What a night we spent in that inn! They who know America will be aware that in all hotels there is a free admixture of different classes. The traveller in Europe may sit down to dinner with his tailor and shoemaker; but if so, his tailor and shoemaker have dressed themselves as he dresses, and are prepared to carry themselves according to a certain standard, which in exterior does not differ from his own. In the large Eastern cities of the States, such as Boston, New York, and Washington, a similar practice of life is gradually becoming prevalent. There are various hotels for various classes, and the ordinary traveller does not find himself at the same table with a butcher fresh from the shambles. But in the West there are no distinctions whatever. "A man's a man for a' that" in the West, let the "a' that" comprise what it may of coarse attire and unsophisticated manners. One soon gets used to it. In that inn at Rolla was a public room, heated in the middle by a stove, and round that we soon found ourselves seated in a company of soldiers, farmers, labourers, and teamsters. But there was among them a general;—not a fighting, or would-be fighting general of the present time, but one of the old-fashioned local generals,—men who held, or had once held, some fabulous generalship in the State militia. There we sat, cheek by jowl with our new friends, till nearly twelve o'clock, talking politics and discussing the war. The General was a stanch Unionist, having, according to his own showing, suffered dreadful things from secessionist persecutors since the rebellion commenced. As a matter of course everybody present was for the Union. In such a place one rarely encounters any difference of opinion. The General was very eager about the war, advocating the immediate abolition of slavery, not as a means of improving the condition of the southern slaves, but on the ground that it would ruin the southern masters. We all sat by, edging in a word now and then, but the General was the talker of the evening. He was very wrathy, and swore at every other word. "It was pretty well time," he said, "to crush out this rebellion, and by —— it must and should be crushed out; General Jim Lane was the man to do it, and by —— General Jim Lane would do it!" and so on. In all such conversations the time for action has always just come, and also the expected man. But the time passes by as other weeks and months have passed before it, and the new General is found to be no more successful than his brethren. Our friend was very angry against England. "When we've polished off these accursed rebels, I guess we'll take a turn at you. You had your turn when you made us give up Mason and Slidell, and we'll have our turn by-and-by." But in spite of his dislike to our nation he invited us warmly to come and see him at his home on the Missouri river. It was, according to his showing, a new Eden,—a Paradise upon earth. He seemed to think that we might perhaps desire to buy a location, and explained to us how readily we could make our fortunes. But he admitted in the course of his eulogiums that it would be as much as his life was worth for him to ride out five miles from his own house. In the meantime the teamsters greased their boots, the soldiers snored, those who were wet took off their shoes and stockings, hanging them to dry round the stove, and the western farmers chewed tobacco in silence and ruminated. At such a house all the guests go in to their meals together. A gong is sounded on a sudden, close behind your ears; accustomed as you may probably be to the sound you jump up from your chair in the agony of the crash, and by the time that you have collected your thoughts the whole crowd is off in a general stampede into the eating room. You may as well join them; if you hesitate as to feeding with so rough a lot of men, you will have to sit down afterwards with the women and children of the family, and your lot will then be worse. Among such classes in the western States the men are always better than the women. The men are dirty and civil, the women are dirty and uncivil.
On the following day we visited the camp, going out in an ambulance and returning on horseback. We were accompanied by the General's aide-de-camp, and also, to our great gratification, by the General's daughter. There had been a hard frost for some nights, but though the cold was very great there was always heat enough in the middle of the day to turn the surface of the ground into glutinous mud; consequently we had all the roughness induced by frost, but none of the usually attendant cleanliness. Indeed, it seemed that in these parts nothing was so dirty as frost. The mud stuck like paste and encompassed everything. We heard that morning that from sixty to seventy baggage-waggons had "broken through," as they called it, and stuck fast near a river in their endeavour to make their way on to Lebanon. We encountered two generals of brigade, General Siegel, a German, and General Ashboth, an Hungarian, both of whom were waiting till the weather should allow them to advance. They were extremely courteous, and warmly invited us to go on with them to Lebanon and Springfield, promising to us such accommodation as they might be able to obtain for themselves. I was much tempted to accept the offer; but I found that day after day might pass before any forward movement was commenced, and that it might be weeks before Springfield or even Lebanon could be reached. It was my wish, moreover, to see what I could of the people, rather than to scrutinize the ways of the army. We dined at the tent of General Ashboth, and afterwards rode his horses through the camp back to Rolla. I was greatly taken with this Hungarian gentleman. He was a tall, thin, gaunt man of fifty, a pure-blooded Magyar as I was told, who had come from his own country with Kossuth to America. His camp circumstances were not very luxurious, nor was his table very richly spread; but he received us with the ease and courtesy of a gentleman. He showed us his sword, his rifle, his pistols, his chargers, and daguerreotype of a friend he had loved in his own country. They were all the treasures that he carried with him,—over and above a chess-board and a set of chessmen which sorely tempted me to accompany him in his march.
