, May they all blessings share, Twenty-Four Golden Square. God save the King ! " Mr. Arnold lived there. 286 AMERICA REVISITED. Holland, is great in cows, but the patient animals are in the byre, they do not " loaf around promiscuously." There were formerly so many coavs in the ruined Roman Forum, that it Avas knoAvn as the Campo Vacano. There are cows enough in the market towns of Russian Poland. I remember being " sair owerhanded Avi' coos," as a Scot might say, four years ago, at a place called Brets-Litovsk, but every street in Augusta is a cow-pasture ; and you are driven at last to look at the names over the shop-fronts, expecting that business must be wholly carried on by Messrs. Cuyp, Paul Potter, Vorbeckhoeven, T. S. Cooper, R.A., and other eminent artists in cows. A gentleman was kind enough to take me over the great cotton-weaving mills here. Upon my word, there were a couple of cows tranquilly feeding in the compound or yard before the factor}^. They stand about the pavement, and look with mild eyes into the shop - windows. They are in the old graveyard ; and how authority keeps the cows out of the ceme tery I have not the faintest idea. Fortu nately, the arrivals and departures of railroad trains during the day are few and far between. Otherwise, considering that the raihvay track, quite unfenced and unguarded, crosses Broad- street at its busiest part, the collision of a steam engine with ON THE COW-CATCHER. THE CITY OF MANY COWS. 287 Augusta's Horned Pride would be certainly "bad for the coo," the locomotive cow-catcher notwithstanding. When the shades of evening are gathering around Augusta, and the sunset of crimson and gold is slowly yielding to the dun purple mantle of the night, discreet females, usually of mature age, and armed with switches of hickory, pervade the city in search, each dame, of her particular cow or cows. The animals have had leg bail during the sunny clay ; and they Avith quiet docility obey the behests of the old ladies Avith the hickory switches, and meekly trot rather than they are sternly driven home, there to yield their lacteal tribute and so to supper. An innocent life. Plenty of fodder. The consciousness that you have done your duty to society by giving it an ample supply of nice new milk, and there an end. No log to roll, no axe to grind, no pipe to lay, no Avire to pull, no party to " bulldose," no editorials to Avrite, no editors to shoot, no place to hunt, no vote to cast. If there be a metempsychosis, I think that I should like to be a Coav, at Augusta, in the State of Georgia. Goats, also, are plentiful in the streets of this Arcadian city , and of cocks and hens and turkeys — the latter confined, Avith plenty of elbow room, in coops — the name is legion. The bullocks in the drays are as a rule diminutive ; but the mules l§3&: BULLOCK CART, AUGUSTA. •288 AMERICA REVISITED. abound and are surprisingly strong and fine. It is a curious fact that wherever mules are very plenteous and handsome the •donkey rarely appears in public. The donkeys here keep them selves very much to themselves. They are jealous, perhaps, of the mules. The horseflesh is abundant, and of an excellent type. All the Southerners are "horsey" in their tendencies; .and I am right sorry to have missed the Augusta races, which took place a day or two before 1 came hither, and Avhich Avere -attended, I hear, by all the rank, fashion, and sportsmanship of the country-side. As a compensation, driving to the Sandhills -and the beautiful suburb of Summerville — of course the demon •driver brought us home by the inevitable cemetery — I saw some very remarkable trotting horses, one a lovely bright bay, which went, it may almost without exaggeration be said, like the wind. There is apparently no local law against furious driving ; and, besides, an American trotter does not require to be driven furiously. He is the most willing of four-footed crea tures, and steps out gaily, of his own accord. The gentlemen of Augusta are also very fond of riding; but at the saddlers' shops I noticed scarcely any saddles of English make. Those most in use are first the " M'Clellan " saddle, which is a modification of the Mexican, and next the down right old-fashioned Mexican saddle itself, with its slipper stirrups, high crupper, and projection from the pommel, round Avhich to wind the lasso. The flaps of this saddle are curiously ¦embroidered and the seat is of wood, covered Avith raw hide, ROLLING THE RACE-TRACK. THE CITY OF MANY COWS. 28'J and cleft in the middle, so as not to gall the backbone of the horse. This Mexican apparatus is only the old Andalusian saddhjj plus the projection for the lasso, and the Spanish is only a survival of the old Moorish saddle. One more sight to be seen in Augusta the Prosperous, ere, plummet-like, I drop doAvn another six or seven hundred miles South. In the very centre of Broad-street stands the recently- erected Monument to the Confederate Dead. It is an obelisk supported on columns, of pure AA'hite marble, eighty feet in height, surmounted by the statue of a Confederate Soldier, and Avith four portrait effigies, including those of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, at the angles of the pedestal. The simple and touching inscription recites that this monument Avas erected by the Ladies of the Memorial Association, to those who fell for the Honour of Georgia, for the Rights of the States, for the Liberty of the People, and for the Principles of the Union, as handed down to his Children by the Father of a Common Country. Is there not a monument on our Drummossie Moor to the gallant Jacobites who fell at Culloden ? XXI. Pork and Pantomime in the South. Augusta, January 20. Life in Augusta can scarcely be called deliriously gay. It is not altogether dull ; for the humours of the negroes, their street- corner songs and dances, their whimsical squabbles— in which they freely interchange " dam black nigga" and "Avoolly headed cuss" as terms of disparagement— and their occasional up-and- down fights, in which heads and feet play a much more con spicuous part than do clenched fists, give a recurring fillip to the monotony of existence; stilly it must be frankly OAvned, the Augustan curriculum lacks variety. You grow tired at last of the contemplation of the innumerable coavs. There was a grand PORK AND PANTOMIME IN THE SOUTH. 291 7*rZii stampede of mules this morning, in Broad-street, Avhich for about half an hour caused some pleasurable excitement ; but, when the fugitive animals, after a vast expenditure of shrieking, arms-Avaving, and av hip-cracking, had been captured by the mounted negro stockdrivers— whose dexterity in the saddle might be envied alike by Mexican arrieros and Newmarket stable boys — Broad - street subsided into its usual condition. The tramway car pursued its placidly jingling course ; the country Avains continued to discharge their loads of produce at the doors of the wholesale stores ; the sounds of clucking, hissing, and gobbling were audible from the coops full of foAvls and geese and turkeys ; and things, on the whole, went on as usual. Some mild amusement might, perhaps, be derived from watch ing the (so it seems) incessant delivery of pork at the provision stores. Whether the pigs have been killed and packed in the neighbourhood, or whether the meat has come by rail . from ¦Chicago or Cincinnati, I know not ; but Augusta is none the less a huge emporium for swine's flesh in a semi-cured state. I say semi-cured, for the meat appears neither in the guise of our pickled or " tubbed " pork, nor in that of Avell-cured ham or bacon. V 2 292 AMERICA REVISITED. It looks as though it had been only roughly salted ; and, from the "thud" it makes when it is flung from the wain on to the pavement, it should be "as hard as nails." Pelions upon Ossas of sides and legs of swine rise on the pavement ; and, Avhen you consider this prodigious mass of hog's flesh in conjunction Avith A STAMPEDE OF 11ULES. the granaries overflowing with corn, buckAvheat, and a dozen varieties of cereals and pulse, the use of Avhich is to us almost unknown, you begin to understand Avhat important factors " hog and hominy " are in the economy of Southern life. Rice also plays an important part in the dietary of the labouring classes. The green vegetables — the cabbages ex cepted— are very poor; and I regret that I have not been able PORK AND PANTOMIME IN THE SOUTH. 