NEW YORK—MENU AT FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL—HOW TRAVEL IN THE STATES MAY
BE ARRANGED FOR A WINTER TOUR—THE QUEEN’S BOOK IN AMERICA—EXTERNAL
APPEARANCE OF NEW YORK—IGNORANCE OF ENGLISH IMMIGRANTS—INDUSTRIAL
SCHOOLS—CHILDREN’S AID SOCIETY—NUMBER OF CHURCHES—BROAD VIEWS
GENERAL—A SERVICE AT THE REV. H. W. BEECHER’S CHURCH—EPISCOPALIAN
BROAD CHURCH CLUB—CHAPELS IN POOR DISTRICTS ANNEXED TO EPISCOPAL
CHURCHES IN RICH ONES—AMERICAN CHURCHES WORKED AT HIGH PRESSURE—AN
AMERICAN DIVINE’S OPINION OF A MINISTER’S DUTY.
During my first visit to New York I stayed at the Fifth Avenue Hotel,
which I had been told was the largest and best managed of the monster
hotels of the city. I arrived just in time for dinner. On being shown
into the dining-saloon, I found between two and three hundred people
at table. I had lately been staying at Paris at the _Grand Hôtel du
Louvre_, where it was thought we were treated rather liberally in
having seven _plats_ at dinner, including two sweets, and one cream
or water ice. The ice was served in infinitesimal morsels; and if you
asked for a second morsel, it was represented by an additional franc
in your bill. With this experience of a great European hotel fresh
in my mind, a waiter in the dining saloon of the Fifth Avenue Hotel
placed in my hand the bill of fare for the dinner then going on. Seeing
almost an interminable printed list of _comestibles_, and not knowing
how these things were managed in America, I supposed that this was
the list of dishes the hotel undertook to prepare; and that, had I
arrived some hours earlier, and then made my selection, what I might
have ordered would have now been ready. The _menu_ contained turtle
soup, venison, turtle steaks, soft-shelled crabs, canvas-back ducks;
in short, whatever fish, flesh, fowl, vegetable, and fruit were then
in season. But the attendant informed me that the paper he had given
me was the bill of fare for that day, and that everything mentioned in
it was then actually ready; and that I might order whatever I pleased,
and it would be immediately brought to me. I made my selection; and
while he was bringing what I had ordered, I counted the number of
dishes provided that day for our dinner, and found that the total
amounted to seventy-five. Nothing was supplied in the scanty way in
which everything was doled out at the _Grand Hôtel du Louvre_; but as
a general rule more of everything was set before you than you could
require: for instance, instead of setting before you a morsel of
ice-cream, a whole mould was left with you till you ordered it to be
taken away. The next morning I found fifty-two things mentioned on the
bill of fare for breakfast. Luncheon, tea, and supper are also supplied
to its guests by this establishment. On the ground-floor are placed
the bar, the billiard-room (containing twelve tables), and a kind of
after-hour Stock Exchange, in which operations are commenced at eight
o’clock P. M. The charge for living in this palatial hotel was five
dollars a day in greenbacks; that is, about sixteen shillings, at the
then price of gold.
[Sidenote: _Menu of an American Hotel._]
One frequently hears the severity of their winters urged as a reason
for not travelling in the United States at that season of the year.
My own experience of the unusually severe winter of ’67-68 would go
some way towards proving that those who press this consideration do so
under a misapprehension. It is possible that by a singular run of good
luck I may have always been at a warm place when the weather was cold
elsewhere, but it is literally true that during that winter I never
once had occasion to put on an overcoat, excepting when I was in Canada
at its breaking up. I left New York early in January; went through the
South, where I gathered ripe oranges from the trees on which they were
hanging; ascended the Mississippi; crossed the prairies and plains to
the Rocky Mountains, at the foot of which I found the thermometer, at
Denver, standing at 70°; recrossed the prairies to Chicago; and during
the whole of this time, whether on foot, or in a railway car, or on
or in a coach, did not on any occasion find the weather disagreeable
on account of the cold, though I frequently found it in railway cars
and in hotels very much warmer than was agreeable. By what I have
just said I do not mean that I never fell in with weather that was
thermometrically cold, for I walked over the Mississippi on the ice at
St. Louis, but that it never felt disagreeably cold. It so happened
that whenever the thermometer was low, the air was still, and the sun
bright. During this winter it only rained twice, and never snowed but
once, at the places at which I happened to be staying. It rained once
at Washington, and once at New Orleans, and it was snowing on my return
across the prairies to Chicago. On my outward journey over them they
were entirely free from snow. Of course if I had remained during the
whole of this time at any one place in the northern part of the Union,
I should have seen some bad weather. My conclusion, however, is that
the traveller may so arrange his tour even for the winter as to be put
to very little annoyance by the cold or wet.
