Yet with all its faults and absurdities upon its face, Chicago is the happiest city in America. It is protected by the triple brass of pride against all the assaults of its enemies. Never in history was so sublime a vanity revealed; and it is hard for a stranger to understand upon what it is based. Chicago is Chicago—that is what its citizens say, with a flattered smile, which makes argument useless. Its dirt and dust do not disconcert its self-esteem. The oversized ugliness of its buildings are no disappointment to its candid soul, and if its peculiar virtue escape your observation, so much the worse for you. "The marvellous city of the West"—that is its own name, and it lives up to it without an effort. Its history, as composed by its own citizens, is one long paean of praise. One chronicler, to whose unconscious humour I am infinitely indebted, dedicates his work to "the children of Chicago, who, if the Lord spares them until they shall have attained the allotted span of life, will see this city the greatest metropolis on the globe." That is a modest estimate, and it makes us feel the inadequacy of our poor speech to hymn the glories of Chicago. And if you suggest a fault, its panegyrists are always ready with a counterstroke. Having no taste for slaughter, I did not visit Packing Town, but, without admitting all the grave charges brought against Chicago's grandest industry, one might have supposed that the sudden translation of herds of cattle into potted meat was not unattended with some inconvenience. This suspicion, you are told, is an insult to the city. What might disgust the traveller elsewhere has no terrors in Chicago. "This Packing-Town odor," we are told by a zealot, "has been unjustly criticised. To any one accustomed to it there is only a pleasant suggestion of rich, ruddy blood and long rows of tempting 'sides' hung up to cool." I prefer not to be tempted. I can only bow before the ingenuity of this eulogy. And if, more seriously, you reproach the cynicism of the Pit, which on this side or that may compel ruin, you are met with a very easy rejoinder. "The Chicago Board of Trade"—it is the same apologist who speaks—"is a world-renowned commercial organisation. It exercises a wider and a more potential influence over the welfare of mankind than any other institution of its kind in existence." This assurance leaves you dumb. You might as well argue with a brass band as with a citizen of Chicago; and doubtless you would wave the flag yourself if you stayed long enough in the wonderful West.
But the panegyrist of the Pit, already quoted, helps us to explain Chicago's vanity. "The fortunes made and lost within the walls of the great building," says he proudly, "astonish the world." If Chicago can only astonish the world, that is enough. Its citizens fondly hope that everything they do is on the largest scale. Size, speed, and prominence are the three gods of their idolatry. They are not content until they—the citizens—are all prominent, and their buildings are all the largest that cumber the earth. It is a great comfort to those who gamble away their substance in the Board of Trade to reflect that the weathercock that surmounts its tower is the biggest ever seen by human eye. There is not one of them that will not tell you, with a satisfied smile, that the slowest of their fire-engines can go from one end of the city to the other in five seconds. There is not one of them who, in the dark recesses of his mind, is not sure that New York is a "back number." They are proud of the senseless height of their houses, and of the rapidity with which they mount towards the sky. They are proud of the shapeless towns which spring up about them like mushrooms in a single night. In brief, they are proud of all the things of which they should feel shame; and even when their buildings have been measured and their pace has been recognised, their vanity is still a puzzle. For, when all the world has been satisfactorily amazed, what boast is left to the citizens of Chicago? They cannot take delight in the soil, since the most of them do not belong to it. The patriotism of the cosmopolitan horde which is huddled together amid their lofty Cliffs must perforce be an artificial sentiment. They cannot look with satisfaction upon the dishevelled suburbs in which they live. They need not suppose the slaughtering of pigs and beeves is the highest duty of man. But wherever they dwell and whatever they do, they are convinced of their own superiority. Their pride is not merely revealed in print; it is evident in a general familiarity of tone and manner. If your cabman wishes to know your destination, he prefaces his question with the immortal words, "Say, boys," and he thinks that he has put himself on amiable terms with you at once. Indeed, the newly-arrived stranger is instantly asked to understand that he belongs to a far meaner city than that in which he sojourns; and, even with the evidence of misapplied wealth before his eyes, he cannot believe it.
And what amiable visions do you carry away from Chicago besides the majesty of the lake, ever changing in colour and aspect, and the beauty of Lincoln Park? A single memory lingers in my mind. At sunset I saw a black regiment marching along Michigan Avenue,—marching like soldiers; and by its side on the pavement a laughing, shouting mob of negresses danced a triumphant cake-walk. They grinned and sang and chattered in perfect happiness and pride. They showed a frank pleasure in the prowess of their brothers and their friends. But, animated as the spectacle was, there was a sinister element in this joyous clatter. To an English eye it seemed a tragic farce—a veritable danse macabre.
