Chapter Nine.
Across the Atlantic.
O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire and behold our home!
“Sir,” said the Honourable Mister Pigeonbarley of Missouri, “we air a peculiar people. Jes so!”
Have you never noticed how, when travelling on a long journey, the wheels of the railway carriage in which you are sitting seem always to be rattling out some carefully studied tune, to which the jolts of the vehicle beat a concerted bass; while, the slackening of the coupling chains, in combination with the concussion of the buffers as they hitch up suddenly again, sounds a regular obbligato accompaniment—the scream of the steam whistle, and the thundering whish and whirr of the train through a deep cutting or tunnel, or over a bridge with water below, coming in occasionally as a sort of symphony to the main air?
Have you never noticed this?
No? Bless me, what a very unimaginative person you are! I have, frequently; and yet, I do not think I am any brighter than the ordinary run of people.
Drawn some odd thousands of miles by the iron horse, as it has been my fortune to be during different periods of my life, I have seldom failed to associate his progress thus with those lesser Melpomenean nymphs, who may be selected to watch over the destinies of the steam god and fill up their leisure hours by “riding on a rail,” in the favourite fashion of the South Carolinian darkeys.
Of course the carriage wheels do not perpetually sing the same song:—that would be monotonous.
They know better than that, I can assure you. Sometimes they rattle out the maddest of mad waltzes—such as that which the imprudent German young lady, living near the Harz Mountains, found herself dancing one day against her will, when she had given expression to the very improper statement, that, she would “take the devil for a partner,” if he only would put in an appearance at the gay and festive scene at which she was then present. Sometimes, again, they will evolve, note by note, the dreariest air that the composer of the Dead March in Saul could have devised; or, croon you out a soothing lullaby, should you feel sleepy, to which the charming melody of “The Cradle Song” would bear no comparison. In fact, the nymphs know their work well; and so alter their strains as to suit every mood and humour of the variously-tempered travellers that listen to their musical cadences.
As I proceeded now on my way to Southampton, where I was to take the ocean steamer for my passage to America, the railway nymphs were busy with their harmonies.
Not sad or dispiriting by any means, but briskly enlivening was their lay.
They seemed to me to sing—
“You’re off on your travels! Off on your travels,
To fame and fortune in another land!
To wait and work, Frank! Wait and work, Frank!
Ere you gain your own Min’s hand!”
And, perhaps, it was from the recollection of Monsieur Parole d’Honneur’s kindness, and from my having been in company with him that winter in Paris, where I had heard that opera of Offenbach’s for the first time, but the tune of the carriage wheels was strangely like the “Pars pour Crete” chorus in the second act of La Belle Hélène—where, if you remember, the unfortunate Menelaus is hustled off the stage, in company with his portly umbrella and other belongings, in order to make room for the advent of Paris, the “gay deceiver,” the successful intriguant!
Although my thoughts were wrapped up in memories of Min and her parting, hopeful words, and my inner eyes still saw her standing at the window, waving her handkerchief to me in mute adieu, my outward vision was keenly watchful of each landpoint the train hurried by.
I remember every incident on the way.
Not a thing escaped me.
The outlook for baggage at Waterloo; the feeing of the obsequious porter expectant of a douceur; the mistake I made in getting my ticket which had to be rectified at the last moment; the confused ringing of bells and clattering of trucks up and down the platform; the slamming of doors and hurrying of feet to and fro:—then, the sudden pause in all these sounds; the shrill whistle, betokening all was ready; the converting of all the employés into animated sign-posts, that waved their arms wildly; the grunt and wheeze from the engine, as if from a giant in pain; the sharp jerk, and then the steady pull at the carriage in which I was sitting; the “pant, pant! puff, puff!” of the iron horse, as he buckled to his work with a will; and then, finally, the preliminary oscillation of the ponderous train, the trembling and rumbling of creaking wheels along the rails—as we glided and bumped, slowly but steadily, out of the terminus—the distance signal showing “all clear” to us, and blocking the up line with the red semaphore of “danger.”
