Iam so afraid that I shan’t get off a letter regularly twice a week from this run in the West, that I begin this in a spare three minutes between packing and a testimonial which is to be given me here by a lot of young graduates of the American Universities at the Club at four o’clock. This place is the wonder of the wonderful West, as you know already. A gentleman I met to-day tells me he came up to this place in 1830, when it consisted of a fort with two companies, a dozen little wooden huts, and an encampment of 3000 or 4000 Indians who had come in to get their allowances under treaty with the United States. Now it is one of the handsomest cities I ever saw, with 300,000 inhabitants, and progressing at the rate of 1500 a week or thereabouts. We have had our first experience of a first-rate American hotel, the Fremont House here. It is decidedly not cheap. At present rates about fifteen shillings or four dollars a day; but you can eat and drink anything but wine and spirits all day, with the exception of one hour in the afternoon between lunch and dinner. I ordered a peach just now for lunch, and they brought me a whole plateful, not so good as our hot-house ones, but very fine fruit. Yesterday I went twice to hear Robert Collyer, a famous Unitarian minister here. He was born in Yorkshire, where he worked as a blacksmith, preaching as a Methodist, and finally, twenty years ago, came out to the West and established himself here. He has great and deserved influence, and is altogether the finest man of the kind I have ever met. His text was out of Job: “Dost thou know the springs of the deep?” I forget the exact words, but you will find them in the splendid 38th chapter, where God is showing Job who is master (as the cabman put it). He had been for his holiday at the sea, and was full of thoughts which, as he said, he wanted to get off to his people. He began by a quotation from Ruskin as to the fantastic power and beauty of the sea, said that no trace of love for the sea could be found in the Bible, only fear of it. In the New Jerusalem, St. John dreamed “there shall be no more sea.” Same with all great poets, even English, illustrated by Burns and Shakespere, and Dr. Johnson’s saying, “That a ship was a prison with a chance of being drowned.” Even sailors don’t really look on sea as home, and fear it, and weave mystical notions of all kinds round it. Yet the sea has its sweet and gentle side too; it nourishes every plant and flower that grows by its exhalations, and keeps the rivers sweet and running; and look at one of the exquisite little shells which you may find after the fiercest storm, or the bit of sea-weed lying on the shore, or the limpet on the rock. The lashing of the storm has done them no harm, and there they lie as perfect as if it had never been raging. about them. So the great stormy sea of life has its gentle and loving side for every one of us so long as we trust in God and just obey His laws and do His will. I have given you the very barest outline of a very striking sermon. In the evening I went to tea with him, and there was a large bunch of grapes on my plate with the enclosed little paper, “To Mr. Hughes from the children,” which touched me much. The children are very nice. Robert Lincoln, Abe’s son, and a lot of his friends are our entertainers to-day, and in the evening we go by the night train to St. Louis. I laid aside the other sheet to go off to this club dinner with the young Chicago men, and I have never had a more hearty greeting or kinder words and looks than amongst these youngsters, all graduates of some university, most of them officers in the late war, who are settled down in the great money-making town, and are living brave and sterling and earnest lives there. I really can’t tell you the sort of things they said (they drank your health, and the proposer made one of the prettiest little speeches in proposing it I ever heard); in short, I was positively ashamed, and scarcely knew how to meet it all or what to say to them; but it was less embarrassing than it would have been with any other young men, for this kind of young American (like Holmes) is so transparently sincere that you can come out quite square with him before you have known him an hour. Our good friends of the Illinois Central gave us free passage to St. Louis, to which we travelled all night. It is the biggest town in Missouri, was a great slave-holding place in 1860, and very “secesh” during the war. A fine city it is too, with its grand quay lined with huge steamers, and its miles of fine streets. Rowdy though, still, full of low saloons and gambling-houses. The most drunken town in the United States, the gentleman who met us, and drove us about and got us free papers here to Cincinnati, told us. The most characteristic thing that happened to me was that I was shaved by a negro (and better shaved than I ever was in my life before). He had been body servant to his master, a rich Southern planter, through the first three years of the war. His master was at last shot and he managed to get taken, and so “I’se no slave now,” as he said, with all his ivories shining. His education has not been much improved, however, for he thought England was at war, as being somehow part either of France or Germany, he couldn’t just say which, and would scarcely believe me when I declared that we were separated by the sea from both. Then we travelled all night again (I sleep splendidly in these palace cars, so don’t be alarmed), and got here to the queen city of Ohio this morning, after the most glorious sunrise I ever saw. This also is a very fine city on the Ohio, with fine hills all round and a magnificent suspension bridge. The most characteristic sight I have seen here, however, was two small boys trotting along together barefooted, with a piece of sugar-cane between them, each sucking one end. I had a note to Force, one of Sherman’s generals, now a judge here, who kindly sent us round in a carriage, but was too busy to come with us. To-night we make another long run to Philadelphia. We should have gone to Washington and so worked north, but Philadelphia is the next place where I shall get letters, and I can’t do any longer without hearing from you, so that’s all about it. I have lots of friends in Philadelphia, so shall probably make two days’ stay there.