293 to ask any medical man in Augusta Avhat effect, deleterious or otherwise, a diet Avhich seems to be composed mainly of salted meat Ifhd farinaceous food may have on the health of the people. Oysters are not nearly so plentiful as in the North— to be sure, wc are a hundred and forty miles from the sea ; and the bill of fare at the Planters' Hotel does not always comprise fish. Very large and new oranges are five cents or tAvopence halfpenny apiece. There is a great Avealth of less choice oranges, hard, heavy, broAvn of skin as ribstone pippins, full of juice, but not sweet, and Avithout perfume. They tell me that even doAvn in Florida — the State par excellence for oranges — I shall find the golden fruit comparatively scarce and costly — the Floridan Hesperides being systematically despoiled for exportation of the fruit to the North ; and in view of this 1 cannot help repeating that which I have said over and over again in print, but which my countrymen are apt to forget, that there is no country in the world, out of Spain and Cuba, where the Avholesome and delicious fruit is so abundant and so cheap as in that England Avhich, neither for love nor money, can grow an orange for herself in the open. We are not half grateful enough for our imported plenitude of oranges at home ; and that is the long and the short of the matter. I have been riding round about Augusta in the most ramshackle of imaginable barouches, drawn by a pair of splendidly - matched horses, and driven by a negro coachman, amiable, talkative, well-informed, and in rags. His hat, previous to its having formed the headgear of a scarecrow, seems to have been built on the precise model of the memorable " tile " in which, more than forty years ago, at the Surrey Theatre, I beheld Mr. T. D. Rice wheel about and turn about and jump Jim Crow. 294 AMERICA REVISITED. Pardon my iteration if I dwell, once and once again, on the tattered condition of the negro in the South. I remember, many years ago, freshly arriving at Naples, being asked by an English lady of great practical common sense Avhat Avas the population of the Magna-Grsecian city. So many hundred thousand, I replied. " And not one perfect pair of pantaloons," thoughtfully observed the practical lady. The Via di Toledo and the Chiaja assuredly do not shine in the integrity of the nether garments of the Southern Italian people at large. But a Neapolitan lazzarone is a Poole-clad " swell," a " Crutch and Toothpick " exquisite, in comparison Avith a Southern negro. Not only his pantaloons but his coat and his vest — if he have any vest — are phenomena of tatters. And let me in pure candour here remark that the negro's shreds and patches must not be taken as unerring proof of his poverty. Large numbers of black and coloured people hereabout, I am told, are doing extremely Avell : not only as porters, warehousemen, grooms, aud stock- drivers, dealers in tin Avare, and so forth, in the city, but as small farmers in the outlying country districts. They are PORK AND PANTOMIME IN THE SOUTH. 293 gradually enriching themselves by spade husbandry, or by raising. small crops of cotton. It is true that in the great cotton mills in Augusta, Avhere excellent sheetings and shirtings are Avoven for exportation to Africa and even to England, the sixteen hundred and fifty hands, male and female, employed, are all white. I Avas told that the negro, while excellent as a field hand, a market gardener, a horsetender, and even as a Avorkman vdiere nothing but " pulley- hauling," fetching or carrying, or striking was required, as in forges, smelting Avorks, cooperages, tobacco factories, and the like, Avas next door to useless as a machinist. His intellect as yet does not seem to have risen to the capacity of taking care or "minding" the different portions of complex machinery; Avhereas " minding " is the first thing requisite in a factory operative, and a white girl-child of thirteen is, as a rule, found more competent in "taking care" of the section of machinery at which she is posted than a negro man of forty. But, on the other hand, the coloured people, who devote themselves to such modes of industry as suit their existent intellectual calibre, thrive, and thrive Avondrously, all things considered. Has the tariff anything to do with the Avretchedness of their raiment ? I cannot help thinking so ; for it is by no means uncommon to find a negro, whose rags would be disdainfully rejected by the most destitute applicant at the door of an English casual Avard, in possession of a substantial silver Avatch and chain. The coloured Avomen and girls, too, rejoice in gold rings— two or three on each hand sometimes — and in gold, or ostensibly gold, earrings and brooches. In general they are far better dressed than the men ; as the North-Eastern factories turn out large quantities of gaudily-patterned and comparatively cheap articles of feminine Avear. It is in good cheap Avoollen stuffs, moleskins, corduroys, velveteens, and other articles of apparel fit for mechanics and Avorking men that the deficiency is most lamentably apparent; and shabbiness in apparel is visible on this continent to a greater extent, and in a more highly ascend- 290 AMERICA REVISITED. LOST IN ADMIRATION. ing scale, than in any other country in which I have travelled. Solomon in all his glory could scarcely be arrayed more gorge ously than is a Avealthy young American in one of the great cities. The ladies of fashion are so many Queens of Sheba in their raiment ; but the m-eat mass of the American! people, male and female, are very poorly clad. After this assertion you are quite at liberty to throw Seven Dials in my teeth, and to reproach me Avith the rags and dirt of Drury-lane. I grant the impeachment, "I acknoAvledge the coin ; " but I unhesitatingly maintain that an English clerk, or shop assistant, or respectable me chanic Avith thirty shillings a week, dresses thrice as well as does an American Avith double that amount of wages; and that an English servant girl on her "clay out" can afford to wear a dress, a bonnet, a jacket, boots, " fal-lals," and kid gloves, which an American young lady three grades above our housemaids in social status cannot afford to Avear. I repeat that which I may have said over and over again, that the home manufactured textile fabrics Avhen made up into garments look "sleezy." If the tariff have anything to do with this, I say that a tariff which, under the pretext of encouraging native manufactures, keeps an intelligent and industrious people meanly and shabbily clad, deliberately retards the progress of civilization ; and that, besides, such a tariff strikes directly at the root of those democratic institutions AAdiich are so highly and so deservedly prized by the Americans ; for how can there be thorough equality in a country Avhere only the very rich are able PORK AND PANTOMIME IN THE SOUTH. 297 toAvear those handsome and comely garments Avhich in a country of Free Trade can be avoiti by all but the idle, the improvident,. and the* profligate ? Having exhausted the drives about Augusta, the pleasant excursions to Summerville and the Sandhills, and having paid a visit to some very handsome nursery gardens rich in avenues of the beauteous magnolia, and in the greenhouses of which flourish the richest varieties of tropicial vegetation — bananas, palmettos, bamboo, Jerusalem cherries as large as tomatoes, and cacti innumerable — I thought that I might appropriately bring my visit to Augusta to a close by going to the play. The City of Many Cows boasts a Grand Opera House. So, it may be hinted, do most American "cities" or towns, where the popula tion exceeds six or seven thousand. Whether the Americans- have any decided taste for the legitimate drama, properly so called, is a question Avhich, I heartily rejoice to say, I am not called upon to discuss in this place ; but a liking for theatrical amusements they indubitably have, and against indulgence in such amusements there does not appear to be any widely-spread prejudice, religious or otherwise. Short as has been the time Avhich I have passed in this country, and Avidely as I have mingled with different classes in the community, I have yet to make acquaintaince Avith the " Serious Classes," as Ave under stand those classes to be from an Exeter Hall point of vieAv ; and people who would shudder to think of missing attendance at church on Sunday seem to see no harm in going to the play on Saturday evening. The Augusta Grand Opera House is a pretty little salle, about as large as our Olympic, but not seating, I should say, as many spectators as does the time-honoured house in Wych- street. The pit or " parquet," of Avhich the incline is very steep, is roomy, and filled with comfortable fauteuils Avith re versible