THE JOURNEY.
Did you ever go a journey with your mother? No? Little Nelly did; it was great fun for her to see her mother pack the trunk. She had no idea before how much may be got into a trunk by squeezing. She thought it full half a dozen times, and laughed merrily when her mother pressed down the things with her hands, and piled as many more on top of them. Nelly and her mother were going to Niagara; that is a long way from New York. They went to bed very early the night before, for they knew that they must be up and off by daylight, breakfast, or no breakfast; for the cars do not wait for hungry people, as you may have found out. Long before daylight Nelly put her hand on her mother’s face, and said, It is time to get up, mother, and sure enough it was; so they both sprang out of bed, washed their eyes open, hurried on their clothes, and, I wish I could say, eat their breakfast, but unfortunatelyNelly and her mother were boarding at a hotel. Now, perhaps you do not know that the servants in the New York hotels set up nearly all night, to wait upon people who stay out late at theaters, and like a nice dainty supper when they get home; and to take care of strangers, too, who arrive late at night; so you can imagine how tired they are, and how soundly they sleep, poor fellows, in the morning. Many of them are most excellent people, who bear without complaint all the hard words they get from those, whose chairs they stand behind, and who consider themselves privileged for that reason to insult and abuse them. No matter how weary they are, they must dart like a flash of lightning wherever they are sent, and get sworn at and abused even then for not going quicker. I remember well a middle-aged man who was waiter in a hotel where I once lived. He was as truly a gentleman as your own father. I could not bear that he should answer the bell when I rang it; it seemed to me that I should rather wait upon him. I could not bear that he should bow his head so deferentially every time he spoke to me, or be so troubled if my tea or coffee was not just as I was accustomed to have it. I could not bear that he should beg my pardon for every little omission or accident, so seldom occurring, too. I almost wished he would saysomething impudent or saucy; it made me so uncomfortable to see such a fine, dignified, gentlemanly man waiting upon my table, waiting upon people in the house, too, who were not fit to wipe his shoes; running hither and thither at the call of capricious, ill-bred children, whose wealthy parents had never taught them that servants have hearts to feel, and that they should be humanely treated. Ah, you should have seen our John; his manners would not have disgraced the White House. In fact I should not be surprised any day to hear that he was its master; for he who fills an inferior position faithfully and well, is he who oftenest rises to the highest. Remember that!
Well, as I was telling you, before I began about John, when Nelly and her mother got up, the poor, sleepy servants, who had not been in bed more than an hour or so, were not up, so Nelly nibbled a cracker and drank a glass of water, and she and her mother jumped into the carriage and were driven to the dépôt. How odd Broadway looked by early daylight! No gayly dressed ladies swept the pavements with their silken robes; no dandies thumped it with their high-heeled boots and dapper canes; no little girls, dressed as old as their mammas, glided languidly up and down, with their hands folded over their belts and an embroideredhandkerchief between their kidded fingers. No—none but the useful class of the community were stirring: market-men, from the country, with their carts laden with lettuce, parsnips, cabbages, radishes, and strawberries, covered over with a layer of fresh, green grass, the very sight and odor of which made one long to be where it grew. Then there were milkmen, driving enough to tear up the pavement; then there were rag-pickers, gray with dirt, raking the gutters; then there were shop-boys and office-boys by the score, who had crossed the ferries to their work, for board in New York is expensive business; then there were tailoresses and sempstresses, more than I could count, with their shawls drawn round their thin shoulders, and their faces shrouded in their barege vails; then there were poor, tired news-boys asleep in entries and on steps, while others of their number rushed past with their bundles of damp papers. Little Nelly saw it all, for her eyes were sharp and bright; and now she is at the dépôt. All is hurry, skurry; carriages, cab-men, passengers, and baggage. Nelly’s eyes look wonderingly about her, and she keeps close to her mother, for the loud shouts of the men frighten her; now she is safe in the cars—how pale, sleepy, and cross every body looks! They hang up their traveling-bags on pegs over theirheads, they fold up their shawls for cushions, they examine their pockets to see if their purses and checks are all right, they shrug their