courtesy, and good breeding. The ladies are unquestionably very
beautiful - in face: but there I am compelled to stop. Their
education is much as with us; neither better nor worse. I had
heard some very marvellous stories in this respect; but not
believing them, was not disappointed. Blue ladies there are, in
Boston; but like philosophers of that colour and sex in most other
latitudes, they rather desire to be thought superior than to be so.
Evangelical ladies there are, likewise, whose attachment to the
forms of religion, and horror of theatrical entertainments, are
most exemplary. Ladies who have a passion for attending lectures
are to be found among all classes and all conditions. In the kind
of provincial life which prevails in cities such as this, the
Pulpit has great influence. The peculiar province of the Pulpit in
New England (always excepting the Unitarian Ministry) would appear
to be the denouncement of all innocent and rational amusements.
The church, the chapel, and the lecture-room, are the only means of
excitement excepted; and to the church, the chapel, and the
lecture-room, the ladies resort in crowds.
Wherever religion is resorted to, as a strong drink, and as an
escape from the dull monotonous round of home, those of its
ministers who pepper the highest will be the surest to please.
They who strew the Eternal Path with the greatest amount of
brimstone, and who most ruthlessly tread down the flowers and
leaves that grow by the wayside, will be voted the most righteous;
and they who enlarge with the greatest pertinacity on the
difficulty of getting into heaven, will be considered by all true
believers certain of going there: though it would be hard to say
by what process of reasoning this conclusion is arrived at. It is
so at home, and it is so abroad. With regard to the other means of
excitement, the Lecture, it has at least the merit of being always
new. One lecture treads so quickly on the heels of another, that
none are remembered; and the course of this month may be safely
repeated next, with its charm of novelty unbroken, and its interest
unabated.
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The fruits of the earth have their growth in corruption. Out of
the rottenness of these things, there has sprung up in Boston a
sect of philosophers known as Transcendentalists. On inquiring
what this appellation might be supposed to signify, I was given to
understand that whatever was unintelligible would be certainly
transcendental. Not deriving much comfort from this elucidation, I
pursued the inquiry still further, and found that the
Transcendentalists are followers of my friend Mr. Carlyle, or I
should rather say, of a follower of his, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson.
This gentleman has written a volume of Essays, in which, among much
that is dreamy and fanciful (if he will pardon me for saying so),
there is much more that is true and manly, honest and bold.
Transcendentalism has its occasional vagaries (what school has
not?), but it has good healthful qualities in spite of them; not
least among the number a hearty disgust of Cant, and an aptitude to
detect her in all the million varieties of her everlasting
wardrobe. And therefore if I were a Bostonian, I think I would be
a Transcendentalist.
The only preacher I heard in Boston was Mr. Taylor, who addresses
himself peculiarly to seamen, and who was once a mariner himself.
I found his chapel down among the shipping, in one of the narrow,
old, water-side streets, with a gay blue flag waving freely from
its roof. In the gallery opposite to the pulpit were a little
choir of male and female singers, a violoncello, and a violin. The
preacher already sat in the pulpit, which was raised on pillars,
and ornamented behind him with painted drapery of a lively and
somewhat theatrical appearance. He looked a weather-beaten hardfeatured
man, of about six or eight and fifty; with deep lines
graven as it were into his face, dark hair, and a stern, keen eye.
Yet the general character of his countenance was pleasant and
an extemporary prayer. It had the fault of frequent repetition,
incidental to all such prayers; but it was plain and comprehensive
in its doctrines, and breathed a tone of general sympathy and
charity, which is not so commonly a characteristic of this form of
address to the Deity as it might be. That done he opened his
discourse, taking for his text a passage from the Song of Solomon,
laid upon the desk before the commencement of the service by some
unknown member of the congregation: 'Who is this coming up from
the wilderness, leaning on the arm of her beloved!'
He handled his text in all kinds of ways, and twisted it into all
manner of shapes; but always ingeniously, and with a rude
eloquence, well adapted to the comprehension of his hearers.
