Last winter in the United States

by F. Barham Zincke

America has but One City.

I observed at Cincinnati, and in some other cities, that the American Jews affect in their synagogues a Moorish style of architecture. As American cities can have no historical buildings, there is nothing in them to counteract the prose of commerce, and of the American method of laying out cities, except the churches. And as many of them (the practice being general among all the denominations) are embellished with towers or spires, their redeeming effect on the appearance of the town is very considerable.

As I am on the subject of American towns, I trust that my friends in that part of the world will excuse me for never having been persuaded by them to fall into ecstacies at the contemplation of the plan of Philadelphia, which they point to with feelings of enthusiasm, as the very perfection of taste and judgment in the art of building cities. There is, however, as far as I could see, nothing in Philadelphia which is not also in St. Louis and Cincinnati, and a hundred other cities in embryo, or in adolescence. The three cities whose names I have just mentioned are, saving their reverence, as like one another as three peas. They have no main street, but a number of parallel streets at equal distances from each other. These are numbered, first, second, third, &c. Another set of streets, again, exactly parallel to each other, cut the first at right angles. This second set of streets, in the three cities I have named, are called after different trees: Birch, Elm, Hickory, &c. This is everything. It is the very democracy of houses; for all the streets and blocks are equal. No one is larger, or wider, or in anyway better than another.

Of course the result of this must be that there is not a particle of difference between one town and another, all having been cast in the same mould. It would be laughable, were it not tiresome, to have not a thousand cities in America, but one city reproduced over and over again, wherever you go. St. Louis and Cincinnati are about the same size, and have much the same kind of site, and I believe that if a man who had spent a week in each of these cities, were a month afterwards carried blindfold into one of them, and set down in the middle of the town, he would be unable to say in which of the two he was. I know no two things that are so like each other, except it be two farms on the Prairie, where every farm is just the fac-simile of every other farm; so that it is really impossible to guess how one living on the Prairie, unless he developes a new sense to meet the circumstances he is placed in, can ever distinguish his own home.

No. 24, G St., Corner of 25th St.

I venture to think that the Americans are under another mistake about their towns; they suppose that their method of parallel streets, not named but enumerated and lettered, is a great help to the memory, and facilitates very much the finding of any house one is in search of. Never did fallible mortals entertain so erroneous an idea. Instead of a name, Rivoli, or Cheapside, which readily fixes itself in the mind you have to remember a figure and a letter; and as neither figures nor letters suggest ideas, the thing is impossible. In truth, you have to remember two figures and a letter. For instance No 24, G Street, corner of 25th Street. There is no faculty in the human mind which enables one to retain this direction. In five minutes all certainty is lost as to whether it was G or E, 25th or 26th—perhaps it was C, perhaps it was 36th.

In fact, the Americans have but one town, and in the nomenclature of the streets of this one town they have done everything the perverse ingenuity of man could desire to render it confusing.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE VALLEY OF THE OHIO—MUCH OF THE UNITED STATES WILL PRODUCE WINE—ILLINOIS AT NIGHT—FIRST VIEW OF LAKE MICHIGAN—CHICAGO—A SIGN OF OUTWARD RELIGION—‘SMALL-POX HERE’—FIRE ALARM—LIBERALITY OF CHICAGO MERCHANTS—THE DOLLAR NOT ALL IN ALL—A CHURCH LIGHTED FROM THE ROOF—A HANDSOME AMERICAN—AMERICA HAS DEVELOPED A NEW TYPE OF FEATURES—CHICAGO SCHOOLS—AN EXCEPTION TO THE AMERICAN WAY OF DENOUNCING THE OFFICIAL CLASS—CHICAGO SUNDAY SCHOOLS—PROGRAMME OF ONE I ATTENDED—EXCELLENCE OF WATER AT CHICAGO—HOW SUPPLIED—LIFTING UP THE CITY—POST OFFICE ARRANGEMENTS—A DISADVANTAGE OF FREQUENT CHANGE OF CLERKS—AMERICANS ON ARISTOCRACY—HOW THE GERMANS, THE MASSES OF THE PEOPLE, AND THE UPPER CLASS FEEL TOWARDS IT.

The valley of the Ohio pleased me—all things considered—more than any other district I saw in the United States. The land was generally very fertile, and much diversified with riverside levels and contiguous hills; with cultivated land, and woodland; with apple and peach orchards, and with wheat and maize. Its most novel feature was the space devoted to the culture of the vine.