shoulders and pull down the windows to keep out the steam from the car boiler, for we are not yet out of the dépôt, they put their feet upon the seat, coil themselves up into a ball, and wonder why the cars don’t start. Siz—z—z, off we go—good-by New York, with your dust, and din, and racket—good-by to your sleepy belles, who are dreaming of last night’s ball, and getting strength to go to another; good-by to the gray old men who toil so hard to find them in dresses and jewels; good-by to their thoughtless sons, who spend so freely what they never earn; good-by to the squalid poor of whom they never think, though they may some day keep them wretched company; good-by to the poor old omnibus horses, who trot and stumble, stumble and trot, till one’s bones ache to look at them; good-by to the merry, sun-burned drivers, who so courteously rein up their horses, when ladies want to trip across the slippery streets; good-by to the little flower-girls, who manufacture those tempting little baskets of pinks, geraniums, and roses; good-by to the pretty parks, with their fountains and trees, nurses and children; good-by to the prisons, which often shut up better people than many whom the judges suffer to gounpunished at large; good-by to the hospitals with their groaning patients, watchful nurses, and skillful doctors. Good-by, we shall not be missed, no more than the pebble which some idle school-boy tosses into the pond, and which disappears and is thought of no more. Good-by, busy, dirty, noisy, crowded, yet delightful New York, for we are off to Niagara.
How hot it is, how dusty—how hungry we all are. I hope we shall soon stop to dinner, for our stock of crackers and patience is exhausted, and nothing is left of the oranges but the peel. Ah, here we are! Only ten minutes to eat; whatcanthe conductor be thinking about; does he take us for boa-constrictors? or does he think that, like the cows, we can store in our food and chew it whenever we get a chance? The fact is, he does not think any thing about it; all he cares for is to pack us all in the cars again and start at the last of the ten minutes. So I suppose we must elbow our way into the dining-room with the rest and scramble for a seat! “Beef, pork, mutton, veal, chicken, what’ll youhave, ma’am?” “What’ll I have? oh, any thing, something, only be quick about it, please, for this little girl looks paler than I like to see her. Lamb and green peas, that will do; but, oh, dear, where’s our knife and fork? Turn round, Nelly, take that spoon and begin on the peas, we can’t stop for trifles. There’s that horrid fizzing of the car boiler, which warns us that we must swallow something or go hungry till bedtime. And here’s a custard, but no spoon; next time I travel I will carry a knife, fork, and spoon in my pocket. I wonder if the people who keep this eating-place forget these things on purpose, so that we need not eat our ten minutes’ worth of food? and we so hungry, too.” “Have an orange, ma’am?” “Of course I will: I have not had any thing else.” “Passengers ready—passengers please settle.” Poor Nelly swallows the last bit of custard and looks wistfully at those we leave behind, and we pay for our comfortless dinner, and scramble back into the cars. “All aboard.” Off we go again. The fat old lady in front of us goes to sleep; the gentlemen get out their newspapers. I wonder do they know how many people have ruined their eyesight trying to read in the cars? It is a losing way of gaining time, Mr. Editor; take my advice and put your papers in your pockets to read when you getto the next stopping-place. There is a woman taking out a needle and thread to sew—that is worse yet—but every body imagines they know best about such things, so I’ll not interfere. Here comes a boy into the cars with some books to sell. Little Nelly pinches my arm slily and looks very wise; she has spelt out, with her bright eyes, among the other books. “Fern Leaves.” Nelly is a bit of a rogue, so she says to the boy, “Have you Fern Leaves?” “Yes, miss, and Second Series and Little Ferns, too.” And he hands them to me. Nelly touches my foot under the seat, and looks as grave as a judge, while I turn over the pages, and when I ask the little boy who wrote Fern Leaves, she does not laugh, but looks straight out of the window at a cow munching grass by the road side, as if it were a matter of no concern at all to her. The little bookseller repeats my question after me, “Who wrote Fern Leaves?” and looks bewildered, then, after scratching his head, he answers, with the air of one who has hit it, “Fanny’s Portfolio, ma’am.” We did not buy the books, we had seen them before. But not till the last rag of the little bookseller’s torn jacket had fluttered through the door, did Nelly’s gravity relax: you should have seen, then, the comical look she gave me behind her pocket handkerchief, and heard her ringing laugh, well worth writinga book for, and which nobody understood but we two, and that was the best part of the joke.
