It is some years since I addressed you last over this signature—indeed I should doubt if five per cent of your present readers will remember the “harvests” of a quiet (ought I to say “lazy” rather than “quiet”?) eye, which I was wont in those days, by your connivance, to submit to them in vacation times. Somehow to-day the old instinct has come back on me, possibly because I happen to be on an errand which should be of no small interest to us English just now; possibly because the last days of an Atlantic crossing seem to be so naturally provocative of the instinct for gossiping, that one is not satisfied with the abundant opportunities one gets on board the vessel in which one is a luxurious prisoner for ten days.
We have been going day and night since we left Queenstown harbour at an average rate of 18 (land) miles an hour. We are more than 1300 passengers (roughly 200 saloon, and the rest steerage), whose baggage, when added to the large cargo of dry goods we are carrying, sinks our beautiful craft till she draws 24 feet of water. She herself is more than 150 yards long, and weighs as she passes Sandy Hook,—well, I am fairly unable to calculate what she weighs, but as much, at any rate, as half a dozen luggage-trains on shore. We have had our last, or the captain’s dinner, at which fish, to all appearance as fresh as if the sailors had just caught them over the side, and lettuces, as crisp as if the steward had a nursery garden down below, have been served as part of a dinner which would have done no discredit to a first-class hotel; beginning with two sorts of soup, and ending with two sorts of ices. Similar dinners, with other meals to match—four solid ones in the twenty-four hours, besides odds and ends—have been served day by day, without a hitch, in a cabin kept as sweet as Atlantic air, constantly pumped into it by the engine, can make it.
By the way, sir, I may remark here, in connection with our feeding, that if we might be taken as average specimens of our race, there is no ground whatever for anxiety as to the Anglo-Saxon digestion, of which some disagreeable philosophers have spoken with disrespect and foreboding in recent years. There were, perhaps, ten persons whose native tongue was not English, and yet we carried our four solid meals a day with resolution bordering on the heroic. The racks were never on the tables, and we had only for a few hours a swell, which thinned our ranks for two meals; and yet when I look round, and make such inquiry as I can, I can see or hear of nothing more than a very slight trace of dyspepsia here and there. The principal change I remarked in the manners and customs on the voyage was the marked increase of play and betting on board. When I first crossed, ten years ago, there was nothing more than an occasional game at whist in the saloon or smoking-room. This voyage it was not easy to get out of the way of hard play except on deck. The best corner of the smoking-room was occupied from breakfast till “Out lights” by a steady poker party, and other smaller and more casual groups played fitfully at the other tables. There were always whist and other games going on in the saloon, but of a soberer and (in a pecuniary sense) more innocent character. There were “pools” of a sovereign or a half sovereign on every event of the day, “the run” being the most exciting issue. The drawer of the winning number seldom pocketed less than £40, when it was posted on the captain’s chart at noon. I heard that play is rather favoured now than otherwise on all the lines, as a percentage is almost always paid to the funds of the Sailors’ Orphan Asylum, for which excellent charity a collection is also legitimately made during every passage. We were good supporters, and collected nearly £70 at our entertainment, which I attribute partly to the fact that we had on board a leading American actor, who most good-naturedly “turned himself loose” for us, and that the plates at the two doors were held by the daughters of an English earl, and an (late, alas!) American ambassador of great eminence. The countries could not have been more characteristically or charmingly represented, and the charity owes them its best thanks.
There was the usual mine of information and entertainment, to be struck with ease by the merest novice in conversational shaft-sinking. Why is it that folk are so much more ready to talk on an Atlantic steamer than elsewhere? I myself “struck ile,” in several directions, one of a sad kind—Scotch farmers of the highest type going out to select new homes, where there will be no factors. The most remarkable of these appeared to have made up his mind finally when he had been told that he would not be allowed a penny at the end of his lease for the addition of three rooms he was obliged to make to his house, as his family were growing up. Have landlords and factors gone mad, in face of the serious times which are on them?
There were quite an abundance of parsons, of many denominations, and all of mark. Prayers on Sunday were read by a New England Episcopalian, and the sermon preached by a Scotch Free Kirk minister. All were men of broad views, in some cases verging on Latitudinarianism to a point which rejoiced my heretic soul, e.g. a Protestant minister in a great American western city, whose church had recently been rebuilt. Looking round to find where his flock could be best housed on Sundays, pending reconstruction, he found the neighbouring synagogue by far the most convenient, and proposed to go there. His people cordially agreed, and despite the furious raging of the (so-called) religious press, into the synagogue they went for their Sunday services, stayed there six months, and when they left, were only charged for the gas by the Rabbi. An intimacy sprung up. It appeared that the Rabbi looked upon our Lord as the first of the inspired men of his nation, greater than Moses or Samuel, and in the end the two congregations met at a service conducted partly by the Rabbi and partly by my informant!—a noteworthy sign of the times, but one at which I fear many even of your readers will shake their heads.
