CHAPTER II.
NEW YORK—MENU AT FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL—HOW TRAVEL IN THE STATES MAY BE ARRANGED FOR A WINTER TOUR—THE QUEEN’S BOOK IN AMERICA—EXTERNAL APPEARANCE OF NEW YORK—IGNORANCE OF ENGLISH IMMIGRANTS—INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS—CHILDREN’S AID SOCIETY—NUMBER OF CHURCHES—BROAD VIEWS GENERAL—A SERVICE AT THE REV. H. W. BEECHER’S CHURCH—EPISCOPALIAN BROAD CHURCH CLUB—CHAPELS IN POOR DISTRICTS ANNEXED TO EPISCOPAL CHURCHES IN RICH ONES—AMERICAN CHURCHES WORKED AT HIGH PRESSURE—AN AMERICAN DIVINE’S OPINION OF A MINISTER’S DUTY.
NEW YORK—MENU AT FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL—HOW TRAVEL IN THE STATES MAY BE ARRANGED FOR A WINTER TOUR—THE QUEEN’S BOOK IN AMERICA—EXTERNAL APPEARANCE OF NEW YORK—IGNORANCE OF ENGLISH IMMIGRANTS—INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS—CHILDREN’S AID SOCIETY—NUMBER OF CHURCHES—BROAD VIEWS GENERAL—A SERVICE AT THE REV. H. W. BEECHER’S CHURCH—EPISCOPALIAN BROAD CHURCH CLUB—CHAPELS IN POOR DISTRICTS ANNEXED TO EPISCOPAL CHURCHES IN RICH ONES—AMERICAN CHURCHES WORKED AT HIGH PRESSURE—AN AMERICAN DIVINE’S OPINION OF A MINISTER’S DUTY.
During my first visit to New York I stayed at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, which I had been told was the largest and best managed of the monster hotels of the city. I arrived just in time for dinner. On being shown into the dining-saloon, I found between two and three hundred people at table. I had lately been staying at Paris at theGrand Hôtel du Louvre, where it was thought we were treated rather liberally in having sevenplatsat dinner, including two sweets, and one cream or water ice. The ice was served in infinitesimal morsels; and if you asked for a second morsel, it was represented by an additional franc in your bill. With this experience of a great European hotel fresh in my mind, a waiter in the dining saloon of the Fifth Avenue Hotel placed in my hand the bill of fare for the dinner then going on. Seeing almost an interminableprinted list ofcomestibles, and not knowing how these things were managed in America, I supposed that this was the list of dishes the hotel undertook to prepare; and that, had I arrived some hours earlier, and then made my selection, what I might have ordered would have now been ready. Themenucontained turtle soup, venison, turtle steaks, soft-shelled crabs, canvas-back ducks; in short, whatever fish, flesh, fowl, vegetable, and fruit were then in season. But the attendant informed me that the paper he had given me was the bill of fare for that day, and that everything mentioned in it was then actually ready; and that I might order whatever I pleased, and it would be immediately brought to me. I made my selection; and while he was bringing what I had ordered, I counted the number of dishes provided that day for our dinner, and found that the total amounted to seventy-five. Nothing was supplied in the scanty way in which everything was doled out at theGrand Hôtel du Louvre; but as a general rule more of everything was set before you than you could require: for instance, instead of setting before you a morsel of ice-cream, a whole mould was left with you till you ordered it to be taken away. The next morning I found fifty-two things mentioned on the bill of fare for breakfast. Luncheon, tea, and supper are also supplied to its guests by this establishment. On the ground-floor are placed the bar, the billiard-room (containing twelve tables), and a kind of after-hour Stock Exchange, in which operations are commenced at eight o’clockP. M.The charge for living in this palatial hotel was five dollars a day in greenbacks;that is, about sixteen shillings, at the then price of gold.
Menu of an American Hotel.
