Read Ebook: Last winter in the United States by Zincke F Barham Foster Barham

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 457 lines and 94306 words, and 10 pages

PAGE

The Winter Voyage recommended--A Cabin to oneself may then be had at no additional cost--Advantages of Travelling in America in Winter--A Feeling in a Gale--The Americans on board the Steamer--Divine Service on Board 1

Why an unreasonable Fancy was acted on--The History of the Cause of American Progressiveness--What passes in America important to us--The Northern States sown broadcast with Houses 24

The Locomotive in the Streets--In Baltimore Public Opinion first becomes Southern--Growth and Prospects of Baltimore--On Trading Politicians and Ill-will to England--Why an American Tutor thought necessary for an Englishman--Repudiation--The Masses and Middle Class in favour of it--Arguments in favour of it--An Argument used 2,000 Miles from Wall Street--Why Republicans bound to repudiate--Americans addicted to Abstract Reasoning--Instances 32

Washington--Style of Speaking in Congress--Congress no Nursery for Statesmen--Society in Washington--Episcopal Church in Washington--Some Opinions of an American Bishop--Commissioner of Agriculture--Use of the Department--Its Museum gives an Idea of the Vastness of the Country--Its Natural Advantages--What Variety of Productions has done for England will be repeated in America--Special Excellence of Californian Productions--The Californian himself--California compared with Italy--Why Coloured Waiters preferable to White--Negro Funeral with Masonic Honours--American Birds' Nests--Bill for making Education compulsory--Coloured Schools--Comparative Intelligence of the Negro--Vulgar Errors about Americans--Night Attendants at Hotel read 'Oliver Twist'--Capitol--Treasury--Patent Office--What our Diplomacy in America should be--Use of Iced Water 44

Richmond--Way by the Battle-fields--Handiness of American Soldiers--Effect of Slavery on the Virginian Landscape--Appearance of American Forest--Republican Relations of Father and Son--State of Feeling in Virginia--Billiards in America--Why Richmond Millers undersold by Californian--Why American Cities are Large--American Living--Prospects of Richmond--Indications of Southern Climate in Richmond--Church-matters in Richmond--Interest that attaches to Richmond, and to the Heroism of the South 67

How Southerners describe their own Condition--Each State must be taken separately--Missouri--Tennessee--Kentucky--Texas--Virginia-- Georgia--Florida--North Carolina--Arkansas--South Carolina--Louisiana--Mississippi--Will the Blacks get the Franchise?--No party considers them fit--They will have it for a time--This will weaken the repudiating party--Also the party hostile to this country--The Blacks will not all be republican--The South should have been left alone to settle the Labour Question--The Bureau suggested false ideas--There will be no war of races--What will kill out the Blacks--The rate of this--Fusion physically impossible--Means of Communication in the South indicate its condition 91

First Sight of a Cotton-field--Spanish Moss--A Night on the Rails--Many kinds of sameness in America--Maize--Order of Succession in the Forest--Its extent--Evergreens in the Southern Forest--Poor land in the South may be more profitable than rich land in the West--Deadness of Charleston--Its Hotels--A Charleston Sam Weller--The Naples of the United States--Few English Travellers--Sufferings of Southern Families--Want of schools--How the deficiency is being supplied--Blacks should be put on same footing as Whites--Dialogue with Black Member of Convention--Another Convention--Able Black Member--South Carolina Orphan Asylum 109

Cold in South Carolina and Georgia--Curious appearance of Ice--Time not valued in the South--Why Americans will not cultivate the Olive--Tea might grow in Georgia--Atlanta bound to be great--Cattle badly off in winter--A Virginian's Recollection of the War--His Position and Prospects--Approach to Mobile by the Alabama River--Mobile--The Harbour--Why no American Ships there--A Day on the Gulf--Ponchatrain--New Orleans--French Sunday Market--French appearance of Town--A New Orleans Gentleman on the Episcopal Church--Bishop Elect of Georgia--Mississippi--The Cemeteries--Expensiveness of everything--Transatlantic News--Fusion of North and South--French Half-breeds--Roads--The best in the World--Approach to New Orleans by land--Sugar Plantations--A Prayer for a Brother Minister 126

My only Delay on an American Railway--No concealing one's Nationality--Railway Cow-plough--Pistols--Memphis--Emigration from the South deprecated--True Method of Resuscitation--The Minister's Study--Conversation with two Ministers--Invitation to 'go to Church' 150 Miles off--Luxury does not sap the Military Spirit--Mrs. Read--Entry into Eden--Share a Bed-room with a Californian--How California was civilised--How a Site upon the Swamp was created for Cairo--Decline the fourth part of a Bed-room at Odin--'Be good to yourself' 146