Where was I in my narrative? I guess (I am getting a thorough Yankee in my vernacular) I gave you a short account of the queen city, as they call Cincinnati. We left Cincinnati at ten o’clock on Wednesday night and came right away for 600 miles to Philadelphia.
The most interesting part of the road was the crossing the Alleghanies, up which we wound through vast forest tracks for some thirty miles, and down the eastern slopes in the sunset, getting daylight for all the most beautiful parts. As we were rushing up one of the finest gorges, some 200 yards wide, we were suddenly aware of a huge eagle (bigger than those we saw on the Danube as we steamed through the Iron Cates) sailing up on the opposite side, perhaps 100 yards from the train. We were going eighty miles an hour at the least, and the grand old fellow swept along without the least apparent effort, keeping abreast of our car for I should think a couple of miles, when he suddenly turned and settled on a fine pine-tree.
After breakfast we had a real field-day in this splendid city, which rivals Boston in interest and character. Outside it is built of red brick and white marble, the contrast of which materials is to me singularly taking, though I daresay it is very bad art.
Then the chief streets run away long and straight, and as you look down them all seem to dive into groups of trees. Walnut Street, Chestnut Street, and Spruce Street are the names of the oldest and handsomest avenues. Our friend Field, the banker, was all ready for us, and a dozen new friends, including General Meade, the first Federal general who won the battle in the East, and a charming, tall, handsome, grizzled, gentlemanly soldier. We went over the old State House, a pre-revolutionary building, from the top of which there is a splendid view of the town, with the two rivers, the Delaware and Schuylkill, on which it stands. There is the hall in which the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the chair in which Hancock sat, and the table on which it lay for signature. The square is charming, with its old trees and turf, just as it has always stood, and I am happy to say the Pennsylvanians are very proud «of the old place, won’t allow it to be touched, and are likely to keep it there till it burns, as I suppose the State House, with all the old-fashioned timbers in wall and roof, will some day. Then we went to the great Normal School for girls here, five hundred strong, the daughters of all sorts of folk, from physicians and lawyers to labourers. I was exceedingly interested and instructed in many classes, especially in the history class. The handsome, self-possessed young woman who was teaching was just beginning the Revolutionary War as we came in, and “felt like” changing the subject as she said, but I begged her to go on, and heard the old story from Lexington down to Cornwallis’s surrender without turning a hair. After classes, at two, the whole school was gathered for Scripture reading and singing a hymn. After the hymn, in compliment to us, they began “God save the Queen”; Rawlins and I got up by a sort of instinct, and to my immense amusement up got the whole company. Then I was asked to say a few words; and talked about the grand education they were getting, referred to the history class and told them no Englishman worth the name now regretted the end of the struggle one hundred years old, but only that any of the bitterness should still be left; spoke of the grand country which has been entrusted to them to be filled with the poor of the whole world, told them that we had a woman’s rights movement at home as well as they, which I hoped would not fall into any great absurdities, but there were two rights they would always insist on—the right of every girl in the States to such an education as they were getting, and their own right (they are all being educated as teachers) to go and give this education to those who want it most in West and South. Then the girls all filed out to march music, played by a senior girl, winding in and out of the rows of benches on which they had sat, and so away downstairs and to all parts of the town, the prettiest sight you can imagine. The girls are at the most awkward age, and, of course, many of them plain, but altogether as comely as the same sort would be with us, and not a sign of poverty amongst them, though many were quite plainly dressed. My democratic soul rejoiced at the sight as you may fancy. What a chance for straining the nonsense out of a girl if she has any! We adjourned from the great training-school for girls to the Girard College for orphan boys, founded by a queer old French Voltairian citizen of Philadelphia, who died some forty years ago and left property worth half a million of our money to found this college, with the expressprovisothat no parson of any denomination was ever to be admitted within the walls. I am happy to say, however, that, notwithstanding this provision, which is observed to the letter, the Bible is read and every day’s instruction is begun and ended by a religious service. This, by the way, is the case almost everywhere in the States. Notwithstanding all the assertions to the contrary, I have found only one place in which the education is purely secular. This was Cincinnati, where the result is obtained by a combination of the Roman Catholics with the German town population. Well, this college, as it is called, is simply a vast boys’ home, just like our own, except that the boys live in a most superb white marble building, copied from the Parthenon. The classes were being taught, and kept in right good order by women, who indeed almost monopolise teaching in this State, and they are in the proportion of more than ten to one. The fault of Girard College is that it is not wanted; the public school system which has grown up since its foundation being open to every one, and offering at least as good an education. If its funds could have been used to support the boys while at the public schools it would have been better. The whole arrangements are decidedly more luxurious than those at Rugby in my time, and they have not yet established workshops. After our round of institutions we were entertained at the Union League Club. The dinner was good and the company better, Mr. MacMichael, the mayor, who had been the chief mover in establishing the club in the dark days of 1861, presided, with General Meade, who commanded at Gettysburg on his left and me on his right. Dear old Field, the most furious and impulsive of Republicans, and the most ardent lover and abuser of England and Englishmen, vice-president, and the rest of the company, staff-officers in the war or marked men in some other way. The club had sent eleven regiments to the war at its own expense, and had exercised immense influence on the Union at the most critical time. At last I was fairly cornered; I had often before had to defend our position in sharp skirmishes, but now, for the first time, was in for a general engagement. Well, I just threw away all defensive arms, and attacked them at once. “You say we were led by our aristocracy, who were savagely hostile to you; I admit they were hostile, though with many notable exceptions, such as the Duke of Argyll, Lord Carlisle, Howards and Cavendishes; but what did you expect? I have taken in three or four American papers for years, and in your debates in Congress, in your newspapers, in every utterance of your public men, I have never heard or read anything but savage abuse of our aristocracy. They don’t reply to your insults, but they don’t forget them, so when you got into such hard lines they went in heartily for your enemies. Well, you say the South were England’s real enemies for the last forty years. True, but aristocracy did not care for that, democracy was represented by you, and that was what they went against.” There was an outcry: “Why, here’s a pretty business, we thought you were a Democrat.”
