ST. LOUIS.
Approach to St. Louis.--Bridge Over the Mississippi.--View of
the City.--Material Resources of Missouri.--Early History of St.
Louis.--Increase of Population.--Manufacturing and Commercial
Interests.--Locality.--Description of St. Louis in 1842.--
Resemblance to Philadelphia.--Public Buildings.--Streets.--
Parks.--Fair Week.--Educational and Charitable Institutions.--
Hotels.--Mississippi River.--St. Louis During the Rebellion.--
Peculiar Characteristics.--The Future of the City.
The visitor to St. Louis, if from the east, will probably make his
approach over the great bridge which spans the Mississippi. This bridge,
designed by Captain Eads, and begun in 1867, was completed in 1874, and
is one of the greatest triumphs of American engineering. It consists of
three spans, resting on four piers. The central span is 520 feet in
width, and the side ones 500 feet each. They have a rise of sixty feet,
sufficient to permit the passage of steamers under them, even at high
water. The piers are sunk through the sand to the bed-rock, a distance
of from ninety to one hundred and twenty feet, the work having been
accomplished by means of iron wrought caissons and atmospheric pressure.
Each span consists of four ribbed arches, made of cast steel. The bridge
is two stories high, the lower story containing a double car track, and
the upper one two horse-car tracks, two carriageways and two foot-ways.
Reaching the St. Louis shore, the car and road ways pass over a viaduct
of five arches, of twenty-seven feet span each, to Washington avenue,
where the railway tracks run into a tunnel 4,800 feet long, terminating
near Eleventh street. Bridge and tunnel together cost eleven millions of
dollars.
[Illustration: THE LEVEE AND GREAT BRIDGE AT ST. LOUIS.]
This wonderful structure, which has few if any equals upon the
continent, will impress the traveler with the commercial magnitude and
enterprise of the great western city to which it forms the eastern
portal. Looking from the car window he will see, first, the Mississippi,
which, if at the period of low water, disappoints him with its apparent
insignificance; but which, if it be at the time of its annual flood, has
crept, on the St. Louis side, nearly to the top of the steep levee, and
has filled up the broad valley miles away on the hither side, a rushing,
turbulent river, turbid with the yellow waters of the Missouri, which,
emptying into it twenty miles above, have scarcely, at this point,
perfectly mingled with the clearer Mississippi. He will see next the
river front of St. Louis--a continuous line of steamboats, towboats and
barges, without a sail or mast among them; the levee rising in a steep
acclivity twenty feet above the river's edge; and multitudinous mules,
with their colored drivers, toiling laboriously, and by the aid of much
whipping and swearing, up or down the steep bank, carrying the
merchandise which has just been landed, or is destined to be loaded in
some vessel's hold. Beyond the river rises the city, terrace above
terrace, its outlines bristling with spires, and prominent above all,
the dome of the Court House.
St. Louis is situated in the very heart of the great Mississippi Valley,
and a large share of its rich agricultural products and mineral stores
are constantly poured into her lap. Pilot Knob and Iron Mountain, both
containing inexhaustible supplies of the useful ore, are not far
distant. The lead districts of Missouri include more than 6,000 square
miles. In fifteen counties there is copper. In short, within one hundred
miles of St. Louis, gold, iron, lead, zinc, copper, tin, silver,
platina, nickel, emery, cobalt, coal, limestone, granite, pipe-clay,
fire-clay, marble, metallic paints and salt are found, in quantities
which will repay working. In the State there are twenty millions acres
of good farming lands; five millions of acres are among the best in the
world for grapes; and eight millions are particularly suited to the
raising of hemp. There is, besides, a sufficiency of timber land. With
all these resources from which to draw, it would be surprising if St.
Louis did not become a leading city in the West. Situated, as she is, on
the Mississippi River, about midway between its source and its mouth,
the junction of the Missouri twenty miles above, and that of the Ohio
about one hundred and seventy-five miles below, and being the river
terminus of a complicated system of western railways, the towns and
cities, and even the small hamlets of the north, south and west, and to
a limited extent of the east also, all pay her tribute. As Chicago is
the gateway to the East, by means of the great chain of lakes and rivers
at whose head she sits, so St. Louis holds open the door to the South
and the East as well, through the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers.
In many respects the business rival of Chicago to-day, it has a history
reaching half a century further back. While Chicago was still a howling
wilderness, its only inhabitants the warlike Pottawatomies, who
sometimes encamped upon the shores of its lake and river, St. Louis had
a local habitation and a name. On February fifteenth, 1764, Pierre
Laclede Siguest, an enterprising Frenchman, established at this point a
depot for the furs of the vast region watered by the Mississippi and
Missouri, and gave it the name of St. Louis. This was done by permission
of the Governor General of Louisiana, which was then a French province.
