agreeable recollections of natural beauty and kind hospitality, I
visited in my way to Chicago, the village of Lockport, which has grown
up in anticipation of the completion of the canal. The descent of the
River Des Planes is here sufficient to afford ample water-power for
mills and manufactories, and this, in a country so level that the water
half the time does not know which way to run, is quite enough to excite
the sanguine adventurers to this promised land to a degree of delirium,
and set them “kalkilating,” as Sam Slick has it, a hundred degrees
beyond the ratio of geometrical progression. There is little reason to
doubt that Lockport will become a considerable manufacturing town in
process of time, after the canal is finished; but the far-sighted
seekers into futurity would perhaps do well to bear in mind, that there
must be people before there are cities; that these latter are the
children, not the parents of the country, and that it is not good policy
to wait so long for the grass to grow that two or three generations of
steeds starve in the meantime. It is well to look a little to the
present as well as the future, and not be for ever gazing at the shadowy
mountain in the distance, least we fall into the ditch directly under
our noses.
A few hours ride in a delightful morning, partly over rich cultivated
prairie lands, brought me to Chicago, at the southern extremity of Lake
Michigan. It is a fine town, and notwithstanding the blight of
speculation which has swept the land from Dan to Beersheba, continues
steadily on the increase. This is the best possible proof of innate
constitutional vigor, and affords sufficient augury of its future growth
and prosperity. To all these sanguine young cities and citizens, might I
assume the universal privilege of giving advice, I would recommend the
maxim of the wise Emperor Augustus, though I confess it is somewhat
anti-republican to cite such an authority—_festina lente_—hasten
slowly—be not in too great a hurry to grow big and to get rich, and do
not crow before daylight, like ambitious young roosters, who aspire to
be beforehand with the sun.
After remaining three or four days at Chicago, and making several
agreeable acquaintances, among which was an enterprising old gentleman
of four score, who had come there, as he said, “_to seek his fortune_,”
I bade farewell to the State of Illinois, bearing on my mind the
impression that there was not in any country of the known world, a
region of the same extent combining within itself a greater portion of
the elements of substantial and enduring prosperity. At the same time, I
could not help lamenting that blessed as it is in its soil, its climate,
its geographical position, and its industrious population, it had been
precipitated from the summit of hope to the lowest abyss of debt and
depression, by turning its back on the advantages which nature had
gratuitously bestowed, to snatch at others that Providence had withheld.
Though the immediate source of these pressing difficulties of the state,
is without doubt improvident legislation, yet let not the good people of
Illinois lay all the blame on their law-makers and rulers. They were
chosen by their own free voices, and in many cases, for the express
purpose of carrying out those very projects which in their vast
accumulation have created these embarrassments. It was the feverish
anxiety, the headlong haste, the insatiable passion for growing rich in
a hurry, independently of the exertions of labor and the savings of
economy, that brought them and other states where they are now standing
shivering on the verge of bankruptcy.
In the United States the people are the sovereign, and all power either
for good or evil emanates from them. If they allow their own passions,
or the seductions of others, to lead them astray, it is but a weak
evasion to cast the blame on those who were only enabled to perpetrate
the offence by the power which they themselves delegated. Let them then
set about retrieving the consequences of their adherence to mischievous
maxims and habits, by returning to those which if firmly adopted and
steadily pursued, will be speedily followed by returning prosperity. Let
the contest be, not who is to blame for the evil, but who shall be
foremost in proposing an effectual remedy and contributing all in his
power to bring it about. In short, let them only save as much in the
next, as they wasted in the last twenty years, instead of resorting for
relief to the very measure which produced the disease, and place their
affairs in the hands of clear-sighted honest men, instead of great
financiers, whose only expedient for paying one debt is contracting
another, and my life on it, they will redeem themselves in less time
than it took to enthral them. But we who live in glass houses should
never throw stones. _Illinois has enough of the sisterhood to keep her
in countenance._
-----
[1] Charleroix, vol. ii. p. 102, 103.
[2] Charleroix, vol. ii. p. 73.
* * * * *
A DREAM OF ITALY.
BY CHARLES ALLEN.