“So I am, in our English sense, but I am before all things an Englishman. I have nothing to do with our aristocracy (except knowing a few of them), and I fought as hard against them in England through the war as you did against the rebels; but I am not going to allow you to separate them from the nation, or to suppose that they can be punished except through the nation.”
“Well, but what do you say for all your great commercial world—bankers, merchants, manufacturers, our correspondents, look how they turned on us!”
“It’s no part of my business to defend them; they were mean, I allow, but their business was, as they supposed, and as all of you agree, to make money; besides, after all, who fought your battle better than Cobden, Bright, Forster, and such men as Kirkman-Hodson, and Tom Baring?” Then they fell back on the general position that our Government was hostile to them, and I went through what had really happened in Parliament, and made them admit that if we had listened to Louis Napoleon, and the blockade had been broken, it would have been a narrow squeak for the Union. On the whole, I think, I made a good deal of impression on most of them. General Meade and the soldiers were on my side throughout, and admitted at once that, after all the abuse their press heaped on our governing classes, it was childish to cry out when they proved that they knew of the abuse and didn’t love the abusers. We all parted the warmest friends, and I went off to tea at Mrs. W———s’, where we met Dr. Mitchell, a scientific man, and his sister, and other very pleasant folk, and heard many interesting stories of the war. The next morning we started for Gettysburg. I had always made a point with myself of seeing this one at any rate of the great battlefields. It was the real turning-point of the war, fought on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of July 1863, after the series of defeats and failures under M’Clellan, Pope Hooker, Burnside. I well remember what a long breath we (the Abolitionists) drew in England when the news came of Lee’s defeat at the farthest point he had ever made to the North, and felt sure, for the first time, that the war would be put through, and slavery be abolished right down to the Gulf of Mexico. We had the best escort possible in the person of Rosengarten, who was aide-decamp to General Reynolds, commander of the corps which came up first and sustained the whole weight of battle on the first day. Field also “came along,” and we had a first-rate time on our journey over the Susquehanna bridge, which the Northern militia burnt behind them as they escaped from Lee’s advance. Then we stopped for an hour or two, waiting for a train at York, a nice shady quiet country town of 11,000 inhabitants. The rebels had occupied the place for three days and levied a matter of 80,000 dollars on the people; in all other respects they seem to have behaved excellently and to have been well under command. The old Episcopalian clergyman, a warm friend of England, who had been Rosengarten’s tutor, and to whom we paid a visit, gave us a capital description of the three days’ occupation, and of the relief the York folk experienced when the poor ragged rebels marched off for Gettysburg, and left the town very little poorer than they had found it. We didn’t get to our inn, a huge wooden building on the first day’s battlefield, till after sunset. Tea over, we came out on the wooden platform which runs all round the house, and saw the most glorious sight I have ever seen, I think, in the skies. Steaming up Memphremagog we saw the aurora borealis splendidly, but that was nothing to this. In Canada there was no colour in the pure flashes of light which lit and pulsed over the whole sky, but on Saturday the changes of colour were splendid, and I should say for half an hour the heavens were throbbing with the most lovely rose-coloured streamers and sheets and flashes. With my view of the importance to the poor old world of the struggle which was descending there, you can fancy that such an introduction to it was welcome and impressive. Next day we devoted to the battlefield: began at the beginning where, on Thursday the 1st July 1863, Rosengarten himself, as Reynolds’s aide-decamp, had ridden forward and placed the first Federal regiments which came on the ground in position between the town of Gettysburg, which contains about 3000 inhabitants and lies in a hollow, and the advancing rebels. Gettysburg is at the junction of three roads and was a point which both armies were bent on seizing. The fight on this the north-east side of the town began early on Thursday. Rosengarten, after carrying out his orders, rode back, and was just in time to see his General fall from his horse, shot through the neck by a sharpshooter, and helped to carry him off the field. After many hours’ hard fighting the Federals were