Unhappy is the city which has no history; and what has Chicago to offer of history or tradition? What has it to tell the traveller? Once she was consumed, though she was not purified, by fire, and she still lives in the recollection. A visitor to a European city goes forth to admire a castle, a cathedral, a gallery of pictures. In Chicago he is asked to wonder at the shapeless residences of "prominent" citizens. And when the present civilisation fades and dies, what will be Chicago's ruins? Neither temple nor tower will be brought to the ground. There will be nothing to show the wandering New Zealander but a broken city, which was a scrap-heap before it was built; and the wandering New Zealander may be forgiven if he proclaim the uselessness of size and progress, if he ask how it has profited a city to buy and sell all the corn in the world, and in its destruction to leave not a wrack of comeliness behind.
NEW ENGLAND.
If in a country town we find an Inn called New, it is a sure sign of ancientry. The fresh and fragrant name survives the passing centuries. It clings to the falling house long after it has ceased to have an intelligible meaning. Taverns with a nobler sign and more arrogant aspect obscure its simpler merits. But there is a pride in its name, a dignity in its age, which a changing fashion will never destroy. And as it is with Inns, so it is with countries. New is an epithet redolent of antiquity. The province which once was, and is still called, New England, is very old America. It cannot be judged by the standards which are esteemed in New York or Chicago. The broad stream of what is called progress has left it undisturbed in its patient backwater. It recks as little of sky-scrapers as of transportation. Its towns are not ashamed of being villages, and the vanity which it guards is not the vanity of shapeless size, but the rarer vanity of a quiet and decent life.
No sooner does the English traveller leave Boston for the north than he enters what seems a familiar country. The towns which he passes, the rivers which he crosses, bear names, as I have said, to prove the faithful devotion the old adventurers felt for their native land. If they sought their fortune across the ocean, they piously preserved the memories of other days. Austere as were the early Puritans, bitterly as they smarted under what they supposed a political grievance, they did not regard the country of their origin with the fierce hatred which has sometimes inspired their descendants. The love of the New did not extinguish the love of the Old England. In Appledore and Portsmouth, in London and Manchester, in Newcastle and Dover, the ancient sentiment lives and breathes. And the New Englanders, once proud of their source, still cherish a pride in their blood, which they have kept pure from the contamination of the foreigner. Fortunately for itself, New England has fallen behind in the march of progress. There is nothing in its peaceful recesses to tempt the cosmopolitan horde which throngs the great cities of America. The hope of gain is there as small as the opportunity of gambling. A quiet folk, devoted to fishery and agriculture, is not worth plundering.
So it is there, if anywhere, that you may surprise the true-born American, and when you have surprised him, he very much resembles your own compatriot. His type and gesture are as familiar to you as his surroundings. Slow of speech and movement, he has not yet acquired the exhausting, purposeless love of speed which devours the more modern cities. He goes about his work with a perfect consciousness that there are four-and-twenty hours in the day. And as he is not the victim of an undue haste, he has leisure for a gracious civility. It is not for him to address a stranger with the familiarity characteristic of New York or Chicago. Though he know it not, and perhaps would resent it if he knew it, he is profoundly influenced by his origin. He has not lost the high seriousness, the quiet gravity, which distinguished his ancestors.
His towns, in aspect and sentiment, closely resemble himself. Portsmouth, for instance, which has not the same reason for self-consciousness as Salem or Concord, has retained the authentic features of the mother-land. You might easily match it in Kent or Essex. The open space in the centre of the town, the Athenæum—in style, name, and purpose, alike English—are of another age and country than their own. There is a look of trim elegance everywhere, which refreshes the eye; and over the streets there broods an immemorial peace, which even the echoing clangour of the Navy Yard cannot dispel. The houses, some of wood, built after the Colonial manner, others of red brick, and of a grave design, are in perfect harmony with their surroundings. Nothing is awry: nothing is out of place. And so severely consistent is the impression of age, that down on the sunlit quay, flanked by the lofty warehouses, the slope of whose roofs is masked by corbie-steps, you are surprised not to see riding at anchor the high-prowed galleons of the seventeenth century.