"We Should Chaw Them Up," She Said, "Make Roads
Or Bridges Of Them, Unless Barnum Transported Them To His Museum:
We would
never keep them on our own hook as you do." "You value them yourselves,"
I answered; "any
One would be 'lynched' who removed a stone of
Ticonderoga." It was an unfortunate speech, for she archly replied, "Our
only ruins are British fortifications, and we go to see them because they
remind us that we whipped the nation which whips all the world." The
Americans, however, though they may talk so, would give anything if they
could appropriate a Kenilworth Castle, or a Melrose or a Tintern Abbey,
with its covering of ivy, and make it sustain some episode of their
history. But though they can make railways, ivy is beyond them, and the
purple heather disdains the soil of the New World. A very amusing ticket
was given me on the Mad River line. It bore the command, "Stick this check
in your - - ," the blank being filled up with a little engraving of a hat;
consequently I saw all the gentlemen with small pink embellishments to the
covering of their heads.
We passed through a large and very beautiful portion of the State of Ohio;
the soil, wherever cultivated, teeming with crops, and elsewhere with a
vegetation no less beautiful than luxuriant; a mixture of small weed
prairies, and forests of splendid timber. Extensive districts of Ohio are
still without inhabitants, yet its energetic people have constructed
within a period of five years half as many miles of railroad as the whole
of Great Britain contains; they are a "great people" they do "go a-
head," these Yankees. The newly cleared soil is too rich for wheat for
many years; it grows Indian corn for thirty in succession, without any
manure. Its present population is under three millions, and it is
estimated that it would support a population of ten millions, almost
entirely in agricultural pursuits. We were going a-head, and in a few
hours arrived at Forest, the junction of the Clyde, Mad River, and Indiana
lines.
Away with all English ideas which may be conjured up by the word
junction - the labyrinth of iron rails, the smart policeman at the
points, the handsome station, and elegant refreshment-rooms. Here was a
dense forest, with merely a clearing round the rails, a small shanty for
the man who cuts wood for the engine, and two sidings for the trains
coming in different directions. There was not even a platform for
passengers, who, to the number of two or three hundred, were standing on
the clearing, resting against the stumps of trees. And yet for a few
minutes every day the bustle of life pervades this lonely spot, for here
meet travellers from east, west, and south; the careworn merchant from the
Atlantic cities, and the hardy trapper from the western prairies. We here
changed cars for those of the Indianapolis line, and, nearly at the same
time with three other trains, plunged into the depths of the forest.
"You're from down east, I guess?" said a sharp nasal voice behind me. -
This was a supposition first made in the Portland cars, when I was at a
loss to know what distinguishing and palpable peculiarity marked me as a
"down-easter." Better informed now, I replied, "I am." "Going west?" -
"Yes." "Travelling alone?" - "No." "Was you raised down east?" - "No, in the
Old Country." "In the little old island? well, you are kinder glad to
leave it, I guess? Are you a widow?" - "No." "Are you travelling on
business?" - "No." "What business do you follow?" - "None." "Well, now, what
are you travelling for?" - "Health and pleasure." "Well, now, I guess
you're pretty considerable rich. Coming to settle out west, I suppose?" -
"No, I'm going back at the end of the fall." "Well, now, if that's not a
pretty tough hickory-nut! I guess you Britishers are the queerest critturs
as ever was raised!" I considered myself quite fortunate to have fallen in
with such a querist, for the Americans are usually too much taken up with
their own business to trouble themselves about yours, beyond such
questions as, "Are you bound west, stranger?" or, "You're from down east,
I guess." "Why do you take me for a down-easier?" I asked once. "Because
you speak like one," was the reply; the frequent supposition that I was a
New Englander being nearly as bad as being told that I "had not the
English accent at all." I was glad to be taken for an American, as it gave
me a better opportunity of seeing things as they really are. An English
person going about staring and questioning, with a note-book in his hand,
is considered "fair game," and consequently is "crammed" on all
subjects; stories of petticoated table-legs, and fabulous horrors of the
bowie-knife, being among the smallest of the absurdities swallowed.
Our party consisted of five persons besides myself, two elderly gentlemen,
the niece of one of them, and a young married couple. They knew the
governor of Indiana, and a candidate for the proud position of Senator,
also our fellow travellers; and the conversation assumed a political
character; in fact, they held a long parliament, for I think the
discussion lasted for three hours. Extraordinary, and to me unintelligible
names, were bandied backwards and forwards; I heard of "Silver Grays," but
my companions were not discussing a breed of fowls; and of "Hard Shells,"
and "Soft Shells," but the merits of eggs were not the topic. "Whigs and
Democrats" seemed to be analogous to our Radicals, and "Know-Nothings" to
be a respectable and constitutional party. Whatever minor differences my
companions had, they all seemed agreed in hating the "Nebraska men" (the
advocates of an extension of slavery), who one would have thought, from
the epithets applied to them, were a set of thieves and cut-throats. A
gentleman whose whole life had been spent in opposition to the principles
which they are bringing forward was very violent, and the pretty young
lady, Mrs. Wood, equally so.
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