It Had A Straggling, Ill-Conditioned,
Uncommercial Aspect, Very Different From The Look Of Detroit,
Milwaukee, Or St. Paul.
There was, however, a great hotel there,
as usual, and a grand bridge over the Rock River, a tributary of
the Mississippi, which runs by or through the town.
I found that
life might be maintained on very cheap terms at Dixon. To me, as a
passing traveler, the charges at the hotel were, I take it, the
same as elsewhere. But I learned from an inmate there that he,
with his wife and horse, were fed and cared for and attended, for
two dollars (or eight shillings and four pence) a day. This
included a private sitting-room, coals, light, and all the wants of
life - as my informant told me - except tobacco and whisky. Feeding
at such a house means a succession of promiscuous hot meals, as
often as the digestion of the patient can face them. Now I do not
know any locality where a man can keep himself and his wife, with
all material comforts and the luxury of a horse and carriage, on
cheaper terms than that. Whether or no it might be worth a man's
while to live at all at such a place as Dixon, is altogether
another question.
We went there because it is surrounded by the prairie, and out into
the prairie we had ourselves driven. We found some difficulty in
getting away from the corn, though we had selected this spot as one
at which the open rolling prairie was specially attainable.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 273 of 538
Words from 72710 to 72970
of 143277