There were some Confederate officers, ready to talk without bitterness of the war, and I was very glad to improve the occasion, having never had the chance of a look from that side the curtain. Anything more grim and humorous than the picture of Southern society during those awful four years I never hope to meet with. The entire want of regular medicines, especially bark, was their greatest trouble in his eyes. In his brigade their remedy for “the shakes” came to be a plaster of raw turpentine, just drawn from the pine woods, laid on down the back. Some one suggested that pills were very portable, and easily imported. “Pills!” he said scornfully; “pills, sir, were as scarce in our brigade as the grace of God in a grog shop at midnight.” Nothing so much brought out to me the horrors of civil war as his account of the perfect knowledge each side had of the plans and doings on the other. A Northern officer, he had since come to know, was leaning against a post within three yards of Jeff. Davis when he made his famous speech announcing the supersession of Joe Johnson as the general fronting Sherman. Sherman had heard it in a few hours, and was acting on the news before nightfall. The most terrible example was that of the mining of the Richmond lines. The defenders knew almost to a foot where the mines were, and when they were to be fired. Breckenbridge’s division, in which he fought, were drawn up in line to repel the attack when the earthworks went up in the air, and the assailants rushed into the great gap which had been made, and which was nearly filled, before they fell back, with the bodies of Northern soldiers. For the last two years, in almost every battle he had all he could do to hold his own against the front attack, knowing and feeling all the while that the enemy was overlapping and massing on both flanks, and that he would have to retire his regiment before they could close. And yet they held together to the last!
I pity mothers, too, down South,
Altho’ they sat amongst the scorners.
It is a curious experience, and one well worth trying, this ten days’ voyage. When you go on board at Liverpool, and look round at the first dinner, there are probably not half a dozen faces you ever saw before. By the time you walk out of the ship, bag in hand, on to the New York landing-place, there are scarcely half a dozen with» whom you have not a pleasant speaking acquaintance; while with a not inconsiderable number you feel (unless you have had singularly bad luck) as if you must have known them intimately for years, without having been aware of it. As you touch the land, the express men and hotel touts rush on you, and the spell is broken. The little society resolves itself at their touch into separate atoms, which are whirled away, without time to wish one another God-speed, into the turbulent ocean of New York life, never again to be gathered together as a society in this world, for worship, for food, or fun. “The present life of man, 0 king!” said a Saxon thane in Edwin’s Witenagemot, when they were consulting whether Augustine and his priests should be allowed to settle at Canterbury, “reminds me of one of your winter feasts where you sit with your thanes and counsellors. The hearth blazes in our midst, and a grateful heat is spread around, while storms of rain and snow are raging without. A little sparrow enters at one door and flies delighted around us, till it departs through the other. Such is the life of man, and we are as ignorant of the state which went before us as of that which will follow it. Things being so,” went on the thane, “I feel that if this new faith can give us more certainty, it deserves to be received,”—which last sentiment has, I allow, no bearing on the present subject, nor, perhaps you will say, has the rest of it. But somehow the old story came into my head so vividly as I was leaving the steamer, that I feel like tossing it on to your readers, to see what they can make of it; though I own, on looking at it again, I am not myself clear as to the interpretation, or whether I am the sparrow or the thane.
New York is more overwhelming than ever,—surely the most tremendous human mill on this planet; but I must not begin upon it at the end of a letter.
It must be many years now (how they do shut up in these latter days like a telescope) since I confided to you in these columns the joy—not unmixed with reverence—of my first interview with that worthy small person (I am sure he must be a person) the tumble-bug of the U.S.A. I looked upon him in those days as on the whole the most industrious and athletic little creature it had ever been my privilege to encounter. I am obliged now to take most of that back, for to-day I have discovered that he isn’t a circumstance to his Mexican cousin on this side the Rio Grande. At any rate, the specimens I have met with here are not only bigger, but work half as hard again, and about twice as quick. I was sitting just now in the verandah in front of this ranche cabin, waiting for the horses to be saddled-up at the corral just below, and looking lazily, now eastward over the river and the wide Texan plains beyond, fading away in the haze till the horizon looked like the Atlantic in a calm, now westward to the jagged outline of the Sierra Nevada, gleaming in the sunshine sixty miles away, when I became aware of something moving at my feet. Looking down I found that it was a tumble-bug rolling a ball of dirt he had put together, till it was at least four times as big as himself, towards the rough stony descent just beyond the verandah, at a pace which fairly staggered me. In a few seconds he was across the floor, and in amongst the stones which lay thickly over the slope beyond. Here his troubles began. First he pushed his ball backwards over a big stone, on the further side of which it fell, and he with it, headlong—no, not headlong, stern foremost—some five inches, rolling over one another twice at the bottom. But he never quitted hold, and began pushing away merrily again without a moment’s pause. Then he ran the ball into acul-de-sacbetween two stones, some inches high. After two or three dead heaves, which lifted the ball at least his own length up the side of the stones—and you must remember, to judge of the feat, that he was standing on his head to do it—he quitted hold, turned round, and looked at the situation. I am almost certain I saw him scratch his ear, or at least the side of his head, with his fore-claw. In a second or two he fixed on again with his hind-claws, pushed the ball out of thecul-de-sac, and continued his journey. If that bug didn’t put two and two together, by what process did he get out of thatcul-de-sac?“Cogito, ergo sum.” Was I wrong in calling him a person? Well, I won’t trouble you further with particulars of his journey, but he ran his big ball into his hole under a mesquite-bush, 19 1/2 yards from the spot on the verandah where I first noticed him, in eleven minutes and a few seconds by my watch. I made a calculation before mounting that, comparing my bug with an average Mexican, five feet eight inches high, and weighing ten stone, the ball of dirt would be at least equal to a bale of cotton, eight feet in diameter, and weighing half a ton, which the man would have to push or carry 2 1/2 miles in eleven minutes, to equal the feat of his tiny fellow-citizen. In the depressed condition of Mexico, might not this enormous bug-power be utilised somehow for the benefit of the Republic?