Past Vauxhall, once famed for its revelry—conspicuous, now, only for its picturesque expanse of candle-factory roofs and the dead boarding that is displayed skirting the railway:—Clapham, villa-studded and with gardens laid out in bird’s-eye perspective:—Surbiton, dainty in its pretty little road-side station, all garnished with roses and shell-walks:—Farnborough, where a large proportion of our passengers, of military proclivities, alight en route for Aldershot, and celebrated of yore for the “grand international” contest with fisticuffs between a British Sayers and a Transatlantic Heenan:—Basingstoke, the great ugly “junction” of many twisted rails and curiously-intricate stacks of chimneys; until, at length, Southampton was reached—a town smelling of docks and coal-tar, and dismal in the evening gloom.
Not a feature of the landscape on my way down was lost to me; although, as I’ve said, I was thinking of Min all the time the train was speeding on.
I was wondering within myself, in a duplicate system of thought, when I would see the scene again, in all its variations, as I saw it clearly, now; and whether the green meadows, and fir-summited hills, and shining water-courses that wandered through and around them—nay, whether the very telegraph posts and wires, and the country stations we rattled past so quickly and unceremoniously, as if they were not worth stopping for—would look the same on my coming back to England and my darling once more!
But, I was not sad or down-hearted.
Her last words had rendered me almost as hopeful as she professed to be; so, in spite of my great grief at our parting, a grief which was too deep for words, I was endeavouring more to look forward sanguinely to the future than dwell on all our past unhappiness—which I tried to put away from me as a bad dream.
I was only musing, that’s all.
It is impossible to keep one’s mind idle, you know; for, even when engaged in an abstract contemplation of the most engrossing theme, the fancy will stray off into by-paths that lead to strangely dissimilar ideas and very disconnected associations.
As the German steamer in which I was going to New York did not start until next day, I put up for the night at Radley’s—that haven of shore-comfort to the Red-Sea-roasted, Biscay-tossed, sea-sickened Indian warriors returning home by the P and O vessels—where, you may be sure, I met with every attention that my constitution required in the way of rest and refreshment; and, at midday on the morrow, embarking on board the stately Herzog von Gottingen, I passed through the Needles, outward-bound across the Atlantic to the “New World” of promise!
Ocean voyages are so common now-a-days that they are not worth mentioning.
Mine was no exception to the rule; the only noticeable point that I observed being the rare courageous temperament of the Teutonic ladies, and the undaunted spirit they displayed in “fighting their battles o’er again” at the saloon table, in despite of the insidious attacks of Neptune. No matter how frequently the fell malady of the sea should assail them—at breakfast, or lunch, or dinner, or at any of the other and many meals which the ship’s caterer thought necessary to our diurnal wants—these delicate fair ones would “never say die,” on having to beat a precipitate retreat to their cabins. They would return again, I assure you, in a few minutes, to resume the repast which had been temporarily interrupted; smiling as if nothing had happened, and showing, too, that nothing had happened, to seriously interfere with their deglutinal faculties!
This was not my first voyage—I did not tell you so before?
Well, suppose I did not; don’t you remember my saying that I was not aware of being under any obligation to you which would make me regard you as the receptor of all my secrets?
This was not my first voyage, I say; consequently, ship-board life was no novelty to me—nor the Atlantic Ocean, either, for that matter. I was used to the one, I had seen the other previously. I was as much at home to both, in fact, as I had been in the vicarage parlour standing beside dear little Miss Pimpernell’s old arm-chair in the chimney corner!
I love the sea, in rest or unrest.
It is never monotonous to me, as some find it; for I think it ever-changing, ever new. I love it always—under every aspect of its kaleidoscopic face.