In the course of the year cabins were built, a little corn planted and
the Indians placated. The Frenchmen seemed to have gotten along with the
Indians tolerably well in those days. They had no hesitation in marrying
squaws, even though they already possessed one lawful wife; they were
good tempered and merry, and attempted no conversion of the Indians with
a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other. So the two races got along
nicely together.
The peace of 1763 gave the country east of the Mississippi to the
English, and the Frenchmen who had settled upon the Illinois made haste
to remove to St. Louis, to avoid living under the rule of their "natural
enemy." This was scarcely accomplished when the more terrible news
reached them that Louis XV had ceded his possessions west of the
Mississippi to Spain. For the next thirty years the town was a Spanish
outpost of Louisiana, in which province no one not a Catholic could own
land.
To go to New Orleans and return was a voyage of ten months; but in that
early day, and under such surprising difficulties, St. Louis began its
commercial career. It exported furs, lead and salt, and imported the few
necessaries required by the settlers, and beads, tomahawks, and other
articles demanded by the Indians in exchange for furs. In 1799 the
inhabitants numbered 925, a falling off of 272 from the previous year.
In 1804, St. Louis passed to the United States, together with the whole
country west of the Mississippi. In 1811 the population had increased to
1400, and there were two schools in the town, one French and one
English. In 1812 the portion of the territory lying north of the
thirty-fifth degree of latitude was organized as Missouri Territory. In
1813 the first brick house was erected in St. Louis. In 1820 its
population was 4,928. In 1822 it was incorporated as a city.
After the cession of Louisiana to the United States, the law forbidding
Protestant worship, and requiring owners of land to profess the Catholic
faith, was repealed, and men American born but of English descent began
to pour into the town. In 1808 a newspaper was established, and in 1811
many of the old French names of the streets were changed to English
ones. In 1812 the lead mines began to be worked to better advantage, on
a larger scale, and agriculture assumed increasing importance. In 1815
the first steamboat made its appearance.
In 1820 St. Louis cast its vote for slavery, and settled the question
for Missouri. The population then was 4,928, which in 1830 had increased
to 5,852; 924 additional inhabitants in ten years! From 1830 to 1860 its
population trebled every ten years, the census returns of the latter
year giving it 160,773. In 1870 it had nearly doubled again, the number
being 310,864 inhabitants. According to the United States Census report
of 1880, the population was 350,522, which made St. Louis the sixth city
in the Union. Since that time it has been rapidly on the increase.
St. Louis is among the first of our cities in the manufacture of flour,
and is a rival of Cincinnati in the pork-packing business. It has
extensive lumber mills, linseed-oil factories, provision-packing
houses, manufactures large quantities of hemp, whisky and tobacco, has
vast iron factories and machine shops, breweries, lead and paint works.
In brief, it takes a rank second only to New York and Philadelphia in
its manufactures, to which its prosperity is largely due. In 1874 the
products of that year were valued at nearly $240,000,000, while it
furnished employment to about 50,000 workmen. Great as are Chicago's
manufacturing interests, St. Louis excels her in this respect, while she
rivals the former city in her commercial interests. The natural
commercial entreport of the Mississippi Valley, the commerce of St.
Louis is immense. It receives and exports to the north, east and south,
breadstuffs, live stock, provisions, cotton, lead, hay, salt, wool,
hides and pelts, lumber and tobacco.
St. Louis is perched high above the river, so that she is beyond the
reach of all save the highest floods of that most capricious stream. She
is built on three terraces, the first twenty, the second one hundred and
fifty, and the third two hundred feet above low-water mark. The second
terrace begins at Twenty-fifth street, and the third at Cote Brillante,
four miles west of the river. The surface here spreads out into a broad,
beautiful plain. The highest hill in the neighborhood of the city was
the lofty mound on the bank of the river, a relic of prehistoric times,
and from which St. Louis derived its name of the "Mound City." Greatly
to the regret of antiquarians a supposed necessity existed for the
removal of this mound, and now no trace of it is left.