I had barely finished my ciphering when I was called to horse, and in a few minutes was riding across a vast plain, nearly bare of grass in this drought, but dotted with mesquite-bushes, prickly pear, and other scrub, so that the general effect was still green. The riding was rough, as much loose stone lay about, and badgers’, “Jack Rabbits’” and other creatures’ holes abounded; but the small Mexican horse I rode was perfectly sure-footed, and I ambled along, swelling with pride at my quaint saddle, with pummel some eight inches high, and depending lasso, showing that for the time I was free of the honourable fraternity of “gentlemen cow-punchers.” Besides myself, our party consisted of the two ranche-men—an Englishman and an American, aged about thirty, old comrades on long drives 1000 miles away to the North, but now anchored on this glorious ranche on the Bio Grande—and a cowboy. The Englishman’s yellow hair was cropped close to his head, and his fair skin was burnt as red, I suppose, as skin will burn; the Marylander’s black hair was as closely cropped, and his skin burnt an equally deep brown. The cowboy, an English lad of about twenty, reconciled the two types, having managed to get his skin tanned a deep red, relieved by large dark brown freckles, from the midst of which his great blue eyes shone out in comical contrast. I fear—
The very mother that him bare,
She had not known her child.
They were all attired alike, in broad felt sombreros, blue shirts, and trousers thrust into boots reaching to the knees. Each had his lasso at pummel, and between them they carried a rifle, frying-pan, coffee-pot, big loaf, and forequarter of a porker—for we were out for a long day. A more picturesque or efficient-looking group it would be hard to find. I must resist the temptation of telling all we did or saw, and come at once to our ride home shortly before sunset. The ranche-men and I were abreast, and the cowboy a few yards behind, when we came across a bunch of cattle, conspicuous amongst which strode along a stalwart yearling bull calf, whose shining brindle hide and jaunty air showed that he, at least, was not suffering from the scanty food which the drought has left for the herds on these wide plains. He was already as big as his poor raw-boned mother, who went along painfully picking at every shrub and tuft in her path, to provide his evening meal at her own expense. Now these dude calves (who insist on living on their parents, and will do nothing for their own livelihood) can only be cured by the insertion of a horse-ring in the upper lip, so that they cannot turn it up to take hold of the maternal udder, and it is often in bad times a matter of life or death to the cows to get them ringed. After a conference of a few seconds, the Marylander shifted the rifle to the saddle of the Englishman (already ornamented with the frying-pan and the coffee-pot), and calling to the cowboy, dashed off for the bunch of cattle. Next moment the cowboy shot past us at full speed, gathering up his lasso as he went; the bull-calf was “cut out” of the bunch as if by magic, and went straight away through mesquite-brush and prickly pears, at a pace which kept his pursuers at their utmost stretch not to lose ground. It was all they could do to hold it, never for a full mile getting within lasso-reach of Boliborus, the ranche-man following like fate, upright from shoulder to toe (they ride with very long stirrups), bridle hand low, and right hand swinging the lasso slowly round his head, awaiting his chance for a throw; the cowboy close on his flank; ranche-man number two clattering along, pot, kettle, and rifle “soaring and singing” round his knees, but availing himself of every turn in the chase, so as to keep within thirty or forty yards. I, a bad fourth, but near enough to see the whole and share the excitement (if, indeed, I hadn’t it all to myself, the sport being to the rest a part of the daily round). The crisis came just at the foot of a mound, up which Boliborus had gained some yards, but in the descent had slackened his pace and the pursuers were on him. The lasso flew from the raised hand, and was round his neck, a dexterous twist brought the rope across his forelegs, and next moment he was over on his side half, throttled. I was up in some five seconds, during which his lassoer had him by the horns, ranche-man number two was prone with all his weight upon his shoulders, and the cowboy on his hind quarters, catching at his tail with his left hand. That bull calf’s struggle to rise was as superb as Bertram Risingham’s inRokeby, and as futile; for the cowboy had caught his tail and passed it between his hind legs, and by pulling hard kept one leg brandishing aimlessly in the air, while the weight of the ranche-men subdued his forequarters. The ring was passed through his upper lip, and the lasso was off his neck in a few seconds more, and the ranche-men turned to mount, saying to the cowboy, “Just hold on a minute.” The cowboy passed the tail back between the hind legs, grasped the end firmly, and stood expectant. Boliborus lay quiet for a second or two, and then bounded to his feet, glaring round in rage and pain to choose which, of his foes to go for, when he became aware of something wrong behind, and looking round, realised the state of the case. Down