We are in the habit of regarding Americans as less domestic than ourselves. I would suggest that their ideas on this subject are somewhat different from ours. It struck me that with them a little republicanism had passed from the State into the home—that children assumed and were allowed a greater degree of independence and equality than with us. This doubtless arises in a great degree from the early knowledge all children have that they will be able and must soon begin to provide for themselves. But it is greatly promoted, I believe, by the fact that the sons do not, as a general rule, leave the paternal roof when they go to school. With us the father never sees his children except in the holidays, and therefore continues to regard them as children, and never learns to regard them as companions. In America the father never loses sight of his child, who thus grows up as his companion, and is soon treated as a companion, and as in some sort an equal. I was often struck with this while listening to conversations between fathers and sons. The father, evidently quite in good faith, would ask the child’s opinion, and inquire of him what he was going to do; as if he had some right to opinions of his own, and to independent action in matters in which he was himself concerned. A little incident in the train as I was on the way to Richmond, illustrated, I thought, this state of things. A father and son of about fourteen years of age were among the passengers, and in the next seat to myself. They had long been talking on a footing of equality in the way I have just mentioned; at last, to while away the time, they began to sing together. First they accompanied each other. Then they took alternate lines; at last alternate words. In this of course they tripped frequently, each laughing at the other for his mistakes. There was no attempt at keeping up the dignity of a parent, as might have been considered necessary and proper with us. There was no reserve. They were in a certain sense already on the equal footing of persons of the same age.
I should have been glad to have fallen in again with this gentleman, as, from the casual conversation I had with him this day in the railway car, I found that he was one of the most cultivated persons I met in my tour through the United States.
I arrived at the Spotswood Hotel at Richmond after dark, and was immediately shown into the supper-room, and placed at a table already occupied by three other persons. We soon entered into conversation. They knew at the first glance, as I found everywhere was the case, that I was an Englishman. ‘Sir,’ said the youngest of the party, who did not appear to be yet twenty years old, ‘you have come to a God-forsaken country. Those who lately had riches are now in want; and the whites are now ruled by the blacks.’
Another gentleman I had met during the day had said to me, that ‘he and many others wished they were living under a king of the English royal family. That Virginians deeply regretted that they had ever been separated from England; but that it was their own doing; for, if they had not helped, the Yankees never could have brought about the separation alone.’
Before I left Richmond, I had heard some of this gallant and most unfortunate people give utterance to the sentiment, ‘that they were so stung by the sense of defeat, that they were ever wishing themselves dead. That everything had been so completely set on the cast of the die, that now, when it had decided against them, they could not find anything to live for. That their sense of honour had been crushed by defeat. That their property had been taken from them. That their black slaves had been made their masters.’
Billiards.
I afterwards met with other Virginians, who, having been impoverished by the war, had voluntarily expatriated themselves that they might, if possible, find elsewhere some support for those who were dependent on them. They were men who had been in the first and the last fight, and had lost everything they possessed. But I never heard from their lips one word of disloyalty to the Union to which they had returned in perfect good faith. They had appealed to the arbitrament of the sword. The decision had been against them; and they had submitted without any reservation to that decision. Their bitterness was only for those trading politicians who, being, as they thought, incapable of understanding honourable men, had sent a Freedman’s Bureau and an army of occupation to oppress and torment those who were now quite as loyal to the Union as themselves, and if they were not, yet were utterly incapable of moving a finger against it.
The rage for athletic exercises, which has spread like wildfire over England, has made some feeble and unsuccessful efforts to lay hold of the mind of Young America. It is quite in harmony with the English love of field sports and outdoor games, but not at all with the habits and predilections of Americans. Their climate, which covers the ground with snow in winter, and is so hot in summer, may be unadapted to, and therefore indispose them for these things. But I believe the chief cause is in their indoor pursuits, which engross so much of their time and thoughts, and in the almost total absence among them of a class possessed of leisure, which from the times of the barons to the present day has always been a large and constantly increasing class amongst us. Billiards appear to have taken very much the place in America which field sports and athletic exercises occupy here. The large billiard rooms of their large hotels are of an evening always full of players and spectators. The American tables have no pockets, except in the four corners. At the hotel at which I stayed while at New York, I saw a man who played his game without cue or mace, merely spinning his ball between his thumb and middle finger. He had attained to such skill in doing this, that he appeared to be able to send the ball just to any point he pleased, with the greatest ease and certainty. I suppose, like Blondin, he had made a single muscular feat the work of his life. I saw billiard tables set up in wooden shanties on the plains of the North Platte, and beyond the plains at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
I inquired here about the truth of what I had heard at Washington, that the great millers of Richmond had last year been undersold in the market of New York by the millers of California; and I was assured by one of the oldest and largest firms in the city that it was so. This firm, who had so short a water carriage from their own mill to the quays of New York, whose appliances of business were all perfected before the fathers of those now their rivals in California were born, who carry on business on such a scale as to make between seven and eight thousand barrels of flour a-week, cannot sell a barrel of that flour in New York at less than two dollars more than the price at which the Californian sells it. They account for this in the following way. At the time the Californian’s harvest is ripe, he knows for a certainty that for two or three months no rain will fall. He therefore merely cuts his wheat without putting it into stacks or barns, without even gathering it up into sheaves. All this expense in harvesting he is saved. When he has cut the whole of his crop, he takes his machine into the field, and threshes it from the swarth. But this is not all. He gains still more largely in another way. He ploughs his land for wheat, and puts in his seed. The land is naturally so clean, and the climate so favourable, that the dropped grains of the first harvest will give him another crop next year, without a cent of cost, for there will be no ploughing or seeding required. Thus every second crop is a pure gift of nature. It is this that makes Californian wheat, and therefore Californian flour, so cheap. I tell the tale as it was told to me. I remember, however, that Sir Alexander Burns mentions that he saw wheat in the neighbourhood of Bokhara which was a biennial, and that the Bokhara farmer got two crops from one sowing. It is possible he may have got two crops from one sowing, not because on the banks of the Oxus the wheat plant was capable of bearing seed twice, but in this Californian fashion.
Two Crops of Wheat from One Sowing.