In 1842 Charles Dickens published his _American Notes_, in which is
found the following description of St. Louis:
"In the old French portion of the town the thoroughfares are narrow and
crooked, and some of the houses are very quaint and picturesque, being
built of wood, with tumble-down galleries before the windows,
approachable by stairs, or rather ladders, from the street. There are
queer little barber shops and drinking houses, too, in this quarter; and
abundance of crazy old tenements, with blinking casements, such as may
be seen in Flanders. Some of these ancient habitations, with high garret
gable windows perking into the roofs, have a kind of French spring about
them; and, being lopsided with age, appear to hold their heads askew,
besides, as if they were grimacing in astonishment at the American
improvements."
There is nothing of this now seen in St. Louis, except in the narrower
streets along the river, which remain a lasting relic of the ancient
city. Yankee enterprise has obliterated, in the appearance of the city
at least, all trace of its French and Spanish origin. The work of
renovation must have commenced soon after Dickens' visit, for Lady
Emeline Wortley, visiting St. Louis in 1849, describes it as follows:--
"Merrily were huge houses going up in all directions. From our hotel
windows we had a long view of gigantic and gigantically-growing-up
dwellings, that seemed every morning to be about a story higher than we
left them on the preceding night; as if they had slept, during the
night, on guano, like the small boy in the American tale, who reposed on
a field covered by it, and whose father, on seeking him the following
day, found a gawky gentleman of eight feet high, bearing a strong
resemblance to a Patagonian walking stick."
[Illustration: SHAW'S GARDEN AT ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI.]
If Chicago is a western reproduction of New York, with its
characteristic alertness preternaturally developed, St. Louis takes
Philadelphia for her prototype. The merchants and statesmen plodding
wearily across the continent during the latter part of the last century
and early in this, found Philadelphia the chief city of the country, and
went home with their minds filled with the distinguishing features of
that city. These they reproduced, as far as was practicable, in their
own young and growing town. They laid it out with regularity, the
streets near the river, which describes a slight curve, running parallel
to it. Further back, they describe straight lines, while the streets
running from east to west are, for the most part, at right angles with
those they cross. Imitating Philadelphia, the streets are named
numerically from the river. Those crossing them have arbitrary names
given them, while many Philadelphia nomenclatures, such as Market,
Chestnut, Pine, Spruce, Poplar, Walnut and Vine, are repeated. The
houses are also numbered in Philadelphia fashion, the streets parallel
with the river being numbered north and south from Market street, and
those running east and west taking their numbers from the river. In
numbering, each street passes on to a new hundred; thus No. 318 is the
ninth house above Third street on one side of the way.
Not only in these superficial matters is Philadelphia imitated, but the
resemblance is preserved in more substantial particulars. Many of the
buildings are large, old-fashioned, square mansions, built of brick with
white marble trimmings. There is less attempt at architectural display
than in Chicago, apparently the main thought of the builders being to
obtain substantiality. Yet there are many handsome buildings, both
public and private. One of the finest structures of its kind in the
United States is the Court House, occupying the square bounded by
Fourth, Fifth, Chestnut and Market streets. It is in the form of a Greek
cross, of Grecian architecture, built of Genevieve limestone, and is
surmounted by a lofty iron dome, from the cupola of which it is possible
to obtain an extensive view of the city and its surroundings. The
building cost $1,200,000. The fronts are adorned with beautiful
porticoes. The Four Courts, in Clark avenue, between Eleventh and
Twelfth streets, is a handsome and spacious building, constructed of
limestone, at a cost of $1,000,000. A semi-circular iron jail is in its
rear, so constructed that all its cells are under the observation of a
single watchman. A Custom House and Post Office has recently been
erected, at the corner of Olive and Eighth streets. It is of Maine
granite, with rose-colored granite trimmings, three stories in height,
with a French roof and Louvre dome, and occupies an entire square. The
cost of the structure was $5,000,000.
The Chamber of Commerce is the great commercial mart of the city, the
heart of enormous business interests, whose arteries sometimes pulsate
with feverish heat, and whose transactions affect business affairs to
the furthest extent of the country. The edifice is the handsomest of its
kind in America. It is five stories high, wholly built of gray
limestone, and cost $800,000. The main hall of the Exchange is two
hundred feet long, one hundred wide, and seventy high. In the gallery
surrounding it strangers can at any time witness the proceedings on the
floor, and watch how fortunes are made and unmade.
The most imposing and ornate building of the city, architecturally
speaking, is the Columbia Life Insurance building, which is of
rose-colored granite, in the Renaissance style, four stories high, with
a massive stone cornice representing mythological figures. The roof is
reached by an elevator, and affords a fine view.