went his head, and round he went with a rush for his own tail end, but the tail and boy were equal to the occasion, and the latter still holding on tight by the former, sent back a defiant kick at the end of each rush, which, however, never got within two feet of the bull’s nose, and could be only looked upon as a proper defiance. Then Boliborus tried stealing round to take his tail by surprise, but all to as little purpose, when the ranche-men, who were now both mounted, to end the farce, rode round in front of the beast, caught his eye, and cried, “Let go.” Whisking his freed tail in the air he made a rush, but only a half-hearted one, at the nearest, who just wheeled his horse, and as he passed administered a contemptuous thwack over his loins with a lasso. Boliborus now stood looking down his nose at the appendant ring, revolving his next move, with so comic an expression that I burst into a roar of laughter, in which the rest joined out of courtesy. This was too much for him, as ridicule proves for so many two-legged calves, so he tossed his head in the air, gave a flirt with his heels, and trotted off after his mother, a sadder, and let us hope, wiser bull-calf; in any case, a ringed one, and bound in future to get his own living.
On my ride home my mind was much occupied by that cowboy, who rode along by me—telling how he had been readingGulliver’s Travelsagain (amongst other things), found it wasn’t a mere boy’s book, and wanted to get a Life of Swift—in his battered old outfit, for which no Jew in Rag-Fair would give him five shillings. The last time I had seen him, two years ago, he had just left Hallebury, a bit of a dandy, with very tight clothes, and so stiff a white collar on, that on his arrival he had been nicknamed “the Parson.”
At home he might by this time be just through responsions by the help of cribs and manuals, having contracted in the process a rooted distaste for classical literature. Possibly he might have pulled in his college boat, and won a plated cup at lawn tennis, and all this at the cost of, say, £250 a year. As it is, besides costing nothing, he can cook a spare-rib of pork to a turn on a forked stick, hold a bull-calf by the tail, and is voluntarily wrestling (not without certain glimmerings of light) withSartor Resartus. Which career for choice? How say you, Mr. Editor?
Amug-wump! I should like to ask you, sir—not as Editor, not even as English gentleman, but simply as vertebrate animal—what you would do if a stranger were all of a sudden to call your intimate friends “mug-wumps,” not obscurely hinting that you yourself laboured under whatever imputation that term may convey? I don’t know what the effect might have been in my own case, but that the story of O’Connell, as a boy, shutting up the voluble old Dublin applewoman by calling her a “parallelopiped,” rushed into my head, and set me off laughing. I haven’t been able to learn more of the etymology of the word than that it is said over here to have been first used in a sermon (?) by Mr. Ward Beecher, and now denotes “bolters” or “scratchers,” as they were called last autumn, or in other words, the Independents, who broke away from the party machine of Republicanism and carried Cleveland. More power to the “mug-wump’s” elbow, say I; and I only wish we may catch the “mugwumps,” “mug-wumpism,” or whatever the name for the disease may be, in England before long. One of the groups on the deck of the liner, amongst whom I first heard the phrase, was a good specimen of the machine-politician, a democrat of the Tammany Hall type. “You bet” I stuck to him till I got at his candid account of the campaign of last autumn, most interesting to me, but I fear not so to the general English reader, so I will only give you his concluding sentence:—“Well,” with a long suck at the big cigar he was half-eating, half-smoking, “I tell you it was about the thinnest ice you ever saw before we were over,—but,I got to land!” From what I heard on board and since, I believe the President is doing splendidly; witness his peremptory order for the great ranche-men to clear out of the Reserves which they had leased from the Indians, and fenced to the extent of some millions of acres; the righteousness of which presidential action is proved (were proof needed) by the threatened resistance of General B. Butler, one of the largest lessees. I can see too clearly looming up a determined opposition to the President’s Civil Service reform from politicians of both parties, mainly on the ground that he is “establishing a class” in these U.S.—a policy which “the Fathers” abhorred and guarded against, and which their only legitimate heirs, the machine politicians, will fight to the death. You may gauge the worth of this opposition by contrasting their two principal arguments—(1) Nine-tenths of the work of the Departments (Post Office, Customs, etc.) can be learnt just as well in three months as in ten years; and (2) the other tenth, requiring skilled and experienced officers, has never been interfered with by either side. But, if argument two is sound,cadit quostio, as there isex hypothesialready a permanent class of civil servants, I conclude that were I an American I would accept “mug-wump” as a title of honour instead of resenting it, and help to get up a “Mug-wump” club in every great city.