When, bright with mellow sunshine, it reflects the intense blue of the ocean sky above, with a brisk breeze topping its many-furrowed waves—that are racing by and leaping over each other like a parcel of schoolboys at play—and cutting off sheets and sparkling showers of the prismatic foam that exhibits every tint of the rainbow—azure and orange, violet, light-green, and pale luminous white,—scatters it broadcast into the air around; whence it falls into yeasty hollows, a sort of feathery snow of a fairy texture, just suited for the bridal veils of the Nereides—only to be churned over again and tossed up anew by the wanton wind in its frolicsome mirth.
Or, when, in a dead calm, it appears to lie sleeping, heaving its tumid bosom in occasional long-drawn sighs—that make it rise and sink in rounded ridges of an oily look and a leadeny tinge, except at the equator, where they shine at midday like a burnished mirror.
Or, again, when storm-tossed and tempest-weary, it rages and raves with all its pent-up fury broken loose—goaded to frenzy by the howling lashes of Aeolus and the roar of the storm-fiend. Then it is grand and awful in its majesty; and when I see it so it makes me mad with a triumphant sense of power in overriding it—as it boils beneath the vessel’s keel, longing to overwhelm it and me, yet impotent of evil!
Whether in calm or in storm—at dawn of day, with the rosy flush of the rising sun blushing the horizon up to the zenith, or at night, with the twinkling stars shining down into its sombre depths and the recurring flashes of sheet lightning lighting up its immensity, which seems vaster as the darkness grows—it is to me always attractive, ever lovable.
In its bright buoyancy it exhilarates me; in its calm, it causes me to dream; and, in its wild moods, when heaven and sea appear to meet together in wrestling embrace, I can—if joyous at the time—almost shout aloud in ecstasy of admiring awe and kindred riot of mind; while, should I feel sad during the carnival of the elements, I get reflective, and—
“As I watch the ocean
In pitiless commotion,
Like the thoughts, now surging wildly through my storm-tost breast,
The snow-capt, heaving billows
Seem to me as lace-fring’d pillows
Of the deep Deep’s bed of rest!”
Did you ever chance to read Châteaubriand’s Génie du Christianisme?
It is a queer book for a Frenchman to have written, but abounding in beautiful description and startling bits of observation. I remember, one evening on the passage out, when it was very rough, having a particular sentence of this work especially called to my mind. It was that in which the author discourses on the Deity, and says,—
“I do not profess to be anything myself; I am only a solitary unit. But I have often heard learned men disputing about a chief originator, or prime cause, and I have never been able to comprehend their arguments; for I have always noticed that it is at the sight of the stupendous movements of nature that the idea of this unknown supreme ‘origin’ becomes manifested to the mind of man.”
This sentence was the more impressed on my memory, from the fact, that, on the very same evening, while reading the appointed portion of the Psalms out of the little Prayer-book which Min had given me—a duty that I had promised her to perform regularly every day—I came across a verse, which, in different language, expressed almost the very same thing. It was the one wherein David exclaims, “They that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their business in great waters, these men see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep!”
Our voyage was uneventful, beyond this one instance of rough weather—when, throughout the night, as the steamer pitched and heaved, rolling and labouring, as if her last hour was come, the screw propeller worked round with a heavy thudding sound, as if some Cyclops were pounding away under my bunk with a broomstick to rouse me up, my cabin being just over the screw shaft. It went for awhile “thump:—thump! thump, thump, thump! Thump:—thump! Thump, thump, thump!” with even regularity; and then would suddenly break off this movement, whizzing away at a great rate, as the “send” of the sea lifted the blades out of the water, buzzing furiously the while like some marine alarum clock running down, or the mainspring of your watch breaking!
In the morning, however, only the swelling waves—that were rapidly subsiding—remained to remind us of the gale; and, from that date, we had fine weather and a good wind “a-beam,” until we finally sighted Sandy Hook lightship at the foot of New York Bay.
We did this in exactly ten days from the time of our “departure point” being taken, off the Needles.—Rather a fair run on the whole, when you consider that we lost fully a day by the storm, compelling us as it did, not only to slacken speed, but also to reverse our course, in order to keep the vessel’s head to the sea, and prevent her being pooped by some gigantic following wave—as might have been the case if we had kept on before it, as the unfortunate London did, a short period before.