driven back through the town with heavy loss. Our friend, General Barlow, who commanded a brigade, was also badly wounded. Luckily, during the day two more corps of the army of the Potomac had come up and been placed in position on a hill just to the south of the town, on part of which the cemetery now stands, which was made immortal by Lincoln’s glorious speech at the inauguration. Behind these fresh troops the broken 1st and 11th corps rallied and prepared for the next day. Reinforcements came up to Lee also, and in the town the shopkeepers and other inhabitants heard them making certain of an easy victory in the morning. Meade is evidently a man who gains and holds the confidence of his troops; but as he was slightly outnumbered, and the rebels had the prestige of the first day’s victory, I take it he must have been beaten but for the splendid position he had selected. His troops lay along two lines of hills, covered in many places with wood which sloped away from the point overlooking the town, leaving a space between them secure from fire, in which he could move his troops without being seen, while every move of Lee’s was open to him. The Confederates began attacks early and kept them up throughout the day, but could not force the position except at one point, where, after dark, they succeeded in making a lodgment and spent the night within Meade’s lines. In the morning they were driven out after a desperate struggle, and later in the day Lee made a determined attempt with Longstreet’s corps to break the line again. He lost three generals and about 4000 men in the great effort, and when it failed, and he had to fall back to his own lines, the back of the Rebellion was broken and the doom of slavery sealed for ever in North America. At night he went away south, leaving most of his wounded, but Meade was too much exhausted to do more than follow slowly. I am writing in hot haste to catch the post, so can give you no clear idea, I fear, of the great day. The hotel was a nice, clean, reasonable place, with a landlord and servants really civil, and we enjoyed our excursion more than I can tell you.
Next day we came on to Baltimore, drove as usual in the beautiful park and about the town in a carriage sent for us by some patriotic citizen, dined at the Union Club, to which they gave us theentrée, and came on to Washington.
You ask whether I read our papers and the news from Europe. No, except just so far as to keep abreast of the bare facts. You know how I hate details of battlefields, and that I have never got over my intense dislike to the glowing and semi-scientific descriptions of “our own correspondents,” sitting down in the midst of dying and agonised men to do their penny or guinea a line. The dry report of a general or staff officer, whose sad duty it is to be there, I follow with the deepest interest, and recognise a battlefield as one of the very noblest places from which a true man may make a “bee-line track” to heaven. The noblest death in our times was Robert Shaw’s at the attack on Fort Wagner, at the head of his niggers, under whom he was buried; but, for all that, war and its details are a ghastly and horrible evil, which the faith of our Master is going yet to root out of this silly old world, and which none of His servants should touch unless it is the clear path of supreme duty.
I pity the poor French, utterly unmanned as they seem to be by this nineteen years of the rule of Mammon, and heartily wish they could find their manhood again, though I see no glimmer of it yet. Trochu seems a fine fellow, and I can’t help believing that many of my acquaintance and the members of the Paris associations, will be found ready to die like men on the walls of the city if they get a chance. By the way, where is N———? I wonder if he has gone back? If so, there is another brave and true man in Paris, and perhaps ten may save it. But I must be getting back to my journal or I shall be dropping stitches. If I don’t forget, my last brought you with us to Willard’s Hotel, Washington, a great three-hundred-roomed hotel, mixed, if not of Southern proclivities during the war, before the door of which more than one duel was fought in those searching times. At breakfast we found ourselves next the Wards, father and son, G. B———‘s friends, to whom I had given some letters. I found they had been even farther west than we; in fact, up to Denver City, in the bosom of the Rocky Mountains, and had also managed to get into four or five Southern states; but they had done it at the sacrifice not only of comfort but of the chance of seeing the home-life of the Americans, and I value the latter infinitely higher than mere sight-seeing, so do not regret the least that we didn’t get through the extra 1500 miles, which at the cost of five days’ more travel would have let us see the Rocky Mountains and shoot at buffaloes.