By-and-by there was a quarrel in the cars about seats, for selfish people travel as well as the good-natured. A cross-looking man, with a wife to match, had monopolized two entire seats, in one of which they sat, and on the other placed their feet and their carpet-bags. It was not long before a large, well-dressed gentleman, with his wife, requested leave to sit on the seat occupied by the cross gentleman’s carpet-bags; to which the cross man replied, with a growl, and without taking down his feet, that that seat was engaged to some persons who had just stepped out. This was a fib; but the gentleman supposing it to be true, led the lady back to the sunny seat which she had just left, and which had given her a bad headache. An hour after, the big gentleman stepped up to the cross man and says, “Your friends are a long time coming, sir.” You should have seen the cross man then; how he sprang to his feet like a little bristly terrier dog, which he strikingly resembled; how he tauntingly asked the big, well-dressed man, how it happened that such an aristocrat as he did not hire an entire car for his lordship and her ladyship (meaning his wife). “I should have done so,” replied the gentleman, in a very low tone,as he turned on his heel, “had I known thatpigswere allowed to travel in this car.” The laugh and the whisper, “Good enough for him!” which followed, might have abashed any body but our terrier, who stepped up to the principal laugher, who sat next me, and putting his face close to his, hissed between his shut teeth, “Shut up!” Nelly did not know what “shut up” meant, but she knew the meaning of the doubled-up fist which the terrier thrust into our neighbor’s face, and looked up at me to see whether there was any danger of our being thumped or not. Seeing only a smothered smile on my face, and the conductor approaching to set matters to rights, she soon became quiet.
On we flew, past houses, fences, trees, cows, sheep, and horses, some of whom pricked up their ears for a minute, then went lazily on munching grass, as much as to say, “That’s an old story;” others, finding an excuse in it for a frolic, raced over the meadows, and kicked up their heels, as if to say, “Just as if nobody could run but you!”
Hark! what’s that? Nobody answers; but the cars tip half-way over, we are all thrown in a heap on the floor, the window-glass comes smashing in, and the hot steam rushes in. A great fat man doubles me up over a seat, trying, like a great coward as he is, to climb over me to get out the window. We don’t know yet what has happened; but, “Get out of the cars!” says the conductor, “quick!” The window is too small to let out the fat man, so he kindly allows me the use of my ribs again, which must have been made of good material, or they would have been broken as he bent me over that seat. I snatch Nelly, poor pale Nelly! who never screams or speaks, for she is a real little Spartan—and we all clamber out into the tall, wet meadow-grass. Then, the danger over, great big tears roll out of Nelly’s eyes, and with an hysterical laugh, as she looks at the broken cars, she sobs out, in a half sorrowful, half droll way, this nursery snatch—“All of a sudden, the old thing bursted!”