Land of Poets, Italy,
As the rivers seek the sea,
Floats my dreaming soul to thee;
And I stand upon the soil,
Where with never ceasing toil,
Careless of the midnight oil,
Poets say the noblest lays—
Artists wrought for Heaven’s praise—
Marking time by deeds, not days.
And before my dreaming eyes,
Temples, palaces arise,
Less’ning, fading in the skies,
’Till upon their lifted spires,
Sit the stars, those spirit fires,
List’ning to thy minstrel lyres.
Hark! their music sweeps along—
Lightly dance the waves of song,
Through the air a happy throng;
Bearing on each foamy crest,
Thoughts that wrap the human breast;
Bidding care lie down to rest.
List’ning to each beauteous strain,
Ah! I am a child again,
Full of childish joy and pain;
All unwritten is life’s tome,
And my spirit seeks its home,
More beloved than gilded dome,
And around the once loved stream,
Revels free in Music’s dream—
Yet, alas! this does but seem.
Music! ’tis the voice of Love,
Sweetly floating from above,
Winged like Noah’s gentle dove;
Seeking, seeking wearily,
O’er life’s deeply flooded sea,
To some higher heart, to flee.
’Tis thy voice, thy language too,
Spoken by the Sainted Few,
Who still make thy wonders new.
Love, was exiled Dante’s theme;
Love, was Buonaroti’s dream—
Raphael took its sunny beam;
’Twas the pencil with which he
Wrought for immortality—
Sweet Italia, wrought for thee.
And the chaste Madonna grew,
From that touch so pure and true,
Breathing life, and speaking too.
These are they who speak for thee,
Speak, though toiling silently—
Speak in love, fair Italy.
Thus in visions of the night,
Oft my spirit takes its flight,
Soaring to thy land of light;
But, alas! the op’ning day,
Finds me from thee, far away,
And no more thy minstrel lay,
Floats in sweetness over me;
But the bird sings on the tree,
’Neath the casement blithe and free.
Yes, ’t has vanished into air,
And again comes heavy care—
Would, O, would, that I were there;
So my spirit whispers me,
Longing, mourning but to see,
Land of Poets, only thee;
For I’m lonely, lonely here,
Falls for me no kindly tear—
Love itself has pressed the bier;
And in bitterness of soul,
As the racer to his goal,
Or the magnet to its pole,
So my spirit turns to thee,
Land of sweetest minstrelsy,
Land of Poets—Italy.
* * * * *
THE LETTER OF INTRODUCTION.
A NEW CHAPTER OF MRS. ALLANBY’S EXPERIENCE.
BY MRS. A. M. F. ANNAN.
“MY DEAR MARY—I know it will be a pleasure to you to become acquainted
with my friends who will hand you this—Mrs. Dilberry and her two
daughters. They are quite the aristocracy of our town, being very
genteel, as you will find, and also independent as to property. They
will be entire strangers in your city, and as they have made up their
minds to take a trip there, (having the means, they intend to travel a
great deal,) it is nothing but proper in me to give them this letter of
introduction.”
Such was the exordium of a letter signed “CATHERINE
CONOLLY,” and dated from “_Tarry-town_,” which I found on the
centre-table one morning, after having been down the street to attend to
a little business—giving a small order to a confectioner. The writer
was an old school-mate of mine, whom, indeed, I had not seen since our
school-days. She was Kitty Colville then—a fair, fat, freckled,
_squashy_-looking girl, who was a sort of common favorite from the
good-nature with which she bore being the butt of our tricks, and the
scape-goat of our trespasses. She afterward married a young country
doctor, and, as I had learned, was settled in some out-of-the-way
village of which I had never known the name until I saw it at the head
of her letter. I caught myself smiling as I laid down the missive, it
was so characteristic of poor Kitty. After telling about her children,
four in number, who were called after their grandfathers and
grandmothers, John and Jacob, and Ruth and Sophia; and her husband, who
had so much practice that he wore out a pair of saddle-bags every two
years, she had filled the remainder of her page with apologies for her
pen, ink, and bad writing. The neat but constrained chirography, into
which she had been drilled at school by a teacher standing over her, had
deteriorated into a scrawl, cramped here and straggling there, and the
orthography testified that she no longer wrote with a dictionary at her
elbow. “To chronicle small-beer,” it was very evident, had long been the
extent of her literary efforts.