The city abounds in handsome churches. Most prominent among them all is
Christ Church (Episcopal) at the corner of Thirteenth and Locust
streets. It is in the cathedral gothic style, with stained-glass windows
and lofty nave. The Catholic Cathedral, on Walnut street, between Second
and Third streets, is an imposing structure with a front of polished
freestone faced by a Doric portico. The Church of the Messiah
(Unitarian), at the corner of Olive and Ninth streets, is a handsome
gothic structure. The Jewish Temple, at the corner of Seventeenth and
Pine streets, is one of the finest religious edifices in the city. There
are many others which will challenge the visitor's attention and
admiration as he passes through the streets of the city.
The wholesale business of St. Louis is confined to Front, Second, Third
and Main streets. Front street is one hundred feet wide, and extends
along the levee, being lined with massive stores and warehouses. Fourth
street contains the leading retail stores, and on every pleasant day it
is filled with handsome equipages, while on its sidewalks are found the
fashion and beauty of the city. Washington avenue is one of the widest
and most elegant avenues in St. Louis, and west of Twenty-seventh street
contains many beautiful residences. Pine, Olive and Locust streets,
Chouteau avenue and Lucas Place, are also famed for their fine
residences. Lindell or Grant avenue, running north and south, on the
western boundary of the city, and slightly bending toward the river, is
its longest street, being twelve miles in length.
The corporate limits of St. Louis extend eleven miles along the river,
and about three miles inland. The densely built portion of the city is
about six miles in length by two in width. Its public parks are one of
its striking features. They embrace an aggregate of about 2,000 acres.
The most beautiful is Lafayette Park, lying between Park and Lafayette,
Mississippi and Missouri avenues. In it are a bronze statue of Thomas H.
Benton, by Harriet Hosmer, and a bronze statue of Washington. It is for
pedestrians only, is elaborately laid out and ornamented, and is
surrounded by magnificent residences. Missouri Park is a pretty little
park at the foot of Lucas Place, containing a handsome fountain. St.
Louis Place, Hyde Park and Washington Square are all attractive places
of resort. Northern Park, on the bluffs to the north of the city, is
noted for its fine trees, and contains 180 acres. Forest Park is the
great park of the city. It lies four miles west of the Court House, and
contains 1350 acres. The Des Pares runs through it, and the native
forest trees are still standing. With great natural advantages, it
requires only time and art to number it among the handsomest parks in
the country. Tower Grove Park, in the southwest part of the city,
contains 227 acres, offers delightful drives among green lawns and
charmingly arranged shrubbery.
Adjoining this park is Shaw's Garden, which contains 109 acres. It
possesses a peculiar interest, from the manner in which it is arranged.
It is divided into three sections, the first being the Herbaceous and
Flower Garden, embracing ten acres, and including every flower which can
be grown in the latitude of St. Louis, besides several greenhouses
containing thousands of exotic and tropical plants. The second section,
called the Fruticetum, comprises six acres devoted to fruit of all
kinds. The Arboretum, or third section, includes twenty-five acres, and
contains all kinds of ornamental and fruit trees. The Labyrinth is an
intricate, hedge-bordered pathway, leading to a summer-house in the
centre. There are also a museum and botanical library. This garden is
entirely the result of private taste and enterprise, having been planned
and executed by Henry Shaw, who has thrown it open to the public, and
intends it as a gift to the city.
Bellefontaine Cemetery is the most beautiful in the West. It is situated
in the northern part of the city, about four and one-half miles from the
Court House, and embraces 350 acres. It contains a number of fine
monuments, while the trees and shrubbery are most tastefully arranged.
Calvary Cemetery, north and not far distant, is nearly as large and
quite as beautiful. Here, in these quiet cities of the dead, far from
the bustle of the great town, the men and women of this western
metropolis, whose lives were passed in turmoil and activity, find at
last that rest which must come to all.
The people of St. Louis are supplied with water from the river, the
waterworks being situated at Bissell's Point, three and one-half miles
north of the court house. Two pumping engines, each with a daily
capacity of 17,000,000 gallons, furnish an ample supply for all the
needs of the great city.