Mississippi frozen over at St. Louis--Why the Bridge at St. Louis is built by Chicago Men--General Sherman--Ideas about Education at St. Louis--Liberal Bequests for Educational Purposes--How New Englandism leavens the whole Lump--The German Invasion will not Germanise America--St. Louis--Its rapid Growth--Its Church Architecture--An Idea on Mental Culture from the West Bank of the Mississippi--A Thought suggested by hearing the Skaters on the Mississippi talking English 164

Instance of American Kindliness--Red-skins and Half-breeds on the Rails--Cincinnati and its Inhabitants--What may be made of Pigs--The influence of its Pork-crop--Machinery for Killing and Curing--Improving effect American Equality has on the highest and lowest Class--Churches only unprosaic Buildings in American Towns--Schools--Merits of Philadelphian style of City-building not obvious--In what it consists--America has but one City--No. 24, G Street, corner of 25th Street 172

The Valley of the Ohio--Much of the United States will produce Wine--Illinois at Night--First View of Lake Michigan--Chicago--A Sign of outward Religion--'Small-pox here'--Fire Alarm--Liberality of Chicago Merchants--The Dollar not all-in-all--A Church lighted from the Roof--A handsome American--America has developed a new type of Features--Chicago Schools--An exception to the American way of denouncing the official Class--Chicago Sunday Schools--Programme of one I attended--Excellence of Water at Chicago--How supplied--Lifting up the City--Post Office Arrangements--A disadvantage of frequent change of Clerks--Americans on Aristocracy--How the Germans, the masses of the people, and the upper class feel towards it 182

Prairie from Chicago to Omaha--Plains from North Platte to the Mountains--Omaha, the intersection of the Pacific Railway and the Missouri--Temporary Bridge over the Missouri--Indifference to Risks affecting Life--A Prairie Fire--The Forest on the Mountains on Fire--Fire the cause of the Treelessness of the Prairies--First found Animal Life abounding in the Valley of the Platte--'The hardest place, Sir, on this Continent'--Its Predecessor--How it is possible to establish Lynch Law at Shyenne--My first Night in Shyenne--A second Night in Shyenne--Necessity and advantages of Lynch Law--'The use of the Pistol'--A Man shot because 'he might have done some mischief'--Newness of Aspects both of Society and of Nature 202

The Armament and Experience of a German Herdmaster--A Stage Coach on the Plains--The Party in the Coach--The only Colonel I met in the United States--The Colonel's Wife--A Colorado Herdmaster--A Philadelphian Graduate--Two jocose Denver Storekeepers--Advantage of having one's Rifle in the Coach--A Californian's account of a Skirmish with Indians--Manners and Life at a house on the Plains--A Lady of the Plains--American Society judges Men fairly--Between Shyenne and Denver 221

The City of Denver--The Ladies give a Ball--Manners of Denver--'Quite our finest Gentleman'--The Plains will be to America an improved Australia--The advantages they offer for Flocks and Herds--Will soon be clear of Indians--Markets now opened to them--Size of the Runs--Wealth of the Region 233

The Rocky Mountains--Golden City--Golden Gates--Mining Towns--Neighbouring Mountains stripped of every Tree--What grows on the Mountains--American Horses--Roads and Bridges they have to pass--How, six-in-hand, we went down a Hillside in the Mountains--A nice Distinction as to Accidents on this Hill--Climate--Wind-storms--Birds--Dogs 241

Rocky Mountains a Field for Sporting--Great variety and abundance of Game--Wild Fruit--Excellence of Climate in the shooting season--How the Mountains may be reached, and how much seen by the way, in 15 days from Liverpool--Cost of the Expedition--The best Camping Ground is the South Park at foot of Pike's Peak--The Route by Chicago and Denver recommended--Other Route by St. Louis and Leavenworth--Route into the Park--The North Park easier work--The more enterprising may go to Laramie Plains--Will deteriorate every year 249

Hotel Cars, real First-class Carriages--An Editor on his Countrymen's Knowledge--American Grandiloquence--Of whom this is said--Necessary to repeat some of what one hears--'Have you seen our Forest?'--'The Pacific Rails will carry the commerce of the world'--Large Acquaintance Americans have--An American on Letters of Introduction--Niagara--The American and Canadian Falls--What is in the mind magnifies what one sees--The Stone Trough it has chipped out--Ice Bridge--How Niagara is pronounced--A Week of Canadian Weather--A Snow-bound Party at Niagara 258