My first impressions of “the Empire city,” as the proud Manhattanese fondly style it, were, certainly, not favourable; rather the contrary, I may say at once, without any “beating about the bush.”
You see, I landed on a Sunday. It was likewise wet—a nasty, drizzling, misty morning, fit to give you the blues with its many disagreeables and make you bless Mackintosh, while cursing Pleiads. Now, either of these two conditions—I do not refer to the act of benediction or its reverse, but to the fact of its being Sunday and wet—would have been sufficient to detract from the attractive merits of any English town; how much more, therefore, from those possessed by the great cosmopolitan metropolis of Transatlantica? This city is in bad weather a hundred-fold more desolate than London, in an aesthetic sense, and that is saying a good deal; and, on a Sunday, through the absence of any Sabbatarian influences and the working of teetotal tastes, it is more outwardly dull and inwardly vicious than any spot north of Tweed—Glasgow, for example, where the name of the illustrious Forbes Mackenzie is venerated!
To commence with, during the early morning we had warped into dock at Hoboken, the Rotherhithe—and, in some respects, Rosherville—of New York, being situated on the opposite side of the river; and here, the Herzog von Gottingen lay, with her bowsprit jammed into a coal shed and her decks, aforetime so white and clean, all bespattered with dirt, and encumbered with hawsers and cables. These latter coiling and uncoiling themselves here, there, and everywhere, like so many writhing sea-serpents, and, tripping you up suddenly just when you believed you had discovered a clear space on which you might stand without imperilling your valuable life.
Besides, the crew were engaged in getting up luggage from the lower hold by the aid of a donkey engine, which made a great deal of clattering fuss over doing a minimum amount of work—in which respect it resembled a good many people of my acquaintance, by the way. It was not pleasant to have the iron-bound cover of a heavy chest poked into the small of one’s back without leave or licence, and the entire article being subsequently deposited on one’s toes! No, it was not. And, to make matters worse, the escape steam, puffing off in volumes from the waste pipe in a hollow roar of relief at being no longer compelled to earn its living, was condensing an additional shower for our benefit—that was not more agreeable, in consequence of being warm—as if the drizzling rain that was falling was not deemed sufficient for wetting purposes!
After settling matters with the Custom House, and crossing the ferry from Hoboken, myself and all my goods packed in a hackney carriage hung on very high springs—like the old “glass coaches” that were used in London during the early part of the century, although, unlike them, drawn by a pair of remarkably fine horses—my drive through the back slums of New York to one of the Broadway hotels was not of a nature to dispel my vapours.
The lower parts of the town, adjacent to the Hudson, are about as odoriferous and architecturally beautiful as a sixth-rate seaport in “the old country.” While, as for Broadway itself—that much be-praised-boulevard—Broadway, the “great,” the “much pumpkins, I guess”—to see which, I had been told by enthusiastic Americans, was to behold the very thirteenth wonder of the world!—Well, the less I say about it, perhaps the better!
If you are still inquisitive, however, and would kindly imagine what your feelings would be on beholding Upper Oxford Street on a November day—with a few draggling flags hung across it, one or two “blocks” of brown-stone buildings interspersed between its rows of uneven shops, and a lofty-spired church, like Saint Margaret’s, jutting out into the roadway by the Marble Arch—you will have a general idea of my impressions when first looking at the magnificent thoroughfare that our cousins love.
It has evidently secured its reputation, from being the only decent street in New York—just as Sackville Street in Dublin is “a foine place entirely,” on account of its being the only one of any respectable length or width in the city on the Liffey—if you will kindly permit the comparison for a moment?
I was disappointed, I confess.
Ever since boyhood I had pictured America, and everything belonging to it, from Fennimore Cooper’s standpoint. I thought I was going to a spot quite different from any locality I had previously been accustomed to; and, lo! New York was altogether commonplace. Nothing original, nothing tropical, nothing “New World”-like about it. It was only an ordinary town of the same stamp as many I have noticed on this side of the water—a European city in a slop suit—“Yankee” all over in that way!