Fair week, which is usually the first week in October, is the great
holiday and gala season of St. Louis. The writer of this article was
once so fortunate as to visit the city early in this week. Every train
of cars on the many lines which centre at St. Louis, and every
steamboat which came from up or down the river, brought its living
freight of men and women, who were out for a week's holiday, and, it may
have been, paying their annual visit to the greatest city west of the
Mississippi. The country roads leading to town were black with vehicles
of all descriptions, and laden with men and merchandise. The laborers
and mules upon the levee were busier than ever, receiving and
transporting the articles to be exhibited and sold. Every hotel was
crowded, and the surplus overflowed into boarding and lodging houses, so
that their keepers undoubtedly reaped a golden harvest for that one
week, at least. The streets were thronged with an immense and motley
multitude: business men, on the alert to extend their trade and add to
their gains; working women, who found an opportunity for a brief
holiday; ladies of fashion who viewed the scene resting at their ease in
their carriages; farmers from the rural districts, looking uncomfortable
yet complaisant in their Sunday suits, and trying to take in all there
was to see and understand; their wives, old-fashioned and countrified in
their dress, and with a tired look upon their faces, which this week
given up to idleness and sight-seeing could not quite dispel; sporting
men, easily recognizable by their flashy dress and "horsey" talk;
gamblers and blacklegs by the score, whose appearance and manners were
too excessively gentlemanly to pass as quite genuine, and whose gains
during the week were probably larger and more certain than those of any
other class; western men, with their patois, borrowed apparently from
the slang of every nation on the globe; Southerners, with their long
hair, slouched hats and broad accent; river hands, whose most
noticeable accomplishments seemed to be disposing of tobacco and
inventing new oaths; negroes, whose facile natures entered heartily into
the occasion, and on whose sleek, shining countenances the spirit of
contentment was plainly visible; eastern men, with the Yankee
intonation; Germans, in great numbers, patronizingly endorsing their
adopted country, and selling lager beer with stolid content; Irishmen,
whose preference was whisky, and who were ever ready for fun or a fight;
beggars, plying their vocation with an extra whine, adopted to conceal
an unwonted tendency to cheerfulness; magnates, who looked pompous and
conscious of their own importance, but who were jostled and pushed with
the democratic disregard for rank and station which characterizes an
American crowd.
Probably in no city in the Union would one find quite so cosmopolitan a
multitude, representing all sections and all nationalities so
impartially. In the business and populous centre of our country, here
came all classes and peoples who had been born under, or had sought the
protection of, our flag, to worship one week at the shrines of Ceres and
Pomona.
The fair grounds of the St. Louis Agricultural and Mechanical
Association are three miles northwest of the Court House, and embrace
eighty-five acres handsomely laid out and containing extensive
buildings. The Amphitheatre will seat 40,000 persons. The street cars
leading to these grounds were at all times filled with people, and in
addition there was a constant procession of carriages, wagons and carts,
going and returning. Within the enclosure the dense throng surged and
swayed like a human whirlpool. The displays in the agricultural and
mechanical departments were something astonishing; for where in the
world is there such grain grown and in such quantities, as in the
Mississippi and Missouri valleys? Where are there such fat oxen, such
sleek, self-satisfied cows, with such capacity for rich milk? Horses,
hogs and sheep were all of the best, and indicated that the West is very
far advanced in scientific stock raising. The farm implements displayed
all sorts of contrivances for lightening and hastening the farmer's
toil. It needed but a glance to show that farming in this region was no
single-man, one-horse affair.
In art the East as yet excels the West; for in the scramble after
material gain the artistic nature has not been greatly cultivated, and
its expressions are, for the most part, crude. But they give promise of
future excellence. St. Louis has no picture gallery worthy the name, but
excells in scientific and educational institutions.
The Mercantile Library, at the corner of Fifth and Locust streets,
contains 50,000 volumes, and its hall is decorated by paintings, coins
and statuary, among which latter may be mentioned Miss Hosmer's
life-size statue of Beatrice Cenci and Oenone; a bronze copy of the
Venus de Medici, a sculptured slab from the ruins of Nineveh, and marble
busts of Thomas H. Benton and Robert Burns. The library with its reading
room is free to strangers.
Besides the library there is a public school library of 38,000 volumes;
an Academy of Science, founded in 1856, with a large museum and a
library of 3,000 volumes; and a Historical Society, founded in 1865,
with a valuable historical collection. Washington University, organized
in 1853, embraces the whole range of university studies except theology.
With it is connected the Mary Institute, for the education of women, the
Polytechnic School, and the Law School. The public school system of St.
Louis is one of the best in the country, and its school-houses are
commendably fine. The Roman Catholic College of the Christian Brothers
has about four hundred students, and a library of 10,000 volumes.
Concordia College (German Lutheran), established in 1839, has a library
of 4,500 volumes. Besides the numerous public schools, the Roman
Catholics, who embrace a majority of the inhabitants, have about one
hundred parochial, private and conventual schools. They have also a
number of convents, charitable homes, asylums and hospitals.