seats. There is a dress circle Avith plenty of elboAv room, and where full dress is not required — a very sensible rule, and one that obtains in the majority of American theatres. The- 298 AMERICA REVISITED. price of admission to the parquet and to the dress circle was the same, and, considering that the theatre Avas a country one, it Avas high — a dollar. Above Avas a spacious gallery, admission to which was fifty cents, or two shillings. This part of the auditorium Avas largely filled by ragged negroes, and the coloured folk are, I am given to understand, great playgoers. I am not aAvare Avhether the institution which by some people in England is denounced as a curse, and by others hailed as a boon to the poor — the Tally Trade — exists in the United States, but, granting the existence of an honest tallyman in the State of Georgia, a negro might very easily purchase the fee simple of a decent coat and appendages to match by pa}dng two shillings a Aveek to the man with the tally. To be sure, he would have to forego his favourite amusement of going to the pky. The decorations of the Grand Opera House of Augusta do not call for any detailed criticism on my part ; since scarcely any attempt had been made to decorate the interior at all. The act drop Avas a ludicrously vile daub, and the scenery, generally, was as bad. The performance was that of " Tony Denier's Pantomime Troupe," and the pantomime itself was the "famous trick entertainment," knoAvn as "Humpty Dumpty." The story of the " opening," so far as I could make it out, had nothing whatever to do Avith the corpulent but infirm hero of nursery legend, who sat on a Avail, and had so great a fall therefrom, that all the King's horses and all the King's men were inade quate to set Humpty Dumpty up again. The hero of the Augusta pantomime seemed to be a kind of village pickle or scapegrace, perpetually indulging in mischievous horseplay Avith an ancient farmer, the father of a lovely daughter, in a yellow pinafore and cream-coloured silk tights, and whose hand was sought by a sprightly youth in a broad-brimmed hat, and a tail coat so much too long and too large for his slim little figure that the garment seemed to have been borrowed from Mr. Jack Daw- kins, the Artful Dodger, and then to have been dyed a pale pink. PORK AND PANTOMIME IN THE SOUTH. 299 The "lines" of the old Italian pantomime, Avith its Arlecchino, Colombina, Gracioso, and Gerontio, appeared to have been closely*followed, or in greater probability the entire scenario had been copied from some old piece of buffoonery erst the Parisian Funambules. There Avas a fairy — a pretty little maiden of some ten summers — who effected the transformation, Avhen, of course, the village pickle became CloAvn, the old farmer Panta loon, the slim little fellow in the Artful Dodger's coat dyed pink Harlequin, and the young lady in the yellow pinafore and the cream-coloured tights Columbine. The clown, Mr. G. H. Adams, otherwise " Grimaldi," was an exceedingly funny one. He Avas a Avondrous dancer on stilts ; and from certain peculi arities in his gait — you knoAv the " outside edge " Avalk, and the habit of looking far up and Avide around Avhile Avalking — I am perhaps not altogether wrong in conjecturing that " Grimaldi " had smelt sawdust in early youth, that he had been acquainted Avith the Ring, and that the sounds of "Houp! la!" and the aspect of fair equestriennes careering on barebacked steeds, or bound ing through hoops covered Avith tissue paper, Avere not Avholly unfamiliar to him. However, he made us all laugh, which was something; and he made the tiny Augusta children, Avho formed fully two-thirds of the audience, positively shriek Avith delight : Avhich was a great deal more. He had merely smeared his entire head, face, and neck with white paint, wearing neither crimson half-moons on his cheek nor a cock's comb on his pate ; in fact, he was made up much more like a French Pierrot than an English cloAvn, and this gave him somewhat of a ghastly appearance. There Avas scarcely anything about the performance to remind one of an English pantomime, save in the intermittent appearance of the inevitable policeman, Avho neve^ strode about the stage without smiting somebody with his truncheon : a joke Avhich seemed to be highly relished by the audience. And stay, there was a British Grenadier in an amazingly dirty tunic, which had once been crimson, garnished with faded gold lace, and •300 AMERICA REVISITED. wearing a prodigious bearskin, Avhose principal business it Avas. to run away in dire perturbation Avhenever he was pelted with pea nuts by a small Yankee boy. And, stay yet again. In the middle of the performance the Columbine, temporarily dispensing with her skirts, came on in trunk hose— a somewhat scanty allowance of trunks to a lavish quantity of hose-made up after the manner of the " Gold Girl," and danced the Skipping Rope dance. Horror ! Ah ! Mr. James M'Neil Whistler, the mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small. There is a Nemesis in Art, even if you have to come so far as Augusta m Georgia to find her. VIEW OF ATLANTA. XXII. Arrogant Atlanta. Atlanta, Georgia, Jan. 21. Just prior to quitting the City of Many Cows, intent study of my " Appleton" convinced me that it Avas not precisely prac ticable to drop " like a plummet " from Augusta, southward. Such a course would have brought me out at Key West, among the Florida Reefs : — a place which I should very much like to visit for the sake of its manufactories of cigars, which in fineness of flavour are beginning to rival the famous puros of Havanna.0 But there is no railroad to Key West, nor, indeed, to any locality in Florida further south than Cedar Keys ; so, abandoning the plummet course of progression, I was fain to SAA'erve a night's journey Avestward and even slightly northward from Augusta the * As respectable rivals to the Cuban cigars are the Mexican ones, of which some excellent samples (" Flor de Mejico ") have recently been imported into this country by the well-known Mr. Carreras of Princes Street, Soho. 302 AMERICA REVISITED. Prosperous to Atlanta the Arrogant. The distance is about one hundred and eighty miles ; and Ave were a trifle under twelve hours in accomplishing it. A gentleman, name unknown, who Avas one of our companions in the sleeping car, declared it to be " the meanest railroad ride " he had ever taken ; and at six p.m. — Ave left Augusta at 5'30 — retired to bed in dudgeon, and Avith his boots on. He was, nevertheless, not indisposed to be com municative ; and at intervals broke the stillness of the night by inquiries addressed to the passengers in general as to whether, in the whole course of their experience, they had ever had a " meaner " journey. So far as I was concerned I found little to complain of. The sleeping car was not a Pullman, and Avas therefore not " palatial," but it Avas comfortable enough; and the " Cap'n" or conductor, Avas very chatty and companionable. I happened to tell him of the exceptionally good breakfast Ave had been favoured Avith at Graniteville before coming to Augusta ; Avhereupon he informed me that the wayside inn in question was celebrated for its excel lent cookery, and that Mrs. Senn, the landlady of the establish ment, Avas quite a noted character in that section of the State. He showed me a paragraph from an Augusta paper in which it was stated that Mrs. Senn had been in toAvn on the previous day, to obtain fresh supplies of Worcestershire sauce, sardines, and Crosse and BlackAvell's pickles, but had returned to Granite ville in the evening, " at the call of duty," Mr. Joe Jefferson and his entire Rip Van Winkle Company having telegraphed from Columbia that they Avould all breakfast at Graniteville on the following morning. " That woman's shirred eggs and sugar- cured ham should immortalise her," the sleeping-car " Cap'n " gravely remarked, as he folded up the local journal. We obtained some supper at eight in the evening, at a place the name of which Avas not revealed to me, but which to my im perfect vision and in the bright moonlight looked as though it Avere situated in the midst of a snow-clad plain. But the seem ing snow was only lily Avhite sand — as fine and as shining as that ARROGANT ATLANTA. 