My heart always warms at the memory of my early days, and of those in
any way pleasantly connected with them, and I felt glad to have an
opportunity to prove to my old companion that I still remembered her
with kindness. I took up the three cards which had been left with the
letter. They had all been cut out of Bristol-board, and that not by
square and rule. The first was inscribed with ink in a large, round
hand, “_Mrs. Dilberry, Tarry-town_,” with the addition, in pencil, of
“_W—— Hotel_.” The second was got up in similar style, the name being
“_Miss Esther Ann Dilberry_”—both having the down-strokes dotted and
scalloped for ornament. The third was still more ambitious—“_Miss Jane
Louisa Dilberry_” being encircled with a painted wreath of roses,
torches, doves, and quivers, with other etceteras, the execution of
which, on watch papers and other fancy wares, was once indispensable to
the perfection of young-lady-craft. They were any thing but
_comme-il-faut_, but recollecting that my future acquaintances were from
a region where cards were by no means a necessary of life, I thought it
unfair to make them the basis of any prejudications. To give my
correspondent the due of prompt action upon her letter, I set off
without delay for the W—— Hotel, though I could not well spare the
time for a long walk and a visit, for I had invited a small party to
tea, to meet an agreeable Englishman and his accomplished wife, to whom
my husband owed the rights of hospitality, and my preparations were yet
to be made. The ladies had not returned to the hotel when I reached it,
and leaving my card with an invitation to tea penciled upon it, and the
hour specified, I hastened home.
The hour for tea had arrived and my company had nearly all assembled,
when I heard strange voices on the stairway, and presuming them to be
those of the party from the W—— Hotel, I stepped out, to go through
the ceremony of introduction with them, before presenting them to the
rest of my guests. I was right in my conjecture, though their appearance
was such as to take me aback considerably. Mrs. Dilberry was a short,
coarse, oily-looking woman, with very light, round eyes, a low, slender
nose, almost hidden between a pair of puffy, red cheeks, and a plump
mouth, turned down at the corners. Though it was a warm summer evening,
she was dressed in a heavy reddish brown silk, with a cape of the same.
The remainder of her costume was a fine, though out-of-fashion
French-work collar, a cap of coarsely-figured net, trimmed with thick
cotton lace, intermixed with a quantity of common, deep-pink artificial
flowers, of which the green leaves looked like plain glazed paper, and a
very coarse pocket-handkerchief, with which she fanned herself
incessantly. Her daughters, whose names she pronounced as Easter Ann and
Jane Louyza, were quite as little prepossessing. The elder, who must
have been thirty, was tall, spare and sour, with a sallow complexion,
and a little turned up nose, quite out of proportion with her long upper
lip, and the general dimensions of her face. The other, who looked ten
years younger, was a youthful likeness of the mother, short, fat, and
florid. From her manner it was apparent that she set up for a beauty.
They both had on summer dresses—that of Miss Esther Ann having
straight, perpendicular stripes, which made her look still taller, while
the dumpiness of the sister seemed to be increased by one of a
horizontal or run-round pattern; and they both wore clumsy, high-colored
head trimmings, which had been somewhat in vogue the winter of the
preceding year.
“Dear me!” exclaimed the old lady, wiping her face with her
handkerchief, “I am so flustered and fagged out!”
“We had such a time hunting up a cap for maw,” rejoined Miss Jane
Louisa.
“Not that she did not bring plenty along,” corrected Miss Esther Ann,
“but we thought that, as it was likely she would go out a great deal,
she ought to have one of the newest fashion for evening dress.”
But the tea-trays were going into the drawing-room, and I hurried my
trio after them. Whilst I was providing them with seats and introducing
them to their neighbors, I heard on different sides of me a strange,
burring, ticking sound, for which I could not account, and which, I
perceived, attracted the attention of others beside myself. During the
course of the evening I discovered its cause. Each of the three had at
her side a large gold repeater, which, having all been set by the same
time, had simultaneously struck eight.
In a movement to make room for my new arrival, Mr. Aylmere, my husband’s
English friend—(Mr. Allanby, by the by, had that morning been called
unexpectedly away for several days, and I was doing the honors
alone)—had taken possession of a seat next to that of Miss Esther Ann.