In my next chapter, which will, I trust, be very short, I purport to say a few words as to what I saw of the American army, and therefore I will not now describe the regiments which we visited. The tents were all encompassed by snow, and the ground on which they stood was a bed of mud; but yet the soldiers out here were not so wretchedly forlorn, or apparently so miserably uncomfortable, as those at Benton barracks. I did not encounter that horrid sickly stench, nor were the men so pale and wobegone. On the following day we returned to St. Louis, bringing back with us our friend the German aide-de-camp. I stayed two days longer in that city, and then I thought that I had seen enough of Missouri;—enough of Missouri at any rate under the present circumstances of frost and secession. As regards the people of the West, I must say that they were not such as I expected to find them. With the Northerns we are all more or less intimately acquainted. Those Americans whom we meet in our own country, or on the Continent, are generally from the North, or if not so they have that type of American manners which has become familiar to us. They are talkative, intelligent, inclined to be social, though frequently not sympathetically social with ourselves; somewhat soi-disant, but almost invariably companionable. As the traveller goes southward into Maryland and Washington, the type is not altered to any great extent. The hard intelligence of the Yankee gives place gradually to the softer, and perhaps more polished manner of the Southern. But the change thus experienced is not so great as is that between the American of the western and the American of the Atlantic States. In the West I found the men gloomy and silent,—I might almost say sullen. A dozen of them will sit for hours round a stove, speechless. They chew tobacco and ruminate. They are not offended if you speak to them, but they are not pleased. They answer with monosyllables, or, if it be practicable, with a gesture of the head. They care nothing for the graces,—or shall I say, for the decencies of life? They are essentially a dirty people. Dirt, untidiness, and noise, seem in nowise to afflict them. Things are constantly done before your eyes, which should be done and might be done behind your back. No doubt we daily come into the closest contact with matters which, if we saw all that appertains to them, would cause us to shake and shudder. In other countries we do not see all this, but in the western States we do. I have eaten in Bedouin tents, and have been ministered to by Turks and Arabs. I have sojourned in the hotels of old Spain and of Spanish America. I have lived in Connaught, and have taken up my quarters with monks of different nations. I have, as it were, been educated to dirt, and taken out my degree in outward abominations. But my education had not reached a point which would enable me to live at my ease in the western States. A man or woman who can do that may be said to have graduated in the highest honours, and to have become absolutely invulnerable, either through the sense of touch, or by the eye, or by the nose. Indifference to appearances is there a matter of pride. A foul shirt is a flag of triumph. A craving for soap and water is as the wail of the weak and the confession of cowardice. This indifference is carried into all their affairs, or rather this manifestation of indifference. A few pages back, I spoke of a man whose furniture had been sold to pay a heavy tax raised on him specially as a secessionist; the same man had also been refused the payment of rent due to him by the Government, unless he would take a false oath. I may presume that he was ruined in his circumstances by the strong hand of the northern army. But he seemed in nowise to be unhappy about his ruin. He spoke with some scorn of the martial law in Missouri, but I felt that it was esteemed a small matter by him that his furniture was seized and sold. No men love money with more eager love than these western men, but they bear the loss of it as an Indian bears his torture at the stake. They are energetic in trade, speculating deeply whenever speculation is possible; but nevertheless they are slow in motion, loving to loaf about. They are slow in speech, preferring to sit in silence, with the tobacco between their teeth. They drink, but are seldom drunk to the eye; they begin at it early in the morning, and take it in a solemn, sullen, ugly manner, standing always at a bar; swallowing their spirits, and saying nothing as they swallow it. They drink often, and to great excess; but they carry it off without noise, sitting down and ruminating over it with the everlasting cud within their jaws. I believe that a stranger might go into the West, and passing from hotel to hotel through a dozen of them, might sit for hours at each in the large everlasting public hall, and never have a word addressed to him. No stranger should travel in the western States, or indeed in any of the States, without letters of introduction. It is the custom of the country, and they are easily procured. Without them everything is barren; for men do not travel in the States of America as they do in Europe, to see scenery and visit the marvels of old cities which are open to all the world. The social and political life of the Americans must constitute the interest of the traveller, and to these he can hardly make his way without introductions.