The hotels, chief amongst which are the new Southern Hotel, Lindell
House, Planters' Hotel, Laclede Hotel and Barnum's Hotel, will compare
favorably, in point of attendance, comfort and elegance, with any in the
country. Horse cars traverse the city in every direction, rendering all
points easily accessible, and carriages are in waiting at the depots and
steamboat landings. Ferries ply continually to East St. Louis, on the
Illinois shore, from the foot of Carr street, north of the bridge, and
from the foot of Spruce street, south of it, the two points of departure
being about a mile apart.
So long as the Mississippi River washes the levee in front of the city,
the citizens of St. Louis are in little danger of long remaining dull,
for want of excitement. That river, one of the uneasiest of water
courses, constantly furnishes fresh themes of interest, and even of
anxiety. It has a singular penchant for a frequent change of channels,
and occasionally threatens to desert to Illinois and leave St. Louis an
inland town, with its high levee a sort of rampart to receive the
mocking assaults of Chicago. Then, every spring, there is the annual
freshet, which, once in ten or fifteen years, creeps up over the top of
the levee, and finds its way into cellars and first floors of stores and
warehouses. Occasionally there is a severe winter, when ice is formed
upon the river as far south even as St. Louis; and when it breaks up in
the spring, mischief is sure to ensue. A hundred steamboats are in
winter quarters along the levee, their noses in the sand, and their
hulls extending riverward, fixed in the ice. At last the great mass of
congealed water, extending up the river hundreds of miles, begins to
move down stream. The motion is at first scarcely perceptible; but,
suddenly, the ice cracks and breaks, and fragments begin to glide
swiftly with the current of the river. The various masses create
conflicting currents, and, presently, the surface of the stream is like
a whirlpool. Some boats are crushed like egg shells between the floes;
cables snap, and others are drawn out into the midst of the whirling
waters and are fortunate indeed if they are not overwhelmed or forced
upon the ice. Meantime, consternation reigns upon the levee. The
multitudes are powerless to prevent, yet make frantic and futile efforts
while they watch, the disaster. At the breaking up of the ice in 1866,
seventeen steamboats were crushed and sunk in a few minutes. Then there
are other river disasters; steamboats burned; others struck on snags and
sunk; and now and then a boiler explosion makes up the tale of horrors
and prevents the Mississippi from ever becoming monotonous or
uninteresting.
St. Louis was most unfavorably affected by the war, and made to expiate
her political sin of 1820. On the border land between the North and the
South, the conflict was carried on in her very midst. Sectional strife
was most bitter and keen. There was no neutrality, and there could be
none. All were either for or against; families were divided in deadly
strife; and while the city suffered to a terrible degree from this
condition of affairs, in back counties whole sections were depopulated.
The population being largely southern, either by birth or descent, its
sympathies were with the South. The class truly loyal was the Germans,
who numbered about 60,000 of the population, and who were characterized
by the Secessionists as the "D---- Dutch." The blockade of the river
reduced the whole business of the city to about a third of its former
amount. Yet, when the war was ended, St. Louis was quick to recover her
prostrated energies. In 1866, and but two years after the war, the city
did more business than in any preceding year; and, relieved from the
incubus of slavery, which had retarded its progress, it aroused itself
to new life.
With the Quaker-like simplicity of its outward appearance, its absence
of business rush, and its general tranquillity, St. Louis' resemblance
to the Quaker City ceases. It is a town of composite character, but from
its earliest existence has been under Roman Catholic domination. Even
now the Roman Catholic element predominates in its population. And its
French and Spanish founders, though their quaint buildings are torn down
and replaced by more modern ones, and their very streets re-named, have
left their impress upon the city. Its many places of amusement, compared
to its population, its general gayety, its stores closed by sunset in
winter, and before sunset in summer, its billiard rooms open on Sunday,
and its ball-playing on the same day, all give indication of its being
the home of a people whose ancestors had no New England prejudices
against worldly amusements, and in favor of sobriety, decorum,
industry, and the observance of the Sabbath.
St. Louis presents a pleasing contrast to many other western cities. Its
prosperity is substantial--not a sham. The capital which has paid for
these costly places of business and elegant residences, and is invested
in these gigantic enterprises, has been created out of the immense
material wealth of the State--not borrowed on a factitious credit. Its
merchants do not make princely fortunes in a day, but what they acquire
they keep. With so satisfactory a past, the errors of its youth atoned
for, the future of St. Louis cannot fail to be a brilliant one.