In regard to its extent, which I had been led to believe was quite equal to, if not surpassing, our metropolis, I found that I could walk from one side of it to the other in half an hour; and traverse its length in twice that time—the entire island on which it is built being only nine miles long. “Why,” thought I, when I had arrived at this knowledge, “some of our suburbs could beat that!”
When bright days came, Broadway undoubtedly looked a little better—Barnum’s streamers, “up town,” floating out bravely over the heads of the “stage” drivers—but I was never able to overcome my first impressions of it and New York generally; and, to make an end of the matter, I may say now, that the longer I stayed in the “land of the settin’ sun,” north, south, east, and west—I had experience of all—the less I saw to like in it.
The country and the scenery are well enough; but the people!
Ah! if the Right Honourable John Bright and other ardent admirers of everything connected with the “great Republic” on the other side of the ocean, would but go over, as I did, and study it honestly from every point of view for three years, say, they must come to a different opinion about the nation which they are so constantly eulogising at the expense of their own!
Don’t let them merely run over to see it in gala trim, however, and have its workings explained only to them through a transatlantic section of the same clique of which they are members at home; but let them go in a private capacity and see things for themselves, mixing amongst all classes of the American community, and not only in one circle.
They won’t, though.
The Manchester manufacturer of “advanced views” visits the Massachusetts manufacturer;—and, derives all his knowledge of America and her institutions from him. The trades’ union delegate of England palavers with the working-men’s societies of the eastern states; whence he gets his information of Transatlantic polemics. The ballot enthusiast over here talks, and only talks, mind you! with the believer in the ballot over there; and so arrives at his conclusions on the subject of secret voting—and then, all these return to this “down-trodden,” “aristocracy-ridden,” “effete old kingdom,” and prate about the glorious way in which their several theories work across the ocean—not one of them having resided long enough beneath the stars and stripes to be able to judge of the truth of what they allege, as they are quite contented to take for gospel the hearsay with which they bolster up their own opinions!
If these respective persons would only go out and live, I say, for three years consecutively in the States, and move about outside of their respective bigotted grooves, they would find out, in time, that, the boasted free, liberty-loving, advanced, progressive commonwealth on the other side of “the big pond,” is?—one of the most despotic, intolerant, morally-and-politically-rotten republics that ever existed, bar none!
What will your ballot-advocate—who anathematises “Tory coercion,” and is continually urging into notice the “purity of election” that characterises the system of our “cousins”—say, to the fact, that one party of “free and enlightened citizens” of the model cosmos of his admiration regularly sell their votes to the highest bidder; while, another set, under a military despotism, are compelled to exercise the franchise only in a manner pleasing to a dominant faction? What will your Democratic Dilke, or Ouvrier Odger—who may, in this “speech-gagged,” “oppressed” country, heap scurrilous abuse on royalty and overhaul the washing bills of her Majesty without let or hindrance—say, for the “liberty of speech” on the other side; where, if they were to utter a word in favour of the conquered Confederates, amongst a certain school of “black republicans,” they would run the risk of having a revolver bullet in their epigastric region before they knew where they were?
How would your communistic enthusiast, who bawls out about the equality of all men, like to see, as I have seen, “respectable cullered pussons,” representatives of the beloved “man and a brother,” wearing livery, the “badge of servitude,” which is only supposed to be donned by the “menials of European tyrants?” And yet, these darkey flunkeys are in the service of free and equal citizens of a “Great Republic,” strange to say!
What does your Manchester “Spinning Jenney,” the earnest upholder of free trade, say to the “Protection” policy of his congeners in the States?
How can he reconcile his statements here with facts there?
Where is the “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité,” now, when you really come to dive below the surface, and see things as they are in America, eh?—
But, bless you, these reformers will not so regard the objects of their veneration. They will only see them in the light in which they choose to see them; and would swear black was white in order to answer their purpose!
