Then the editor remarked that the retiring teacher, Mr. Randal, had advertised in the 'True Democrat' his ability to teach the Latin language; but, unfortunately, Father Ingoldsby had offered himself as a first pupil; Mr. Randal never got another, and all his Latin oozed out. On this timely hint I advertised my ability to teach the citizens of Joliet not only Latin, but Greek, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. My advertisement will be found among the files of the 'True Democrat' of the year 1849 by anyone taking the trouble to look for it. I had carelessly omitted to mention the English language, but we sometimes get what we don't ask for, and no less than sixteen Germans came to night school to study our tongue. They were all masons and quarrymen engaged in exporting steps and window sills to the rising city of Chicago.
When Goldsmith tried to earn his bread by teaching English in Holland, he overlooked the fact that it was first necessary for him to learn Low Dutch. I overlooked the same fact, but it gave me no trouble whatever. There was no united Germany then, and my pupils disagreed continually about the pronunciation of their own language, which seemed, like that of Babel, intelligible to nobody. I composed their quarrels by confining their minds to English solely, and harmony was restored each night by song.
The school-house was a one-storey frame building on the second plateau in West Joliet, and was attended by about one hundred scholars. In the rear was a shallow lagoon, fenced on one side by a wall of loose rocks, infested with snakes. The track to the cemetery was near, and it soon began to be in very frequent use. One day during recess the boys had a snake hunt, and they tied their game in one bunch by the heads with string, and suspended them by the wayside. I counted them, and there were twenty-seven snakes in the bunch.
The year '49 was the 'annus mirabilis' of the great rush for gold across the plains, and it was also an 'annus miserabilis' on account of the cholera. In three weeks fourteen hundred waggons bound for California crossed one of the bridges over the canal. I was desirous of joining the rush, but was, as usual, short of cash, and I had to stay at Joliet to earn my salary. I met the editor of the 'True Democrat' nearly every day carrying home a bucket of water from the Aux Plaines river. He did his own chores. He sent two young men who wished to become teachers to my school to graduate. One was named O'Reilly, lately from Ireland; I gave him his degree in a few weeks, and he kept school somewhere out on the prairie. The other did not graduate before the cholera came. He was a native of Vermont, and he played the clarionet in our church choir. The instrumental music came from the clarionet, from a violin, and a flute. The choir came from France and Germany, Old England and New England, Ireland, Alsace, and Belgium. It was divided into two hostile camps, and the party which first took possession of the gallery took precedence in the music for that day only. There was a want of harmony. One morning when the priest was chanting the first words of the Gloria, the head of a little French bugler appeared at the top of the gallery stairs, and at once started a plaint chant, Gloria, we had never rehearsed or heard before. He sang his solo to the end. He was thirsting for glory, and he took a full draught.
I don't think there was ever a choir like ours but one, and that was conducted by a butcher from Dolphinholm in the Anglican Church at Garstang. One Sunday he started a hymn with a new tune. Three times his men broke down, and three times they were heard by the whole congregation whispering ferociously at one another. At length the parson tried to proceed with the service, and said: "Let us pray." But the bold butcher retorted: "Pray be hanged. Let us try again, lads; I know we can do it." He then started the hymn for the fourth time, and they did it. After the service the parson demanded satisfaction of the butcher, and got it in a neighbouring pasture.
The cholera came, and we soon grew very serious. The young man from Vermont walked with me after school hours, and we tried to be cheerful, but it was of no use. Our talk always reverted to the plague, and the best way to cure it or to avoid it. The doctors disagreed. Every theory was soon contradicted by facts; all kinds of people were attacked and died; the young and the old, the weak and the strong, the drunken and the sober. Every man adopted a special diet or a favourite liquor--brandy, whiskey, bitters, cherry-bounce, sarsaparilla. My own particular preventive was hot tea, sweetened with molasses and seasoned with cayenne pepper. I survived, but that does not prove anything in particular.
The two papers, the 'Joliet Signal' and the 'True Democrat', scarcely ever mentioned the cholera. It would have been bad policy, tending to scare away the citizens and to injure trade.
Many men suddenly found that they had urgent business to look after elsewhere, and sneaked away, leaving their wives and families behind them.
On Sunday Father Ingoldsby advised his people to prepare their souls for the visit of the Angel of Death, who was every night knocking at their doors. There were many, he said, whose faces he had never seen at the rails since he came to Joliet; and what answer would they give to the summons which called them to appear without delay before the judgment seat of God? What doom could they expect but that of damnation and eternal death?
The sermon needed no translation for the men of many nations who were present. Irishmen and Englishmen, Highlanders and Belgians, French and Germans, Mexicans and Canadians, could interpret the meaning of the flashing eye which roamed to every corner of the church, singling out each miserable sinner; the fierce frown, the threatening gesture, the finger first pointing to the heaven above, and then down to the depths of hell.