I never in my life perused any article more philosophical in spirit or more conclusive in argument; the scheme was clearly shown not only to be absurd but impracticable, and the projectors proved either to be presumptuous imitators, or men profligately speculating upon the ignorant credulity of their fellow-citizens.
I closed the review, in short, admiring the clear judgment and practical farsightedness of the writer; pitying the Yankees, for whom I cherished a sneaking kindness, and inwardly hoping that this very clever exposition of the folly of their seeking to counteract the manifest designs of Providence, which had so clearly demonstrated their paths, might produce as full conviction on their minds as it had on mine.
Well, I forgot the article and its subject, and was only reminded of it by finding myself one fine day whisking along at the rate of twenty miles an hour over a well-constructed railway, one of a cargo of four hundred souls. The impossibility had, in fact, been achieved; and, in addition to the natural roads offered by Sea, Lake, and River, I found railways twining and locomotives hissing like serpents over the whole continent from Maine to Mississippi: Binding the cold North to the ever-flowing streams of Georgia and Alabama, literally, with bonds of iron, and forming, indeed, the natural roads of a country whose soil and climate would set at nought all the ingenuity of M'Adam, backed by the wealth of Croesus and the flint of Derbyshire to boot.
Now, had such a result been prognosticated only a very few years back, the man whose foresight had led to such a large view of the subject would have been mouthed at as mad all over the American continent, and written down knave or ass, or both, in every practical journal of Europe.
Such great changes constantly agitated, and reduced to practice with a promptitude of which even England, with her wealth, industry, and enterprise, has little notion, make discrepancies between the facts and opinions of rapidly succeeding travellers, for which neither the veracity nor the judgment of the parties can fairly be impugned.
Action here leaves speculation lagging far behind; the improvement once conceived is in operation by such time as the opposing theorist has satisfactorily demonstrated its impracticability; and the dream of to-day is the reality of to-morrow.
I feel, in fact, a difficulty in describing without seeming hyperbole the impressions I daily received, and beheld confirmed by facts, of the extraordinary spirit of movement that appears to impel men and things in this country; this great hive wherein there be no drones; this field in which every man finds place for his plough, and where each hand seems actually employed either "to hold or drive."
For ever wandering about as I was, and visiting, as I frequently did, the same places at intervals again and again, I had occasion to be much struck with a state of things of which I was thus afforded constant evidence: take for instance,
My first journey in Sept. 1833, between New York and Philadelphia, was by steam-boat and railway, having cars drawn by horses over thirty-five miles, which thus occupied five hours and a half. In October of the same year I did the same distance by locomotive in two hours. When first I visited Boston, the journey was performed in twenty-four hours, by steamer to Providence, thence to Boston by stage; the same distance now occupies fifteen hours, a railway having been last spring put in operation between Providence and Boston.