Indeed if I be not mistaken, he studied their sympathies and
understandings much more than the display of his own powers. His
imagery was all drawn from the sea, and from the incidents of a
seaman's life; and was often remarkably good. He spoke to them of
'that glorious man, Lord Nelson,' and of Collingwood; and drew
nothing in, as the saying is, by the head and shoulders, but
brought it to bear upon his purpose, naturally, and with a sharp
mind to its effect. Sometimes, when much excited with his subject,
he had an odd way - compounded of John Bunyan, and Balfour of
Burley - of taking his great quarto Bible under his arm and pacing
up and down the pulpit with it; looking steadily down, meantime,
into the midst of the congregation. Thus, when he applied his text
to the first assemblage of his hearers, and pictured the wonder of
the church at their presumption in forming a congregation among
themselves, he stopped short with his Bible under his arm in the
manner I have described, and pursued his discourse after this
manner:
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'Who are these - who are they - who are these fellows? where do
they come from? Where are they going to? - Come from! What's the
answer?' - leaning out of the pulpit, and pointing downward with
his right hand: 'From below!' - starting back again, and looking
at the sailors before him: 'From below, my brethren. From under
the hatches of sin, battened down above you by the evil one.
That's where you came from!' - a walk up and down the pulpit: 'and
where are you going' - stopping abruptly: 'where are you going?
Aloft!' - very softly, and pointing upward: 'Aloft!' - louder:
'aloft!' - louder still: 'That's where you are going - with a fair
wind, - all taut and trim, steering direct for Heaven in its glory,
where there are no storms or foul weather, and where the wicked
cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.' - Another walk:
'That's where you're going to, my friends. That
's it. That's the
place. That's the port. That's the haven. It's a blessed harbour
- still water there, in all changes of the winds and tides; no
driving ashore upon the rocks, or slipping your cables and running
out to sea, there: Peace - Peace - Peace - all peace!' - Another
walk, and patting the Bible under his left arm: 'What! These
fellows are coming from the wilderness, are they? Yes. From the
dreary, blighted wilderness of Iniquity, whose only crop is Death.
But do they lean upon anything - do they lean upon nothing, these
poor seamen?' - Three raps upon the Bible: 'Oh yes. - Yes. - They
lean upon the arm of their Beloved' - three more raps: 'upon the
arm of their Beloved' - three more, and a walk: 'Pilot, guidingstar,
and compass, all in one, to all hands - here it is' - three
more: 'Here it is. They can do their seaman's duty manfully, and
be easy in their minds in the utmost peril and danger, with this' -
two more: 'They can come, even these poor fellows can come, from
the wilderness leaning on the arm of their Beloved, and go up - up
- up!' - raising his hand higher, and higher, at every repetition
of the word, so that he stood with it at last stretched above his
head, regarding them in a strange, rapt manner, and pressing the
book triumphantly to his breast, until he gradually subsided into
some other portion of his discourse.
I have cited this, rather as an instance of the preacher's
eccentricities than his merits, though taken in connection with his
look and manner, and the character of his audience, even this was
striking. It is possible, however, that my favourable impression
of him may have been greatly influenced and strengthened, firstly,
by his impressing upon his hearers that the true observance of
religion was not inconsistent with a cheerful deportment and an
exact discharge of the duties of their station, which, indeed, it
scrupulously required of them; and secondly, by his cautioning them
not to set up any monopoly in Paradise and its mercies. I never
heard these two points so wisely touched (if indeed I have ever
heard them touched at all), by any preacher of that kind before.
Having passed the time I spent in Boston, in making myself
acquainted with these things, in settling the course I should take
in my future travels, and in mixing constantly with its society, I
am not aware that I have any occasion to prolong this chapter.
Such of its social customs as I have not mentioned, however, may be
told in a very few words.
The usual dinner-hour is two o'clock. A dinner party takes place
at five; and at an evening party, they seldom sup later than
eleven; so that it goes hard but one gets home, even from a rout,
by midnight. I never could find out any difference between a party
at Boston and a party in London, saving that at the former place
all assemblies are held at more rational hours; that the
conversation may possibly be a little louder and more cheerful; and
a guest is usually expected to ascend to the very top of the house
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to take his cloak off; that he is certain to see, at every dinner,
an unusual amount of poultry on the table; and at every supper, at
least two mighty bowls of hot stewed oysters, in any one of which a
half-grown Duke of Clarence might be smothered easily.
There are two theatres in Boston, of good size and construction,
but sadly in want of patronage. The few ladies who resort to them,
sit, as of right, in the front rows of the boxes.
The bar is a large room with a stone floor, and there people stand
and smoke, and lounge about, all the evening: dropping in and out
as the humour takes them. There too the stranger is initiated into
the mysteries of Gin-sling, Cock-tail, Sangaree, Mint Julep,
Sherry-cobbler, Timber Doodle, and other rare drinks. The house is
full of boarders, both married and single, many of whom sleep upon
the premises, and contract by the week for their board and lodging:
the charge for which diminishes as they go nearer the sky to roost.
