CHAPTER II.
Journey from Washington to Philadelphia.—A day at Philadelphia.—Journey to New York on the rail-road.—Stop on Broadway.—A dinner consisting of ice water and one mouthful of roast beef!—Bill of fare, but no fare.—Thefts and burglary.—Broadstreet Hotel corner of Broad and Pearl streets.—Fare excellent, but no BILL OF FARE on the table at dinner.—Charles A. Clinton and Dr. Hosack.—Mrs. Lentner’s on Amity street, where Colonel Trumbull lived and died.—Albert Gallatin and his lady on Beckman street.—Mr. Gallatin’s eventful life.—How employed in the study of Indian languages.—His inquiries concerning his old friends in the District of Columbia.—Their feeling towards him and Mrs. Gallatin, and the comparisons they are now daily compelled to make.—The trade of New York city, its vast amount and probable increase, which will eventually render it the greatest commercial emporium in the world.—Rail-road to the Pacific ocean and a fair prospect of its connecting our Atlantic cities with China and the Pacific islands, by means of rail-roads and steam vessels.—The future wealth, grandeur and moral glory of this republic.
Having tarried at Washington about eight days, and having visited all the places and persons that I then desired to see, I left the city early in the morning, in the rail-road cars, breakfasted in Baltimore at Bradshaws, and reached Philadelphia about dark in the evening. Stopping at the Mansion House hotel, adjoining the depot, I visited Dr. S. G. Morton, on Arch street, not far from my lodgings. He invited me to call on him the next evening, which I did. Through the day intervening, I visited some book-sellers and book-binders, and saw and conversed with several very agreeable and well educated persons, citizens and strangers. The Philadelphians are a very moral, well-informed and good people. At Dr. Morton’s I met a small circle of his friends, with whom I spent agreeably several hours. The Doctor and his lady have a family of very promising sons and daughters, whom they are educating in the best possible manner. I saw Dr. Wistar at the hotel where I put up, and where he boards. He is the son of the celebrated Doctor of that name, but the present Dr. Wistar does not wish to follow the practice of his profession, and so he does not follow it at present; at least, I so understood him to say. Since I had seen this city, it had greatly increased its dimensions and improved its exterior appearance. The Girard College buildings, the Merchants’ Exchange and the Almshouse, have been built since I had seen Philadelphia before, and they added much to its exterior aspect.
The building intended as a residence for paupers, as we passed along the rail-road, on my return from New York, in a pleasant morning, on our right hand, across the Schuylkill, standing on elevated ground, made a splendid appearance. Had we not known that it was the Almshouse, we might have been tempted to believe it the residence of some retired monarch of the old world, who had come here, and at the expense of a million of dollars or more, had erected this splendid palace for a residence. The traveller is generally treated a little better, and charged a little less in Philadelphia, than he is in any other Atlantic city. As a whole, this city has always been celebrated for its good qualities of all sorts, and yet a few, a very few men here have done not a little to injure its still fair character. Its banks, bankers and bankrupts have brought down ruin on many an honest man and covered themselves, the authors of the ruin, with shame and disgrace. The ruin has fallen on the innocent only, while the guilty have escaped condign punishment, except one of them, whose death in all human probability was occasioned by his mental sufferings, at the loss of his character.—Peace to his shade.
Early on the morning of January 10th, I left the Mansion house, crossed the Delaware and passed through the State of New Jersey, in the rail-road cars, and arrived at New York city about three o’clock in the afternoon, in season for a dinner at a tavern on Broadway, At dinner we had a printed bill of fare in French. For drink, I had a glass of Croton water, with ice in it, and this, after a cold day’s ride, in the depth of a cold, northern winter! Had I been a frozen turnip, such water might have thawed my frozen stomach, but as it was, hot coffee or hot tea would have suited me much better. I called for something to eat, but the waiter in an insolent tone ordered me in German “to read my bill of fare,” and he refused to give me any thing to eat. Finally, after positively refusing to comply with my request a dozen times, the ruffian gave me a thin slice of roasted beef, which I ate at a mouthful, and called in vain for more. This mouthful of meat, with some cold Croton water and some ice in it, was all I got for my dinner! Half a dollar for such a dinner! kind reader. I had the bill of fare lying before me, but the fare itself I did not and could not obtain. After sitting at the table nearly an hour, faint, cold and hungry, I went to my room, in which a small fire had been made at my request, at the expense of another half dollar. The room being cold and damp, with so bad a prospect before me, I locked my door, put the key in my pocket, and went down Broadstreet, until I came to Thresher’s Broadstreet hotel, and told the host my story. He agreed to furnish me the best fare, unaccompanied by a bill of it, a good room to myself, warmed constantly by a good coal fire, for one dollar a day. Upon these terms we agreed, and I went back to the Broadway tavern. The Broadstreet hotel is the same house, which was occupied by General Washington as his head quarters, when he took possession of the city, after the British army had left it, at the conclusion of the revolutionary war. Standing in front of a large opened window in the second story, his officers standing before him in the street, below him, General Washington delivered to them his farewell address. From the house, his officers accompanied him to the wharf, not very distant from this spot, where he took his final leave of his companions in arms. Having crossed the ferry into New Jersey, he hastened to appear before the continental Congress, then sitting in Annapolis, the now seat of government in the State of Maryland. A painting in the rotundo, represents Washington at Annapolis delivering his farewell address to Congress.
