Being thus brought near to you by the swift convoys of science, it will be evident that we are not so far away as we seem. We do not perpetrate an Irish bull when we say that the distance to a place is often greater than the distance in returning. It is, on the contrary, a well authenticated natural fact—a phenomenon, if you please. And by way of illustration we may aver that it is a great deal farther from your metropolis to west of the Mississippi, than from west of the Mississippi to the metropolis.
You sit in your cosy parlors and offices and think of some friend or relative, perhaps a son or daughter, in the 'far West.' It seems as if a sea spread out between you, or at least the better part of a continent. You think of India and China, perchance, or of England or France, and you feel as if they were all nearly equidistant with the home of your beloved ones. It is so far away out to the Father of Waters, and you can never make up your mind, without great and frequent resolution, to undertake such a journey as this.
But, my friends, it is not half so far as that, from us to the Atlantic coast. It is not so far from us to you, as it is to some tardy customer, whose bills are yet to collect, a hundred miles down the country by a two-days' stage adventure. Not nearly so far. Why, when we want to go to New York or Boston, we don't pack our trunks and take a cargo of luggage on board for a two-months' voyage. We just tumble hurriedly a few things into a valise or carpet sack before we go to bed, and the next morning off we start, and after two days of sight-seeing and newspaper reading along the way, and two nights' comfortable sleeping-car rest, we wake up at the dawn of the third day to bid you good morning and inquire after the markets; and that is the end of it.
It isn't so very far, after all. We put off in the morning, bid good evening to Chicago, good morning to Toledo, a ten-o'clock good night to Buffalo, and we sit down to a late breakfast with you the following day.
But then if you have never been out here, it's a long, long distance, and we advise you not to try it all of a sudden, nor to come without a trunk. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Then, in the next place, being out here, what sort of a people are we? This is a very important query. In the eyes of many we are Western semi-barbarians, without an overplus of manners, means, comforts, knowledge, or many, if any, of the means of Eastern and refined enjoyment. We have come hither to make our fortunes, or to care for those who have, and we are the fit objects of spiritual and temporal commiseration and missionary operations. That is the idea somewhat candidly expressed, isn't it? Oh, no! you don't think so poorly of us as that; but then we are a great ways off, in fact, in a new country, among strangers for the most part, and of course we cannot expect to find everything at hand which we enjoyed in our former comfortable homes.
Well, we are, many of us, from the 'far' East, and most of us from eastward. But we have tried to bring whatever of refinement, manners, knowledge, proprieties, and comforts we before possessed, such as they were, with us, and we haven't lost many of them. We do not believe that contact with the Indians has very much barbarized us. We still read and write and live in houses which we have built, and conduct mercantile and other transactions on former equitable principles; and our communications and intercourse with each other may still be said to be civilized, at least in great measure. We eat and drink what we formerly did, not excepting occasional shad and frequent oysters; and you do not seem to be averse to trying our deer and grouse once in a while—while we even share with you our wheat, cattle, and pork. We don't wear moccasons as yet, nor buckskin with Indian trimmings, instead of doeskin with the latest cut. We try, for the sake of appearances, to wear cotton and woollen and silk; and beads and trinkets are in no extraordinary demand. Beavers and furs are seen upon our streets; and the sound of the piano heard in the land, is not a very unusual disturbance. Our boys, as of old, smoke cigars in secret, fearful of ancient birch, and gum drops still adhere to the pockets of our girls in school. We don't see a very remarkable difference between the children about us and those we knew at a somewhat early age. Brick and stone rise with us into comfortable and even aspiring buildings, and the price of board is not less than we have paid before, nor so very much more. We neither travel nor live on half fare. And men still drive the horse before the cart, and carry the wheat in both ends of the bag as they go to mill.
In fact, we don't see that civilization has lost much flesh in its arduous journey to the far West; nor that, being human before, we have become less human now, or discarded our manners when we shut the doors of our birthplace behind us. We know indeed that Colenso went to convert the heathen, and that the heathen succeeded in converting him, thus putting the boot on the other leg; but the Indians have not yet won us to their dusky faith, although we must confess that assimilation to their copper-colored principles seems to have made some Copperheads among us.
As to works of art, they are not very plentiful hereabouts, excepting in the way of monuments perhaps. We have a generous number of those, erected to the large-heartedness and wisdom of persons who engaged in great improvement schemes, in the line of speculation, when there was but a fictitious basis of wealth in this land, before the bubble burst. These monuments, however, are not generally esteemed ornamental, and the wealth so lavishly expended upon them came not from the bosom of our communities, neither was it imported from north of us, nor west of us, but from whence I will not say. Perhaps some one who reads can help to account for part of it. These monuments, however, such as they are, have, by the liberal contributions made for their erection, exceeded in cost that of Bunker Hill, or the half-finished shot tower in Washington. Our only statues do not represent either the Father of his Country, nor the late old public defunctionary who sat in his chair—but they are principally devoted to 'the poor Indian,' in native costume. These statues, frequently wooden, exhibit the wonted hospitality of this race, and maintain the attitude of proffering a cigar to the friendly passer by.
Of paintings there is not a superfluity; still we have a small collection, comprising several which have for some years been on public exhibition, illustrating 'The Good Samaritan;' 'Prodigious;' 'Washington's Blacksmith shoeing Washington's Horse,' and others of less note, while ——'s panorama of the war has lately departed from us.