Last winter in the United States

by F. Barham Zincke

A new and completely distinct type of features has been developed in America. Of all races of men, that from which the Americans are descended has the greatest mixture and variety of features. We have no facial type. We have round heads and long heads; low, high, prominent, and receding foreheads; large jaws and small; our noses are infinite in multiformity; we have long and short, thick and fine, pug, Roman, and straight, each in all degrees. In America, however, the whole of this variety has been lost and obliterated. The descendants of the most various-featured race of mankind have become one of the most uniform-featured race in the world. Whatever part of the country you may be in, you will find the same thing. As a general rule, the native Americans all have straight noses off straight foreheads, and small jaws. Their faces have been brought to one type, and that a far more intellectual one than what we are familiar with in the old country: it is almost the antipodes of that to which the conventional John Bull belongs. To be convinced of this, it is only necessary to look at the features of the passengers in a railway car, or at the Americans one meets in private houses, or at places of public amusement. The straight nose and forehead are everywhere the rule. I saw at Richmond a frame containing the photographs of the fifty Southerners who had most distinguished themselves in the late war. There was not a single pug, or short or Roman nose among them. It has been just the same with the Greeks; whatever race of people has inhabited the soil of Greece, has assumed the Greek type of feature. The present inhabitants of Greece are chiefly Bulgarians, but their features are Greek.

Schools at Chicago.

In America this transformation is observable chiefly in those of Anglo-Saxon descent. The French, both of Canada and Louisiana, retain their French features. This may give us some clue to the cause which has acted on our descendants. The French have retained French habits of life. They have not given in to and adopted the American love of excitement, love of work, and devotion to business, which never pause to enjoy life, but are always struggling forward, and doing something and doing it at high pressure. It is also observable that the descendants of the easy-going Germans retain their old European type longer than those who are of Anglo-Saxon parentage.

I was taken over some of the schools of Chicago by the Superintendent of Schools for the city. Those I saw were chiefly used by the children of German and Irish parents. They did not appear so quick as the children of native Americans: the variety, also, of feature, and more general fulness of face observable among them, indicated their foreign extraction. Americanization in these particulars takes place in the second or third generation. They were cleanly and orderly, and looked well clothed and well fed. In the Illinois system there are ten grades; the tenth is the lowest in the Primary School, and the first the highest in the Grammar School. No copy slips are used in these schools. They write at first from something set before them on the black board as I noticed was done at Cincinnati. When sufficiently advanced, they write each day from memory something they were taught on the previous day. In Chicago the number of children attending school is very much below the number of those who are of an age to attend. This is what might have been expected in a town that has grown to such dimensions in a single generation. Great efforts, however, are being made to overtake the work. The difficulty just at present is to get school-buildings quickly enough. It is certain that neither the city itself, nor their zealous and able superintendent, will fall short of the occasion.

The Americans are in the habit of speaking very disparagingly of their official class. I never heard one speak in any other tone on this subject. If the canon, that whatever all men, at all times, and in all places, affirm must be true, is to be accepted, then this class in the United States occupies a position of very bad pre-eminence. No one is spared. ‘The President is a Judas Iscariot who has sold his country. Senators, and representatives, are a set of log-rollers and wire-pullers, who make, on an average of the whole body, £6,000 a year out of their votes in Congress. Judges receive such small salaries, that they must also receive bribes. Every town councillor (if that is the right title), every exciseman, every customhouse officer, every tax assessor, or collector, is open to conviction, if the argument used be the dollar. They work quick, for they know they have only four years for making their fortunes.’ These are the mildest terms in which they inveigh against what they call the universal rottenness, from top to bottom, of the official class throughout the Union. On this very dangerous and delicate ground a stranger can only act the part of a reporter. He cannot give any comment, or even have any opinion of his own. I feel, however, that I should be guilty of foul ingratitude, if I did not give the results of my own experience and observation with respect to one class, at all events, of American public servants. I saw much of the superintendents of schools, and was everywhere struck with their devotion to their work, and with their ability. As far as I could judge, the public are well and faithfully served by these officers. And as the superintendent in each city is practically, though not theoretically, the doer of all that is done in the general management, and is responsible for the condition of all the schools in the city, his office is, in fact, second in importance to none.

How they speak of those in Authority.

On a Sunday, while I was at Chicago, the gentleman who had given up to me his berth in the sleeping-car to Cincinnati, took me to see one of the large Sunday-schools, which have been organised on a very extensive scale in this great Western city, and from which great results are expected. The one I went to see is held in a Congregationalist church. It is customary at the end of the meeting to give out the number of those who are present, as everybody is supposed to be interested in the maintenance and spread of the movement. At the meeting I witnessed there were 998 persons present, of whom 84 were teachers. They now have in the city 75 of these schools; of these, however, only five are organised on the scale of the one I am speaking of. One of the five is held in an Episcopal church, I believe that of the Holy Trinity. The pupils in these Sunday-schools are not confined to one class in society, or to children, or to the members of any particular communion. All classes attend them; so do many grown-up persons, and all religious denominations, except the Roman Catholics, are to be found among the taught and the teachers.

The work of the day commenced by singing three hymns, which were evidently intended to excite religious emotions of a highly enthusiastic kind. The leading manager then recited the Commandments, all present repeating, after each commandment, the petition of our Ante-Communion service. To this was added what follows the commandments in the American Episcopal service. ‘Hear also what the Lord Jesus Christ says: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”’ The last chapter in St. Mark’s Gospel was then read, the chief manager reading the first verse, and all present simultaneously reading the second, and so on throughout the chapter. The object of their reading it in this alternate method is to prevent monotony, and to keep up attention. The pupils had been requested to commit five verses of this chapter to memory. These verses were now repeated simultaneously. This was all that was learnt by heart; and even the learning of this was left entirely to the discretion of each pupil. A prayer was then offered; but, as a preliminary to it, the subjects it was proposed to make mention of in the prayer were announced, with a few brief and pointed comments. The whole assemblage was now divided into classes of fourteen in each, with a separate teacher for each. This was done without a single person leaving his seat, by the simple process of reversing the back of every alternate seat; so that, where before there were a hundred pews holding seven persons each, there were now fifty holding fourteen each. The change was effected in a few seconds. Each teacher now commented on, and expounded to his class, the five verses that had been committed to memory. Then followed another hymn, and another short prayer, being founded entirely on the five verses which had formed the subject for the day’s instruction. The whole was concluded with the singing of the Doxology.

A Chicago Sunday School.

This Sunday-school was divided into three grades. First came the infants. They were placed in a large room behind the west-end gallery, and over the porch. None of them could read. Nothing was attempted in this department except awakening the moral sentiments, and teaching a few facts of Christian history, and if possible a little Christian doctrine. This was done by telling the children little stories. Three of these I heard. My friend, who was the chief doer of all that was done and taught on the occasion of my visit, told these infants, in a very effective manner, well adapted to their little understandings, how he had spent on himself, after a long and uncertain struggle (which he minutely described to them), the first ten cents he had ever possessed; and how ashamed he afterwards felt of himself.