“Any body hurt?” ask the pale, anxious passengers, as they creep out one by one. “No—nobody’s hurt.” “Ah yes—ah yes—the poor brakeman is badly scalded—poor fellow.” Now the country people come flocking out of the farm houses—good, honest, kind souls—and they make a litter, and they put the wounded man upon it, and bear him slowly away over the green fields, under the drooping trees, carefully, carefully, heeding his groans, into the nearest farm-house; then the doctor’s chaise drives hurriedly up, and after atime, word is brought us that he will not die. Little Nelly cries and laughs again, for she is very nervous from the fright. And the conductor says, “Have patience, ladies; we will soon get another car;” and some go into barns, and some go into houses, for the rain is falling; and the poor watchmaker, whose trunk was broken to pieces, stands looking at the fragments of broken watches, and saying big words about damages and the railroad company. But every body else is so glad to be alive, and to be in possession of sound limbs, that they do not think of their baggage. And after a while the new car comes, for every body helps us, and we all climb up into it, and the color comes back to the lips of the ladies; and the great fat coward, who bent me double over the seat, takes precious good care to sit near the door, ready for a jump if any thing else turns up, or turns over.
One o’clock at night, and this is Niagara. It might as well be Boston Frog Pond, for all the enthusiasm has been shook, and jolted, and stunned, and frightenedout of us getting to it. And now here it is one o’clock at night. I suppose not a bit of supper is to be had for poor Nelly and me, although we have eaten nothing since we had that scrambling twelve o’clock dinner. What a big hotel! bless us—there is a supper though all ready; for they are used to little accidents, called collisions, this way, and feed the survivors with as much alacrity as they bury the dead; to be sure there is a supper—chicken—oh, Nelly! chicken and hot tea. Sorry figures we cut by the light of the bright gas chandeliers, with our jammed bonnets and torn riding-dresses, but who cares? I am sure black John don’t; he is just as civil as if we were as presentable as a Broadway belle; certainly he is used to it; he is used to seeing ladies emerge from begrimed caterpillar riding-habits into all sorts of gay butterfly paraphernalia; John is charitable; he always suspends his judgment of passengers till the next morning at breakfast; then he knows who is who. If a lady takes diamonds with her coffee, he knows she talks bad grammar, and is not what she would have people think her; he is not surprised to have her find fault with every thing from the omelette to the Indian cake. He expects to see her nose turned up at every thing, just as if she had every thing better at home.
She does not impose on John—he waits upon her with a quiet twinkle in his eye, which says as plain as a twinkle can say: I have not stood behind travelers’ chairs these two years for nothing; that game has been played out here, my lady; but when a lady comes down to breakfast in a modest-colored, quiet-looking breakfast robe, with smooth hair, neatly-slippered feet, and a very nice collar, and speaks civily and kindly to him, John knows he sees a real lady, whether she owns a diamond or not—and her pleasant “Thank you,” when he has taken some trouble to procure her what she desires, wings his feet for many a hard hour’s work that day. I wish ladies oftener thought of this. I wish they did not think it beneath them, or were not too indifferent or thoughtless to attend to it. “What is that noise, John?” “Oh, them’s the Rapids, ma’am.” “Rapids? sure enough, we almost forgot we were at Niagara; how very dismal they sound!” John laughs and says, “You are tired to-night, ma’am; when you look at them in the morning you will like ’em; most ladies does.” But poor Nelly is half asleep over her plate, so we will go to bed. What a little box of a chamber! not a pretty thing in it but Nelly; a table, a chair, a bed, a bureau, and a candle on it; the window shaking as if it had St. Vitus’s dance; the Rapids, as John calls them,roaring like mad under the window. I can’t stand the rattling of that window. I’ll stop it with the handle of a tooth-brush. I suppose I have a tooth-brush left, if the cars did run off the track; oh, yes! “Now tumble into bed, Nelly. What a dismal thing those Rapids are, to be sure. I feel as if I were out at sea in an egg-shell boat. I wonder how they will look in the morning? don’t you, Nelly?” No answer. “Nelly’s asleep; I wish I could sleep, but I’m sure those horrid Rapids will give me the night-mare.”
