I Have Not
Heard Of Children Being Destroyed Wholesale In The Streets, Or Of
Drunken Men Becoming Frequent Sacrifices.
But had I been consulted
beforehand as to the natural effects of such an arrangement, I
should have said that no child could have been reared in such a
town, and that any continuance of population under such
circumstances must have been impracticable.
Such places, however, do thrive and prosper with a prosperity
especially their own, and the boys and girls increase and multiply
in spite of all dangers. With us in England it is difficult to
realize the importance which is attached to a railway in the States,
and the results which a railway creates. We have roads everywhere,
and our country had been cultivated throughout with more or less
care before our system of railways had been commenced; but in
America, especially in the North, the railways have been the
precursors of cultivation. They have been carried hither and
thither, through primeval forests and over prairies, with small hope
of other traffic than that which they themselves would make by their
own influences. The people settling on their edges have had the
very best of all roads at their service; but they have had no other
roads. The face of the country between one settlement and another
is still in many cases utterly unknown; but there is the connecting
road by which produce is carried away, and new-comers are brought
in. The town that is distant a hundred miles by the rail is so near
that its inhabitants are neighbors; but a settlement twenty miles
distant across the uncleared country is unknown, unvisited, and
probably unheard of by the women and children.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 251 of 531
Words from 67157 to 67440
of 142339
