A town whose future greatness exists only in the imagination of its deluded habiters, whose enterprise and public spirit are as fabulous as the Phœnix.
A town which will never be a city, save in name, until telegraphs, railroads, colleges, churches, libraries, and busy warehouses become indigenous to the soil of the Wolverines, and spring like mushrooms from the earth, without the aid of human mind to plan, or human will to urge the work, or human hand to place one single stone.
For, sooner than this dormant town shall be matured into a flourishing city by the men who now doze away their time within its sleepy limits, the dead men of Greenwood shall rise from their mossy graves and pile their marble monuments into a tradesman's market-house.
A town, where, in former days, some few short-sighted business men did congregate, who commenced great stores, hotels and warehouses, and the other tools by help of which the world does "business," but which said men, too wise to remain faithful to a place which all their toil would ever fail to permanently rouse from its persevering sleep, soon left for ever, after, by united effort, they had galvanized it into a spasmodic life, and taken advantage of its transient vitality to hastily sell their property, before its slumber should come on again. These men are now remembered by the great hotel their enterprise erected, and which is to this day unfinished, and the warehouses (now deserted, save by rats,) which they put up, and the other massive structure, the work on which was going bravely on, until the drowsy genius of the place congealed the energy of the founders, and left the unroofed walls and rotting timbers a crumbling landmark in the desolate dearth, to show where another business man was wrecked.
A rusty village which has not enterprise enough to keep its public buildings in repair, and whose very Court-house, now in the last decrepit years of a slothful life, has for years leaked dirty water on the heads of the sleepy lawyers who burrow in its dingy lower rooms; and which, in a soaking rain, could not boast a dry corner to protect the dignified caput of the supreme judge from the aqueous visitation.
A town where every one is poorer than his neighbor, and no one man is rich in this world's goods, save those few treacherous pilots, who, being charged to guide the vessels of their fellows, have placed false lights on hidden rocks, run the confiding craft to ruin, and fattened on the plunder of the wreck.
A distant and remote extreme of the hurrying world, which is so separated from the "heart of business" that no single drop of its vital life ever reaches this defunct and amputated member.
A place where the inactivity and inertia of the people infects even the animal and vegetable worlds; and the cows and pigs are too lazy to eat enough to ensure their pinguitude, but drawl about the streets, perambulating specimens of embodied animated laziness, displaying through their skins their osseous economy.
Where the very trees don't leaf out till August and the flowers are too backward to bloom till snow comes, and where the river itself, too lazy to run down hill, sometimes from sheer indolence stops flowing, to take a rest; dams itself up, and overflows the railroad.
Yet here has the late lamented Damphool resolved to bury himself, establishing thereby an undisputed title to the expressive name he bears; and I can only hope that in his exile some stray copy of this book may be wrecked within his reach, that he may come to know the present heartfelt lament of me, Doesticks.