Educational Department at Toronto--Canadian Arguments against Common Schools--A Canadian's Opinion on Secular Schools in England--How the Canadians' Objections are met in the United States--Upper Canadians not yet a People--Advantages possessed by Upper Canada--Service at the Romanist and Anglican Cathedrals--Unmannerly Behaviour permitted on Canadian Railways--Badness of their Carriages--Why Canada is not 'the Land of Freedom'--Yankee Smartness in Train-driving--Picturesqueness of Vermont--Travelling on American Railways not fatiguing 269

Boston is the Hub of America--Mr. Ticknor--Professor Rogers and the Technological--Mr. Norton--Professor Agassiz--Mr. Appleton and Mr. Longfellow--Mr. Philbrick--A Grammar School Commemoration--Humility of the better Literary Men of Boston--Regret at leaving Boston 279

American Hotels--Why some People in America travel without any Luggage--Conversation at Tables-d'h?te should be encouraged--The Irish, the African, and the Chinese--Can a Republic do without a Servile Class?--What will be the ultimate Fate of these three races in America--No Children--Motives--Means-- Consequences--Why many young Men and young Women make Shipwreck of Happiness in America--The course many Families run--America the Hub of the World 286

On American Common Schools--Conclusion 299

INTRODUCTION.

No one would now think of writing a continuous narrative of travel in the United States of America. The only alternative hitherto adopted has been that of Essays on American subjects. But towards these the opinion of the reading public has not been so favourable as to make one desirous of adding to their number. There appears, however, to be another form, as yet, I believe, untried, in which he who has travelled in a country, about which people know much, but from which they are still desirous of hearing something more, may present to the reader what he has to say. He may write, I mean, somewhat in the fashion of a book of table-talk. This he may do by confining himself just to what he knows would be listened to with interest in a company of intelligent persons who had some acquaintance with the subject; and by putting what he has to say of this kind with the conciseness, and, if possible, with the point, required in conversation. This would render it necessary that the book should consist rather of paragraphs than of chapters; and that these should frequently have little or no connection; many of them being very brief, because they will contain merely some observation, or the notice of some fact, for which half a dozen lines will suffice. It is in this way that I now propose to write about America, trusting that by so doing I shall spare my readers' time and patience.

A WINTER

THE UNITED STATES.

THE WINTER VOYAGE RECOMMENDED--A CABIN TO ONE'S SELF MAY THEN BE HAD AT NO ADDITIONAL COST--ADVANTAGES OF TRAVELLING IN AMERICA IN WINTER--A FEELING IN A GALE--THE AMERICANS ON BOARD THE STEAMER--DIVINE SERVICE ON BOARD.

I would recommend the man who begins to feel the effects of long-continued professional labour, or of an idle and luxurious life, if his constitution is still capable of amendment, to try what may be gained by a voyage across the Atlantic, and back again, in winter; with such an interval between the two as he might be able to allow for a tour in the United States. In the summer the weather is likely to be so fine that the only benefit he would derive from his two voyages would be that of breathing the air of the ocean for as many days as he would spend in making them; but in winter there would be almost a certainty of some rough weather; and if after a few days he should prove capable of resisting the usual disturbing effects of such weather at sea, and come to take a pleasure in facing and battling against boisterous winds and tossing waves, I do not know what could more rapidly brace up within him what had begun to fail. Even the mere finding of one's sea-legs, and the subsequent use of them under difficulties, would not be unattended with advantage, for I suppose it would bring into action and develope muscles not much used at other times. In winter, too, the air would be cool , and this coolness of the air would of itself have with many constitutions an invigorating effect. But be the process what it may by which your two ocean voyages bring about their renovating result, that result is that you return to your home a stronger and a hungrier man than you were before you left it.

There is always much inconvenience and discomfort in sharing at sea the few square feet a cabin contains with another man, however gentlemanly he may be; and it is not improbable that one taken promiscuously from a hundred and fifty Transatlantic travellers would possess some habit or infirmity which would render such close companionship almost insufferable. In summer you cannot avoid this misery except at a great cost. To be alone at that season you must pay the fare of the one or two additional berths in your cabin which you wish should remain unoccupied. But in winter the number of passengers being always less than the number of berths, you can stipulate for a cabin to yourself without being put to any additional expense. There are now so many competing lines of steamers to America, that neither on the outward nor homeward voyage will you find any difficulty on this head. And you need not scruple about asking for this accommodation, for it may be granted to you without at all lessening either the profits of the owners of the ship, or the comforts of any one of the passengers.

What is lost by confining one's travels in America to the dead season of the year is, that nothing is seen of the summer and autumn aspects of the vegetation of the country. Its winter aspect, however, is not without interest to the Englishman, whose eye is accustomed to the perennial green of his own parks and meadows, which are generally, indeed, even greener at Christmas than at Mid-summer. While in America I did not see in the winter and early spring a blade of grass that was even faintly tinted with green, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, or from New York to the Rocky Mountains. I was told that the blue grass of parts of Kentucky and Virginia is an exception, but of this I saw nothing myself. I found the roadsides, pastures, and prairies everywhere clothed in unrelieved drab.