[Sidenote: _The Queen’s Book in America._]
Everybody in New York had read the Queen’s book; in every society
I found people talking about it; and I never heard it mentioned
without expressions of interest and approval, always uttered without
any qualifications, and with unmistakable heartiness. They said it
made royalty appear to them in a new and more human light, in which
they had never regarded it before. They spoke of her as the head of
the Anglo-Saxon race, almost as if they had as much part in her as
ourselves. I believe that her Majesty’s work has had a greater number
of readers, and that a greater number of copies of it have been sold,
in the United States than in the United Kingdom.
The exterior appearance of New York is at first disappointing. We
are accustomed to find in every capital we visit large and stately
buildings, which, as in the case of royal or imperial palaces, public
offices, and the hotels of a territorial nobility, are the results
of our own existing institutions; or, as in the case of cathedrals,
churches, town-halls, and castles, are the result of a state of things
belonging to the past history of Europe; and so when we walk through
the streets of a city larger than most European capitals, and find
none of the buildings we are in the habit of seeing everywhere else,
we condemn it as architecturally poor. This feeling is increased in
New York by the fact that there is nothing very striking in Broadway,
its main street, except its length. The shops, or stores as they are
called, are rendered externally quite ineffective by the narrowness
of their frontage, and by the way in which they are converted into an
advertising frame for names and announcements of various kinds. When
you get inside the door you find as extensive and rich an assortment
of goods as can be seen in the best shops of London or Paris: there
is, however, little indication of this from the outside. But a better
acquaintance with the city qualifies to a great extent this first
feeling of disappointment. It is irrational to condemn a place for
not having what it is impossible could ever have been there. New
York cannot have imperial palaces, or mediæval cathedrals, not even
great public offices; but in the part of the Fifth Avenue, and of the
contiguous streets, which is occupied with the residences of private
citizens, it is not surpassed by anything of the same kind in any city
of the world. Certainly Belgravia can show nothing like it. There is
no stucco, nor are the houses built, as is the case in our streets, in
rows of monotonous uniformity, but in some places each separate house
differs in design from its neighbours. Sometimes you may find three or
four that are alike, but seldom more than half a dozen; and probably
those that are alike in general design will vary in the ornamentation
of the doors and windows; thus indicating that they are not run up
to order, as in Paris, or on speculation, as in London, but that they
were built by the people who inhabit them. This variety of façade,
where nothing is mean, of course contributes very much to the effect of
street architecture. The materials, too, used for building in New York
are better and more varied than those used by ourselves. In the best
quarters a chocolate-coloured stone is the most common. Brick, which is
always painted, and dressed with stone, comes next in frequency; then
a stone which in colour is compounded of a yellowish-white with a very
perceptible trace of green. Some of the largest stores and hotels, and
occasionally a private residence and church, are of white marble. Of
this latter material is constructed the imposing office of the New York
Herald—I suppose the most magnificent newspaper office in the world.
[Sidenote: _New York._]
The great glory, however, of the city is its Park. It is on the central
ridge of the island—on very uneven ground, with the native rock
everywhere cropping up through the surface, and with many depressions,
in which are pieces of water peopled with various kinds of waterfowl;
it is between two and three miles in length, and is throughout kept
in faultless order; it has already cost the city twenty millions of
dollars, and is one of the more than imperial works of the American
democracy.
