The restless, lever[lever] pen of Mr. Seward pried up new territory for the screaming eagle to light upon,—the distant and hazy Alas-ka, rich in ices and other cool reasons, and St. Thomas the Danish, whose abundant lemons may, when well mixed, allay, without quenching, our thirst for foreign drinks.
These speculations did not, it is needless to add, discourage Chicago. Always dis-pairing individuals, she never despaired for herself. Her courts granted four hundred and sixty-eight divorces during 1868; but notwithstanding the untoward fact, her unchecked population sang on more loudly consoling lullabies to her well-rocked and increasing cradles of grain. Efforts were made the same year to annex New York to the Erie Railway and to change its name to Fisk-ville. These efforts might have succeeded, but that the attention of the leading proprietor was diverted to the Pacific; and the motion for the expected change was postponed to a later term of the Supremest Court in the city of New York.
The last feat of Mr. Johnson was to get Mudd out of the Dry Tortugas.
Getting Mudd out of the Dry Tortugas.
(p. 533)
CHAPTER XXII.
TAKEN FOR GRANTED; OR, WHAT IS EXPECTED OF GRANT AND THE AMERICAN FUTURE.
MARCH 4, 1869, TO ——.
The supposed Difficulties of writing History in advance considered, and the Popular Delusions on the Subject disposed of.—Lively Expectations of what our future Presidents, Cabinet Members, Foreign Ministers, etc., etc., will be and do.—What Citizens will be exempt from Executing and Garroting the Laws.—The Public Debt to disappear.—The Ways considered.—Cut up into Dividends and no more heard of.—What is expected of Common Schools and Sunday Schools in improving Public Men and their Speeches.—Certain Occupations to be dispensed with.—The Uses to which their Pursuers are to be put.—Improvements in Judges, Injunctions, and Court-Houses.—Extension of Efforts of Society for preventing Cruelty to Animals, to Employers, etc.—Woman’s Rights discussed from various Aspects.—Men and Women equal,—especially Women.—How any Differences between them are to be disposed of.—How Children are to be utilized before they get to be Twenty-one and lose their Activities.—The new Arts and Sciences to be taught.—Secretary of the Treasury to regulate the Fashions, and how.—The President and Sunday Schools.—All Mining to be transferred to Wall Street.—Advance Sheets of Reports for 1969.—What our Railway System is to be.—Grumbling and Patriotism.—Of the Future of Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.—A Pax Vobiscum.
Most people suppose that it is difficult to write history in advance. There is no greater delusion. Facts—even when we can get at them and are sure of them, which seldom happens—are great obstructions to a narrative. They involve sudden leaps into unforeseen depths of human action, perplexing struggles through very dynastic uncertainties, or ascents to unexpected developments of character, trying to one’s judgment and patience, and often hurtful to one’s pride of opinion. Our preconceptions, unverified by a set of obstinate facts, are distressed by the unsatisfactory contradictions. We halt dissatisfied on a dusty road, which the tramp of events has worn smooth, and left nothing to novelty or an industrious fancy.
Besides, the great majority of readers are partisans, and have a right to be disappointed at and to blame those unreasoning conclusions, which slide inevitably out of realities. They confront sternly those facts, which affront them, by insisting on happening in a way or order different from their expectations or wishes. Hitherto, we have been obliged to conform to the hard conditions thus inherent in actual chronicles, and have been forced to submit our readers to these annoying certainties.
We can, however, now dismiss these tantalizing fixities of events, which have run before us, and left us the wearisome business of catching up to them; and leaving them to overtake us, if they can, to write up a future history of events, which ought to happen, and which will greatly disappoint the sanguine expectations of Americans if they do not. The excuse for failure will be lessened by the outlined path which we here stretch downward into the wooded future.