I had a misgiving as to the impression he was likely to receive, but did
not therefore evade the civility of introducing her. A few minutes
afterward I caught the thread of a dialogue between them.
“We intend to stay several weeks,” said she, “and we expect to see a
great deal of city society. We brought a letter of introduction to Mrs.
Allanby from one of her most particular friends, a physician’s lady, and
of course she will think it her duty to make her circle acquainted with
us. I dare say this party is intended for that.”
“Have you no older acquaintances in the city?” asked Mr. Aylmere.
“None that we shall claim. There are several persons from here that we
were introduced to at different times in our own neighborhood, but we
always found out afterward that they were not in the first circle, and
we would not think it our place to keep up the acquaintance even if we
should happen to fall in with them.”
I acknowledge myself afflicted, in some degree, with what is called our
“national thin-skinnedness” to the opinion of an intelligent and
well-bred foreigner of any of my own countrymen or women; even such of
them as I may despise myself; I, therefore, heartily wished my curious
and quizzical-looking Englishman in the farthest corner of the room. I
had not, however, at the moment, the ingenuity to send him there, and,
instead, I made an effort to change the conversation. But my attention
was called off directly, and I next heard him say—
“Then in your neighborhood you recognize various grades of society?”
“That we do. Our town has three or four classes. Our own set are very
exclusive, having none but lawyers and doctors, and the most genteel of
the storekeepers, and we are very particular what strangers we pay
attention to. We never call on any, of late, unless we find out that
they are number one at home.”
“And I suppose it is somewhat difficult to ascertain that,” rejoined Mr.
Aylmere.
“Not at all, sir. We know the names of two or three of the most genteel
families in each of the large cities, and if the strangers are city
people, some one finds out whether they know any of those. If they
don’t, we set them down for nobodies. If they are not from the cities,
we find out what they do at home, and if they are professional, or live
on their means, we know that they are exclusive; if not we keep clear of
them. Tarry-town is considered a very proud place.”
“Has your town a large population to select from?”
“Considerable—eight hundred or so. Though it is not a county-town, we
have four lawyers, two of them, however, don’t practice, owning farms
around the town; my brother is one of the two others. And we have three
physicians, Mrs. Allanby’s friend being the lady of one of them. The
botanic doctor we don’t count.”
“Do your rules of admission and rejection apply farther than to native
Americans? If a foreigner, like myself for instance, were to go among
you, how is it likely he would be received?”
“Of course according to his standing in his own country,” replied Miss
Esther Ann, with imperturbable self-importance; “we understand very well
how people are divided off in foreign countries, for we read a great
deal. There’s my sister, she positively swallows every novel she can lay
her hands on, and it is surprising what a knowledge she has of the world
and fashionable life. She says she would know a nobleman at a glance by
his distingué air, (pronounced _a la Anglaise_;) maw doesn’t encourage
her in it—like most elderly persons, maw has very old-fashioned
notions; she tells her it teaches her to look too high.”
“And I am to infer that, according to the code of Tarry-town, you would
hesitate to admit foreigners, unless they should be noblemen?” persisted
Mr. Aylmere.
“Certainly, or grandees, or gentry, I believe the English call them. We
have it on the best authority that no others are noticed in the large
cities—that is, by the first people—and what is not good enough for
them is not good enough for us. We think ourselves on a par with any
city people, and, when we go to a city, nothing ought to satisfy us but
the first. Birds of a feather ought always to flock together, in my
opinion, and I’m sure, that after taking the lead in Tarry-town, if ever
I went to Europe, I should make myself very choice of my associates.
Europeans have the same right when they come here. Those that are
aristocracy at home have a right to be aristocracy every where else, and
no others, and those that are not, and push themselves forward, are no
better than impostors.”
“Then I am afraid I should stand a chance to be _tabooed_ at
Tarry-town,” said Mr. Aylmere, “for I am an English merchant.”
During the progress of this conversation, Mrs. Dilberry, with a loud,
though wheezing voice, was panting through a long harangue to Mrs.
Aylmere, and two other ladies, in whose midst she had anchored herself.