303 at Aiken. The little shanty which served as a summer-house Avas embosomed in a thicket of graceful trees ; and altogether it looked fust such a place as Mr. Longfellow's Diana might have chosen in her dreams to drop her silver boAv upon, and to Avake Endyniion vvith a kiss, " when, Sleeping in the Grove," he Avas quite unaware that the chaste goddess had fallen in love Avith him. The supper was not equal to the Graniteville breakfast ; but it Avas a pleasant repast to me, for at its conclusion the money— fifty cents a head — was taken by the prettiest little six teen-year-old maiden that I have yet seen in the South. She had hair of pale gold, and eyes of such a lustrous ultramarine .304 AMERICA REVISITED. Idue that they might have been stolen from that great sphere of Japis-lazuli above the high altar in the Church of the Gesu, at Rome. She had the slimmest little figure that ever drove a scientific corset-maker to despair as to fitting it properly ; and it would have been an outrage to have placed any but five thou sand dollar diamond rings on the rosy tipped fingers Avith which she took our fifty cents for supper. She Avas as timid as she Avas pretty and graceful ; and holding out her tiny hand and murmuring " thanks," kept Avith the other the door ajar of the private parlour of her family, which comprised, I think, an aunt Avith a shrill voice, and, I am sure, a baby that squealed. Good bye, little sixteen-year-old maiden. I shall not see you any more in this world ; but one does not meet a Sylphide every day ; and, when found, she should be taken note of. The ladies in the sleeping car all agreed that the maiden was " passable," which confirms me in my opinion that she Avas enchantingly beautiful. I passed a sleepless night, roaming about the cars, listening to the snorers, conversing softly with the conductor, the bag gage-master, and the negro boot-black, and ever and anon find ing solace in the Indian weed. It seemed to me that Ave stopped at least half a dozen times during the night between station and station, and that the duration of our stoppages varied between twenty minutes and three-quarters of an hour. They were strangely oppressive to the sense, — these long intervals of utter immobility and silence without ; but after a while would come a solemn clanking, as of the chains of doomed souls in torment, and then the hoarse thick pants of the locomotive. Passing from the door of the car you beheld a Aveird and, as it seemed, interminable train of open Avaggons and trucks and huge " box cars " passing you, dragged sometimes by two engines. These Avere freight trains ; the trucks heaped high with cotton bales ; the " box cars " laden with grain, on their Avay from the middle-south to Savannah and Charleston, for shipment to Europe. How many hundred tons of the raw material for ARROGANT ATLANTA. 305 THE BAGGAGE MASTER S ARMOURY. English bread and English body-linen passed our sleeping car that night I cannot estimate ; but it strikes me that the freight traffic, either in the South or in the North, Avould not be quite so lively if a facetious British Chancellor of the Exchequer clapped a merry duty of a penny a pound on cotton, and a pro portionately jocose import tax on every bushel of American wheat. How the advocates of the Morrill tariff would howl to he sure. But the thing is, of course, impossible. Mr. Mongredin and all the sages of the Cobden Club tell us so. We may not retract — we must not retract one iota of the dogma of Free Trade. We cannot obtain Reciprocity ; but Ave must not think VOL. 1. 306 AMERICA REVISITED. of Retaliation. Oh, dear no ! We must turn the other cheek to the fiscal smiter, and alloAv the British farmer, the British dairyman and cheesemonger, and the British manufacturer of preserved provisions to be half-ruined by duty-free imports from the States. ^H' J ¦A" ' i A HOT AXLE-BOX. As for the railway stoppages, they are due, I suppose, to the circumstance that the lines, save in the immediate neighbour hood of the Atlantic cities, are single ones ; and it is conse quently necessary to shunt the passenger trains on to sidings to allow the freight trains to pass. Sometimes the shunting is not properly performed, and the " freighter " runs into the passenger and " telescopes " it into horrible havoc and collapse. They bundled us out of the train at Arrogant Atlanta at five o'clock in the morning, and in the middle of a Avhite fog that Avould have done honour to Sheerness in October. No actual physical coercion, it must be admitted, Avas used in extruding us from the train, and the gentleman Avho had so frequently denounced the meanness of the journey publicly proclaimed from behind his curtains his resolution to have his dollar and a half's ARROGANT ATLANTA. 307 worth out of the " Sleeper," and to remain in bed until breakfast time ; but the negro shoeblack told us that it was " quite most de fasWonable ting " to go to the hotel until we could " make connections " Avith the train for New Orleans, and, as a stranger in Atlanta, I did not like to be unfashionable. The raihvay dep6t is in the very centre of the Arrogant City, and right oppo site a tall hotel called the Markham House ; so thither Ave repaired, shivering. We were affably received, and the black Avaiter, who conducted us to a very elegantly furnished bed-room, forthwith brought us a jug of iced water to regale ourselves withal. Ice is the Alpha and Omega of social life in the United States of America. You begin and you end every repast with a glass of iced water ; and whenever you feel lonely in your bed room you have only to touch the electric bell, and the waiter makes his appearance with an iced-water pitcher. I do not know whether they ice the babies to soothe them during the anguish of teething; but I have already hinted that the first thing that an American undertaker does with the mortal coil of our dear brother departed is to ice it. We concluded not to drink the glacial beverage, but to shiver until breakfast time. But why AATas it so cold ? I asked myself. Were Ave not yet in the State of Georgia ? Were Ave not still in the Sunny South ? We had left June weather at Augusta. Why this chilliness of temperature at Atlanta ? I soon found out : the reason why. The Arrogant City is at the foot of a mountainous region, and is itself a thousand feet above the sea level. It was not a real fos; Avhich had half suffocated us ; it was a mountain mist. I half ex pected, when I received this information, to find all Clan Alpine's warriors true in the breakfast hall, and to be told by the negro waiter — confound his iced water ! — that he Avas Roderick Dhu. Between Augusta and Atlanta there is as much structural and social difference as there is between Birmingham and Strat- ford-on-Avon : that is to say, the difference Avhich exists between swart and grimy and anxious industry and simple, peaceful, beautiful ruralitv. Augusta in its every blade of green prettiness 308 AMERICA REVISITED. is redolent of the South. Atlanta at once and emphatically reminds you of the stern strong North. The Atlanta papers rally their sister city for being such a Campo Vaccino. " The Augusta coav," I read in one of the local journals, " is still at large." Why not ? A city cannot be very Avicked when the cows roam undisturbedly about the streets. I Avould sooner meet a cow than a steam-engine; and the locomotives are puffing and panting about the streets of Atlanta all day long. There is a very excellent reason for the go-ahead and sub stantially Northern aspect of the capital of Georgia. The city is a creation, so to speak, of the day before yesterday. Next to Savannah, it is the largest city in the State, and the population they told me exceeds 50,000, although " Appleton " puts it clown at only 38,000 in 1878 ; and its remarkable outgrowth has been ascribed to the fact that it is the centre of an extensive network of railways. But there is another reason. During the Civil War, Atlanta Avas the Richmond of the Central South ; and its position made it a place of vital importance to the Southern cause. The siege of Atlanta by General Sherman will be ever memorable in the history of the tremendous struggle ; and with its capture the doom of the Confederacy was virtually sealed. Before evacuating Atlanta to fall back on Macon, the Confederate commander, General Hood, set fire to all the machinery, stores, and munitions of war AAThich he Avas unable to remove; and in the terrible conflagration Avhich ensued, on September 3, 18G4, the greater part of the city Avas reduced to ashes. Its resuscitation Avas swift and marvellous. Immense hotels arose. The Kemball and the Markham houses rival the cara vanserais of Philadelphia in vastness and handsomeness ; there- is a grand State House, and, of course, a grand Opera House ; there is a State Library, containing sixteen thousand volumes, and the Young Men of Atlanta have a library Avith five thousand volumes, Avhile there are as many tomes in the library of the Oglethorpe College. Gigantic warehouses and dry goods stores ARROGANT ATLANTA. 