American cities are not in the position of our country towns, but of the capitals of European kingdoms. Richmond, for instance, till the disruption of Virginia which took place during the late war, was the capital of a State as large as the whole of England and Wales, with the addition of almost the half of Scotland. And as the sites of these cities were always chosen on account of the facilities they offered for trade and commerce, they have in almost every instance become the emporia for the chief part of the foreign and domestic business of their respective States. This also has generally led to their becoming manufacturing towns. In this way each has come to engross almost everything in the State that contributes to the building up of a great city. Bearing this in mind, we shall cease to wonder at the rapid growth in population, wealth, and trade of such a place as Chicago. It is a measure of the population, the wealth, the production and consumption of the great State of Illinois. Just so also with Cincinnati, St. Louis, and all their other great cities. They are made by the States to which they belong. This of course is not the case with New York, which is the commercial capital of a great part of the Union, or with New Orleans, which is the warehouse through which a large proportion of the produce of the valley of the Mississippi must pass. We must also remember that these large cities are at enormous distances from each other. In some instances, as notably in those of New York and New Orleans, the chief town in the State has not been able to retain the presence of the State legislature; this loss, however, has proved of no great consequence to them.
We are often told that the character of a nation in some degree depends on its kitchen. A traveller therefore who understands all that will be expected of him when he returns home, will not pass by unnoticed the style of cookery, and the materials with which it deals, of the people among whom he makes what I heard in this country called, not unaptly, ‘a tour of observation’; and cookery, whether he chooses to observe it or not, is a matter which at all events is submitted to his observation two or three times a day.
The fact that first struck me in American ‘living’ was its abundance. Butchers’ shops and poulterers’ were, particularly the latter, of more frequent occurrence and better stored than I had ever seen elsewhere. Everybody appears to have plenty to eat, and few appear to neglect their opportunities.
American Living.
But as this is a prosaic subject, I must begin at the beginning. On my voyage out, before I had had time to generalise a conclusion on such a subject, a gentleman among the passengers confided to me, as the result of his own experience, that New England young ladies (of course he did not mean this of the young ladies who belonged to the upper ten thousand) never appeared less amiable than when at breakfast. A long and large experience enabled him to speak with some authority on this subject; though, as I afterwards discovered, he was not a quite unprejudiced commentator. I declined to accept his conclusion, notwithstanding his pointing out to me two young ladies who seemed to confirm it by disposing, each of them every morning, of a beefsteak, while they were considering what they would order for breakfast, and then going through a performance of varieties which was in very good keeping with the prologue.
One ought to be sparing of comment on a neighbour’s way of managing himself. You are not acquainted with his constitution, or with the atmosphere he has to live in, or with the kind of work he has to do; and these things may render advisable in his case what would not suit yourself. But if you know that some of his habits are such as do not generally conduce to a sound sanitary condition, and then see that the doctor is the most frequent visitor in his house, you can hardly help coupling the two facts together in the relation of cause and effect. Now it happens that wherever one is in the United States, the most prominent and abundant affiches are those that recommend different kinds of ‘bitters.’ There are ‘Red jacket bitters,’ and ‘Planters’ bitters,’ ‘French,’ ‘German,’ ‘Mexican,’ and ‘American bitters,’ but no English, which I am disposed to take as a compliment implying that Englishmen need no such restoratives, for it can hardly mean that the name would be no recommendation. And there are bitters from the four quarters of the compass, limiting the range, I suppose, to American soil. All this of course implies that in our neighbour’s case ‘perfect order does not reign in the interior;’ and it struck me that his constant habit of beginning the day with a breakfast that for its variety and solidity would be sufficient for a dinner on this side, had something to do with it. I hazard this, though the reply is obvious that one does not know what is requisite in this way in America. It is possible too that these bitters may not always mean what the traveller is likely to suppose. I say this because, on an occasion when a fractured rail delayed the train on the banks of the Mississippi for several hours, and every one produced what he had in the way of resources for passing away the time, an American I was then with produced from his hand-bag a bottle of what he called ‘Angostura bitters.’ I was rather surprised at his offering me a glass of it, thinking from its name that it must be something medicinal. I found it, however, to be merely a better kind of whiskey a little fortified with spice.
But though one may not be quite up to the mark in judging of the significance of these numerous species of bitters, one at all events is able to understand the constant complaints of Americans themselves on the subject of their health. One never elsewhere met with people who so frequently impart to you the information that they are suffering from dyspepsia. They do things in America on a big scale, and here they have a bigger amount of dyspepsia than any other country in the world. There may be other causes for this, but I still, perhaps very ignorantly, think the breakfast sufficient to account for it. It is a good rule in dietetics, as in many other things, to begin the day quietly. A certain amount of breakfast means a certain amount of work for the digestive machinery; and just the same rule that would apply to your horse will apply to this animal part of your own system. If you were going to give him some work in the afternoon, and again in the evening, or at night, you would spare him in the morning. One’s stomach cannot always be working hard any more than one’s horse can. I heard of a Southern planter who (before the war) never sat down to breakfast with less than six-and-twenty farinaceous preparations before him. I forbear to call them six-and-twenty kinds of bread, as my informant did, because they included dough cakes, buckwheat cakes, slap-jacks, fried hominy, &c. It was by no means meant that the gentleman who was so profuse in furnishing ‘the bread-kind’ department of his breakfast table confined himself to what he found there. These were merely the garniture, and not the substantial part of the replenishment of his matutinal board.
I heard of another gentleman, who bore a name well known in the Union, and who made it his daily practice to conclude this meal with a large bowl of cream; and of a third who, when, in Homeric fashion and phrase, he had appeased the rage of his appetite, would conclude with as many buckwheat cakes as he could lift at one time on his fork, which it was his custom to strike for this purpose through a lofty pile of them. Americans, sooner or later, find breakfasts of this kind harder to digest than they have hitherto found their national debt.
As buckwheat cakes are the usual finale of an American breakfast, I will explain what they are, and how they are to be eaten. The cakes are made from a batter (as the name implies) of buckwheat meal. They are done on a griddle. Each is in diameter about the size of the palm of one’s hand, and in thickness about the sixth of an inch. The usual way of serving them at hotels is three cakes, one on the top of another, to each person; not from any wish to limit the number consumed, but because they cannot be eaten in perfection if more or less than three are brought at one time. You then prepare them yourself, by lifting the uppermost one with your fork, and buttering the upper surface of the middle one (if they are not hot enough to melt the butter they are worthless) you then reverse your pile of three, and lifting what had been the bottom one, repeat the process of buttering. That completed, you pour upon them from a jug, which is always brought with them, enough maple-syrup, or that failing, enough clarified syrup of sugar to cover them. They are now ready, and are by no means to be despised. As the buckwheat, however, is a little oleaginous, the cakes are a little leathery—so much the better, many will say; but this, and the combination of butter and syrup, must, one would think, render them somewhat dyspeptic. Still they are universally approved of, and it is the waiter’s business at an hotel, when he sees you are finishing your breakfast, to ask you ‘if you will have some cakes.’ There would be something to say in favour of concluding a moderate breakfast occasionally in this way, but to make the cakes a daily addition to a varied and solid meal is to presume too much on one’s strength. Who but would be appalled at contemplating the amount of work which half a century of such breakfasts would impose upon himself?
Slap-jacks.