We had a splendid crossing, deck crowded all the way, and the company gloriously cosmopolitan and communicative during the short intervals between the orthodox four full meals a day. There is surely no place in the world where that universal instinct, the desire to get behind the scenes of one’s neighbours’ lives, is so easily and abundantly gratified. Here is one of my rather odd discoveries. On reaching the deck, after my bath on the first morning, for the tramp before breakfast, I was joined by a fine specimen of an old Yorkshireman. It seems we had met years ago, at some political or social gathering, and as he looked in superb health and fit to fight for his life, I congratulated. Yes, he said, it was all owing to his having discovered how to pass his holiday. He used to go to some northern seaside place, one as bad as the other, for “whenever the wind blew on shore you might as well be living in a sewer.” So he saved enough one year to buy a return-ticket on a Cunard liner, calculating that whatever way the wind blew he must be getting sea-air all the time. He has done it every year since, having found that besides sea-air he gets better food and company than he could ever command at home. My next “find” was a pleasant soldierly-looking man who called to me from the upper deck to come up and see a sword-fish chasing a whale. Alas! I arrived too late. The uncivil brutes had both disappeared by the time I got up; but I was much consoled by the talk which ensued with my new acquaintance. He was a Lieutenant of Marines in the Admiral’s flag-ship off Palermo in King Bomba’s last days, and was sent ashore to arrest and bring on board all sailors found with the Garibaldini. He seems to have found it necessary to be present himself at the battle of Metazzo (I think that was the name) and at the storming of the town afterwards, in which the Garibaldini suffered severely. The dead were all laid out before the gate after the town was taken, and he counted no less than seventy bluejackets amongst them! They used to drop over the sides of the ships and swim ashore, or smuggle themselves into the bum-boats which came off to the fleet with provisions. No wonder that we have been popular in Italy ever since.
Then, attracted by a crowd on the fore part of the deck, roped off to divide steerage from saloon passengers, I became one of a motley group assisting at a sort of moral “free-and-easy,” got up for the 300 steerage folk by two ecclesiastics, whom I took at first for Romish priests from their costume. I found I was mistaken, and that they were the Principal and a Brother of “the Fraternity of the Iron Cross,” an order of the American Episcopal Church, which, it seems, has taken root in several of the large cities. The Brethren are vowed to “poverty, purity, and temperance” (or obedience, I am not sure which); and these two were crossing in the steerage to comfort and help the poor folk there—no pleasant task, even in so airy a ship and such fine weather. One can imagine what power this kind of fellowship must give the Iron Cross Brethren with their rather sad fellow-passengers, to whom they could say—one of them, indeed, did say it—“We are just as poor as the poorest of you, for we own no property of any kind, and never can own any till our deaths.” This Brother (a strapping young fellow of twenty-five, who I found had been an athlete at Oxford) waxed eloquent to them on his experiences in Philadelphia, especially on the working-men Brethren there. One of these, a big, rough chap, with a badly broken nose, he had rather looked askance at, first, till he found that the broken nose had been earned in a rough-and-tumble fight with a fellow who was ill-using a woman. Now they were the closest friends, and he looked on the broken nose as more honourable than the Victoria Cross, and hoped none of the men there would fail to go in for that decoration if they ever got the same chance.
In melancholy contrast to the Iron Cross Brethren were two other diligent workers in quite another kind of business. They haunted the smoking-room from breakfast till “lights out,” officious to help to arrange the daily sweepstakes on the ship’s run; gloating over, and piling caressingly as they rattled down on the table, the dollars and half-crowns; always on the watch and ready to take a hand at cards, just to accommodate gents with whom time hung heavily. Bagmen, they were said to be; but I doubt if they travel for any industry except plucking pigeons on their own account—unmistakable Jews of a low type, who never looked any man in the face:—
In their eyes that stealthy gleam,
Was not learned of sky or stream,
But it has the hard, cold glint
Of new dollars from the mint.
Their industry was pursued cautiously, as the fine old captain is known to hold strong views about gambling, and there was less on this ship than any other I have crossed on. No baccarat-table going all day, with excited youngsters punting their silver (gold, too, now and then) over the shoulders of the players,—only a quiet hand at euchre or poker at a corner table, in the afternoon and after dinner; but even with such straitened opportunities, youngsters may be plucked to a fairly satisfactory figure. From £10 to £20 was often at stake on one deal at poker, and, I was told, not seldom much higher sums. I saw myself one mere boy inveigled into blind-hookey for a minute or two while the poker party was gathering. He won the first cut; and two minutes later I saw “Iscariot Ingots, Esq., that highly respectable man,” looking abstractedly across the room, and dreamily gathering up a large handful of silver which the boy rattled down as he flung off to take his seat at the poker-table; and so on, and so on.