One frequently hears the severity of their winters urged as a reason for not travelling in the United States at that season of the year. My own experience of the unusually severe winter of ’67-68 would go some way towards proving that those who press this consideration do so under a misapprehension. It is possible that by a singular run of good luck I may have always been at a warm place when the weather was cold elsewhere, but it is literally true that during that winter I never once had occasion to put on an overcoat, excepting when I was in Canada at its breaking up. I left New York early in January; went through the South, where I gathered ripe oranges from the trees on which they were hanging; ascended the Mississippi; crossed the prairies and plains to the Rocky Mountains, at the foot of which I found the thermometer, at Denver, standing at 70°; recrossed the prairies to Chicago; and during the whole of this time, whether on foot, or in a railway car, or on or in a coach, did not on any occasion find the weather disagreeable on account of the cold, though I frequently found it in railway cars and in hotels very much warmer than was agreeable. By what I have just said I do not mean that I never fell in with weather that was thermometrically cold, for I walked over the Mississippi on the ice at St. Louis, but that it never felt disagreeably cold. It so happened that whenever the thermometer was low, the air was still, and the sun bright. During this winter it only rained twice, and never snowed but once, at the places at which Ihappened to be staying. It rained once at Washington, and once at New Orleans, and it was snowing on my return across the prairies to Chicago. On my outward journey over them they were entirely free from snow. Of course if I had remained during the whole of this time at any one place in the northern part of the Union, I should have seen some bad weather. My conclusion, however, is that the traveller may so arrange his tour even for the winter as to be put to very little annoyance by the cold or wet.
The Queen’s Book in America.
Everybody in New York had read the Queen’s book; in every society I found people talking about it; and I never heard it mentioned without expressions of interest and approval, always uttered without any qualifications, and with unmistakable heartiness. They said it made royalty appear to them in a new and more human light, in which they had never regarded it before. They spoke of her as the head of the Anglo-Saxon race, almost as if they had as much part in her as ourselves. I believe that her Majesty’s work has had a greater number of readers, and that a greater number of copies of it have been sold, in the United States than in the United Kingdom.
The exterior appearance of New York is at first disappointing. We are accustomed to find in every capital we visit large and stately buildings, which, as in the case of royal or imperial palaces, public offices, and the hotels of a territorial nobility, are the results of our own existing institutions; or, as in the case of cathedrals, churches, town-halls, and castles, are the result of a state of things belonging to the past history of Europe; and so when we walk through thestreets of a city larger than most European capitals, and find none of the buildings we are in the habit of seeing everywhere else, we condemn it as architecturally poor. This feeling is increased in New York by the fact that there is nothing very striking in Broadway, its main street, except its length. The shops, or stores as they are called, are rendered externally quite ineffective by the narrowness of their frontage, and by the way in which they are converted into an advertising frame for names and announcements of various kinds. When you get inside the door you find as extensive and rich an assortment of goods as can be seen in the best shops of London or Paris: there is, however, little indication of this from the outside. But a better acquaintance with the city qualifies to a great extent this first feeling of disappointment. It is irrational to condemn a place for not having what it is impossible could ever have been there. New York cannot have imperial palaces, or mediæval cathedrals, not even great public offices; but in the part of the Fifth Avenue, and of the contiguous streets, which is occupied with the residences of private citizens, it is not surpassed by anything of the same kind in any city of the world. Certainly Belgravia can show nothing like it. There is no stucco, nor are the houses built, as is the case in our streets, in rows of monotonous uniformity, but in some places each separate house differs in design from its neighbours. Sometimes you may find three or four that are alike, but seldom more than half a dozen; and probably those that are alike in general design will vary in the ornamentation of the doors and windows; thusindicating that they are not run up to order, as in Paris, or on speculation, as in London, but that they were built by the people who inhabit them. This variety of façade, where nothing is mean, of course contributes very much to the effect of street architecture. The materials, too, used for building in New York are better and more varied than those used by ourselves. In the best quarters a chocolate-coloured stone is the most common. Brick, which is always painted, and dressed with stone, comes next in frequency; then a stone which in colour is compounded of a yellowish-white with a very perceptible trace of green. Some of the largest stores and hotels, and occasionally a private residence and church, are of white marble. Of this latter material is constructed the imposing office of the New York Herald—I suppose the most magnificent newspaper office in the world.
New York.