A public table is laid in a very handsome hall for breakfast, and
for dinner, and for supper. The party sitting down together to
these meals will vary in number from one to two hundred: sometimes
more. The advent of each of these epochs in the day is proclaimed
by an awful gong, which shakes the very window-frames as it
reverberates through the house, and horribly disturbs nervous
foreigners. There is an ordinary for ladies, and an ordinary for
gentlemen.
In our private room the cloth could not, for any earthly
consideration, have been laid for dinner without a huge glass dish
of cranberries in the middle of the table; and breakfast would have
been no breakfast unless the principal dish were a deformed beefsteak
with a great flat bone in the centre, swimming in hot butter,
and sprinkled with the very blackest of all possible pepper. Our
bedroom was spacious and airy, but (like every bedroom on this side
of the Atlantic) very bare of furniture, having no curtains to the
French bedstead or to the window. It had one unusual luxury,
however, in the shape of a wardrobe of painted wood, something
smaller than an English watch-box; or if this comparison should be
insufficient to convey a just idea of its dimensions, they may be
estimated from the fact of my having lived for fourteen days and
nights in the firm belief that it was a shower-bath.
CHAPTER IV - AN AMERICAN RAILROAD. LOWELL AND ITS FACTORY SYSTEM
BEFORE leaving Boston, I devoted one day to an excursion to Lowell.
I assign a separate chapter to this visit; not because I am about
to describe it at any great length, but because I remember it as a
thing by itself, and am desirous that my readers should do the
same.
I made acquaintance with an American railroad, on this occasion,
for the first time. As these works are pretty much alike all
through the States, their general characteristics are easily
described.
There are no first and second class carriages as with us; but there
is a gentleman's car and a ladies' car: the main distinction
between which is that in the first, everybody smokes; and in the
second, nobody does. As a black man never travels with a white
one, there is also a negro car; which is a great, blundering,
clumsy chest, such as Gulliver put to sea in, from the kingdom of
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Brobdingnag. There is a great deal of jolting, a great deal of
noise, a great deal of wall, not much window, a locomotive engine,
a shriek, and a bell.
The cars are like shabby omnibuses, but larger: holding thirty,
forty, fifty, people. The seats, instead of stretching from end to
end, are placed crosswise. Each seat holds two persons. There is
a long row of them on each side of the caravan, a narrow passage up
the middle, and a door at both ends. In the centre of the carriage
there is usually a stove, fed with charcoal or anthracite coal;
which is for the most part red-hot. It is insufferably close; and
you see the hot air fluttering between yourself and any other
object you may happen to look at, like the ghost of smoke.
In the ladies' car, there are a great many gentlemen who have
ladies with them. There are also a great many ladies who have
nobody with them: for any lady may travel alone, from one end of
the United States to the other, and be certain of the most
courteous and considerate treatment everywhere. The conductor or
check-taker, or guard, or whatever he may be, wears no uniform. He
walks up and down the car, and in and out of it, as his fancy
dictates; leans against the door with his hands in his pockets and
stares at you, if you chance to be a stranger; or enters into
conversation with the passengers about him. A great many
newspapers are pulled out, and a few of them are read. Everybody
talks to you, or to anybody else who hits his fancy. If you are an
Englishman, he expects that that railroad is pretty much like an
English railroad. If you say 'No,' he says 'Yes?'
(interrogatively), and asks in what respect they differ. You
enumerate the heads of difference, one by one, and he says 'Yes?'
(still interrogatively) to each. Then he guesses that you don't
travel faster in England; and on your replying that you do, says
'Yes?' again (still interrogatively), and it is quite evident,
don't believe it. After a long pause he remarks, partly to you,
and partly to the knob on the top of his stick, that 'Yankees are
reckoned to be considerable of a go-ahead people too;' upon which
YOU say 'Yes,' and then HE says 'Yes' again (affirmatively this
time); and upon your looking out of window, tells you that behind
that hill, and some three miles from the next station, there is a
clever town in a smart lo-ca-tion, where he expects you have
concluded to stop. Your answer in the negative naturally leads to
more questions in reference to your intended route (always
pronounced rout); and wherever you are going, you invariably learn
that you can't get there without immense difficulty and danger, and
that all the great sights are somewhere else.
If a lady take a fancy to any male passenger's seat, the gentleman
who accompanies her gives him notice of the fact, and he