Under these circumstances it became a matter of some importance to decide the question, Where can we go to the best advantage, pecuniary and æsthetical?
We had both of us, in the pursuit of our calling,—that is to say, in hunting after bad debts and drumming up new business,—travelled over most of this country on those long lines of rails that always remind me of the parallels of latitude on globes and maps; and we wondered why people who had once gratified a natural curiosity to see this land should ever travel over it again, unless with the hope of making money by their labor. Health, certainly, no one can expect to get from the tough upper-leathers and sodden soles of the pies offered at the ten-minutes-for-refreshment stations, nor from their saturated spongecakes. As to pleasure, I said to Thompson,—"the pleasure of travelling consists in the new agreeable sensations it affords. Above all, they must be new. You wish to move out of your set of thoughts and feelings, or else why move at all? But all the civilized world over, locomotives, like huge flat-irons, are smoothing customs, costumes, thoughts, and feelings into one plane, homogeneous surface. And in this country not only does Nature appear to do everything by wholesale, but there is as little variety in human beings. We have discovered the political alkahest or universal solvent of the alchemists, and with it we reduce at once the national characteristics of foreigners into our well-known American compound. Hence, on all the great lines of travel, Monotony has marked us for her own. Coming from the West, you are whirled through twelve hundred miles of towns, so alike in their outward features that they seem to have been started in New England nurseries and sent to be planted wherever they might be wanted;—square brick buildings, covered with signs, and a stoutish sentry-box on each flat roof; telegraph offices; express companies; a crowd of people dressed alike, 'earnest,' and bustling as ants, with seemingly but one idea,—to furnish materials for the statistical tables of the next census. Then, beyond, you catch glimpses of many smaller and neater buildings, with grass and trees and white fences about them. Some are Gothic, some Italian, some native American. But the glory of one Gothic is like the glory of another Gothic, the Italian are all built upon the same pattern, and the native American differ only in size. There are three marked currents of architectural taste, but no individual character in particular buildings. Everywhere you see comfort and abundance; your mind is easy on the great subject of imports, exports, products of the soil, and manufactures;—a pleasant and strengthening prospect for a political economist, or for shareholders in railways or owners of lands in the vicinity. This 'unparalleled prosperity' must be exciting to a foreigner who sees it for the first time; but we Yankees are to the manner born and bred up. We take it all as a matter of course, as the young Plutuses do their father's fine house and horses and servants. Kingsley says there is a great, unspoken poetry in sanitary reform. It may be so; but as yet the words only suggest sewers, ventilation, and chloride of lime. The poetry has not yet become vocal; and I think the same may be said of our 'material progress.' It seems thus far very prosaic. 'Only a great poet sees the poetry of his own age,' we are told. We every-day people are unfortunately blind to it."
Here I was silent. I had dived into the deepest recesses of my soul. Thompson waited patiently until I should rise to the surface and blow again. It was thus:—
"Have you not noticed that the people we sit beside in railway cars are becoming as much alike as their brown linen 'dusters,' and unsuggestive except on that point of statistics? They are intelligent, but they carry their shops on their backs, as snails do their houses. Their thoughts are fixed upon the one great subject. On all others, politics included, they talk from hand to mouth, offering you a cold hash of their favorite morning paper. Even those praiseworthy persons who devote their time to temperance, missions, tract-societies, seem more like men of business than apostles. They lay their charities before you much as they would display their goods, and urge their excellence and comparative cheapness to induce you to lay out your money.
"The fact is, that the traveller is daily losing his human character, and becoming more and more a package, to be handled, stowed, and 'forwarded' as may best suit the convenience and profit of the enterprising parties engaged in the business. If at night he stops at a hotel, he rises to the dignity of an animal, is marked by a number, and driven to his food and litter by the herdsmen employed by the master of the establishment. To a thinking man, it is a sad indication for the future to see what slaves this hotel-railroad-steamboat system has made of the brave and the free when they travel. How they toady captains and conductors, and without murmuring put up with any imposition they please to practise upon them, even unto taking away their lives! As we all pay the same price at hotels, each one hopes by smirks and servility to induce the head-clerk to treat him a little better than his neighbors. There is no despotism more absolute than that of these servants of the public. As Cobbett said, 'In America, public servant means master.' None of us can sing, 'Yankees never will be slaves,' unless we stay at home. We have liberated the blacks, but I see little chance of emancipation for ourselves. The only liberty that is vigorously vindicated here is the liberty of doing wrong."
Here I stopped short. It was evident that my wind was gone, and any further exertion of eloquence out of the question for some time. I was as exhausted as a Gymnotus that has parted with all its electricity. Thompson took advantage of my helpless condition, and carried me off unresisting to a place which railways can never reach, and where there is nothing to attract fashionable travellers. The surly Atlantic keeps watch over it and growls off the pestilent crowd of excursionists who bring uncleanness and greediness in their train, and are pursued by the land-sharks who prey upon such frivolous flying-fish. A little town, whose life stands still, or rather goes backward, whose ships have sailed away to other ports, whose inhabitants have followed the ships, and whose houses seem to be going after the inhabitants; but a town in its decline, not in its decay. Everything is clean and in good repair; everybody well dressed, healthy, and cheerful. Paupers there are none; and the new school-house would be an ornament to any town in Massachusetts. That there is no lack of spirit and vigor may be known from the fact that the island furnished five hundred men for the late war.
When we caught sight of Nantucket, the sun was shining his best, and the sea too smooth to raise a qualm in the bosom of the most delicately organized female. The island first makes its appearance, as a long, thin strip of yellow underlying a long, thinner strip of green. In the middle of this double line the horizon is broken by two square towers. As you approach, the towers resolve themselves into meeting-houses, and a large white town lies before you.
At the wharf there were no baggage smashers. Our trunks were
"Taken up tenderly,
Lifted with care,"
and carried to the hotel for twenty-five cents in paper. I immediately established the fact, that there are no fellow-citizens in Nantucket of foreign descent. "For," said I, "if you offered that obsolete fraction of a dollar to the turbulent hackmen of our cities, you would meet with offensive demonstrations of contempt." I seized the opportunity to add, apropos of the ways of that class of persons: "Theoretically, I am a thorough democrat; but when democracy drives a hack, smells of bad whiskey and cheap tobacco, ruins my portmanteau, robs me of my money, and damns my eyes when it does not blacken them, if I dare protest,—I hate it."