The great glory, however, of the city is its Park. It is on the central ridge of the island—on very uneven ground, with the native rock everywhere cropping up through the surface, and with many depressions, in which are pieces of water peopled with various kinds of waterfowl; it is between two and three miles in length, and is throughout kept in faultless order; it has already cost the city twenty millions of dollars, and is one of the more than imperial works of the American democracy.
An English merchant, carrying on business at New York, and who had for several years been the president of the St. George’s Society of that city, and in that capacity brought very much into contact with the English immigrants, assured me that hehad often had to blush for the ignorance of his countrymen. ‘Of all the immigrants,’ he said, ‘who came to the United States the Englishman was the least educated, and so the most shiftless. Even the wild Irishman had generally been better taught, and knew more.’
Supplementary Schools.
Among my letters of introduction for New York was one to a gentleman who is personally and actively engaged in the working of some of the most useful institutions of the city. Under his guidance I visited and examined several of their industrial schools, in which the children of the lowest and most vicious part of the Irish and German population of the city are educated. Sixteen of these schools have already been established, and are now at work. They do not at all enter into competition with the common schools, but are a supplement to them, occupying very much the place of our ragged schools. They are partly supported by the city, and partly by voluntary contributions. This is far better than that the city should take upon itself the whole of the cost; because in that case everything would be done by paid agents, who, as experience proves, are seldom able to establish an influence over the classes for whose benefit these institutions are designed; while good and Christian people are generally to be found, who will, for love’s sake and for the work’s sake, go among the disorderly and depraved, and endeavour to awaken whatever dormant sparks of parental affection, of religious sentiment, and of the sense of responsibility may remain within them, and will thus induce them to send their children to school. And not only will these ministers of good words, illustratedand expounded by kindly acts, aid the regular teachers in bringing children into the school, but also in attaching them to the place where they were first made comfortable and happy. In all these schools I either found ladies actually present at the time of my visit, or heard that they were in the habit of being present almost daily. Their chief effort is to instil into the minds of the children a good moral and religious tone, and to bring them to feel that there are such things in human hearts as kindliness and regard for others, and that this kindliness and regard is being directed towards themselves. They also generally superintend the musical instruction, for which purpose each school is supplied with an harmonium. It is thought that music will both attract and humanise children accustomed at home to so much roughness and coarseness. They also teach the girls to make their own clothes; the materials for which, in the case of the poorest and most neglected, are given either at the cost of the school funds, or by some of the well-wishers of the school through these voluntary assistants. This, and meals provided two or three times a week for the most destitute, are used as allurements by which the most neglected children, which are precisely the cases the managers are most desirous of getting hold of, may be brought in.
None of the children found in these schools would ever attend the common schools—their rags and habits would alone render them inadmissible; and it is only by such means and exertions as I have just mentioned that they can be attracted to and fitted for the industrial schools. I was told that notwithstanding thesuccess I witnessed, there was still a lower depth that could not be reached, in which the children remained untaught in the lessons of any school excepting that of vice.
In these matters, then, they have in the great commercial capital of the New World, where land is a drug, and where there are employment and food for everybody, just the same difficulties we have to struggle against in the capital of the old country, and they endeavour to meet them much in the same way as ourselves; though perhaps they may set about doing what they see ought to be done, with more system and energy than we have yet shown.
The same gentleman also took me over the establishments of the Children’s Aid Society. The object of this association is to collect from the streets the newsboys, and any others who may be growing up uncared for, and who have no prospect of being trained up to any employment or trade by which they may gain an honest livelihood, and by the inducement of comfortable lodgings, and some other advantages, to get them to submit to regular habits, and to a certain amount of instruction; and then, when they have become qualified for such situations, to give them an outfit, and find them homes in the farmhouses of the West. This institution was under my friend’s superintendence. It appeared to be a very valuable one, and to be effecting a great deal of good among a large class that could have no other chance of being rescued from degradation, and launched favourably into life. On each of my two visits to New York I saw a band of healthy and hopeful-looking youths it had trained and taught, and had just fitted out, on their way to therailroad which was to take them to their new Western homes.
An Old Principle Resuscitated.
