“I am very glad to tell you that we shall soon meet again; for we shall have the honor of appearing before you on the 11th of next month, when we shall have the gratification of spending another week amongst you. And now I beg to thank you again and again, and I can but hope that we may live in your memories as you will live in ours.” (Applause.)
The receipts for the first week in Chicago were $17,048, and for the second, $19,117; making a total of $36,166. From a mere box-office point of view the success of his visit is unprecedented; the increase of the receipts at the close of the engagement dissipating the last “weak invention of the enemy,” that Irving only excites curiosity. If this shallow nonsense merited the smallest attention the figures already quoted would be a sufficient answer. A truer test of the genuineness of Irving’s popularity, and the hold his work has obtained upon the intelligent and intellectual public of America, will be the character of his reception when, in the course of the present tour, he begins to pay return visits to Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and New York; for he goes back to these cities when their enthusiasm may be said to have cooled, and in the Lenten season, which is largely observed in the chief cities of the United States.
XVII.
ST. LOUIS, CINCINNATI, INDIANAPOLIS, COLUMBUS.
Sunshine and Snow—Wintry Landscapes—Fire and Frost—Picturesque St. Louis—“The Elks”—A Notable Reception—“Dime Shows”—Under-studies—Germany in America—“On the Ohio”—Printing under Difficulties—“Baggage-smashing”—Handsome Negroes and Sunday Papers—The Wonders of Chicago.
I.
There was a little crowd of friends at the railway station, to see us take our leave of Chicago, at noon on Sunday, January 20, 1884. The weather was cold, but there was a bright, sunny sky. Everybody was in good spirits. The “Edwin Forrest” car, in which we travelled, had now quite a familiar appearance. George, a colored attendant who had charge of it, was there, with a merry grin upon his broad, intelligent features. “A right good fellow, George,” said Irving. “Yes, that’s so,” was George’s response, as he relieved him of his coat and stick, and led the way to the pretty little suite of rooms on wheels allotted to Irving and his friends. The other cars were also admirably appointed. “This is something like a day for travelling,” said one member of the company to another. The sun blazed down upon them as they walked about, awaiting the signal for departure, but there appeared to be very little warmth in it. The sunbeams were bright, but they seemed to have contracted a chill as they fell. Every now and then a gust of icy wind would come along, as if to put truth into this conclusion. Terriss and Tyars, braving the weather without overcoats, as Englishmen delight to do, soon discovered that, after all, the winter was still with us. As the cry “All aboard,” followed by the clanging of the engine-bell, set the train in motion, we entered once more upon severely wintry scenes of ice and snow.
Within a very short time we found ourselves in the midst of snow-drifts, out of which preceding trains had had to cut their way. Gangs of men were clearing the track, flinging up the snow on both sides of the road in solid shovelfuls. The white débris was piled up six and eight feet high, where the snow had settled down in great drifts upon the line. “One train was stuck here five hours yesterday,” said the guard. “It is the heaviest snow in my experience.”
Moving onwards once more, we travelled through a world of snow: through prairie-lands, where the wind came tearing after us, waited upon by scudding clouds of snow, that rose like spray, to fall in its wake as if the prairie were a snow-sea; past forests of oak, with the brown leaves clinging to the tough branches, that moved with a sturdy kind of protest against the boisterous wind; across great rivers, that were closed to navigation. Now and then skating-parties flitted by us in sheltered bends of the great silent water-ways, and at intervals the sun would burst out upon the white world and fill it with icy diamonds.