We went after breakfast to leave some of my letters, and over the White House, a fine residence of white marble splendidly situated some one and a half miles from the Capitol, with which it is connected by Pennsylvania avenue, wider than Portland Place. I shall keep the details till we meet; the house is as big as the Mansion House I should say, and not very unlike it. Luckily, soon after we got outside we were recognised (at least I was) in the street by Blackie, who was over in England with the Harvard crew. He is in the attorney-general’s office, and consequently has the run of all the public apartments, and he took us in hand and lionised us splendidly. The Capitol Patent Office and Treasury I shall bring you photographs of, and describe at leisure in our winter evenings. The view from the top, over the city and Maryland to the north, and across the Potomac over Virginia to the south, is as fine as any I ever saw, General Lee’s house at Arlington Heights, now a national cemetery, being the most conspicuous point in the southern view. The thing that struck one most was the staff of women, mostly young and many pretty, serving in the Treasury. They say there are upwards of two thousand, and that for counting, sorting, and repairing the paper currency, they are far superior to men. They earn one thousand dollars (or £200) a year on an average. Fancy the boon to the orphan girls of soldiers and sailors. One of the first we saw was the daughter of a very distinguished Colonel of Marines, who had left her quite destitute, as ladylike, pretty-looking a girl as you ever saw, and she was running over bundles of dollar notes with her fingers as fast as if she were playing the overture toSemiramidewith you on the piano. It nearly took my breath away, and yet I was assured she never made an error in counting. I wish we could get off a lot of our poor girls in some such way in Somerset House, and send a lot of our Government clerks to till the ground or hammer or do some hard, productive work.
Perhaps, however, the pleasantest part of the day was the end, when he took us off on the street-cars down to the Potomac, where we found a boating club, with their boat-house, etc., just like an Oxford or Cambridge College. There were eight or ten of them down there who received us with open arms, and in a few minutes manned a heavy eight-oared boat with room enough for me and R——— to sit in the stern, and away we went up under the long bridge, over which the armies used to cross in the war time, and saw a glorious sunset on the river, with the stars and stripes floating proudly over our stern. I enjoyed the row vastly and liked the men, who are just training for a race with the Potomac club. Boating flourishes all over the states I have been in, and they have learnt a lesson from their defeat two years ago and pull now in just as good style as our boys. Oxford and Cambridge must mind their hits, for they will have a tough job of it the next time they have to meet a crew from this side.
Next morning I called on our minister after breakfast, having heard by chance that he was in town. I am very glad I did, as I had the pleasure of hearing him praise C———, his ability, willingness, and capacity for work, in a strain which would have rejoiced the heart of poor, dear R. F——— and of the F——— family. He seems to think C——— will come back here, and desires it most earnestly. I got from him Lord Clarendon’s last despatch on the Alabama claims, which will be most useful to me in my stump in the Boston Music Hall on the 11th. It is the room and the course in which Wendell Phillips, Emerson, and all the orators and philosophers figure. I have taken for my subject, “John to Jonathan,” suggested by Lowell’s famous “Jonathan to John.” They won’t get any eloquence or oratory out of me, as you know; but I am sure I can say some things in a plain, straightforward way which will do good and help to heal wounded pride and other sorely irritating places in the over-sensitive, but simple and gallant Yankee mind. They have treated me so like a spoilt child from Boston to Omaha and back, that I know they will let me say anything and will listen to it affectionately. I really love them too well to say anything that will really hurt them, and when they see that this kind of feeling and appreciation is genuine, the more thorough John Bull you are the better they like it; that is, all the best of them, who rule the nation in the long run though not directly. When I got back from our embassy, it was just time to be starting for the train to Philadelphia, and lo! there were a dozen folk, from secretaries of state downwards, waiting to offer lodgings, dinners, excursions, lecturings, every sort of kindness in creation. It was hard work to get off, but I managed somehow to make tracks, suppressing, I fear, the fact that I was not likely to get to Washington again. The journey to Philadelphia is very interesting along the coast, though seldom within sight of the sea, but crossing huge inlets and rivers (the abode of canvas-backs) on spider bridges. We didn’t change cars at Baltimore, but were dropped by our engine in the outskirts of the town. Six fine horses in a string were then hitched on to each long car, and away we went through the crowded streets along the tramway rails, our driver, or rather, conductor, for he had no reins, blowing his horn loudly to warn all good people, and shouting to the train of horses who trotted along by instinct between the rails. How we missed fifty collisions I can’t conceive; at last we had one—crash into a confusion of carts and drays, driven by shouting negroes who had got them all into a hopeless jam as we bore down on them. Bang we went into the nearest; I saw the comical, scared look of the grisly old Sambo who was driving, as he was shot from his seat, but no harm was done except knocking off our own step, and as we shot past I saw his face light up into a broad grin as he sat on the bottom of his cart. We had cleared him right away from his dead-lock with two other vehicles, and he went on his way delighted. At Philadelphia we found our kindest of hosts, Field, waiting supper for us in his delightful house, where he is living for a few days’ business as a bachelor. Quiet evening, with talk till eleven o’clock on all manner of places, people, and things, mostly English. Lippincott, the great American publisher, and Rosengarten to breakfast, then a visit from Morrison’s friend Welsh, reproachful that we had not occupied his house, and full of interesting stories of the Indian commission, of which he is the moving spirit. Then more schools, workmen’s houses, etc., with Rosengarten, and a drive in the park, five miles long on both sides of the river Schuylkill (as broad as the Thames at Putney), and with views combining Richmond Hill and Oxford. The Central Park is nothing to it, or any other I ever saw on heard of. The Quaker city of white marble and red brick fascinated me more and more. A most interesting dinner at Dr. Mitchell’s, a scientific man—talk of the war, prairie stories, Yankee stories, wonderful old Madeira and excellent cigars. This morning, after seeing Lippincott’s store, and a most interesting talk with Sheridan’s adjutant-general on the last campaigns (he came to breakfast), we literally tore ourselves away from Philadelphia and came on here to this splendid, great, empty house, to be received most hospitably by Maria, the big, handsome, good-natured Irishwoman in charge.