An English merchant, carrying on business at New York, and who had for
several years been the president of the St. George’s Society of that
city, and in that capacity brought very much into contact with the
English immigrants, assured me that he had often had to blush for the
ignorance of his countrymen. ‘Of all the immigrants,’ he said, ‘who
came to the United States the Englishman was the least educated, and so
the most shiftless. Even the wild Irishman had generally been better
taught, and knew more.’
[Sidenote: _Supplementary Schools._]
Among my letters of introduction for New York was one to a gentleman
who is personally and actively engaged in the working of some of the
most useful institutions of the city. Under his guidance I visited and
examined several of their industrial schools, in which the children of
the lowest and most vicious part of the Irish and German population
of the city are educated. Sixteen of these schools have already been
established, and are now at work. They do not at all enter into
competition with the common schools, but are a supplement to them,
occupying very much the place of our ragged schools. They are partly
supported by the city, and partly by voluntary contributions. This is
far better than that the city should take upon itself the whole of the
cost; because in that case everything would be done by paid agents,
who, as experience proves, are seldom able to establish an influence
over the classes for whose benefit these institutions are designed;
while good and Christian people are generally to be found, who will,
for love’s sake and for the work’s sake, go among the disorderly and
depraved, and endeavour to awaken whatever dormant sparks of parental
affection, of religious sentiment, and of the sense of responsibility
may remain within them, and will thus induce them to send their
children to school. And not only will these ministers of good words,
illustrated and expounded by kindly acts, aid the regular teachers in
bringing children into the school, but also in attaching them to the
place where they were first made comfortable and happy. In all these
schools I either found ladies actually present at the time of my visit,
or heard that they were in the habit of being present almost daily.
Their chief effort is to instil into the minds of the children a good
moral and religious tone, and to bring them to feel that there are
such things in human hearts as kindliness and regard for others, and
that this kindliness and regard is being directed towards themselves.
They also generally superintend the musical instruction, for which
purpose each school is supplied with an harmonium. It is thought that
music will both attract and humanise children accustomed at home to
so much roughness and coarseness. They also teach the girls to make
their own clothes; the materials for which, in the case of the poorest
and most neglected, are given either at the cost of the school funds,
or by some of the well-wishers of the school through these voluntary
assistants. This, and meals provided two or three times a week for the
most destitute, are used as allurements by which the most neglected
children, which are precisely the cases the managers are most desirous
of getting hold of, may be brought in.
None of the children found in these schools would ever attend
the common schools—their rags and habits would alone render them
inadmissible; and it is only by such means and exertions as I have just
mentioned that they can be attracted to and fitted for the industrial
schools. I was told that notwithstanding the success I witnessed,
there was still a lower depth that could not be reached, in which the
children remained untaught in the lessons of any school excepting that
of vice.
In these matters, then, they have in the great commercial capital of
the New World, where land is a drug, and where there are employment
and food for everybody, just the same difficulties we have to struggle
against in the capital of the old country, and they endeavour to meet
them much in the same way as ourselves; though perhaps they may set
about doing what they see ought to be done, with more system and energy
than we have yet shown.
The same gentleman also took me over the establishments of the
Children’s Aid Society. The object of this association is to collect
from the streets the newsboys, and any others who may be growing up
uncared for, and who have no prospect of being trained up to any
employment or trade by which they may gain an honest livelihood,
and by the inducement of comfortable lodgings, and some other
advantages, to get them to submit to regular habits, and to a certain
amount of instruction; and then, when they have become qualified
for such situations, to give them an outfit, and find them homes in
the farmhouses of the West. This institution was under my friend’s
superintendence. It appeared to be a very valuable one, and to be
effecting a great deal of good among a large class that could have no
other chance of being rescued from degradation, and launched favourably
into life. On each of my two visits to New York I saw a band of healthy
and hopeful-looking youths it had trained and taught, and had just
fitted out, on their way to the railroad which was to take them to
their new Western homes.
[Sidenote: _An Old Principle Resuscitated._]
I have mentioned these industrial schools and the Children’s Aid
Society in connection with my first visit to New York, because I did
not meet with institutions of this kind elsewhere. I shall say nothing
about the common schools I saw here, because as I had letters to the
superintendents of schools in all the chief cities I visited, and so
had opportunities for inspecting these schools wherever I went; and as
I intend to bring into one summary the conclusions I arrived at after
an inspection of schools from New York to Denver on the plains at the
foot of the Rocky Mountains, and from Denver back again to Boston, it
will be better that I should only make separate mention of my visits to
schools which appeared to possess some peculiarity of method or object.