“Morning? you don’t mean that, Nelly! and you look as bright as if the cars had kept right end up all the way here. Does the sun shine, Nelly? Open the blinds and see. No? what a pity. ‘A great river under the window!’ why, pussy, that river is the Rapids; I don’t wonder they shake the window so; how they tumble about! Now, we will dress and breakfast, and then, no! for the Falls. You and I are not to be frightened at a few rain-drops, Nelly; we have had too many drenchings running to and fro from printing-offices for that. That’s right, Nelly, dip your face into the washbasin, it will make your eyes strong and bright; now smooth your hair, and put on the plainest dress you can find, but let it be very clean. I hope your finger-nailsand teeth are quite nice, and then pull your stockings smoothly up; of all things don’t wear wrinkled stockings. Put stout boots on; don’t be afraid of a thick sole, Nelly; every thing looks well in its place; and a thin shoe on Goat Island would be quite ridiculous.
“You are glad to get out of that stifled bed-room? so am I. What a nice wide breezy hall this is! Oh, there are more travelers who have just arrived, and there are some more who are just leaving; and there comes the servant to say breakfast is ready; gongs are out of fashion, I am glad of that; I would run a mile to escape a gong; and beside, no hospitable landlord, I think, would set such a machine in motion to disturb sick and weary travelers, who prefer a longer sleep. Ah, this landlord knows what he is about, I am sure of that; you can generally judge of any house by the manners of the servants. How well trained they are here, how quiet, how prompt! Good fellows; I hope they get well paid, don’t you, Nelly? I hope they have a comfortable place to sleep, when the day is over, don’t you? All black? I am glad of that, too; I like black people; they are such a merry people, they are so easily made happy, they are so affectionate, they are so neat. Oh, what nice bread and coffee! Don’t touch those omelettes, Nelly; take a bit of beefsteak andhere’s some milk—realmilk; it is so long since I have tasted any, that it seems like cream!
“Who are those people? How do I know, little puss? I dare say they are asking the same question about us! You don’t like that lady’s face? Why not? She don’t look as if she could laugh. That’s a fact, Nelly. She is as solemn as an owl. But perhaps she is in trouble, who knows? We must not laugh about her. Come, Nelly, let us get up and go to the Falls. Tie on your bonnet; what a nice fresh air! See the shops, Nelly! shops at Niagara, who would have thought it? and curiosities of all sorts to sell! Well, never mind them now. Want a carriage? want a cab? Of course we don’t—look at our democratic thick-soled shoes! what’s the use of having feet, if we are not to be allowed to use them? No, of course we don’t want a carriage; we feel, Nelly and I, as if we were just made; don’t you see how we step off? No, keep your carriages for infirm, proud, and lazy people. Carriage—who can run in a carriage? who can skip? This way, Nelly, over the little bridge? Oh—pay toll here! Do we? Twenty-five cents. And please register our names! Oh yes, of course—Mrs. Nelly, and Miss Nelly. What are you laughing at, puss? come along; oh, see this pretty island! now you see the useof thick shoes—off into that grass, and pick me some of those wild-flowers. Oh, Nelly, there are some blue, and pink, and purple—get a handful, Nelly! Oh, how delicious it is to be alive; skip, Nelly, run, Nelly, sing Nelly.
“A real Indian? Where? Oh, that’s not a real Indian, no more than you or I. She’s a pretty little sham Indian; but what are her pin cushions and moccasins to these wild-flowers? No, no, little girl, don’t stop us with those things; we left shopping in New York. Goat Island was not made for that, I’m sure; come Nelly! A boy with crosses made of Table-rock; how they plague us—we don’t want to buy any crosses, we are cross enough ourselves, because you keep bothering us so; we came to see the Falls, not to do shopping. Come away, Nelly! Oh, Nelly—look! look!”