309 rise on every side ; and the city is groAving rapidly rich, OAving to its being a vast emporium for the produce of the South, and a distributing centre for such Northern commodities as the South has need of. I should scarcely call it an agreeable city ; but it is in all respects a very remarkable one. The negro population seemed to be numerous, and to be very hard at Avork as porters and packers ; and I saAv very few street-corner loafers. Why I have called Atlanta Arrogant is not with the slightest intent of disparaging her, but because she seems to have altogether a certain swaggering mien and a high-handed manner of comport ing herself, as though she was saying, " See what a burnt-up city can do ; look at my hotels and my banks, my colleges and libraries, my dry goods stores and my First Methodist churches, and then talk of the crippled and impoverished South, if you dare." The great marble entrance hall and clerks' office of the Markham House, Avhere they treated us very politely, and charged us only three dollars for excellent accommodation and a capital breakfast, is slightly suggestive of a Moorish-built house in Andalusia, inasmuch as it has a patio, or inner court-yard, of marble, round which run galleries, supported by marble columns, and leading to the various corridors. But the patio of a Morocco- Andalusian house is open to the sky, whereas that of the Markham House is roofed in ; and the space beneath, whether the roof be of cupola shape or not, is always known as the "Rotunda." There at the clerks' counter you register your name, and enquire for your letters. There, at a stand at one side of the hall, you buy your newspapers and your postage stamps. Elsewhere you find facilities for purchasing railway tickets to every part of the Union, or for sending telegraphic messages ; and at a stall at the opposite extremity you find a place for the sale of cigars, which, as a rule, are expensive and not good. While travelling in America never cease to bear this cardinal fact in mind, that this is a wholesale and not a retail country. 310 AMERICA REVISITED. Everything is on an extensive scale. Nothing is petty. And if you Avant a good cigar at a reasonable rate you must get some friend to introduce you to a direct importer of the article and buy a couple of boxes. You may even procure good and com paratively cheap claret if you buy it by the cask and bottle it yourself; only the "trouble" is that the transient and elderly traveller who has been accustomed from his youth upwards to drink a modest pint of St. Julien at his dinner does not see his way towards travelling up and down the enormous continent Avith a hogshead of Bordeaux in his baggage. Frenchmen, as a nation, are not travellers. Were they such wanderers to and fro on the earth's surface as Ave are, I imagine that nine lively Gauls out of ten, journeying through the interior States of the American Union, would go mad or commit suicide for want of their accustomed vin ordinaire at breakfast and dinner. Yes ; I know very well that vin ordinaire at thirty cents a pint can be obtained at many of the New York restaurants ; but the great Republic is not all New York. From the point of view of cheap and good Avine I have hitherto found it a great desert in Avhich New York is the solitary oasis. But halte Id ! It is too early to generalise. I have not yet seen New Orleans. There should be some thousand lusty Creoles in the Crescent City, of Gallic descent, to whom cheap claret must be a necessary of life. And — much more — I have not yet seen Chicago the Marvellous. I have not yet seen San Francisco the Auriferous. There will be claret enough there, I have no doubt. I saAv two strange specimens of American humanity at the Markham House, Atlanta— the very strangest, assuredly, that I have yet beheld in the course of my travels. I met them loafing in the hall. They occupied two rocking chairs. They were smoking very big cigars, and they Avere the observed of all observers. Strange man number one Avas over six feet high, and correspondingly athletic. He was very handsome and exceedingly dirty. He wore his brown hair flowing in long ringlets over his shoulders and a good way down his back. He ARROGANT ATLANTA. 311 was full-bearded and moustached; but a very long period seemed to have elapsed since any barber had " fixed " him up with tftfe emollient pomatum or the invigorating bay rum. His attire consisted of an old drab coat, vest, and continuations, high boots, as innocent of " the soot pots of Day and Martin" as were the boots of Frederick the Great, as pictured by Mr. Carlyle ; and a battered, greasy, old, low-croAvned felt hat, with a monstrous broad brim, Avhich, with a tarnished gold cord and tassel encircling it, looked like the ghost of a Mexican sombrero galonado. His revolvers and his bowie-knife — if his equipment comprised such trinkets — did not in sight appear ; his age might have been about thirty-five. His companion was, perhaps, bordering on sixty ; but his grizzled hair fell over his shoulders, just as did the lovelocks of his companion. He was quite as unwashed and unbrushed ; his apparel was similar in cut to that of his fellow ; only there was no galon or tarnished gold cord round his sombrero. 312 AMERICA REVISITED. Who were these hirsute men ? At first I took • them for " Moonshiners," or illicit whiskey distillers, who just now are abounding in the State of Georgia, and against Avhom the Federal Government has sent out a whole army of revenue officers, Avell mounted, and armed to the teeth with rifles and six-shooters. The " Moonshiners' " haunts are up in the mountains, and the revenue people find the task of raiding the stills to be both difficult and dangerous : since the smugglers are very apt to shoAV fight, and derive much gratification from hiding behind projecting ledges of rock, and "potting" the Excise officers as the latter ride by. The state of things fiscal in Georgia is, in fine, closely similar to that which existed in Scotland in the days of a certain " riding officer " of the Excise named Robert Burns. But the hairy men Avhom I saw in the hall of the Markham House could scarcely have been " Moon shiners." They were not under guard, nor were they hand cuffed. " Bushwhackers " they might have been, but could be so no longer, since the guerilla or " bushwhacking " profession faded out with the Civil War. Were they members of that darkly- famed and direly-dreaded Vehmgericht the " Ku-Klux-Klan " ? No ! the mysterious brethren of the Ku-Klux only sallied forth by night, and when engaged in their nocturnal raids they wore masks and black calico shrouds over their ordinary garments. Finally, I asked, were these ringletted strangers twin brothers of Mr. Joaquin Miller, Poet of the Sierras, in difficulties ? People laughed when I interrogated them on these gravely moot points. I was told, jocularly, that one of the hairy strangers claimed to be " Buffalo Bill," and that the other was "Kit Carson." Who are Kit Carson and Buffalo Bill ? I could obtain no further explanation concerning them beyond a hint that I should see "plenty more of the same stripe" when I got out West. Be it as it may, the men with the ringlets and the sombreros afforded me food for cogitation until it was time to take the train for NeAv Orleans ; and gradually I began to ARROGANT ATLANTA. 313 associate the hairy men in my mind with the heroes of a very droll story which was lately related to me by a distinguished Senato#of the United States, whose fund of humorous anecdote is as inexhaustible as that of Mr. Secretary Evarts. Perhaps I shall mar the tale in the telling of it ; but so far as I can recol lect, it ran thus : Say that the two heroes were named Damon and Pythias, or Orestes and Pylades, or, better still, Jim and Mose. At all events they were the fastest of friends. They were together one evening in some out-of-the-way rural town, no matter in what State; when finding, "between drinks," the time hang somewhat heavy on their hands, they concluded to attend a lecture given at the local institute by, say, Professor M'Hoshkosh. The lecture Avas on the identity of the author of the Letters of Junius, and the peroration seemed to have been a sublimely eloquent one. "Time," quoth Professor M'Hoshkosh, " has left but a very mean balance of mysteries to be toted up and unravelled. Time has rent the veil of the Semitic Isis, and turned Edison's electric light full blast on the Man with the Iron Mask. Time has deciphered the Rosetta inscription ; and there ain't much in it. Time has revealed the cause of the banishment of Ovid ; and in process of time we shall find out who stole the body of A. T. Stewart, and which of the Masonic lodges it was that didn't murder Morgan. Time has replaced the lost nose of the Sphinx, and all her conundrums have been answered in the columns of the Philadelphia press. But, ladies and gentlemen, the Author of the Letters of Junius doesn't care five cents for Time, and defies the most persistent researches of the New York detectives. Who wrote those letters ? Was it Sir Philip Francis? Was it Edmund Burke? Was it Lord George Sackville ? Was it Lord Temple? Was it John Wilkes Booth— I mean John Wilkes? Was it Benjamin Franklin? 'Echo answers P'raps.' Was it Dr. Johnson? Was it Tom Paine, when he ivas a young man ? Who wrote those immortal editorials ? Who Avrote them ? We ask again and again; and Echo replies, in a derisively equivocating 314 AMERICA REVISITED. manner, that she possesses no reliable information on the subject.' Thus Professor M'Hoshkosh. The tAvo friends adjourned to the nearest bar, much edified by what they had heard. They partook of many drinks, still discoursing more or less coherently about the lecture ; and by the time they reached their hotel Jim and Mose were quite " tight." The attached friends " roomed " together ; and in the middle of the night, Jim, waking up thirsty, and stretching forth his hand for the iced water pitcher became aware of Mose bewailing himself dolefully in his bed. "Wot's the matter?" asked Jim. "0, my Avife and babes," sobbed the afflicted Mose. " Who writ them letters to Julius ? Why didn't he OAvn up ? Why didn't he acknoAvledge the coin, and send in his checks? Why didn't he send it to the papers that he writ 'em?" And Mose continued to moan and sob, at intervals, for at least two hours. Unable to endure any longer the affliction of his friend, the sympathetic Jim sprang from his couch, and sitting by the side of Mose's bed, took his comrade's hand, and wrung it affectionately. " Don't cry, hoss," he said, the tears running down his own brown cheeks. " Don't cry. I can't abear it. You shall know all about it. I writ them Letters to Julius ; and he answered every darned one of 'em ; and I've left 'em downstairs in the office, locked up in The Silas Herring fireproof safe." There is a touch of tenderness in the absurdity. The poor ignorant felloAv's falsehood Avas atoned for by noble friendship, sympathy, and compassion. END OF VOL. I. BRADEUKY, AOXEW, & CO., PRINTERS, Trt'IlITEFRIARS LONDON. 42, Catherine Street, Strand, August, 1882. VIZETELLY & CO.'S RECENT PUBLICATIONS. — =Ts»aF#s«>«-s— Second Edition. In Post Svo, Handsomely Bound. Price 10s. 6d. SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY : g>fertdjt£( from Eifc, Social nuts Satirical. By E. C. GRENVILLE-MURRAY, AUTHOR OF "THE MEMBER FOR PARIS," "THAT ARTFUL VICAR," ETC. WITH NEARLY 300 CHARACTERISTIC ENGRAVINGS FROM DESIGNS BY WELL-KNOWN ARTISTS. CONTENTS: I. FLIRTS : — Born Flirts— The Flirt who has Plain Sisters— The Flirt in the London Soason— The Ecclesiastical Flirt — The Regimental Flirt on Homo and Foreign Service— Tho Town and Country House Flirt— The Seaside Flirt— The Flirt on her Travels— Tho Sentimental Flirt^The Studious Flirt. II. ON HER BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S SERVICE :— Ambassadors -Envoys Extraordinary — Secretaries of Embassy — Secretaries of Legation — Attaches — Consuls-General — Consuls— Vice-Consuls — Queen's Messengers — Interpreters — Ambassadresses. III. SEMI-DETACHED WIVES :— Authoresses and Actressos— Separated by Mutual Consent — Candidates for a Decree Nisi — A very virtuous yemi-JJetachod Wife — Ulyssos and Penelope. IV. NOBLE LORDS :— The Millionaire Tluke— Political Peers— Noble Old Fogies— Spiritual Peers — The Sabbatarian Peer— The Philanthropist Peer — Coaching Peers — Sporting Peers— Spendthrift Peers— Peers without Rent-rolls— Virtuoso Lords — Mad and Miserly Peers — Stock Exchange and Literary Lords. V. YOTTNGI- WIDOWS :— Interesting Widows— Gay Young Widows— Yountr Widows of Good Estate — Young Widows who take Boarders — Young Widows who want Situations— Great Men's Young Widows— Widows under a Cloud. VI. OTTR SILVERED YOUTH, OR NOBLE OLD BOYS :— Political Old Boys i4 —Horsey Old Boys— An M. F. H.— Theatrical Old Bovs— The Old Boy Cricketer— The Agricultural Old If Boy— The Wicked Old Boy— Tha Shabby Old Boy— The Recluse Old Boy-The Clerical Old Boy-Old Curiosity— An Old Courtier. VIZETELLY &> CO.'S RECENT PUBLICATIONS. (From "Side Lights on English Society.") ca -**% TOURIST FLIRTS ON THE WINO. READER TO A DILAPIDATED PEER. VIZETELLY £r> CO.'S RECENT PUBLICATIONS. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON "SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY." ATHENAEUM. Mr. Granville Murray has had a large and varied experience of life, and is a keen observer of men and manners ; Els EngUsh is clear, vivacious, and expressive ; he can hardly write otherwise than amusingly. ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS. Describes in a piquant and even trenchant style various phases of English social life, and various personages, some real and some imaginary, but typical, to be met with, according to the author's evi. dently wide experience or his no less evidently productive fancy, in different circles of what is called Society. TRUTH. Mr. Grenville Murray's now book is, in its way, a serious contribution to the literature of polite socio logy. It is a collection of skilful and vivid character sketches, both general and individual. I suppose that Mr. Murray, who is probably the most brilliant of living journalists, could hardly be dull if he tried. Be this as it may, he sparkles very steadily throughout the present volumes, and he puts to excellent use indeed his incomparable knowledge of life and manners, of men and cities, of appearances and facts. Of his several descants upon English types, I shall ouly remark that they are brilliantly and dashingly written, curious as to their matter, and admirably readable. WHITEHALL REVIEW. No one can question the brilliancy of the sketches, nor affirm that ( ' Side-Lights " is aught but a fasci nating book This book is destined to make a great noise in the world ; and not a little of the success which it is certain to obtain will be due to the numerous illustrations, which are all of the most humorous description. VANITY PAIR. This is a startling book. The volumes are expensively and elaborately got up ; the writing is bitter, unsparing, and extremely clever ; and we are informed by public advertisement that Mr. Mudie will not allow the book to circulate. Our readers should get the work and see whether Mr. Mudie is justified. ILLUSTRATED SPORTING AND DRAMATIC NEWS. There is no denying Mr. Grenville Murray's ability, and it may furthermore be added that he brings abundant knowledge to his task. He knows most people who figure in Society, and nearly everything about them The author is not only cynical, but bitter — very bitter in some cases— and the gall of his bitterness is not diminished by the circumstance that many of the ugliest things he has to say about society at large, and its members in particular, arc generally supposed to be unhappily true. PUBLISHER'S CIRCULAR. A book of much more solid interest than a superficial glance would lead one to expect. A section is devoted to H. B. M. service — the diplomatic side — which is evidently written from intimate knowledge, and deserves the attention of those who care to know how the country's business is carried on abroad. MORNING POST. "Noble Lords " will doubtless be the part of the book most widely read, as it is assuredly the best. Several notabilities among the peerage are presented under names so thinly disguised, as to leave no doubt as to the personality of the originals. VIZETELLY &* CO.'S RECENT PUBLICATIONS. Sixth Edition. In Cronn Svo, attractively hound. Price 6s. PARIS HERSELF AGAIN. By GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. WITH 350 CHARACTERISTIC ILLUSTRATIONS BY NOTABLE FRENCH ARTISTS. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. THE TIMES. The author's " round-about " chapters are as animated as thev are varied and sympathetic ; for few- Englishmen have the French verve like Mr. Sala, or so light a touch on congenial subjects. He has stoies- of out-of-the-way information, a very many-sided gift of appreciation, with a singularly tenacious memory, and on subjects like those in his present work he is at his best. The book is profusely illustrated with, woodcuts after well-known artists aud caricaturists, which are xtremely realistic or humorously suggestive. PALL TVTAT.T. GAZETTE. Mr. Sala seems to have seen a great deal of Paris that is eminently Parisian, and of what he saw then- and had seen before he contrives to chat agreeably and vivaciously. The book is thoroughly indi vidual ; no one alive could have written it except Mr. Sala himself. It contains n great deal Of good sense, a great deal that is picturesque and novel, a great deal that is useful, and a great deal that is interesting and amusing, and it is very well worth reading indeed. The many engravings add greiftly to the interest of the book, and their introduction was a happy thought. SATURDAY REVIEW. " Paris Herself Again " furnishes a happy illustration of the attractiveness of Mr. Sala's style and th fertility of his resources. For those who do and those who do not know Paris these volumes contain fund of instruction and amusement. VIZETELLY &> CO.'S RECENT PUBLICATIONS. A "petit creve" (from " Paris Herself Again.") THE ATHENffiUM. Mr.Salawandersaboutwithan artful «*!«-»«- >-d tell, .his ^^^ZLiT^Z old and new, well known and little known, and not known at al in ^l™ia" Dr" ented in " Paris Herself On the whole the humours of the capital of the Third Eepublio are well represented ±-ans ne Again." THE OBSERVER. The truth is that Mr Sala knows Paris.asthe French ^^^Z^t^^Z^ inoido out, but always to find something m it. .... Mr. Sala .»PP»™ W Paris has had many pane- interesting, for he suffuses it with his own particular »d distmcb ve self. Pans y£ gyrists, and unfortunately only too many flatterers, some satirists, never a rival, chronicler than Mr. Sala. 6 VIZETELLY &* CO.'S RECENT .PUBLICATIONS. THE WORLD. "Paris Herself Again" is infinitely more amusing than most novels, and will give you information which you can turn to advantage, and innumerable anecdotes for the dinner-table and the smoking-room. There is no style so chatty and so unwearying as that of which Mr. Sala is a ma ter. DAILY NEWS. Most amusing letters they are, with clever little pictures scattered so profusely through the solid volume that it would be difficult to prick the edges with a pin at any point without coming upon one or more. Few writers can rival Mr. Sala's fertility of illustration and ever ready command of lively comment. TRUTH. This book is one of the most readable that has appeared for many a day. Few Englishmen know so much of old and modern Paris as Mr. Sala. Endowed with a facility to extract humour from every phase of the world's stage, and blessed with a wondrous store of recondite lore, he outdoes himself when he deals with a city like Paris that he knows so well, and that affords such an opportunity for his pen. THE GRAPHIC. -What makes the book more interesting is the fact that the author to a great extent leaves the beaten track, and wanders with observing eye in the out-of-the-way places. Men, manners, and things are hit off with a happy grace and humour of touch peculiarly the author's own, and his book has afforded us some remarkably pleasant, amusing, and instructive reading. It is profuoely and appropriately illustrated by well-known French artists. DAILY TELEGRAPH. To an intimate knowledge of the people among whom great part of his life has been passed, and to a microscopic study of their characteristics, Mr. Sala brings a gift of verbal description which enables him to paint French ways, French habits, almost French thought, with a vivacity uuapproached by any other living writer. ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS. The manners and habits of Parisian social life, with that of French people and that of their foreign visitors, have never been portrayed with a more intense appreciation of their diverting aspect, and seldom by any English author with more genuine and abundant knowledge. MORNING POST. Next in interest and value to the text — and this is saying a great deal, for Mr. Sala's text is simply delightful— aro the illustrations to this book. Years hence these pictures of Parisian life and manners will be consulted with the same degree of interest as are those of Hogarth and Cruikshank with respect to the London of the past. Every phase of Parisian life is touched with infinite tact and fidelity. In O/w Volume, Post Svo. Price 8s. 6d. THE CHILDISHNESS AND BRUTALITY OF THE TIME: Some Plain Truths in Plain Language. By HARGRAVB JENNINGS, AUTHOR OF "THE KOSICIU'CIANS, &C." VIZETELLY fir» CO.'S RECENT PUBLICATIONS. In, Crown 8co, handsomely printed and hound. Price 6s. THE AMUSING ADVENTURES OF GUZMAN OF ALFARAQUE. a $panwflj ^obtl. Translated by EDWARD LOWDELL. ILLUSTRATED WITH HIGHLY-FINISHED ENGRAVINGS ON STEEL FROM DESIGNS BY STAHL. In Crown Sco, handsomely hound and extra gilt. Price Cut. THE THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED, OF THE STORY OF THE DIAMOND NECKLACE, TOLD IN DETAIL FOR THE FIRST TIME, AND COMPRISING A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF THE COUNTESS DE LA MOTTE, PRETENDED CONFIDANT OF MARIE-ANTOINETTE, WITH PARTICULARS OF THE CAREERS OF THE OTHER ACTORS IN THIS REMARKABLE DRAMA. By HENRY VIZETELLY. ILLUSTRATED WITH AN EXACT REPRESENTATION OF THE DIAMOND NECKLACE, FROM A CONTEMPORARY DRAWING, AND A PORTRAIT OF THE COUNTESS DE LA MOTTE, ENGRAVED ON STEEL. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON THE FIRST EDITION. SATURDAY REVIEW. Mr Vizetelly's tale has all tho interest of a romance which is too strange not to bo true His summing up of the evidence, both negative and positive, which exculpates Marie-Antoinette from any complicity whatever with tho scandalous intriguo in which she was represented as bearing a part, is admirable. STANDARD. We can, without fear of contradiction, describe Mr. Henry Vizetelly's " Story of the Diamond Neck lace " as a book of thrilling interest. Ho has not only executed his task with skill and faithlulnes also with tact and delicacy. M0RNING POST. It is particularly desirable in the interests of history and literature that such a book as Mr. Vizetelly has, with infinite care and evidently great labour, produced, should exist The story is marvel ous m its intricacies and complications, arranged as the author has arranged >* »» * ^^ J^^J^ summed up as he has summed it up with remarkable lucidly It would be : difficult ° P^*°° ed the the plan on which Mr. Vizetelly has constructed his story, and the ability with which he has analysed the .contending evidence. m „„ DAILY TELEGRAPH. Let us say nt once that Mr. Vizetelly has performed his work admirably. He has diligently searched, -Batientlvltudied nd ^c^aborated with rare discrimination all the contcmpoi-ary evidence bearing in any CS»^!Sj^rf«tt^rtertltaoftb.l8thc CO.'S RECENT .PUBLICATIONS. In small post 8tto, ornamental covers, One Shilling each. Or tastefully bound in cloth, l.v. 6'/. VIZETELLY'S POPULAR FRENCH NOVELS. TRANSLATIONS OF THE BEST EXAMPLES OF RECENT FRENCH FICTION OF AN UNOBJECTIONABLE CHAEACTEK. " The average French novelist knows his trade better than the average English novelist, and turns out a better piece of work. On the one hand, lie has a keener sense of the artistic necessities of a book; on the other, he takes more trouble. Then, again, it must be remembered, lie is not the slave of a vicious system of publication which aims not at the production of good literature, but at keeping up a bad supply to meet an unhealthy demand. The circulating library '¦to literature." — The Times. "Novel-readers owe the publishers a deep debt of gratitude for providing an entirely new and harmless source of literary enjoyment, a fountain flowing with the milk and honey of cultureT sparkling with wit and humour, ha ring the flavour of real life and the colour of romance."— Illustrated London News. VOLUMES ALREADY PUBLISHED. FROMONT THE YOUNGER & RISLER THE ELDER. ByA.DAUDET. " The series starts well with M. Alphonse Daudet's masterpiece. "—Athenaeum "A terriblo story, powerful after a sledge hammer fashion in some parts, and wonderfully tender, touching, and pathetic in others, the extraordinary popularity whereof may be inferred from the fact that this English version is said to be " translated from the fiftieth French edition " —Illustrated London News. ' ' The character of Siedonie Risler, her home, her parents, and her victims, are drawn with a truth to nature and vividness of detail worthy of the ablest of Balzac's pupils."— St James's Gazette SAMUEL BROHL AND PARTNER. By v. Cherbuliez. " M. Cherbuliez's novels are read by everybody and offend nobody. They are excellent studies- of character well constructed, peopled with interesting men and women, and the stvle in which they are written is admirable."— The Times. ™«uu»- " Those who have rend this singular story in the original need not be reminded of that sunremelv dramatic study of tho man who lived two lives at once, even within himself The reader's dis covery of his double naturo is one of the most cleverly managed of surprises, and Samuel Brobl's- ™Ldl „ ution o£ Partnership with himself is a remarkable stroke of almost pathetic comedv " — The Graphic. * whjcuj. VIZETELLY &-, CO.'S RECENT PUBLICATIONS. , THE DRAMA OF THE RUE DE LA PAIX. By a. Belot. f "A highly ingenious plot is dovolopod in ''Tho Drama of tho Ruo de In Pnix," in which a dooldedly interesting and thrilling nhvrativo is told with groat force and passion, relievod by sprlgutlinoss and tondemoss." — Illustrated London News. "It is a brilliant and admirably oonstruotod romance of the strongly dramatic kind, in which iho reader's attention is not allowed to flag for a single instance."— Tue Graphic. MAUGARS JUNIOR. By A. Theukiet. " Ono of tho most ohurming novelettes wo hi\ve road for a long time." — Literary World. " A ploasant and hoalthy httlo talo."— St. James's Gazette. WAYWARD DOSIA, & THE GENEROUS DIPLOMATIST. By HBNAY GluSYILLfi. " As epigrammatic as anything Lord Beaconsfiold has over wrUton."— Hampshire Telegraph. " Infinitely hotter than, tho ordinary run of fictional lituraturo in this country." — The Scotsman. ** Tho charm of tlio first story Uos in tho manner of tolling it, in tho exquisito descriptions, the studios and sketches of character, tho clovorly contrived surprises, tho thrilling situations, and tho piquant and brilliant dialogues." — Gloucester Meroury. A NEW LEASE OF LIFE, & SAVING A DAUGHTER'S DOWRY. ]3y E. Anoi'T. *" A Xnw Loase of Life ' is an absorbing story the intorost of which is kept up to tho very- em!.' Dublin Evening Mail. " The story, as a flight of brilliant and eccontric imagination, is unequalled in its poculiar way." — The Graphic. " ' A Now Lease of Life " is as humourous as anything Swift ever wrote and has none of that wrjtor's coarsonoss." — Perthshire Advertiser. COLOMBA, & CARMEN. By p. Merimee. "The freshnoss and racinoss of Colomha is quito cheering after tho storootypod throe-volumo novels with which our circulating libraries are crammed."— Halifax Times. " Carmen will be welcomed by tho lovers of tho sprightly and tuneful opora tho horoino of whioh Si mud- Hnuk made so popular. It is a bright and vivacious story."— Lite. " Both stories are highly interosting and aro marked by considerable power, especially in tho delineation of tho characters of the horoinos."— Birmingham Daily Gazette. A WOMAN'S DIARY, & THE LITTLE COUNTESS. By a Feuillet. " ' A Woman's Diary ' is well ehosen to illustrate tho peculiar differences of construction be- twoen French and English fiction. It is right to commend afrosh tho oaro which is exorcisod in tho solection and the skill maintained in tho translation of this series of stories." — The Graphic " Excellent examples of tho lighter novelette in which French fictional writers nro so suc cessful."— European Mail. "Is wrought out with masterly skill and affords reading, which although of a slightly sen sational kind, cannot bo said to bo hurtful oithor mentally or morally."— Dumbarton Herald. BLUE-EYED META H0LDENIS,,& A STROKE OF DIPLOMACY. By V. CllEKBULIEZ. "Blue-oyod Meta Holdonis introduces the English novel reader to characters and scenos which havo nil tho charm of ' fresh woods and pastures now.' Mota herself is really a delightful con ception, and few who onco make her acquaintance in thoso graceful pages will hesitate to accom pany her to tho ond of her story." — Brief. " Blue-eyod Mota Holdonis is a delightful tale."— Civil Servioe Gazette. '• A Stroke of Diplomacy is a bright vivacious story pleasantly told."— Hampshire Advertiser. THE GODSON OF A MARQUIS. By a. Theuriet. "M. Thouriot has here given us anothor of thoso inimitablo pictures of Frouoh rural lifo in which he is uurivallod, his descriptions being so animated and forcible as to mako tho scones almost visiblo, as it woro, to tho reader."— Birmingham Daily Gazette. "The rustio porsonagos, tho rural soonory and lifo in the forest country of tho Argonno, are paintod with the hand of a master. From the beginning to the oloso tlio interest of tho story never flags, the ntinosphore oven whon roudored opprossivo by tho sweetness of tho honeysuckle and moaduw sweat is uovor nuwholesomo." — Life. THE TOWER OF PERCEMONT & MARIANNE. By George Sand. "Goorgo Sand has n groat name, and tbo 'Towor of Perconiouf is not unworthy of it."- Hlustrated London News. .*,*•! ¦ v. "Thoy are books that may bo safely loft lying about whore tho ladies of tho family can pick them up and road them. Tho intorost they ci-oato is happily not of the vicious sort at all. — Sheffield Independent. THE LOW-BORN LOVER'S REVENGE. By V. Cherbuliez. " ' Tho Low-born Lover's Kovonge " is ono of M. Cherbuliozs many exquisite written produc tions. Tho studios of human nature under various influences, especially in the cases of the unhappy horoino and her low-born lover, are wonderfully offooUve."-lUusu:ated London News. VIZETELLY . 6VJ. cloeit j,'*. FACTS ABOUT SHERRY, GLEASED IX THE YIXETAKDS AXD B0DZ5A5 OF THE JEREZ. SEYILLE, MOGCEK, AXD MOSHLLA L'ISTKIJTS. Illustrated "srith =u=:er:us Z-gra—jrss frc=i Criri^sl Sketches. LOVELY WOSIEX TKEAriXC. OEAFE.-? IX THE UPPER rOUF.O. VIZETELLY &-» CO.'S RECENT PUBLICATIONS. '3 Price Is. 6d. ornamental cover ; or 2s. 6d. in elegant cloth binding, FACTS ABOUT CHAMPAGNE, • AND OTHER SPARKLING WINES. COLLECTED DURING NUMEROUS VISITS TO THE CHAMPAGNE AND OTHER VITICULTURAL DISTRICTS OF PRANCE, AND THE PRINCIPAL REMAINING WINE- PRODUCING COUNTRIES OF EUROPE. With One Hundred and Twelve Engravings from Original Sketches and Photographs. ^^V^S^^^lfe^ --_ ' .- MODE OP STACKING BOTTLES OF "VIS B1IUT " IN THE CHAMPAGNE. Price Is. ornamental' cover ; or Is. 6d. cloth gilt, THE WINES OF THE WORLD, CHARACTERISED AND CLASSED; With some Particulars respecting the Beers of Europe. 14 MR. HENRY VIZ E TELLY'S "HISTORY OF CHAMPAGNE." In demy Uo, handsomely printed and bound, with gilt edges, price 15s., A HISTORY OF CHAMPAGNE; WITH NOTES ON THE OTHER SPARKLING WINES OF FRANCE. By HENRY VIZETELLY, ** ¦CHEVALIER OF THE ORDER OF FRANZ-JOSEPH ; WINE JUROR FOR GREAT BRITAIN AT THE VIENNA AND> PARIS EXHIBITIONS OF 1S73 AND 1878. Illustrated with 350 Engravings, PROM ORIGINAL SKETCHES AND PHOTOGRAPHS, ANCIENT MSS., EARLY PRINTED BOOKS, RARE PRINTS, CARICATURES, ETC. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. "A very agreeable modley of history, anecdote, geographical description, and such like matter, dis tinguished by an accuracy not often found in such medleys, and illustrated in the most abundant and pleasingly miscellaneous fashion. . . . Altogether a very pleasant book, gratifying to the idle reader ¦who only wants to be amused, and also to the 1 cader who, without any objection to being amused, does nob care to be insulted by slovenly ignorance of history and literature on the part of his amuser." — Daily Ntivs. " Mr. Henry Vizetelly has written a quarto volume on the 'History of Champagne,' in which he has- collectod a largo number of facts, many of them vory curious and interesting. Mr. Vizetelly has traced the gi'adual growth in popularity of sparkling Champagne since the days of Dom Perignon, and he has not neglected the earlier history of the Champagne vineyards. In the second part of the book Mr. Vizetelly has added particulars regarding the cultivation of the vines, and the chief firms at Rheims, Epernay, &c. A large number of woodcuts are given, some of which are excellent. " — Athenaimn. "It is probable that this largo volume contains such an amount of information touching the subject which it treats as cannot bo found olsewhere. How competent the author was for the task he undertook is to be inferred from tho functions ho has discharged, and from tho exceptional opportunities he enjoyed." — Illustrated London News. " A voritablo tllition de luxe, doaling with tho history of Champagne from the time of the Romans to tho present dato. , . , . An interor-ting book, tho incidents and details of which are very graphically told with a good doaPoi wit and humour, The engravings aro exceedingly well executed."— The Wine and Spirit News. HENRY SOTHERAN & CO., 36, Piccadilly; and 136, Strand. 3 9002 00755 1048