‘We wish everybody to have a chance, and to enjoy life. We wish for
nothing for ourselves which we should not be glad to see others have.’
I first heard this sentiment enounced in the above words by a gentleman
whom I met in one of my visits to the Children’s Aid Society. I
afterwards heard it expressed by other persons in widely distant parts
of the Union. There is nothing new in the sentiment itself to those
who are familiar with a book for which deep reverence is professed on
both sides of the Atlantic; but I felt—perhaps I was wrong in feeling
so—that there was something new in hearing it proclaimed as a principle
of conduct, and in finding myself among people who in their system of
public education, in many of their charities, and in other matters,
distinctly acted upon it.
Few people can have visited the great and wealthy capital of the French
empire without being struck with the paucity of churches it contains.
Few can have visited New York, which is not even the capital of the
State whose name it bears, without being struck with the opposite
fact. The latter city abounds in churches, still I saw many additional
ones in course of construction. Many of these churches have cost large
sums of money, and are of good architectural designs. As a general
rule, those who minister in them are very liberally maintained: I was
astonished at hearing the amount of the annual collections in some of
them.
The clergy are allowed much freedom of expression in America. A
gentleman residing in New York, while conversing with me on this
subject, made the following statement of what he supposed was the
general practice:—‘The way in which we deal with the clergy here is to
pay them well, and to encourage them to say exactly what they think.
What we pay them for is not other people’s ideas and opinions—that
we can find in books—but their own. We expect them to devote a
reasonable portion of their time and all the mental powers they
possess to theological study, and then to give us the result.’ This
broad construction of the duty of a clergyman, as a religious teacher,
coincides very much with what I was frequently told, that the broad
way of thinking was becoming the common way of thinking in almost all
the American churches. Mr. Henry Ward Beecher, though a Presbyterian,
is very broad, and never has a seat empty in his church. Sunday after
Sunday, three thousand people assemble to hear him preach. In American
society religious questions are frequently discussed. No one feels any
disposition to avoid them, because expression of opinion is perfectly
free. An American lady once said to me across the table, and was heard
by everyone present, that ‘every thinking American was of opinion that
religion, if not in conformity with the knowledge and sentiments of
the times, was a dead thing.’ In New York this expression of opinion
appeared perfectly natural; but I suppose that if an English lady
entertained ideas of this kind, she would not think it allowable for
her to enunciate them in company.
[Sidenote: _Service at the Rev. H. W. Beecher’s Church._]
The most celebrated preacher in America is Mr. Henry Ward Beecher.
On the subjugation of the South he was the man selected by President
Lincoln from all the great speakers of the United States to pronounce
at Fort Sumter, where the war had commenced, an oration which would
signalise its conclusion with an eloquence worthy of the occasion. The
three thousand sittings his church contains, I was told, are let by
auction for sums which on this side of the water would appear fabulous.
He returns his income at 8,000_l._ a year. Of course I went to hear
him, and through the assistance of one of his congregation obtained a
seat.
The church is very much in the form of a theatre. The stage is occupied
by Mr. Beecher himself. Over the stage, however, is a gallery for
the organ and choir. There was not, on the occasion upon which I was
present, a vacant place in the building. As one looked down from what
corresponded with the gallery of a theatre, there appeared to be no
aisles in the body of the church, because as soon as the occupants
of the pews had taken their places, seats that had been fastened up
against the outside of the pews were opened out and instantly filled.
