The Seat of Empire

by Charles Carleton Coffin

With a fresh team we move on, finding mud "spots" now and then. We remember the remarks of the fellows at the railroad. We dive into holes, the forward wheels going down kerchug, sending bucketsful of muddy water upward to the roof of the wagon and forward upon the horses; jounce over corduroy which sets our teeth to chattering; then come upon a series of hollows through which we ride as in a jolly-boat on the waves of the sea. The wagon is ballasted by two members of Congress on the back seat, and by our rotund physician and the Vice-President of the Northern Pacific on the middle seat. The President is outside with the driver, on the lookout for breakers, while the rest of us, like passengers on shipboard, stowed beneath the hatches, must take whatever comes. The members of Congress bob up and down like electric pith-balls between the negative and positive poles of a galvanic battery,—only that the positive is the prevailing force! When the forward wheels go down to the hub, they go up; and then, as they descend, the seat, by some unaccountable process, comes up, meets them half-way,—and with such a bump!

Then we who are shaking our sides with laughter on the front seat, congratulating ourselves, like the Pharisees, that we are not as they are, suddenly find ourselves sprawling on the floor. When we regain our places, the M. D. and Vice-President come forward with a rush and embrace us fraternally. We get our legs so mixed up with our neighbors' that we can hardly tell whether our feet belong to ourselves or to somebody else! The light weights of the party are knocked about like shuttlecocks, while the solid ones roll like those ridiculous, round-bottomed, grinning images that we see in the toy-shops! I find myself going up and down after the manner of Sancho Panza when tossed in a blanket.

Our dinners are well settled when we reach Grindstone,—our stopping-place for the night. The town is located on Grindstone Creek, and consists of a log-house and stable, surrounded by burnt timber.

Half a dozen men who have footed it from Duluth are nursing their sore feet in one of the three rooms on the ground-floor. The furniture of the apartment consists of a cast-iron stove in the centre and three rough benches against the walls, which are papered with pictorial newspapers.

The occupants are discussing the future prospects of Duluth.

"It is a right smart chance of a place," says a tall, thin-faced, long-nosed man stretched in one corner. We know by the utterance of that one sentence that he is from southern Illinois.

"They have got their i-deas pretty well up though, on real estate, for a town that is only a yearlin'," says another, who, by his accent of the i, has shown that he too is a Western man.

An Amazon in stature, with a round red face, hurries up a supper of pork and fried eggs; and then we who are going northward, and they who are travelling southward,—sixteen of us, all told,—creep up the narrow stairway to the unfinished garret, and go to bed, with our noses close to the rafters and long shingles, through the crevices of which we look out and behold the stars marching in grand procession across the midnight sky.

It is glorious to lie there and feel the tire and weariness go out of us; to look into the "eternities of space," as Carlyle says of the vault of heaven. But our profound thoughts upon the measureless empyrean are brought down to sublunary things by four of the sleepers who engage in a snoring contest. The race is so close, neck and neck, or rather nose and nose, that it is impossible to decide whether the deep sonorous—not to say snorous?—bass of the big fellow by the window, or the sharp, piercing, energetic snorts of the thin-faced, lantern-jawed, long-nosed man from southern Illinois, is entitled to the trumpet or horn, or whatever may be appropriate to signalize such championship. Either of them would have been a power in the grand chorus of the Coliseum Jubilee, and both together would be equal to the big organ!

We are off early in the morning, feeling a little sore in spots. The first thump extorts a sudden oh! from a member of Congress, but we are philosophic, and accommodate ourselves to circumstances, tell stories between the bumpings, and make the grand old forest ring with our laughter. It is glorious to get away from the town, and out into the woods, where you can shout and sing and let yourself out without regard to what folks will say! The fountain of perennial youth is in the forest,—never in the city. Its healing, beautifying, and restoring waters do not run through aqueducts; they are never pumped up; but you must lie down upon the mossy bank beneath old trees and drink from the crystal stream to obtain them.