To look out from one of the Cunard Company's magnificent steam-ships, where everything is going on with the precision of clockwork, while a gale is raging on the ocean around you, and to see that in the Mid-Atlantic you are master of the winds and waves, makes you feel that it is something to be a man.

As I was going to America to see the Americans, I took the first opportunity which presented itself--that of the voyage to America--for weighing and measuring the specimens of that very compound race who happened to be on board the ship in which I was sailing. About half the passengers, forty-five in all, were of German extraction; and about half of this half were of the Hebrew persuasion. One young fellow among these latter, who I suppose might be regarded as a representative of the broad synagogue, delivered it as his opinion, that the time had come when the Jews should give up all their peculiar practices which modern knowledge had proved to be founded in misconceptions and mistakes. He instanced their abstinence from pork, and from the blood of the animals they used for food, and their method of killing animals. One of these Teutonic Americans, a youth with such a width of shoulder, and massiveness of neck and head, that no one could look upon him without being reminded of a buffalo, was an Indian trader from the borders of Kansas. His practice was to give the Indians four dollars' worth of goods for such a buffalo robe as sells in London for fifty or sixty shillings. It was his opinion that Indians were vermin which should on every opportunity have a dose of lead administered to them. When asked if this was justifiable, 'Well,' he replied, 'they are a set of bloodthirsty, treacherous skunks; and they must all die out, or be shot down, and it can't matter much to them which it is. It comes to much the same in the end. They shot my brother, and my plan is to take a shot at them whenever I have a chance.' All these German Americans spoke English as fluently as they did German. Their most prominent idea appeared to be hatred of all aristocracies. That of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland they regarded with their purest hatred, because it seemed to them the most developed and the most powerful. The best mannered people of the party were the Yankee and New York traders; some of these were buyers for large wholesale and retail houses, others on their own account. There were about a dozen of them on board. They were very careful about their dress, and their conversation was pleasing and intelligent. The majority of them were entirely free from the Yankee tone of voice. They were the very reverse of pushing, and they never guessed. In appearance and manners they would have passed amongst ourselves for gentlemen. We had, however, among the passengers one genuine Yankee of the received type. He had been a successful inventor of improvements in machinery, though medicine, not mechanics or engineering, was his business. He thought that anything by which he could make money was as much his business as his profession was. He was always talking, and ready to argue on any subject: if unacquainted with it, that made no difference--he still had a right to express his opinion. His favourite idea was that discussion led to knowledge, and that books came after knowledge, and that therefore they were not of much value. This dictum he fearlessly applied to everything--to history, to science, and to religion. Theoretically he was a strong Negrophilist. He believed that the patriarchs and prophets, that the Saviour of the world and His apostles were all Negroes. He thought that the amount of wealth a man had been able to accumulate was the true measure of a man, because all pursued wealth, and employed in the pursuit the whole of their power. If a man was idle or stupid, he employed what power was left him, after so much had been cancelled by his idleness or stupidity. And therefore--for this was his conclusion--if he could produce several blacks, which he was sure he could do, who had accumulated more wealth than anyone present, then they were better men than any of the present company. I say he was theoretically a Negrophilist, because, although he liked the Negro, he liked him best at a distance. In politics, he held that clever men, and men with ideas, were the bane of the country. They had already got their constitution and their laws. The people did not want a letter of either altered, or anything added to either. All officers, therefore, elected by the people, whether for the general or the local government, were in the position of servants with written instructions. No one would tolerate a domestic servant who, in the face of his instructions, thought for himself; nor ought the people ever to re-elect a public servant who acted in this way. Indeed he held that no man should ever be re-elected, but that all public offices should be made 'to go as far as possible' in bringing into notice deserving young men, and in helping them on a little, and in rewarding in a temporary way those who had exerted themselves on behalf of their party. He was always joking; his jokes consisting of grotesque impossibilities and laughable exaggerations. But his unconscious and unfailing conceit, and his assumptions of omniscience, were as ridiculous as his jokes.

On Sunday Divine Service was celebrated in the saloon. The service was that of the Established Church. The Germans absented themselves. The Americans were all present, and behaved very well, many of them making the responses audibly. The Bishop of Ontario read the prayers, and an English clergyman preached. Some of the Americans proposed to him that he should, as they expressed it, 'hold another meeting' in the evening; but it would not have been right to drive the Germans a second time on to the deck.

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 mediaeval 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 fa?ade, 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.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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 has been allowed to appropriate to themselves a large proportion of the sittings in these chapels.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet