Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 - Various
The man who may be said to have devised the land-basis for railroads
through unsettled tracts--a financier of unsurpassed sagacity, and
once the soul of commercial honor as well as intelligence--should not,
in his dishonored grave, and far beyond the reach of human scorn or
vengeance, be denied the credit of what he accomplished before the
fatal madness seized his soul and dragged him to perdition. Let it be
enough that his name has come to be an epithet of infamy in his land's
language. Let not the grandeur of his views, the intent with which he
set out, and the good he achieved, be lost in oblivion. Pride--"by
that sin fell the angels!"--cast him headlong down the irrecoverable
steep,--
"And when he fell, he fell like Lucifer,"--
aye! like Wolsey and Bacon,--
"Never to rise again!"
It is no sin to hope that the All-seeing eye discerned in those noble
undertakings and beneficent results the germ of wings that shall one
day bear him back to light and mercy. Let us, who benefit by his good
deeds, not insist on remembering only the evil!
Chicago, the Wondrous, sits amid her wealth, like a magnificent
sultana, half-reclining over a great oval mirror, supplied by that
lake of lakes, the fathomless Michigan. Perhaps the resemblance might
be unpoetically traced to particulars; for we are told by lotos-eating
travellers, that Oriental beauties, with all their splendor, are not
especially clean. Certain it is that our Occidental sultana dresses
her fair head with towers and spires, and hangs about her neck long
rows of gems in the shape of stately and elegant dwellings,--yet,
descending to her feet, we sink in mud and mire, or tumble unguardedly
into excavations set like traps for the unwary, or oust whole colonies
of rats from beneath plank walks where they have burrowed securely
ever since "improvements" began. At some seasons, indeed, there is no
mud; because the high winds from the lake or the prairies turn the mud
into dust, which blinds our eyes, fills our mouths, and makes us
Quakers in appearance and anything but saints in heart.
Chicago-walking resembles none but such as Christian encountered as he
fled from the City of Destruction; yet in this case the ills are those
of a City of _Con_struction.--sure to disappear as soon as the
builders find time to care for such trifles. Chicago people, it is
well known, walk with their heads in the clouds, and, naturally, do
not mind what happens to their feet. It is only strangers who exclaim,
and sometimes more than exclaim, at the dangers of the way. Cast-away
carriages lie along the road-side, like ships on Fire Island beach.
Nobody minds them. If you see a gentleman at a distance, progressing
slowly with a gliding or floundering pace, you conclude he has a horse
under him, and, perhaps, on nearer approach, you see bridle and
headstall. This is in early spring, while the frost is coming out of
the ground. As the season advances, the horse emerges, and you are
just getting a fair sight of him when the dust begins and he
disappears again. So say the scoffers, and those who would, but do
not, own any city-lots in that favored vicinity; and to the somewhat
heated mind of the traveller who encounters such things for the first
time, the story does not seem so very much exaggerated. Simple
wayfarers like myself, however, tell no such wicked tales of the
Garden City; but remember only her youth, her grandeur, her spirit,
her hospitality, her weight of cares, her immense achievements, and
her sure promise of future metropolitan splendors.
The vicinity of Chicago is all dotted with beautiful villa-residences.
To drive among them is like turning over a book of architectural
drawings,--so great is their variety, and so marked the taste which
prevails. Many of them are of the fine light-colored stone found in
the neighborhood, and their substantial excellence inspires a feeling
that all this prosperity is of no ephemeral character. People do not
build such country-houses until they feel settled and secure. The
lake-shore is of course the line of attraction, for it is the only
natural beauty of the place. But what trees! Several of the streets of
Chicago may easily become as beautiful drives as the far-famed Cascine
at Florence, and will be so before her population doubles
again,--which is giving but a short interval for the improvement. No
parks as yet, however. Land on the lake-shore is too precious, and the
flats west of the town are quite despised. Yet city parks do not
demand very unequal surface, and it would not require a very potent
landscape-gardener or an unheard-of amount of dollars to make a fine
driving-and riding-ground, where the new carriages of the fortunate
might be aired, and the fine horses of the gay exercised, during a
good part of the year.
To describe Chicago, one would need all the superlatives set in a row.
Grandest, flattest,--muddiest, dustiest,--hottest, coldest,--wettest,
driest,--farthest north, south, east, and west from other places,
consequently most central,--best harbor on Lake Michigan, worst harbor
and smallest river any great commercial city ever lived on,--most
elegant in architecture, meanest in hovel-propping,--wildest in
speculation, solidest in value,--proudest in self-esteem, loudest in
self-disparagement,--most lavish, most grasping,--most public-spirited
in some things, blindest and darkest on some points of highest
interest.
And some poor souls would doubtless add,--most fascinating, or most
desolate,--according as one goes there, gay and hopeful, to find
troops of prosperous friends, or, lonely and poor, with the distant
hope of bettering broken fortunes by struggling among the driving
thousands already there on the same errand. There is, perhaps, no
place in the world where it is more necessary to take a bright and
hopeful view of life, and none where this is more difficult. There is
too much at stake. Those who have visited Baden-Baden and her Kursaal
sisters in the height of the season need not be told that no
"church-face" ever equalled in solemnity the countenances of those who
surround the fatal tables, waiting for the stony lips of the croupier
to announce "_Noir perd_" or "_Rouge gagne_." At Chicago are a wider
table, higher stakes, more desperate throws, and Fate herself
presiding, or what seems Fate, at once partial and inexorable.
But, on this great scale, even success fails to bring smiles. The
winners sit "with hair on end at their own wonders," and half-fearing
that such golden showers have some illusion about them and may prove
fairy favors at last. Next to this fueling comes the thirst for more.
Enlarged means bring enlarged desires and ever-extending plans. The
repose and lightness of heart that were at first to be the reward of
success recede farther and farther into the dim distance, until at
last they are lost sight of entirely, confessed, with a sigh, to be
unattainable. How can people in this State wear cheerful countenances?
When one looks at the gay and social faces and habits of some little
German town, where are cultivated people, surrounded by the books and
pictures they love, with leisure enough for music and dancing and
tea-garden chat, for deep friendships and lofty musings, it would seem
as if our shrewd Yankee-land and its outcroppings at the West had not
yet found out everything worth knowing. Froissart's famous remark
about the English in France--"They take their pleasure sadly, after
their fashion"--may apply to the population of Chicago, and it will be
some time yet, I fancy, before they will take it very gayly.
At a little country-town, the other day, not within a thousand miles
of Chicago, a family about leaving for a distant place advertised
their movables for sale at auction. There was such a stir throughout
the settlement as called forth an expression of wonder from a
stranger. "Ah!" said a good lady, "auctions are the only gayety we
have here!"
Joking apart, there was a deep American truth in this seeming
_niaiserie_.
Chicago has, as we have said, with all her wealth, no public park or
other provision for out-door recreation. She has no gallery of Art, or
the beginning of one,--no establishment of music, no public
library,--no social institution whatever, except the church. Without
that blessed bond, her people would be absolute units, as independent
of each other as the grains of sand on the seashore, swept hither and
thither by the ocean winds.
But even before these words have found their way to the Garden City,
they will, perhaps, be inapplicable,--so rapid is progress at the
West. The people are like a great family moving into a new house.
There is so much sweeping and dusting to do, so much finding of places
for the furniture, so much time to spend in providing for breakfast,
dinner, and tea, lodging and washing, that nobody thinks of unpacking
the pictures, taking the books out of their boxes, or getting up
drives or riding-parties. All these come in good time, and will be the
better done for a little prudent delay.
There is, to the stranger, an appearance of extreme hurry in Chicago,
and the streets are very peculiar in not having a lady walking in
them. Day after day I traversed them, meeting crowds of men, who
looked like the representatives of every nation and tongue and
people,--and every class of society, from the greenest rustic, or the
most undisguised sharper, to the man of most serious respectability,
or him of highest _ton_. Yet one lady walking in the streets I saw
not; and when I say not one lady, I mean that I did not meet a woman
who seemed to claim that title, or any title much above that of an
ordinary domestic. Perhaps this is only a spring symptom, which passes
off when the mud dries up a little,--but it certainly gave a rather
forlorn or funereal aspect to the streets for the time.
There is, nevertheless, potent inspiration in the resolute and
occupied air of these crowds. Hardly any one stays long among them
without feeling a desire to share their excitement, and do something
towards the splendid future which is evidently beckoning them on.
Preparing the future! It is glorious business. No wonder it makes the
pulse quicken and the eye look as if it saw spirits. It may be said,
that in some sense we are all preparing the future; but in the West
there is a special meaning in the expression. In circumstances so new
and wondrous, first steps are all-important. Those who have been
providentially led to become early settlers have immense power for
good or evil. One can trace in many or most of our Western towns, and
even States, the spirit of their first influential citizens. Happy is
it for Chicago that she has been favored in this respect,--and to her
honor be it said, that she appreciates her benefactors. Of one
citizen, who has been for twenty years past doing the quiet and modest
work of a good genius in the city of his adoption, it is currently
said, that he has built a hundred miles of her streets,--and there is
no mark of respect and gratitude that she would not gladly show him.
Other citizens take the most faithful and disinterested care of her
schools; and to many she is indebted for an amount of liberality and
public spirit which is constantly increasing her enormous prosperity.
Happy the city which possesses such citizens! Happy the citizens who
have a city so nobly deserving of their best services!
AN EVENING WITH THE TELEGRAPH-WIRES.
My cousin Moses has made the discovery that he is a powerful
magnetizer.
Like many others who have newly come into possession of a small tract
in those mysterious, outlying, unexplored wildernesses of Nature,
which we call by so many names, but which as yet refuse to be defined
or classed, he has been naturally eager to commence operations, and
_exploit_ and farm it a little. He is making experiments on a narrow
border of his wild lands. He is a man of will and of strong
_physique_, with an inquiring and scientific turn of mind, which
inclines him chiefly to metaphysical studies. It is not to be wondered
at, that, having lately discovered that he possesses the mesmeric
gift, he should not sufficiently discriminate as to its application.
Later he will see that it is an agent not to be tampered with, and
never to be used on healthy subjects, but applied only to invalids.
To-day he is like a newly-armed knight-errant, bounding off on his
steed at sunrise, in search of adventures.
One afternoon, not long since, he was telling me of his extraordinary
successes with somnambulists and _somnoparlists_,--of old ladies cured
of nervous headaches and face-twitches, and of young ones put to sleep
at a distance from the magnetizer, dropping into a trance suddenly as
a bird struck by a gun-shot, simply by an act of his volition,--of
water turned into wine, and wine into brandy, to the somnambulic
taste,--and so on, till we got wandering into crooked by-paths of
physics and metaphysics, that seemed to lead us nowhere in
particular,--when I said, "Come, Cousin Moses, suppose you try it on
me, by way of experiment. But I have my doubts if you'll ever put me
to sleep."
My cousin yielded to my request with alacrity;--every subject for
mesmerism was for him legitimate;--and I relinquished myself to his
passes with the docility of a man about to be shaved.
The passes from the head downward were kept up perseveringly for half
an hour, without my experiencing any change, or manifesting the least
symptom of drowsiness. At last the charm began to work. I began to be
conscious of a singular trickling or creeping sensation following the
motion of his passes down my arms. My respiration grew short. I
experienced, however, no tendency to sleep, and my mind was perfectly
calm and unexcited. My cousin was satisfied with his experiment so
far, but we both concluded it had better end here. So he made the
reverse passes, in order to undo the knot he was beginning to tie in
my nerves. He did not, however, entirely succeed in untying it. I was
a healthy subject, and the magnetism continued to affect my nerves, in
spite of the untangling passes.
Soon after, I rose and took my leave. I was strangely excited, but it
was a purely physical, and not a mental excitement. Thinking that a
walk would quiet me, I went through street after street, until I
reached the outskirts of the city. It was a mild September evening.
The fine weather and the sight of the trees and fields tempted me to
continue my walk. It was near sunset, and I strolled on and on,
watching the purple gray and ruddy gold of the clouds, until I had got
fairly into the country.
As I rambled on, I was suddenly seized with a fancy to climb a tree
which stood by the roadside, and rest myself in a convenient notch
which I observed between two of the limbs. I was soon seated in among
the branches, with a canopy of leaves around and over me,--feeling, in
my still nervous condition, as I leaned my back against the mossy
bark, like a magnified tree-toad in clothes.
The air was balmy and fragrant, and against the amber of the western
sky rose and fell numberless little clouds of insects. The birds were
chirping and fluttering about me, and made their arrangements for
their night's lodging, in manifest dread of the clothed tree-toad who
had invaded their leafy premises.
The peculiar nervousness which had taken possession of me was now
passing off, to be replaced by a species of mental exaltation. I was
becoming conscious of something approaching semi-clairvoyance, and yet
not in the ordinary form. Sensation, emotion, thought were
intensified. The landscape around me was dotted with farm-houses,
pillowed in soft, dark clumps of trees. One by one, the lights began
to appear at the windows,--soft rising stars of home-joys. The
glorious September sunset was fading, but still resplendent in the
west. The landscape was pervaded with a deeper repose, the glowing
clouds with a diviner splendor than that which filled the eye. Then
thronging memories awoke. My remembrances of all my past life in the
crowded cities of America and Europe rose vividly before me. In the
long strata of solid gray clouds, where the sun had gone down, leaving
only a few vapory gold-fishes swimming in the clear spaces above, I
could fancy I saw the lonely Roman Campagna and the wondrous dome of
St. Peter's, as when first beheld on the horizon ten years ago. Then,
as from the slopes of San Miniato at sunset, gray, red-tiled Florence,
with its Boboli gardens, full of nightingales, its old towers and
cathedrals, and its soaring Giotto Campanile. Then Genoa, with its
terraces and marble palaces, and that huge statue of Andre Doria. Then
Naples, gleaming white in the eye of day over her pellucid depths of
sea. The golden days of Italy floated by me. Then came the memories,
glad or sad, of days that had passed in my own native land,--in the
very city that lay behind me,--the intimate communings with dear
friends,--the musical and the merry nights,--the trials, anxieties,
sorrows----
But all this is very egotistical and unnecessary. I merely meant to
say that I was in a peculiar, almost abnormal state of mind, that
evening. The spirit had, as it were, been drawn outwards, and perhaps
slightly dislocated, by those mesmeric passes of my cousin, and I had
not succeeded as yet in adjusting it quite satisfactorily in its old
bodily grooves and sockets. The condition I was in was not as pleasant
as I could have wished; for I was as alive to painful remembrances and
imaginations, as to pleasant ones. I seemed to myself like a revolving
lantern of a light-house,--now dark, now glowing with a fiery
radiance.
I asked myself, Is it that I have been blind and deaf and dull all my
life, and am just waking into real existence? or am I developing into
a _medium_,--Heaven forbid!--and the spirits pushing at some unguarded
portal of the nervous system, and striving to take possession? Shall I
hear raps and knockings when I return to my solitary chamber, and sit
a powerless beholder of damaged furniture, which the spirits will
never have the conscience to promise payment for, when my landlady's
bill comes in? (By the way, have the spirits _ever_ behaved like
gentlemen in this respect, and settled up fair and square for the
breakages they have indulged in by way of exemplifying the doctrine of
a future state?)
As I soliloquized thus, I was attracted by a low vibrating note among
the leaves. Looking through them, I saw, for the first time, that two
or three telegraph-wires, which I had observed skirting the road, ran
directly through the tree in which I was seated. It was a strange sort
of sound, that came in hurried jerks, as it were, accompanied with a
corresponding jerk of the wire.
A gigantic fancy flashed across me:--This State of New York is a great
guitar; yonder, at Albany, are the legislative pegs and screws; down
there in Manhattan Island is the great sounding-board; these iron
wires are the strings! The spirits are singing, perhaps, with their
heads up there in the sweet heavens and the rosy clouds,--and this
vibration of the wires is a sort of loose jangling accompaniment of
their unpractised hands on earth. The voice is always above the
strings.--This I thought in my semi-mesmeric condition, perhaps. I
soon laughed at my Brobdignagian nonsense, and said,--There is a
telegraphic despatch passing. Now if I could only find out what it
is!--that would be something new in science,--a discovery worth
knowing,--to be able to hear or feel the purport of a telegraphic
message, simply by touching the wire along which it runs!
So, regardless of any electric shock I might receive, I thrust out my
hand through the leaves of the tree, and boldly grasped the wire. The
jerks instantly were experienced in my elbow, and it was not long
before certain short sentences were conveyed, magnetically, to my
brain. In my amazement at the discovery, I almost dropped out of the
tree. However, I kept firm hold of the wire, and my sensorium made me
aware of something passing like this:--"Market active. Fair demand for
exchange. Transactions from five to ten thousand shares. Aristides
railroad-stock scarce. Rates of freight to Liverpool firm. Yours
respectfully, Grabber and Holdham."
Upon my word, said I, this is rather dry!--only a merchant! I expected
something better than this, to commence with.
The wire being now quiet, I fell into a musing upon the singular
discovery I had made,--and whether I should get anything from the
public or the government for revealing it. And then my thoughts
wandered across the Atlantic, and I remembered those long rows of
telegraphic wires in France, ruled along the tops of high
barrier-walls, and looking against the sky like immense
music-lines,--and those queer inverted-coffee-cup-like supports for
the wires, on the tall posts. Then I thought of music and coffee at
the Jardin Mabille. Then my fancy wandered down the Champs Elysees to
those multitudinous spider-web wires that radiate from the palace of
the Tuileries, where the Imperial spider sits plotting and weaving his
meshes around the liberties of France. Then I thought, What a thing
this discovery of mine would be for political conspirators,--to
reverse the whispering-gallery of Dionysius, and, instead of the
tyrant hearing the secrets of the people, the people hearing the
secrets of the tyrant! Then I thought of Robespierre, and Marat, and
Charlotte Corday, and Marie Antoinette,--then of Delaroche's and
Mueller's pictures of the unfortunate Queen,--then of pictures in
general,--then of landscape-scenery,--till I almost fell into a doze,
when I was startled by a faint sound along the wire, as of a sigh,
like the first thrill of the AEolian harp in the evening wind. Another
message was passing. I reached my hand out to the iron thread. A
confused sadness began to oppress me. A mother's voice weeping over
her sick child pulsed along the wire. Her husband was far away. Her
little daughter lay very ill. "Come quick," said the voice. "I have
little hope; but if you were only here, I should be calmer. If she
must die, it would be such a comfort to have you here!"
I drew my hand away. I saw the whole scene too vividly. Who this
mother was I knew not; but the news of the death of a child whom I
knew and loved could not have affected me more strangely and keenly
than this semi-articulate sob which quivered along the iron airtrack,
in the silence of the evening, from one unknown--to another unknown.
I roused myself from my sadness, and thought I would descend the tree
and stroll home. The moon was up, and a pleasant walk before me, with
enough to meditate upon in the singular discovery I had made. I was
about to get down from my crotch in the tree, and was just reaching
out my dexter leg to feel if I could touch a bough below me, when a
low, wild shriek ran along the wire,--as when the wind-harp, above
referred to for illustration, is blown upon by some rude, sharp
northwester. In spite of myself, I touched the vibrating cord. The
message was brief and abrupt, like a sea-captain's command:--"Ship
Trinidad wrecked off Wildcat's Beach,--all hands lost,--no insurance!"
Do you recollect, when sitting alone sometimes in your room, at
midnight, in the month of November, how, after a lull in the blast,
the bleak wind will all at once seem to clutch at the windows, with a
demoniac howl that makes the house rock? Do you remember the
half-whistles and half-groans through the key-holes and crevices,--the
cries and shrieks that rise and fall,--the roaring in the
chimney,--the slamming of distant doors and shutters? Well, all this
seemed to be suggested in the ringing of the iron cord. The very
leaves, green and dewy, and the delicate branches, seemed to quiver as
the dreary message passed.
I thought,--This is a little too much! This old tree is getting to be
a very lugubrious spot. I don't want to hear any more such messages. I
almost wish I had never touched the wire. Strange! one reads such an
announcement in a newspaper very coolly;--why is it that I can't take
it coolly in a telegraphic despatch? We can read a thing with
indifference which we hear spoken with a shudder,--such prisoners are
we to our senses! I have had enough of this telegraphing. I sha'n't
close my eyes to-night, if I have any more of it.
I had now fairly got my foot on the branch below, and was slipping
myself gradually down, when the wire began to ring like a horn, and in
the merriest of strains. I paused and listened. I could fancy the
joyful barking of dogs in accompaniment. Ah, surely, this is some
sportsman,--"the hunter's call, to faun and dryad known." This smacks
of the bright sunshine and the green woods and the yellow fields. I
will stop and hear it.--It was just what I expected,--a jolly citizen
telegraphing his country friend to meet him with his guns and dogs at
such a place.
And immediately afterwards, in much the same key, came a musical note
and a message babbling of green fields, from a painter:--"I shall
leave town to-morrow. Meet me at Bullshornville at ten, A.M. Don't
forget to bring my field-easel, canvases, and the other traps."