Your true radical or republican—the name “liberal” is a misnomer—is, as I have often heard the vicar say, one of the most intolerant, illiberal persons under the sun. His idea of freedom, is, that everybody should be free to do as he pleases:—if they object to his programme, they are evidently not sufficiently “advanced” to suit him! His liberty of speech, is, for himself to spout away ad libitum on his hobby, and everybody else who may not agree with him to hold his tongue! His theory of equality is, for all above him in station to be brought down to his level, and then, for him to remain cock of the walk!
I have studied the animal. That’s his view of it, depend upon it! He will not be convinced. He will not even “argue the point,” nor listen to a word said on the side contrary to that which he espouses. He has his opinions, he says; and will stick to them, right or wrong—notwithstanding the home truths that may lie in those of others opposed to him. Dogged, certainly:—liberal, no! Do you doubt what I say?—Let us go to particulars then.
Your candid disestablishers, for instance,—will they meet your outspoken churchmen, who stand up for the old faith in the constitution, on an open platform; and discuss the question of a national church on a common footing, where both its opponents and its supporters can be heard?
Will your would—be—republican, foregathering at some Hole-in-the-Wall meeting, allow a conservative speaker to say a word in opposition to his progressive puerilities? Your teetotal-alliancer, in a quorum of water-drinkers, will he let a licensed victualler utter a protest against his scheme for universal abstinence?
No.
Each and all of these several cliques are, in common with all cliques, narrow-minded and intolerant. They prefer being kings of their respective small companies and enjoying the mutual admiration of a packed assembly, to coming out boldly like men and letting the pros and cons of their schemes be ventilated in free discussion at genuine meetings, composed of diverse elements.—Do you want any further proof?
I confess, I don’t like republics or republicans. Once upon a time, before seeing how they worked, I undoubtedly had a leaning towards the “liberalism,” as I thought it, of this school; but a thorough exposure of the “institution” and the character of its partisans in America and in France have completely opened my eyes to their real nature.
Were I asked, now, to define a republic, I should say that it was a general scramble for power and perquisites, by a lot of ragged rascals with empty pockets, who have everything to gain by success, and nothing to lose by failure.—A sort of “rough and tumble” fight, in which those with the easiest consciences, the loudest tongues and the wildest promises, come to the fore, letting “the devil take the hindmost!”
It is a so-called commonwealth, wherein the welfare of the mass is subordinated to party spirit; and in which each aspirant for place and power, well knowing that his chief ambition is to “feather his own nest” without any afterthought of patriotism, kicks down his struggling brother—likewise on the lookout for the loaves and fishes of office—ostracising him, if he doesn’t put up with the treatment quietly!
I may be wrong, certainly, and I’m open to argument on the point, but I like our old system best. I infinitely prefer a gentleman with a reputation, to a snob with none; and a clean shirt to a dirty one! and if you allow that I possess the right of selecting my future rulers, I would much rather have those whom birth and education have taught at least toleration, than a parcel of grubby-nailed democrats, innocent of soap-and-water, who wish to choke their one-sided creed, willy-nilly, down my throat, in defiance of my inclinations and better judgment; and whose sole interest in “their fellow man” is centred in the problem—how to line their own pockets at his cost, in the neatest way!
“Sans culottes” and the “Bonnet Rouge” for those who like them; but, as a matter of choice, I prefer a pair of decent “inexpressibles” and a Lincoln and Bennett “chapeau!” As the elder Capulet’s first scullion sagely remarked to his fellow-servant—
“When good manners shall lie all in one or two men’s hands, and they unwashed too, ’tis a foul thing!”
There are men calling themselves “politicians”—save the mark! that would have us pull down the old constitutional machine, (lumbering it may be,) which has served our purpose for generations, and whose working and capabilities we have tested some odd thousand years; to replace it with the newfangled gimcrack model which is continually getting out of gear across the Atlantic; and I have no patience with them. I do not particularly desire to run America and its people down; but, when we are in the habit of criticising the deeds and doings of our continental neighbours, without much reticence as to our likes and dislikes, I do not see why any especial immunity should be placed over Americans to taboo them from honest judgment!
I must say that when I hear and read the fulsome admiration that it has been the fashion of late to express and write concerning our so-called “cousins,” it fairly makes my blood boil. If nobody else will “take the gilt off the gingerbread,” why shouldn’t I try to do so?
The truth of the matter, with regard to America, is that the Columbian eagle makes such a tremendous cackling over every little egg it lays, that we cis-Atlantic folks rate its achievements much higher than they deserve!
We do not kick up a fuss about our general proceedings; consequently, we imagine something very great must have happened to cause the Bird o’ Freedom to burst into such gallinacious paeans of delight.
The “advancement” of the first Republic, you say?—Why, it has taken over a hundred years to grow, and it ought to be arriving at maturity by this time!
The determination of its citizens displayed in crushing out secession?—They took four years to do it in, although they had an army and navy provided to their hand, and were receiving recruits in hundreds from the masses of incoming emigrants, up to the very end of the struggle; while, the Southerners had to improvise everything, and their forces dwindled down day by day.
We put down the Indian mutiny in 1857 with a little handful of troops, that had to confront thousands upon thousands of insurgent Hindoos before a single reinforcement could arrive from England:—we never triumphed so loudly about what we did on that occasion; and yet, our campaign against the Sepoys was fought over a far more extended territory than the war for the “Union.”
Their progress, you remark?
Pooh, my dear sir! One would almost think, to hear you talk, that the old world had stood still in sheer astonishment ever since the “new” was ushered into being!
Granted, that a few wooden shanties are run up “out west” on the prairies, and styled “towns,” and that these towns grow into “cities” by-and-by:—what then? Are there not miles of streets, and houses without number, added to London, and other little villages over here every year, which do not attract any comment—except in the annual report of the Registrar General?
Their Union Pacific Railway, connecting New York with Saint Francisco; and hence abridging the distance between Europe and Asia!
A “big thing,” certainly; but have you forgotten our Underground line, and the Holborn Viaduct, and the Thames Embankment—either and all of which can vie with the noblest relics of ancient Rome?
Bah! Don’t talk to me in that strain, please. Has not France also achieved the Suez Canal, and Italy the Mont Cenis tunnel—both works surpassing any feat of Transatlantic engineering ever attempted. Why, their Hoosaic tunnel, which is not near the size of the Alpine one, and which has been talked of and worked at for the last twenty years, is not yet half completed! Have we not, too, run railways through the jungles of India, and spanned the wastes of Australia with the electric wire?
Ha! while alluding to telegraphs, let us instance the Atlantic cable. That strikes nearer home, doesn’t it? Originated as the idea was by an American, Cyrus Field—to whom may all honour be given—can you inform me which country is entitled to take credit for its success—slow England or smart America?
You won’t answer, eh? Then I’ll tell you.
The company that conducted that undertaking to a triumphant issue—was got up in London, and formed mostly of Englishmen. The money that paid for the ocean cable—came out of the pockets of English shareholders. English manufacturers constructed it:—English artisans fashioned it; and an English ship, the largest ever built, manned by an English crew, laid it. There! what do you say to that now, eh?
“Caved in?”
I guessed so. Thought we “could crow some, I reckon.”
But, I will say no more on the subject. I have allowed you to have the free benefit of my opinions—such as they are—at your private valuation, no discount allowed!
You don’t seem pleased—what is it that you say?
You want to hear about my doings; and not my opinions?
Bless me! How very impatient you are. I was only just going to continue my story!
How can you hear about me without hearing my opinions also?
I dare say they may not appear palatable to you. There is no accounting for tastes; and, as you probably know, “veritas odium parit!”
Still, you cannot separate a man and his opinions; they are inseparable.
Fancy an individual without an opinion of his own!
Why, he would be a nonentity—a thing!
Don’t talk nonsense.