I have mentioned these industrial schools and the Children’s Aid Society in connection with my first visit to New York, because I did not meet with institutions of this kind elsewhere. I shall say nothing about the common schools I saw here, because as I had letters to the superintendents of schools in all the chief cities I visited, and so had opportunities for inspecting these schools wherever I went; and as I intend to bring into one summary the conclusions I arrived at after an inspection of schools from New York to Denver on the plains at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and from Denver back again to Boston, it will be better that I should only make separate mention of my visits to schools which appeared to possess some peculiarity of method or object.
‘We wish everybody to have a chance, and to enjoy life. We wish for nothing for ourselves which we should not be glad to see others have.’ I first heard this sentiment enounced in the above words by a gentleman whom I met in one of my visits to the Children’s Aid Society. I afterwards heard it expressed by other persons in widely distant parts of the Union. There is nothing new in the sentiment itself to those who are familiar with a book for which deep reverence is professed on both sides of the Atlantic; but I felt—perhaps I was wrong in feeling so—that there was something new in hearing it proclaimed as a principle of conduct, and in finding myself among people who in their system of public education, in many of their charities, and in other matters, distinctly acted upon it.
Few people can have visited the great and wealthy capital of the French empire without being struck with the paucity of churches it contains. Few can have visited New York, which is not even the capital of the State whose name it bears, without being struck with the opposite fact. The latter city abounds in churches, still I saw many additional ones in course of construction. Many of these churches have cost large sums of money, and are of good architectural designs. As a general rule, those who minister in them are very liberally maintained: I was astonished at hearing the amount of the annual collections in some of them.
The clergy are allowed much freedom of expression in America. A gentleman residing in New York, while conversing with me on this subject, made the following statement of what he supposed was the general practice:—‘The way in which we deal with the clergy here is to pay them well, and to encourage them to say exactly what they think. What we pay them for is not other people’s ideas and opinions—that we can find in books—but their own. We expect them to devote a reasonable portion of their time and all the mental powers they possess to theological study, and then to give us the result.’ This broad construction of the duty of a clergyman, as a religious teacher, coincides very much with what I was frequently told, that the broad way of thinking was becoming the common way of thinking in almost all the American churches. Mr. Henry Ward Beecher, though a Presbyterian, is very broad, and never has a seat empty in his church. Sunday after Sunday, three thousand people assemble to hear him preach. In American society religious questions are frequentlydiscussed. No one feels any disposition to avoid them, because expression of opinion is perfectly free. An American lady once said to me across the table, and was heard by everyone present, that ‘every thinking American was of opinion that religion, if not in conformity with the knowledge and sentiments of the times, was a dead thing.’ In New York this expression of opinion appeared perfectly natural; but I suppose that if an English lady entertained ideas of this kind, she would not think it allowable for her to enunciate them in company.
Service at the Rev. H. W. Beecher’s Church.
The most celebrated preacher in America is Mr. Henry Ward Beecher. On the subjugation of the South he was the man selected by President Lincoln from all the great speakers of the United States to pronounce at Fort Sumter, where the war had commenced, an oration which would signalise its conclusion with an eloquence worthy of the occasion. The three thousand sittings his church contains, I was told, are let by auction for sums which on this side of the water would appear fabulous. He returns his income at 8,000l.a year. Of course I went to hear him, and through the assistance of one of his congregation obtained a seat.