Everything is getting so crowded with me that I have hardly time to turn round. All sorts of kind friends urging me to stop just for one day here or there, a few hundred miles making no difference with them, hundreds (almost) of applications for lectures or addresses, and the engagements already made driving me nearly wild to know how I am to get through with them. I shall never get my journal straight. Where was I? With dear old Peter Cooper, the simplest, most utterly guileless of old men who ever made a big fortune in this world or any other, I should think. That I remember, but can’t the least get further. Nothing, however, very particular happened, except that I was again caught and had to speak a few words to the Normal Training School of New York, consisting of nine hundred girls. I managed to get out of going with the beautiful Miss P——— to her school, but thought I should be safe in going with the dear old gentleman to the Normal School to be present at the morning service. We were of course on the dais, and Mr. Cooper, after the singing of a hymn, read a chapter of the Bible, then another hymn, and then, instead of the adjournment to their classes at once, as I had expected, I was called upon. You must imagine what I said, for I really don’t remember. Then I was photographed alone, and with Mr. Cooper. I enclose a proof of the latter which, I hope, will not quite fade on the way. They tell me the prints will be very good, and I hope to have several to bring home. We left on Wednesday by the afternoon boat to Fall River, the finest boat in the States, the great cabin of which I shall bring you a photograph, all the family grouped round the door breaking one down with their kindness. I slept as usual famously on board theBristol,and waked at Fall River about three, and so on by rail to Boston, and by car up here, where I feel quite at home. Miss Mabel appeared at breakfast, and produced her photographs made at the time of our last visit with great triumph. They are excellent, and I shall bring you lots of them. At eleven was the Harvard memorial ceremony on the laying of the corner-stone of the hall they are building in honour of the members who died in the war. I walked in with Mr A——— and heard a good account of his wife and family. They want me to go out there for a quiet day or two, but, I fear, it is quite impossible. Two of his sons, the Colonel, and our friend Henry, who is just named as one of the lecturers, were there also, and Emerson, Dana, and a number of old and new friends. The ceremony was very simple, Luther’s hymn, a shortextemporeprayer, a report, and two addresses, and the benediction, and then we just broke up and left the great tent as we pleased. The point of greatest interest was, of course, the gathering of some seventy or eighty of those who had been in the army, almost all in their old uniforms, and many of them carrying the marks of war about them too plainly. Colonel Holmes amongst them as nice as ever, and young F——— and General M———, with half a dozen other generals.
Lunch afterwards at a very quaint and attractive little club founded in 1792, and recruited by a few of the best fellows in each year, like the Apostles at our Cambridge. Longfellow and our friend Field came to dine here, and the poet was fascinating, full of his English doings, and genial and modest as a big man should be. To-day I have been preparing for my lecture, “John to Jonathan,” which comes off next Tuesday, as to which I am considerably anxious, as it is exceedingly difficult to get a line which will have the healing effect I intend. Let us hope for the best. I go for Sunday to Lowell’s brother’s school, twenty miles away. On Monday evening I meet the Harvard undergraduates, and on Wednesday spend the day with Emerson at Concord. On Thursday I hope to get away, but where? All our plans are changing. We now propose, if it can be so arranged, to go first to Montreal for two or three days to pick up our things, returning to Ithaca to Goldwin Smith for a long day about the 18th, and so to New York, from which we should sail about the 22nd. You will, I daresay, be glad that we don’t go from Quebec; but I don’t believe there is the least more danger at this time of year by this route than any other. All I have resolved on is, that nothing shall keep me beyond my time.
We have had a very charming visit to this little village, twenty miles from Boston, in which is established a Church of England boarding-school, modelled as nearly as possible on our public school system, and intended to do for American boys precisely what Eton, Rugby, etc., do for ours. I am not sure that such schools are wanted here.
