Last winter in the United States

by F. Barham Zincke

As the balance of probability did not appear to be in favour of either of these suppositions, I took off my boots, and placed them on the outside of the door. As I closed the door a voice came to me from the bed at the further side of the room. Its tone was manly and friendly: ‘Sir,’ it said, ‘if that is the only pair of boots you have with you’ (it was so; for I had sent my luggage on to St. Louis), ‘I would advise you to keep them inside the room, and have them cleaned on your feet in the morning. The last time I was here I put mine outside the door, and never saw them again; and so I had to go barefooted till I could get another pair.’ I thanked the speaker for his advice, and acted upon it. My next care was to provide for the safety of my watch and pocket-book, which contained three hundred dollars in greenbacks. This I did by putting them into the pocket where I had my handkerchief, which I then took out of my pocket, as if there was nothing in it (but the watch and pocket-book were in it), and placed it under my pillow. I have no doubt but that my companion saw through what I was doing, for he now addressed me a second time. ‘Before you go to sleep, I suppose you would like to know who is in the room with you; and yet I hardly know how to describe myself. For the last four or five years I have been on this side the mountains. For the fifteen years before that I had been in California; and I began life in the old States as a lawyer. In the early days of California, I went out as one of a company for digging and mining. There were seven of us, and five of the seven were lawyers. I came over the mountains to help the North in putting down the rebellion. I made a great heap of money in California, and I have lost a great heap in bad speculations since I have been over here. But I have got a scheme on its legs by which I hope to make again as much as I have lost. That, sir, is what I am—and I wish you good night. My name is——’ I could not catch the word, but I afterwards ascertained it, and found that my first bed-room companion added modesty to his other merits, and had not told me how great a man he was in his own State.

It happened the next day that no train started for the North till half-past four in the afternoon; and as the rain of the previous night had turned to heavy driving sleet, I congratulated myself on the accident, although it appeared so disagreeable at the time, to which I was indebted for the acquaintance of the Californian. He had known California, he said, from the first influx of gold hunters. The rogues and desperadoes of all that part of the world were collected there; but there was some good stuff that came in at the same time. Society would have been completely turned upside down, and no decent man could have remained in the place, if it had not been for Lynch law and the use of the pistol. These two things set everything quite right in five years, in a way in which no other kind of law, supported by all the churches and all the teachers in the world, could have done it in fifty years. And now the State is as orderly a community as there is on the face of the earth. After the roughness of many years of Californian life, in the early days of the State, he found the hardships of the late war mere bagatelles. The war seemed to him only like an exciting pastime.

How the Site of Eden was Created.

The capacity of Eden, for offering a field for such talents as those of Mr. Mark Tapley, was very much diminished during the late war; for being at the junction of the Ohio with the Mississippi (the Ohio itself, not far above this point, is joined by three large streams), it became a very important military station. But it was necessary to create a site for a town, for the locality itself supplied nothing of the kind. This was done by raising a levee, forty feet high, and then, behind this, making streets in the form of embankments at right angles to the levee, these streets again being intersected by other embankments parallel to the levee. The whole space that was reclaimed was thus divided by these embankments into hollow squares, each of which is intended for a block of buildings. At present very few of these blocks have been raised, but the streets—that is, the embankments, with in some instances planked trottoirs at their sides—are finished. If the water should ever rise up through the ground, or the storm-water flow into the cellars and underground parts of the houses, it will be necessary to pump it out, for there can be no drainage in such a place. So in America, where no difficulties are recognised, are towns built in swamps.

One cannot help speculating on what will be the amount of inducement required for getting people to try to live and carry on business at this city in the swamp, for the fact that the traffic of the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi join and diverge here will ensure its becoming rich and populous. And what will be the manners and customs of the place? Will it be merely that people living here will call for more whisky toddy and sherry cobblers, smoke more cigars, and play more games of billiards than they would elsewhere? How far will the beneficent railway go towards redressing the wretchedness of the place by carrying off, for the night, for Sundays, and for holidays, all who might wish to have their homes on terra firma? Democracies are stingy and do not build beautiful cities in these days; so, however rich it may become, it is not likely ever to become a Venice.

The train in which I had left Cairo reached a place called Odin at eleven o’clock at night. We had to wait here for a St. Louis train till the next morning. This is an instance of what is called, in American railway phraseology, ‘making bad connexions.’ The gentleman who registered after me at the chief hotel at Odin happened to be my Californian acquaintance. Having entered his name, he said to the manager, pointing to me, ‘This gentleman and I will have the same bed-room.’ This was meant as a compliment; and I did not now feel as disinclined to the proposal, particularly as it came from him, as I had been a few nights before. The clerk, however, told him that the house was full, and that I was the last person he could accommodate. I was, upon this, shown to my bed-room, which turned out to be only the fourth part of a very small apartment containing four beds, three of which were already tenanted. My English inexperience and prejudices were still too strong for this, so I sallied out in search of another hotel. While thus occupied I had time to reflect, that there is not much more harm in spending the night in a room with three others, than in spending the day in a railway car with thirty or forty others. At last, chance conducted me to the same house the Californian had already reached; and we sat by the stove in the drawing-room, talking together till the small hours of the morning. There is an unconventional kind of frankness and manliness that is very pleasing in these Western men, who have gone through a great deal of rough life and hardship, and have never, for years together, been out of danger from Indians, or desperate white men, as sanguinary as Indians, and as little troubled with scruples.

Be Good to Yourself.

For the words’ sake I ‘made a note’ of a parting expression I heard used by a rough-looking and ill-clad ostler, who it appeared was not very comfortably assured of his friend’s motives for leaving him to go to one of the most rowdy places in the Union. His friend had taken his place on the roof of the coach, which was in the act of starting, when he waved his hand to him, saying at the same time with an enviable neatness, that conveyed both his kindly feelings and his misgivings, ‘Tom, be good to yourself.’

CHAPTER XI

MISSISSIPPI FROZEN OVER AT ST. LOUIS—WHY THE BRIDGE AT ST. LOUIS IS BUILT BY CHICAGO MEN—GENERAL SHERMAN—IDEAS ABOUT EDUCATION AT ST. LOUIS—LIBERAL BEQUESTS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES—HOW NEW ENGLANDISM LEAVENS THE WHOLE LUMP—THE GERMAN INVASION WILL NOT GERMANISE AMERICA—ST. LOUIS—ITS RAPID GROWTH—ITS CHURCH ARCHITECTURE—AN IDEA ON MENTAL CULTURE FROM THE WEST BANK OF THE MISSISSIPPI—A THOUGHT SUGGESTED BY HEARING THE SKATERS ON THE MISSISSIPPI TALKING ENGLISH.