The church is very much in the form of a theatre. The stage is occupied by Mr. Beecher himself. Over the stage, however, is a gallery for the organ and choir. There was not, on the occasion upon which I was present, a vacant place in the building. As one looked down from what corresponded with the gallery of a theatre, there appeared to be no aisles in the body of the church, because as soon as the occupants of the pews had taken their places, seats that had beenfastened up against the outside of the pews were opened out and instantly filled. The service commenced with the Te Deum, chanted by a choir of ladies and gentlemen. A short prayer was then offered. This was followed by a short lesson from the book of Ecclesiastes, which was all that the service contained from the Holy Scriptures. Six or seven children were now baptised. The baptismal service consisted of several texts bearing more or less on the subject, which were chanted by the choir, Mr. Beecher afterwards sprinkling water upon each in the name of the Trinity. This was succeeded by a long prayer, which was rather a thanksgiving for domestic happiness than a prayer. A hymn was then sung, during the singing of which very few of the vast congregation rose from their seats. There was, of course, no kneeling during the prayers, or in any part of the service, which was concluded with a sermon of more than an hour’s length, taken from the few verses in Ecclesiastes that had been previously read. The sermon was an essay on ‘the art of making old age happy and beautiful.’ This was in connection with the administration of the sacrament of baptism. He spoke very eulogistically of a certain admiral, whose name I could not catch, now residing at Brooklyn, in the neighbourhood of Mr. Beecher’s church, and whom the preacher announced as the specimen old man. He inveighed strongly against all forms of dissipation, on the ground that ‘they take too much out of a man. They are,’ he said, ‘cheques drawn by youth on old age.’ He said ‘he had no objection to balls, provided they were held in the middle of the day and in the open air.’ Heshould like to see young people dancing on the green turf in summer. But crowded rooms and late hours were prejudicial to health.’ He thanked God that he had never used tobacco in any form. He said, ‘the use of it was a filthy, beastly habit, wasteful of health and of animal power.’ In speaking of excessive drinking, he said ‘that the American had not the excuse which the Englishman had, for the latter had so much water outside, that there was a reason for his never taking any inside.’ This was received by the congregation with great laughter, as were some other sallies contained in the sermon.
The Rev. H. W. Beecher.
According to our ideas, there was a great want of reverence in the service. People talked—some who were in my hearing, of dollars and investments—till the service commenced. One of the officers of the Church wore his hat till the congregation were more than half assembled. Mr. Beecher appeared to me to have but two tones, a very loud one and a quiet impressive one. The latter was very much the better of the two. His manuscript was placed on a desk on the stage. He could leave the desk with his manuscript on it whenever he pleased; and this he frequently did. One has no right to express an opinion of a preacher’s power after having heard only one sermon; all, therefore, that I will say of Mr. Beecher is what I heard said of him. I was told that his popularity never flagged, and that his originality had hitherto proved inexhaustible; for that during the many years he had been before the public, during which time everything he had said had been reported, he had never been known to repeat himself. I was also told that he had been a useful man incalming, as far as the great influence he possessed allowed, the storms both of religious controversy and of political animosity. It must be remembered that a clergyman of Mr. Beecher’s energy and talents has much more prominence and influence in America, where there is no governing class, than it would be possible for him to attain in England.
There is a club—perhaps we should call it a society or association—of Episcopalian Broad Churchmen, the members of which reside in the cities of New York and Philadelphia. I believe clergymen only are members.
Almost every Episcopal church in New York has a chapel attached to it, exclusively for the use of the poor. This has been done because it has been found there, just as is the case with us, that in the cities the poor will not use the same churches as the rich. We have in London, in a few cases, attempted to cure the same evil with the same remedy. The remedy, however, has not been fairly applied, for a better class of persons (the very thing that indisposes the ill-clad poor to be present) has been allowed to appropriate to themselves a large proportion of the sittings in these chapels.
I will mention here a conclusion to which I was brought by my observation of what was going on in the Episcopal Church in different parts of the Union. Among ministers and congregations there are, just as with us, some High Church, some Low Church, some Ritualistic, and some Broad Church. I think the proportion of those that are High Church is greater with them than with ourselves. The real and important difference between us on this head is,that in the American Church every minister and congregation belongs distinctly to one or other of these parties, and that every Church is worked at high pressure.
An American’s Opinion of a Minister’s Duty.
One of the leading divines of America whom I met at New York (he was not a minister of the Episcopal Church) remarked to me that the view taken in America of a minister’s duty was, that he was a teacher. He occupied towards the adults of the congregation precisely the same position that the schoolmaster held with respect to the children. What he had to teach was the history and theory of religion; and to show how, as a rule of life, it bore on the ever-varying circumstances of the day. If he could not teach the people these things he was of no use to them.
This ignores altogether that view of the service which makes it an expression of the devotion and of the religious feelings of the congregation itself.