Were I living here I should certainly try the public schools first for my boys. But they say that the teaching there is too forcing in the earlier stages, and afterwards not liberal enough in the direction of “the humanities,” so that the boys get trained more into competitive money-making machines than into thinking cultivated men. There is a very considerable demand at any rate for this kind of school, as this is only one of several in New England. There is an objection too amongst New England mothers. I find that the high schools (as I ought to call them, and not public schools) being open to every one, a large class of Irish and other recent arrivals go there whose manners and language make them dangerous class-mates for their own children. At any rate, St. Mark’s school is a successful fact, and seeing how fast they go ahead here I shouldn’t be astonished to hear that in a few years it is as big as Rugby. Dr. Lowell is the principal, and a first-rate one, a High Church of England clergyman, not a ritualist. The school is founded as a denominational one, with a little chancel, which opens from the end of the big schoolroom, and in which the doctor, in his robes, reads our prayers morning and evening to the boys. He and his family live entirely with the boys, taking all their meals in the hall, and there is no fagging, the monitors having no power or responsibility, except just to keep order in the schoolroom at certain hours. They have a monthly reception of the friends from the neighbourhood, which took place on Saturday evening. All the boys were there, and handed round ices, cakes, and tea to some thirty ladies and gentlemen who came in, including several of the trustees, a judge whom I had met in England, a neighbouring squire (Boston merchant by profession), who is farming largely down there, reclaiming the stony lands and getting up a most beautiful herd of cattle. Of course I had to “address a few words” to them, all which they took most kindly. On Sunday we had two Church of England services in the pretty parish church, a copy of one in England, the plans of which the Squire, Bartlett, had brought over. We dined in the middle of the day at his house, which would be a good squire’s house at home. The family were very nice—a sweet, pretty wife, a strapping great eldest son now at Harvard, and good in all ways. He is bent on going out West as soon as he is through college, and, as a preparation, hired himself out to a farmer this summer vacation, earned ten dollars a week for some two months at hoeing and other hard work, and then had a sporting run to Canada. Two more big sons and any number of younger children. The house was tastefully furnished with some really good pictures, and altogether it was as nice a home as I have seen here. On Monday we got back to dear Elmwood, and I went hard at work on my lecture. Newspaper men came buzzing about all day and seizing my MS. as I got through with it. Also came up Julian H———, one of the Chartist prisoners of 1848. I had known him in the socialist times, and I had always a respect and liking for him, but he had quite slipped out of sight for some eighteen years. His errand touched me. He reminded me (which I had entirely forgotten) that he had applied to Lord R——— in 1851 for a loan of £20 which had been advanced to him through me. He told the long story of his life since, full of interest; I must keep it till we meet. At last he landed in the Massachussets state house, where he is a Government clerk, on a small salary for this country, but out of it he has saved a few hundred dollars, and the object of his visit was to say that he was now anxious to pay his old debt with many hearty thanks to Lord R———. Would I settle whether he should pay for interest, and he would go and draw it out and send it by me? I said I couldn’t say whether our friend would take interest, or at what rate, but promised to let him know when I got back, so that he can remit the exact amount to London. Even he has never taken up his citizenship here, but remains an Englishman, and means at any rate to come back and die in the old country. In the evening we went down to a gathering of all the Harvard students who had petitioned me to come and talk to them. They were gathered some five hundred strong in the Massachusetts Hall, and a finer and manlier set of boys I have never seen. I talked to them on Muscular Christianity and its proper limits, as they are likely to run into professional athletics like our boys at home. Told them they lived in a land which had “struck ile” and was so overflowing with wealth that every one was hasting to get rich too quick. Exhorted to patience and thoroughness; read to them Lowell’s “Hebe” (you remember the little gem of a poem); told them they ought to take more part in public affairs than their class usually do. All which they swallowed devoutly, and cheered vehemently, like good boys, and then sang a lot of their college songs: “Marching through Georgia” splendid, the rest much like our own. The war has given a magnificent lift to all the young men and boys of this country, and I think the rising generation will put America in a very different place from that which she holds now. Last night I gave my lecture in the Music Hall, which was crammed, and the whole affair a brilliant success. “John to Jonathan” is printed verbatim in the morning newspapers, so you will probably see it before I get back, and I think like it. No more time for the moment.