The service commenced with the Te Deum, chanted by a choir of ladies
and gentlemen. A short prayer was then offered. This was followed by
a short lesson from the book of Ecclesiastes, which was all that the
service contained from the Holy Scriptures. Six or seven children
were now baptised. The baptismal service consisted of several texts
bearing more or less on the subject, which were chanted by the choir,
Mr. Beecher afterwards sprinkling water upon each in the name of the
Trinity. This was succeeded by a long prayer, which was rather a
thanksgiving for domestic happiness than a prayer. A hymn was then
sung, during the singing of which very few of the vast congregation
rose from their seats. There was, of course, no kneeling during the
prayers, or in any part of the service, which was concluded with a
sermon of more than an hour’s length, taken from the few verses in
Ecclesiastes that had been previously read. The sermon was an essay on
‘the art of making old age happy and beautiful.’ This was in connection
with the administration of the sacrament of baptism. He spoke very
eulogistically of a certain admiral, whose name I could not catch, now
residing at Brooklyn, in the neighbourhood of Mr. Beecher’s church,
and whom the preacher announced as the specimen old man. He inveighed
strongly against all forms of dissipation, on the ground that ‘they
take too much out of a man. They are,’ he said, ‘cheques drawn by youth
on old age.’ He said ‘he had no objection to balls, provided they were
held in the middle of the day and in the open air.’ He should like to
see young people dancing on the green turf in summer. But crowded rooms
and late hours were prejudicial to health.’ He thanked God that he had
never used tobacco in any form. He said, ‘the use of it was a filthy,
beastly habit, wasteful of health and of animal power.’ In speaking of
excessive drinking, he said ‘that the American had not the excuse which
the Englishman had, for the latter had so much water outside, that
there was a reason for his never taking any inside.’ This was received
by the congregation with great laughter, as were some other sallies
contained in the sermon.
[Sidenote: _The Rev. H. W. Beecher._]
According to our ideas, there was a great want of reverence in the
service. People talked—some who were in my hearing, of dollars and
investments—till the service commenced. One of the officers of
the Church wore his hat till the congregation were more than half
assembled. Mr. Beecher appeared to me to have but two tones, a very
loud one and a quiet impressive one. The latter was very much the
better of the two. His manuscript was placed on a desk on the stage.
He could leave the desk with his manuscript on it whenever he pleased;
and this he frequently did. One has no right to express an opinion of
a preacher’s power after having heard only one sermon; all, therefore,
that I will say of Mr. Beecher is what I heard said of him. I was
told that his popularity never flagged, and that his originality had
hitherto proved inexhaustible; for that during the many years he had
been before the public, during which time everything he had said
had been reported, he had never been known to repeat himself. I was
also told that he had been a useful man in calming, as far as the
great influence he possessed allowed, the storms both of religious
controversy and of political animosity. It must be remembered that a
clergyman of Mr. Beecher’s energy and talents has much more prominence
and influence in America, where there is no governing class, than it
would be possible for him to attain in England.
There is a club—perhaps we should call it a society or association—of
Episcopalian Broad Churchmen, the members of which reside in the cities
of New York and Philadelphia. I believe clergymen only are members.
Almost every Episcopal church in New York has a chapel attached to
it, exclusively for the use of the poor. This has been done because
it has been found there, just as is the case with us, that in the
cities the poor will not use the same churches as the rich. We have in
London, in a few cases, attempted to cure the same evil with the same
remedy. The remedy, however, has not been fairly applied, for a better
class of persons (the very thing that indisposes the ill-clad poor
to be present) has been allowed to appropriate to themselves a large
proportion of the sittings in these chapels.
I will mention here a conclusion to which I was brought by my
observation of what was going on in the Episcopal Church in different
parts of the Union. Among ministers and congregations there are, just
as with us, some High Church, some Low Church, some Ritualistic, and
some Broad Church. I think the proportion of those that are High Church
is greater with them than with ourselves. The real and important
difference between us on this head is, that in the American Church
every minister and congregation belongs distinctly to one or other of
these parties, and that every Church is worked at high pressure.
[Sidenote: _An American’s Opinion of a Minister’s Duty._]
One of the leading divines of America whom I met at New York (he was
not a minister of the Episcopal Church) remarked to me that the view
taken in America of a minister’s duty was, that he was a teacher. He
occupied towards the adults of the congregation precisely the same
position that the schoolmaster held with respect to the children. What
he had to teach was the history and theory of religion; and to show
how, as a rule of life, it bore on the ever-varying circumstances of
the day. If he could not teach the people these things he was of no use
to them.
This ignores altogether that view of the service which makes it an
expression of the devotion and of the religious feelings of the
congregation itself.