Had Sydney Smith Ever Been At Rolla
He Would Have Written Differently.
I could tell at great length how
I fell on my face in the icy snow, how my friend
Stuck in the frozen
mud when he essayed to jump the stream, and how our guide walked on
easily in advance, encouraging us with his voice from a distance.
Why is it that a stout Englishman bordering on fifty finds himself
in such a predicament as that? No Frenchman, no Italian, no German
would so place himself, unless under the stress of insurmountable
circumstances. No American would do so under any circumstances. As
I slipped about on the ice and groaned with that terrible fardle on
my back, burdened with a dozen shirts, and a suit of dress clothes,
and three pair of boots, and four or five thick volumes, and a set
of maps, and a box of cigars, and a washing tub, I confessed to
myself that I was a fool. What was I doing in such a galley as
that? Why had I brought all that useless lumber down to Rolla? Why
had I come to Rolla, with no certain hope even of shelter for a
night? But we did reach the hotel; we did get a room between us
with two bedsteads. And pondering over the matter in my mind, since
that evening, I have been inclined to think that the stout
Englishman is in the right of it. No American of my age and weight
will ever go through what I went through then, but I am not sure
that he does not in his accustomed career go through worse things
even than that. However, if I go to Rolla again during the war, I
will at any rate leave the books behind me.
What a night we spent in that inn! They who know America will be
aware that in all hotels there is a free admixture of different
classes. The traveler in Europe may sit down to dinner with his
tailor and shoemaker; but if so, his tailor and shoemaker have
dressed themselves as he dresses, and are prepared to carry
themselves according to a certain standard, which in exterior does
not differ from his own. In the large Eastern cities of the States,
such as Boston, New York, and Washington, a similar practice of life
is gradually becoming prevalent. There are various hotels for
various classes, and the ordinary traveler does not find himself at
the same table with a butcher fresh from the shambles. But in the
West there are no distinctions whatever. A man's a man for a' that
in the West, let the "a' that" comprise what it may of coarse attire
and unsophisticated manners. One soon gets used to it. In that inn
at Rolla was a public room, heated in the middle by a stove, and
round that we soon found ourselves seated in a company of soldiers,
farmers, laborers, and teamsters. But there was among them a
general; not a fighting, or would-be fighting general of the present
time, but one of the old-fashioned local generals, - men who held, or
had once held, some fabulous generalship in the State militia.
There we sat, cheek by jowl with our new friends, till nearly twelve
o'clock, talking politics and discussing the war. The general was a
stanch Unionist, having, according to his own showing, suffered
dreadful things from secessionist persecutors since the rebellion
commenced. As a matter of course everybody present was for the
Union. In such a place one rarely encounters any difference of
opinion. The general was very eager about the war, advocating the
immediate abolition of slavery, not as a means of improving the
condition of the Southern slaves, but on the ground that it would
ruin the Southern masters. We all sat by, edging in a word now and
then, but the general was the talker of the evening. He was very
wrathy, and swore at every other word. "It was pretty well time,"
he said, "to crush out this rebellion, and by - - it must and
should be crushed out; General Jim Lane was the man to do it, and by
- - General Jim Lane would do it!" and so on. In all such
conversations the time for action has always just come, and also the
expected man. But the time passes by as other weeks and months have
passed before it, and the new general is found to be no more
successful than his brethren. Our friend was very angry against
England. "When we've polished off these accursed rebels, I guess
we'll take a turn at you. You had your turn when you made us give
up Mason and Slidell, and we'll have our turn by-and-by." But in
spite of his dislike to our nation he invited us warmly to come and
see him at his home on the Missouri River. It was, according to his
showing, a new Eden, a Paradise upon earth. He seemed to think that
we might perhaps desire to buy a location, and explained to us how
readily we could make our fortunes. But he admitted in the course
of his eulogiums that it would be as much as his life was worth to
him to ride out five miles from his own house. In the mean time the
teamsters greased their boots, the soldiers snored, those who were
wet took off their shoes and stockings, hanging them to dry round
the stove, and the Western farmers chewed tobacco in silence, and
ruminated. At such a house all the guests go in to their meals
together. A gong is sounded on a sudden, close behind your ears;
accustomed as you may probably be to the sound, you jump up from
your chair in the agony of the crash, and by the time that you have
collected your thoughts the whole crowd is off in a general stampede
into the eating-room. You may as well join them; if you hesitate as
to feeding with so rough a lot of men, you will have to set down
afterward with the women and children of the family, and your lot
will then be worse.
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