Imissed the last mail through stress of work, chiefly on my lecture, which I mentioned in my last. The applications for lectures were so numerous and urgent that I really felt that I ought not to leave the country without giving one at any rate, and all my friends said that the Music Hall at Boston was the place if I only spoke once. It is the largest room in New England, holds nearly three thousand people, is easy to speak in, though it has great deep galleries running round three sides, and in it all the big folk talk and lecture, Wendell Phillips and Sumner follow me, so you see the class of thing at once. Well, as I was in for it much against my will, I was determined to talk out with the whole Yankee nation the controversy which. I had been carrying on already with many of them in private. I was anxious not to leave them with any false impressions, and to let them see clearly that in our national differences I think that we have a very good case, and that even if I didn’t think so, I am too good a John Bull not to stand by my own country. Lowell agreed as to the title and object, but I think had serious misgivings as to how the affair might turn out. Mundella thought it very risky and so did most other folk. However, as you know, I don’t care a straw for applause, and do care about speaking my own mind, so whether it made me unpopular or not I determined to have my say. In order that I might say nothing on the spur of the moment, I wrote out the whole address carefully, and I am very glad I did, as the reporters all copied from my MS., and consequently I was thoroughly well reported. TheTribune and Boston Advertiserprinted it in full, and I will bring you home copies. I was a little nervous myself when I got to the hall. Two ex-Governors and the present Governor of the State were on the platform, the two Senators (Sumner and Wilson), Longfellow, Judge Hoare, Dana, Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips, Lowell, and, in short, pretty nearly all the Boston big wigs. The great organ played “God save the Queen” as I came in, and the audience, generally, I am told, a very undemonstrative one, cheered heartily. My nervousness, however, wore off at once, when I got on my legs. I found that my voice filled the hall easily, and so was at my ease and got through just within the hour, without once losing the attention of the audience for a minute. They were indeed wonderfully sympathetic and hearty, and gave me three rounds of cheers at the end, far more warmly than at the beginning. Every one came and said that it was a great success; that they had never heard our side fairly stated before; that this and that fact were quite new to them, etc. In fact, if I didn’t know how soon the reaction comes in such cases, I should think I had done some good work towards a better understanding between the nations, and, as it is, I am sure I have done no harm, and have at any rate made my own position perfectly clear, and shown them that in the event of a quarrel, they can’t reckon upon me for any kind of sympathy or aid. After the lecture whom should I meet as I went out but Craft, the negro who had been the cause of one of the most exciting meetings ever held in that hall some twenty years before, when the attempt was made to seize him and his wife in Boston. I was delighted to see him and to hear a capital account of his experiment at association in Georgia. Then I went to Field’s, the publisher, to supper, where were Longfellow, Holmes, Dana, and others, and so home by the last car, thankful that it was all well over. Next morning I got a cheque for 250 dollars (£50). I had, of course, never said a word about any payment, so it was an agreeable surprise. The post brought me I know not how many letters, begging me to lecture in a dozen states on my own terms, so when all trades fail, I can come over here and earn a good living easily enough, which is a consolation. Wednesday, our last whole day with the dear Lowells, I spent peaceably. Went to his lecture in the University on Arthurian legends; Miss Mabel photographed the house and us in groups, and we talked and loafed. In the evening a supper at the house of one of the professors, to meet the whole staff, and a pleasanter or abler set of men I have never come across. Thursday, lunch with Longfellow after packing, then a run down on the car to Boston, to change my cheque, to take a berth on a packet, so as to be armed against any appeals for another day or two in New York, and to get a last look at the favourite points in the old Puritan capital, the place where I should certainly settle if I ever had to leave England. We drove a rather sad party to Mrs. Lowell’s sister, and the mother of the beautiful boy whose photograph we have, and who was killed early in the war, to tea, and from her house went to the station and took sleeping-car for Syracuse. I cannot tell you how I like Lowell and all his belongings. It is a dangerous thing to make acquaintance in the flesh with one with whose writings one is so familiar, but he has quite come up to my idea of him, and his wife and Miss Mabel are both very charming in their own ways. I slept well, woke at Albany, breakfasted, and then on to Syracuse, where Mr. Wansey, Mrs. Hamilton’s uncle, lives. We got there at two, and I was immediately seized at the station by Wilkinson, the local banker, whom I had just met at Ned’s this summer. He drove us all through and round the most characteristic town in America. Great broad streets lined with lovely maple trees, all turned now to clouds of scarlet and gold; down the principal one the railway runs without any fence. Old Mr. Wansey and others came to dine, he a dear old man of eighty, but hale and handsome, rather like my dear old grandfather’s picture, the rest pleasant country folk. We played billiards, and told stories after dinner, and had a decidedly good time till nearly midnight. The next morning we breakfasted with Mr. White, the President of this new University, and came on here with him. He is a young man of about thirty-five, and one of the finest scholars America has to boast of at present. By the way, he was a classmate of Smalley at Yale. He is a rich man, and he has nothing whatever to gain by undertaking this work. In short, he is quite worthy of having Goldwin Smith as a fellow-worker, and between them, with the excellent staff of professors and teachers they have got round them, I expect they will make this place in a wondrous short time a great working-men’s college. Everything is of course rough at present, as the buildings are still in progress, but two blocks are completed, and there are about seven hundred pupils living in them and in the town at the bottom of the hill on which Cornell stands. It is a most magnificent situation, looking over a large lake, forty miles long, and two splendid valleys, which are now ablaze with the crimson and purple colours of the maples, shumachs, American walnuts, and other trees, which make the hillsides here glow all the later autumn through. We found Goldwin Smith waiting for us at the wharf and looking much stronger than he used to do in England, and quite warm in his welcome. All the professors, with their wives and families, if married, live for the present in a huge square block of buildings originally intended for a hydropathic establishment, in which they have a private sitting-room and bedrooms and dine and take all meals in the hall. You may fancy how much I am interested in this great practical step towards association.