It occurs to one to ask, not without some indignation, why this sort of thing is allowed on these Atlantic steamers. My own observation confirms the general belief that professionals cross on nearly every boat; and, on every boat, there are youngsters fresh from school or college, out of leading-strings for the first time, and with considerable sums in their pockets. It is a bad scandal, and might be stopped with the greatest ease. Prohibit all cards, except whist for small points in the smoking-room; and let it be the purser’s or some other officer’s duty to see the rule enforced. As things stand, I do not know of a more dangerous place for youngsters—American or English—than an Atlantic steamer.
One never gets past Sandy Hook, I think, without some new sensation. This time, for me, it was the harbour buoys, each of which carried a brilliant electric lamp. They are lighted from the shore!
Inever come to this country without stumbling over some startling differences between our kin here and ourselves, which it puzzles me to account for. Take this last. Some days ago, I met a young Englishman from a Western ranche. He had run down some six hundred miles, from Kansas City, into which he had brought a “bunch” of steers from the ranche. As he would not be wanted again for a fortnight, he had taken the opportunity of looking in on his friends down South. In our talk the question of railway fares turned up. “Oh, yes,” he said, “the fare is $25; but I only paid $16.”
“How is that?”
“Why, I just went to the ‘ticket-scalpers’,’ right opposite the railway dépôt—here is their card (handing it to me); and, you see, my ticket is to Chatanooga; so I might go on for another hundred and fifty miles if I wanted to.” There was the business card, “Moss Brothers, ticket-brokers, opposite central dépôt, Kansas City, members of the Ticket Brokers’ Union.” It went on to say that every attention is paid to travellers, inquiries made, and information given, by these enterprising Hebrews; and on the back, a list of the towns to which they could issue tickets, including nearly every important centre in the Northern and Western States. Since then I have made inquiries at several towns, and find that the “scalper” is an institution in every one of them; and, apart from the saving of money, is much in favour with the travelling public, on account of his civility and intelligence. The ordinary railway clerk is a remarkably short-tempered and ill-informed person, out of whom you can with difficulty extract the most trifling piece of information, even as to his own line; while the despised “scalper” across the road (generally a Jew) will take any amount of trouble to find out how you can “make connections,” while furnishing you with a ticket, which he guarantees, at a third less, on the average, than his legitimate but morose rival in “the dépôt.” But the strangest thing of all is, that even the railway directors seem to think it all right; or, at any rate, that it is not worth their while to try to stop this traffic. One friend, a first-rate business man, actually said that he should have no scruple what, ever in going to the “scalpers” when off his own system, over which, of course, he is “dead-headed.” I heard several explanations of the phenomenon, the only plausible one being that it is impossible to control the enormous issues of cheap excursion tickets which are made by all the main lines. But surely, then, the question occurs, “Why impossible!” At any rate, the average Briton is inclined to think that if such establishments appeared opposite the Euston Square or Waterloo termini, they would soon hear something from Mr. Moon and Mr. Ralph Dutton not to their advantage.
I gleaned other items of information from my young friend from Kansas which may be useful to some of your readers, now that there is scarcely a family in England (so it seems to me, at least) which is not sending out one or more of its younger members to try their fortunes in the Far West. This, for instance, seems worth bearing in mind: When a young fellow comes out from home, he shouldn’t go and hire himself out at once to a farmer. If he does, he’ll find they’ll make the winter jobs for an Englishman pretty tough. He’ll get all the hardest work laid out for him, and mighty poor pay at the end. Let him go and board with a farmer. Any one will be glad to take him for a few dollars. Then he can learn all he wants, and they’ll be glad of his help, because they’ll see it’s a picnic. If you like it, you can buy and settle down. If not, you can just pull out, and go on somewhere else.