“I expected a great deal of pleasure in shopping when I came to the
city,” said she, “but it’s precious little I’m likely to have, for
shopping without making bargains is but a dry business. We tried it
yesterday and this morning, my daughters and me, and plague a thing
could we find that was any thing to signify cheaper than in the stores
at Tarry-town. I told the girls that I now believed what the man said in
the newspapers, that people in the city all live by cheating one
another. One would think that as they live at head-quarters, some of
them could now and then pick up things for little or nothing and sell
them at half-price, but it seems they are all leagued together to get
whatever they can. We went from one end of a street to the other, and
every place they had pretty much the same goods, and asked the same
prices, unless it was here and there where they put up every thing
monstrously high, just to come down little by little on being jewed, and
then they never got lower than their next door neighbors. I was talking
about it to one of the boarders at the hotel, old Mrs. Scrooge, a very
sharp, sensible woman—some of you ladies know her, I dare say. She let
me into a secret about shopping, that is well worth knowing. She says it
is bad policy for people to go shopping with their best bib and tucker
on, for if they look as if they are well off in the world, it’s a sure
way to be taken advantage of, and that when she starts off among the
stores, she always puts on a calico gown and a black straw bonnet which
she keeps for that and for funerals.”
“And does her plan work well?” asked one of the ladies, at length
breaking in upon the monologue.
“Just wait, I am coming to it. She says that she had three nieces that
came to the city to buy finery. They were very dressy women, and they
wished to lay in a good supply. She told them her plan, but they hooted
the thoughts of going into the street looking common, so they fixed
themselves up, and went in their carriage, having made up their minds
not to purchase at once, but to go every where first and get samples.
Well, Mrs. Scrooge offered to assist them in gathering samples, but not
a foot would she set in their carriage, but puts on her old things, and
goes out after them, and sometimes into the very places where they were.
When they all got back and compared samples, she showed the others that
she could get many of the self-same things six or eight per cent. lower
than they could. She says that she has crowed over them ever since. I’m
sure I’m much obliged to her for giving me the hint, and I don’t think
any one will catch me shopping again with a silk dress on, and a
four-dollar collar, and a gold watch at my side. I shall wear my old
winter bonnet that I traveled in, and my faded mousseline de laine
dress, and then they’ll have to put their goods down to suit my
appearance. The girls say if I do I may go alone, for they have no
notion to look common, and while they are in the city they mean to put
the best foot foremost. Easter Ann says we should always stand upon our
dignity—she’s very dignified herself. As to Jane Louyza, she says it
looks mean and matter-of-fact to be always counting the cost, and that
if I’d let her, she would take every thing without asking the price,
particularly when she is waited on by some of the spruce, handsome,
fashionable young gentlemen that cut such a dash, showing off the goods
to ladies. But they’ll learn better when they get older; indeed, Easter
Ann is old enough now—she’s no chicken, though she don’t like me to
tell her so, and I shouldn’t wonder if they’d learn to look after the
main chance as well as their mother before them. If I hadn’t been
uncommon keen in money matters their poor father wouldn’t have died
worth his twenty thousand cash, beside farms and stock, leaving them to
sit up like ladies, with their hands in their laps.”
Miss Jane Louisa was sitting close by, engaged in what she called a
“desperate flirtation” with two astonished-looking young men, the only
beaux in the room, whom she seemed determined to monopolize, one of them
being my brother-in-law, George Allanby, a youth of eighteen. She
discussed love and matrimony with much languishment of manner, and
novelty of pronunciation, and criticised her favorite novels after the
following fashion:
“Ain’t the ‘Bride of the Brier-field’ beautiful? Don’t tell me you have
not read it!—dear me!—I was perfectly on thorns till I got it.
Araminta is so sweet, I almost cried my eyes out when she died. Of
course you’ve read the ‘Pirate of Point Peepin?’ Oh, how I do hate him!
I declare I never see black whiskers on any of the gentlemen in the
street that I a’n’t ready to scream, they put me so much in mind of Don
Hildebrando.”
Intent upon conquest as she was, the loud accents of her mother
sometimes disturbed the tenor of her softer themes, and she showed her
apprehension that the old lady’s discourse might not be in unison with
the general tone of the company, by occasionally interpolating, “Just
listen to maw!—did you ever know any one so old-fashioned;” or, “maw
will always talk so, but you city people will get used to her ways after
a while;” or, “maw is so independent, she always says whatever comes
into her head.”