On the conclusion of my bargain with the landlord of the Broadstreet Hotel, I returned to my first stopping place, and by dint of argument, aided by several southern guests, I got a warm supper, with warm coffee and warm food, a little after ten o’clock that night. I got some sleep that night and a breakfast next morning, and paid a bill of three dollars twelve-and-a-half cents, for what I had! Although my door had always been locked when I was out of it and the key was in my pocket, yet that precaution had not prevented my room from being entered, my locked trunk’s being opened, and several articles of no great value being stolen from it—such as a shirt, a handkerchief and a quire of writing paper. By ten in the morning I was at my new lodgings, where I continued some three weeks, while I remained in New York. This Broadstreet Hotel, on the corner of Pearl and Broad streets, is within one minute’s walk of the shipping, in the slip; it is one square from Broadway, and the old Battery. At the Battery there is playing constantly a splendid, roaring fountain of Croton water. It roars like a cataract in a still night. This Hotel is near not only to all the shipping in port, and the principal wholesale stores of all sorts, but it is the headquarters of most of the captain of vessels, which sail from this city to all parts of the world. From such a point, I found it an easy matter to visit every part of this emporium. New York, with its four hundred thousand people, here, or in Brooklyn, is unquestionably the first city on this continent. To fully comprehend all the ideas necessarily belonging to the wealth and resources of the United States, a man must visit New York and tarry some time there. Its streets, compared with those of Philadelphia, are narrow, crooked and dirty.
The first person whom I called to see, merely as a friend, was Charles A. Clinton, the eldest son of De Witt Clinton. Him I found some few squares above the Park and near Broadway. Here I found too Dr. Hosack, the son of my old friend Dr. Hosack, now deceased. It was quite gratifying to see the sons of my old friends, in the enjoyment of good health and prosperous in the world. Maj. Clinton had been clerk of the Superior court, for some dozen or more years, but had been removed from office, to make room for some relative of one of the judges of the court. This circumstance I had previously learned through the newspapers, about which Major Clinton said nothing. I called several times afterwards to see Major Clinton at his law office, nearly opposite the Customhouse, in Nassau street. He practices in partnership with Henry S. Towner, Esq., a lawyer, originally from Williamstown, Massachusetts. The lawyers cluster around the Customhouse and around the Merchants’ Exchange in Wall street.
If law business is great in the city, the number of those who follow the legal profession, is great likewise. I became personally acquainted with several lawyers here, who are highly respectable as men, as lawyers and as scholars. Among them may be mentioned George Folsom, Esq., whose office is opposite the Exchange, on Wall street. He is an author too. A son of Colonel Gibbs, the geologist, is a lawyer whose office is near the Exchange.
The bustle and crowd, the noise, the anxiety on many faces, and the vast amount of property of all sorts, such as cotton for instance, in piles, blocking up streets, or moving to and fro, between warehouses and wharves—the masts of vessels, standing along the shores of North river or those of Long Island sound, strike the eye, as one passes over the lower end of the city. Along Broadway, the goods and the signs and every thing, indeed, that possibly can catch the eye and draw the attention of the stranger, are not wanting, for a distance of two miles from the Battery upwards. The citizens, I believe, do not patronise the hotels on Broadway, but prefer those in streets farther eastward, as cheaper, more quiet and better in all respects, than Broadway houses. The retail stores are many of them on Broadway, but the wholesale ones are lower down in the city. Wall street is full of banks and insurance companies. The Harpers’ great book establishment is in Cliff street, near the old swamp, we believe. At the foot of Fulton street is the ferry, which crosses the East river to Long Island. This is the greatest ferrying place in America. We say this, though we are aware that a place in Kentucky, is called “Great Crossings,” yet Brooklyn ferry is a greater “crossing” place, than the “Crossings” in Scott county, Kentucky. I went over to Brooklyn and called on the editor of the Long Island Star—Alden Spooner, Esq. He is the surrogate of the county where he resides, and he devotes the most of his time to the duties of his office. Of the forty thousand people who live in Brooklyn, not a few of them have stores, shops and offices in New York city. Such men spend the day in the city and sleep with their families on Long Island at night. House rent is cheaper in Brooklyn than it is in New York, and there may be other reasons, such as the comparative quietness of a village, in Brooklyn, which is not found in New York, except some three miles up in the city. Brooklyn is therefore nearer their business than the upper part of New York would be; so Brooklyn is preferred by men of business, as a family residence, to the city itself.
Soon after my arrival in the city, as soon as it was generally known, through the newspapers, where I was located, I was carried by Geo. Folsom, Esq. to the dwelling house of Albert Gallatin, in Beekman street. He and his lady received me most cordially, as “a man, whom they had ardently desired to see, (as they assured me) during the last thirty years.” I found Mrs. Gallatin a most interesting old lady, surrounded by the neighboring ladies of that vicinity, to whom she politely introduced me. After a brief interview with these ladies below stairs, we proceeded (Mr. Folsom and myself) to Mr. Gallatin’s library room, where we found him engaged in his favorite study of the Indian languages of America. Perhaps I am in an error, but as I understood him, Mr. Gallatin had taken the Indian words as spelt by Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portugese, Americans, &c. as the true pronunciation of Indian words, which by the Indians themselves, had never been written. If he had done so, the true pronunciation of the Indians themselves had seldom been reached. Having been myself engaged in writing down the language of the Sioux, I am aware of the difficulty of catching the exact sound of each word, and the difficulty too, of expressing the exact sound of the word, by means of our alphabet. I saw at a glance the difficulty of his position. I hinted at this circumstance, but Mr. Gallatin did not fully comprehend my meaning, and so I dropped the subject. No alphabet now in use among men, can convey all the sounds of any Indian language, now or ever spoken in North America. Of this fact I feel assured from my own knowledge of Indian languages. The perfect knowledge of these languages is more curious than useful, perhaps, in as much as the Indians themselves will soon be gone, before the Anglo-Americans, whose march and conquests will soon obliterate every vestige of the aboriginals of America.