The administration of justice on the plains is still in a primitive condition. The difficulty of getting a jury of farmers together makes a gaol delivery a troublesome matter. Another youngster from Dakota illustrated this from his section. There was a turbulent member of the community who, after committing other minor offences, at last got lodged in the shanty which does office for a gaol, on the serious charge of a murderous attack on a girl who refused any longer to receive his attentions, and on her father when he came to the rescue. He had lain in gaol for some weeks, waiting for a judge and jury, when 4th July came round. The Sheriff-Constable, with all the rest of the neighbours, was bound for the nearest railway-station, some ten miles off, where the anniversary of “the glorious Fourth” was to be commemorated, with trotting marches and other diversions. He had one other prisoner in charge, and so, after weighing the matter well, and taking the length of their incarceration into account, came to the ingenious conclusion to let them out for the day, each going bail for the return of the other on the following day. On the morrow, however, it was found that the chief culprit had not turned up, and the fathers of the little community gathered in indignant council to consider what was to be done. After some debate the Sheriff-Constable gave it as his opinion that, on the whole, Dogberry’s advice was sound, and they should let him go, and thank God they were rid of a knave, “the country having spent too much already over the darned cuss.” To this thepatres conscriptiagreed, and went home to their farms. Even stranger is another well-authenticated story from one of the most active and important of the new cities in the North-West. Amongst the first settlers there was one who had dabbled in real estate, and grown with the growth of the city, until he had become “one of our principal citizens.” No one seemed to know whether he was a lawyer by profession, and he never conducted a case in Court. But one thing was quite clear, that he was intimate with all the judges, had theentréeto their private rooms, and, especially in the case of the Judges of the Supreme Court, scarcely ever failed to avail himself of this privilege when the Courts were sitting. He had a capital cook and good horses, which were always freely at the service of the representatives of justice. Gradually it began to be quietly understood, no one quite knew how, amongst suitors, that it was possible, and very desirable, to interest the gentleman in question in their cases. He was ready, it would seem, to accept a retaining-fee. His charge was fixed at a very moderate percentage on the value of the property in dispute, which nobody need pay unless they thought it worth while. Moreover, the system was one of “No cure, no pay.” He gave every one an acknowledgment in writing of the amount paid in their respective cases, with an undertaking to return the full sum in the event of their proving unsuccessful. It therefore naturally appeared to the average Western suitor about as profitable an investment as he could make. Strange to say, this queer practice seems to have gone on for years, and no shadow of suspicion ever fell on this “principal citizen,” whatever might have been the case as to his friends the judges. The strong individuality and secretiveness which marks the Western character may probably account for the fact that during his life no one would seem to have taken any public notice of this peculiar industry. If a suitor was successful, he was content; if not, he got back his money, and it was nobody’s affair but his own. Well, the good man died, and was buried, and his executors, in administering his estate, were astonished to find bundles of receipts from suitors of all classes and degrees, acknowledging the repayment to them of sums varying in amount from $5 and upwards “in the case of Brown v. Jones,” “in the matter of United States v. Robinson,” “ex parteWhite,” etc. This led to further inquiry, and the facts came ~ gradually to light. The sagacious testator had, in fact, taken his percentagefrom both sidesin almost every case of any importance which had been heard in the Courts for years. He had never mentioned suit or suitor to any of the judges, his visits to them being simply for the purpose of asking them to dinner, offering them a drive, or a bed if they were on circuit away from home, or interchanging gossip as to stocks, railways, or public affairs. And so for years five honest men had been presiding in the different Courts, entirely innocent of the fact that almost every suitor was looking upon each of them as a person who had received valuable consideration for deciding in his favour. I own that my experience, though, of course, narrow, is decidedly favourable as to the ability and uprightness of the judges in out-of-the-way districts; so that nothing but what I could not but regard as quite unimpeachable evidence would have satisfied me that a whole-community of litigants should have gone on paying black-mail in this egregiously stupid manner.
I was considerably astonished, and a little troubled, to find so many of my friends among Northern Republicans—men who had gone through and borne the burden of the War of Secession—not, indeed, sympathising with the Irish, whom they dislike and distrust more than we do, but saying: “Oh, you had better let them have their own way. Look at our experience of twenty years after the war. Until we let the Southern States have their own way, and withdrew the troops, and threw over the carpetbaggers, we had no peace; and now they are just as quiet as New England.” To which, of course, I made the obvious reply: “Let the seceding States have their own way, did you? Why, I had always understood that they went out because you elected a free-soil President, pledged to oppose any further extension of their peculiar institution, and that at the end of the war that institution had not only been confined within its old limits, but had absolutely disappeared. The parallel would have held if you had said to Mr. Jefferson Davis and his backers in the spring of 1861, ‘Do what you please as to your negroes; take them where you will; it is a purely domestic matter for you to settle in your own way.’ Instead of this, you said, ‘You shall not take your slaves where you please, and you shall not go out of the Union.’ In the same way, we have to say now to the Irish, ‘You shall not do what you please with the owners of property in Ireland, and you shall not go out of the Union.’”
You will be glad to hear that, wherever I went, there seemed to be the expectation of a revival of trade in the near future. I can see no ground myself for the expectation, so long as all industry remains in its present competitive phase, and the power of production goes on increasing instead of diminishing. Why should men not desire as eagerly to take each other’s trade this next year as they did last year? But the knowing people think otherwise, and I suppose that is good for something.
It must be nearly thirty years since I first wrote to you over this signature, but never before except in long vacations, and from outlandish parts. Why not keep to a good rule? you may ask, at this crowded time of year. Well, the fact is I really want to say something as to this “Westward Ho!” gadfly, which seems to have bitten young England with a vengeance in these last months. I am startled, not to say alarmed, at the number of letters I get from the parents and guardians—generally professional men—of youngsters eagerly bent on cattle-ranches, horse-ranches, orange-groves in Florida, vineyards, peach and strawberry-raising, and I know not what other golden dreams of wealth quickly acquired in the open air, generally with plenty of wild sport thrown in. I suppose they write from some fancy that I know a good deal about such matters. That is not so; but I do know a very little about them, and may possibly do some good by publishing that little just now in your columns.