But why describe the Falls to you, when all your school geographies have a picture of it? when your teacher has taken all the school to see a panorama of it? when your Uncle George, and Aunt Caroline, and Cousin James have seen it? and yet no tongue, no pen ever could, ever has described its beauty, its majesty. I would that I had never heard it attempted; I would that I had never heard of Niagara; I would that I hadcome upon it unawares some glorious morning before Indian girls had peddled moccasins there, or boys, had profaned it by selling pictures and crosses; I would have knelt on that lovely island, and seen God’s majesty in the ceaseless, roaring torrent; God’s smile in the bright rainbow, hung upon the fleecy mist; God’s love in making earth so beautiful, for those who forget to thank Him for it. I would leadhimthere who says there is no God, that he might hear His voice, and see His glory.
But no two persons look on Niagara with the same eyes. You can not see it through my spectacles; some it animates and makes jubilant; others it depresses and terrifies; some hear in it the thunder and lightning of Sinai; others hear in it the voice of Him who stilled the raging waves with “Peace, be still!”
Yes, I was glad to have seen Niagara, but I was not sorry to leave it. Its rushing torrent threw a shadow over my spirit. Its monster jaws seemed hungry for some victim, other than the unconscious leaves which it whirled so impatiently and disdainfully out of sight. Its never-ceasing roar seemed like the trumpet-challenge to battle, telling of mangled corpses and broken hearts. No;—dearer to me is the silvery little brook, tripping lightly through green meadows, singing lowand sweet to the nodding flowers, bending to see their own sweet beauty mirrored in its clear face. I like not that all Nature’s gentle voices should be tyrannically hushed to silence, drowned by a despot’s deafening roar. Give me the low murmur of the trees; I like the hum of the bee; I like the flash of the merry little fish; I like the little bird, circling, darting, singing, skimming the blue above, dipping his blight wings in the blue below; I like the cricket which chirps the tired farmer to sleep; I like the distant bleat of the lamb, the faint lowing of the cow; I lay my head on Nature’s breast, in her gentler moods, and tell her all my hopes and fears, and am not ashamed of my tears. But she drives me from her when she roars and foams, and flashes fierce lightning from her angry eyes; I close my ears to her roaring thunder. But when, clearing the cloud from her brow, she hangs a rainbow on her breast, throws perfume to the pretty flowers, and smiles caressingly through her tears—ah, then I love her; then she is all my own again.
Here I have been running on! and all this while you have been waiting to know the rest of my story. Well, Nelly and I started to go back to New York. Nelly did not like the idea of trusting herself in the cars, nor, to tell the truth, did I; but there was nohelp for it: besides, it is not wise to be a slave to one’s fears. So we tried to forget all about it. A girl who lived with me once remarked, there is always something happening most days. So we soon found amusement. An old lady in the cars, when she had smelled up all her camphor and eaten all her lozenges, commenced asking me questions faster than I could answer, and looking at Nelly through her spectacles. Some of her questions were very funny, and, from any body but an old lady, would have been impertinent; but we answered them all, for it was very evident she did not ride in the cars every day, and was determined to get her money’s worth. Poor old lady! I suppose she had lived all her life in some small village where there was only a blacksmith’s shop and a meeting-house, and where every body knew what time every body got up, and what they had for breakfast. Nice old lady! I hope somebody gave her a good cup of tea, and a rocking-chair, when she got home, which, I regret to say, was the first stopping-place after we left Niagara.
From the car-windows Nelly and I saw the Catskill Mountains. O the lovely changing hues of their steep and misty sides; the billowy clouds that rolled up, and rolled over, and rolled off;—then the far-offsummit, now hidden, now revealed, lying against the sky, tempting us to see from thence the kingdoms of the earth, and the glory of them. And so we will, some day. I will tell you what we see.
Night came, and we had not yet reached New York. Nelly was dusty, and hungry, and tired; but she was a good traveler, and made no complaint. The cars were dashing along through the darkness, close by the edge of the Hudson River, and Nelly clasped my hand more closely as she looked out of the windows upon its dark surface, and sighed as if she feared some accident might tip us all over into it. But no such accident occurred, and by-and-by the bright gas-lights of New York shone and sparkled; and the never-failing gutter odor informed us that we were back again upon its dusty streets.