I cannot part with the West without saying in its favour that there is a certain manliness about its men, which gives them a dignity of their own. It is shown in that very indifference of which I have spoken. Whatever turns up the man is still there,—still unsophisticated and still unbroken. It has seemed to me that no race of men requires less outward assistance than these pioneers of civilization. They rarely amuse themselves. Food, newspapers, and brandy-smashes suffice for life; and while these last, whatever may occur, the man is still there in his manhood. The fury of the mob does not shake him, nor the stern countenance of his present martial tyrant. Alas! I cannot stick to my text by calling him a just man. Intelligence, energy, and endurance are his virtues. Dirt, dishonesty, and morning drinks are his vices.
All native American women are intelligent. It seems to be their birthright. In the eastern cities they have, in their upper classes, superadded womanly grace to this intelligence, and consequently they are charming as companions. They are beautiful also, and, as I believe, lack nothing that a lover can desire in his love. But I cannot fancy myself much in love with a western lady, or rather with a lady in the West. They are as sharp as nails, but then they are also as hard. They know, doubtless, all that they ought to know, but then they know so much more than they ought to know. They are tyrants to their parents, and never practise the virtue of obedience till they have half-grown-up daughters of their own. They have faith in the destiny of their country, if in nothing else; but they believe that that destiny is to be worked out by the spirit and talent of the young women. I confess that for me Eve would have had no charms had she not recognized Adam as her lord. I can forgive her in that she tempted him to eat the apple. Had she come from the West country she would have ordered him to make his meal, and then I could not have forgiven her.
St. Louis should be, and still will be, a town of great wealth. To no city can have been given more means of riches. I have spoken of the enormous mileage of water-communication of which she is the centre. The country around her produces Indian corn, wheat, grasses, hemp, and tobacco. Coal is dug even within the boundaries of the city, and iron-mines are worked at a distance from it of a hundred miles. The iron is so pure, that it is broken off in solid blocks, almost free from alloy; and as the metal stands up on the earth's surface in the guise almost of a gigantic metal pillar, instead of lying low within its bowels, it is worked at a cheap rate, and with great certainty. Nevertheless, at the present moment, the iron-works of Pilot Knob, as the place is called, do not pay. As far as I could learn, nothing did pay, except government contracts.
CHAPTER VI.
CAIRO AND CAMP WOOD.
To whatever period of life my days may be prolonged, I do not think that I shall ever forget Cairo. I do not mean Grand Cairo, which is also memorable in its way, and a place not to be forgotten,—but Cairo in the State of Illinois, which by native Americans is always called Caaro. An idea is prevalent in the States, and I think I have heard the same broached in England, that a popular British author had Cairo, State of Illinois, in his eye when under the name of Eden he depicted a chosen, happy spot on the Mississippi river, and told us how certain English emigrants fixed themselves in that locality, and there made light of those little ills of life which are incident to humanity even in the garden of the valley of the Mississippi. But I doubt whether that author ever visited Cairo in mid-winter, and I am sure that he never visited Cairo when Cairo was the seat of an American army. Had he done so, his love of truth would have forbidden him to presume that even Mark Tapley could have enjoyed himself in such an Eden.