First, then, as to cattle and horse-raising on ranches. This is practically a closed business on any but a small scale, and as part of farm work. All the best ranche-grounds are in the hands of large and rich companies, or millionaires, with whom no newcomer can compete. It will, no doubt, be a valuable experience for any young man to work for a year or two on a big ranch as a cowboy; but he must be thoroughly able to trust his temper, and to rough it in many ways, or he should not try it. At the end, if prudent, he will only have been able to save a few hundred dollars. But this is not the kind of thing, so far as I see, that our youngsters at all expect or want. Orange-groves are excellent and profitable things, no doubt, and there are parts in Florida and elsewhere where there is still plenty of land fit for this purpose, though the choice spots are probably occupied. But an orange-grove will not give any return till the sixth year, cautious people say the seventh.
Vineyards may, with good luck, be giving some return in the third or fourth year; but the amount of hard work which must be put into the soil in breaking up, clearing out stumps, and ploughing, even if there is no timber to fell, is very serious; and the same may be said of peach-orchards and early, fruit and vegetable-rearing. Moreover, the choice places for such industry, such as Lookout Mountain, are for the most part occupied. In a word, though it is quite possible to do well in other industries, and in ordinary farming, nothing beyond a decent living can be earned, without at any rate as free an expenditure of brain and muscle as high farming requires at home. On the other hand, sport, except for rich ranche-men who can command waggons, horses, and men, and travel long distances for it, is not to be had generally, and apt to disappoint where it can be had.
So much for the working side of the problem. The playing side—outside whisky-shops, which I will assume the young Englishman means to keep clear of—ought also to be looked fairly in the face before the experiment is tried. Perhaps the most direct way to bring it home to inquirers will be to quote from the letter of a young English public-school boy who has lately finished his first year as a cowboy on the cattle-ranche of one of the big companies:—
Friday nightwe had quite a time. We went to an exhibition of the home talent of——, and really of all shows this was the worst I ever saw. One man, the town barber, and our greatest “society man,” played a nigger, and played it so well that one could not help fancying he has at one time been a “profesh.” The rest were so dull and such sticks that it made him shine more than ever. After the home talent, there was a “social hop,” at which Jerry and I shone as being the “bored young men.” You can, of course, see why I was bored; and Jerry, he is from Ohio, and of course——— cannot compete with Ohio. However, as Jerry was somewhat of a great man, the quadrilles being all called by him—i.e. he stood on the stage and shouted, “balance all,” “swing your partners,” “lady’s chain,” at the right time—we had to stay, and more or less to dance. Jerry took great pains to find me partners worthy of a man who had danced in a dress-coat. He did not succeed but once, when he introduced me to a very lively little school-lady, “marm,” I should say; the rest were very wooden in movement and conversation. The school-marm amused me very much. She had not long returned from the————- University, where all the young ladies, though they met the other sex at school, were not allowed to speak to them at other times. The girls were allowed to give dances, but she and three or four others thought that a “hen-pie” dance was too much of a fraud, so they contrived a plan by which they could get three or four dancing men in without going to the door. They fastened a pulley on to the beam where the bell hung, and with the aid of a clothes-basket and a rope they spoiled the “hen-pie” with two or three young men. This plan worked well several times, till one night three or four of them were exerting themselves to get a very heavy boy up, when instead of a boy they perceived the bearded face of the head-master. In horror they turned loose the rope and fled, leaving him twelve feet from the ground, hanging on by his fingers to the window-sill, from which, as no one would respond to his call for help, he finally dropped. The young lady told it much better than I have. Jerry was very popular as a “caller.” I noticed he understood his audience well, and whenever they got a figure they didn’t know, he came in with “grand chain,” which they all knew and performed very nicely; so you would see a whole set lost in the intricate feat of “visiting” (say) and all muddled up, when you would hear the grand voice of Jerry, “grand chain,” and all the dancers would smile and go to it, and Jerry was quite the boss. We however lost our reputation as good young men, as towards midnight we were overcome with a great thirst; so wicked I, a hardened sinner, persuaded the social barber to let me have half-a-pint of whisky; and J——— and I were caught in the barber’s shop, eating tinned oysters with our pocket-knives, and biscuits, and indulging in whisky-and-water. We were caught by three young men who had “got religion” last fall, and who were, of course, highly shocked; but I think they would have overcome all their scruples but for the stern mothers in the background, and they not only envied us our whisky-and-water, but also our mothers. Half the fight in drinking, I think, is to have been “raised” to look upon it as an every-day luxury, and not as a thing to be had as a great treat on the sly. Well, good-bye! I have written a lot of rubbish, but beyond that am fatter than I have ever been in America.
This will probably give readers a pretty clear notion of the social life available in the West. It is, as they will see at a glance, utterly unlike anything they have been used to. If this kind of social life (and there is something to be said for it) is what they want, in the interludes of really hard manual labour and rough board and lodging, let them start by all means, and they may do very well out West. Otherwise they had better look the thing round twice or thrice before starting. In any case, no young man ought to take more ready money with him than will just keep him from starving for about a month.
If he cannot make his hands keep him by that time, he has no business, and will do no good, in the West.