I
Know Nothing Of The Trotting Horses, But I Should Imagine That A
Fine Mouth Must Be An Essential Requisite For A Trotting Match In
Harness.
As regards riding at Newport, we were not tempted to
repeat the experiment.
The number of carriages which we saw there -
remembering as I did that the place was comparatively empty - and
their general smartness, surprised me very much. It seemed that
every lady, with a house of her own, had also her own carriage.
These carriages were always open, and the law of the land
imperatively demands that the occupants shall cover their knees
with a worked worsted apron of brilliant colors. These aprons at
first I confess seemed tawdry; but the eye soon becomes used to
bright colors, in carriage aprons as well as in architecture, and I
soon learned to like them.
Rhode Island, as the State is usually called, is the smallest State
in the Union. I may perhaps best show its disparity to other
States by saying that New York extends about two hundred and fifty
miles from north to south, and the same distance from east to west;
whereas the State called Rhode Island is about forty miles long by
twenty broad, independently of certain small islands. It would, in
fact, not form a considerable addition if added on to many of the
other States. Nevertheless, it has all the same powers of self-
government as are possessed by such nationalities as the States of
New York and Pennsylvania, and sends two Senators to the Senate at
Washington, as do those enormous States. Small as the State is,
Rhode Island itself forms but a small portion of it. The
authorized and proper name of the State is Providence Plantation
and Rhode Island. Roger Williams was the first founder of the
colony, and he established himself on the mainland at a spot which
he called Providence. Here now stands the City of Providence, the
chief town of the State; and a thriving, comfortable town it seems
to be, full of banks, fed by railways and steamers, and going ahead
quite as quickly as Roger Williams could in his fondest hopes have
desired.
Rhode Island, as I have said, has all the attributes of government
in common with her stouter and more famous sisters. She has a
governor, and an upper house and a lower house of legislature; and
she is somewhat fantastic in the use of these constitutional
powers, for she calls on them to sit now in one town and now in
another. Providence is the capital of the State; but the Rhode
Island parliament sits sometimes at Providence and sometimes at
Newport. At stated times also it has to collect itself at Bristol,
and at other stated times at Kingston, and at others at East
Greenwich. Of all legislative assemblies it is the most
peripatetic. Universal suffrage does not absolutely prevail in
this State, a certain property qualification being necessary to
confer a right to vote even for the State representatives. I
should think it would be well for all parties if the whole State
could be swallowed up by Massachusetts or by Connecticut, either of
which lie conveniently for the feat; but I presume that any
suggestion of such a nature would be regarded as treason by the men
of Providence Plantation.
We returned back to Boston by Attleborough, a town at which, in
ordinary times, the whole population is supported by the jewelers'
trade. It is a place with a specialty, upon which specialty it has
thriven well and become a town. But the specialty is one ill
adapted for times of war and we were assured that the trade was for
the present at an end. What man could now-a-days buy jewels, or
even what woman, seeing that everything would be required for the
war? I do not say that such abstinence from luxury has been
begotten altogether by a feeling of patriotism. The direct taxes
which all Americans will now be called on to pay, have had and will
have much to do with such abstinence. In the mean time the poor
jewelers of Attleborough have gone altogether to the wall.
CHAPTER III.
MAINE, NEW HAMPSHIRE, AND VERMONT.
Perhaps I ought to assume that all the world in England knows that
that portion of the United States called New England consists of
the six States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts,
Connecticut, and Rhode Island. This is especially the land of
Yankees, and none can properly be called Yankees but those who
belong to New England. I have named the States as nearly as may be
in order from the north downward. Of Rhode Island, the smallest
State in the Union, I have already said what little I have to say.
Of these six States Boston may be called the capital. Not that it
is so in any civil or political sense; it is simply the capital of
Massachusetts. But as it is the Athens of the Western world; as it
was the cradle of American freedom; as everybody of course knows
that into Boston harbor was thrown the tea which George III. would
tax, and that at Boston, on account of that and similar taxes,
sprang up the new revolution; and as it has grown in wealth, and
fame, and size beyond other towns in New England, it may be allowed
to us to regard it as the capital of these six Northern States,
without guilt of lese majeste toward the other five. To me, I
confess this Northern division of our once-unruly colonies is, and
always has been, the dearest. I am no Puritan myself, and fancy
that, had I lived in the days of the Puritans, I should have been
anti-Puritan to the full extent of my capabilities. But I should
have been so through ignorance and prejudice, and actuated by that
love of existing rights and wrongs which men call loyalty. If the
Canadas were to rebel now, I should be for putting down the
Canadians with a strong hand; but not the less have I an idea that
it will become the Canadas to rebel and assert their independence
at some future period, unless it be conceded to them without such
rebellion.
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