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CHAPTER I.
About a year ago I came into possession of a fortune. It was from an entirely unexpected source, and I naturally cast about for the best mode of investment. The war was bravely over, and there was no further need of private contributions to prop up public credit. Diligent investigation showed that wool-growing was a delightful and profitable occupation.
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Sheep are innocent, lambs engaging, and wool marketable. I therefore despatched my agent to Wisconsin, where he bought twenty-five sheep, at four dollars and fifty cents a head. This amounted to one hundred and twelve dollars and fifty cents. I gave him the odd half-dollar for commission, bade him put the remaining twelve dollars (I forgot to mention that the original fortune was one hundred and twenty-five dollars) into the bank against a rainy day, drive the sheep to Minnesota, and set them spinning,--by metonymy. He wrote to me soon that he had faithfully carried out all my directions; the sheep had been bought and driven home, and were in good condition. He added, however, that there was always a degree of uncertainty connected with the establishing of a family of sheep. A greater or less number generally succumbed to the severity of their first winter in a new climate. I wrote back at once that I did not expect the order of nature to be changed for my benefit, but neither did I wish to be annoyed by dead sheep dribbling through the winter. It could not be exhilarating to read, in every letter that came, "there is another sheep frozen." I therefore bade him not write any obit-
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uary notices, but wait till the sheep were all dead, and then say so.
I accordingly heard no bad news from my sheep. And some time during the following summer word came that the sheep-shearing was over, and my agent was ready with his first yearly report. It was a beautiful document. It showed that my profits were two pounds of wool to each sheep. This my agent had sold for forty-five cents a pound, making ninety cents a head, which, multiplied by twenty-five heads, made twenty-two dollars and fifty cents as a year's interest of one hundred and twelve dollars and fifty cents. I have verified this reckoning by geometry and the higher mathematics, and I believe it to be correct in every particular.
The thoughtful reader will not fail to see that twenty-two dollars and fifty cents is a sum of money not to be laughed at, and the question at once became, how to get possession of it. The United States Post-Office does not refund the property which it fails to transmit, and, considering the heavy robberies committed upon the Adams Express Company, I could not trust my treasure to its keeping. After a severe mental
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conflict I decided to go myself and fetch the money. Commentators differ as to the real motive of my journey, but this is the explanation on which the general opinion of foreign nations and the next age will finally settle.
Aware that mankind is ever athirst for knowledge, I have decided to gratify it by putting on record some of the more sagacious thoughts which naturally occur to the inquiring mind on its tour around the world. I shall not descend to the trivial details of personal experience, which are necessarily impertinent, but shall adhere strictly to such broad and philosophic views as have a national, I may say a cosmopolitan value. And I shall from time to time add moral reflections; two reasons impel me to this: mankind is fond of reading moral reflections; and I am fond of making them.
The first requisite for a long journey is to take all your best clothes. A prejudice prevails to some extent against this practice, and it is indeed some extent against this practice, and it is indeed unwise if you regard clothes solely as a means of warmth; but the noble soul lifts its wardrobe into a higher sphere, and makes it an element of character. You may in truth not need to array your-
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self in all your glory, but the consciousness that you can do it gives a peace of mind which outweighs many trunks.
Next in importance to your best clothes are two bottles of Dr. Hamlin's cholera mixture. When I say that Dr. Hamlin is an Orthodox Congregational clergyman, I need give no further reason for my recommendation; but I can from my own knowledge speak with confidence of the efficacy of his medicine. For nine weeks it travelled with us by field and flood, and not one of the party had the cholera!
A bottle of brandy makes an excellent travelling-companion if your principles and habits are good.
A box of mustard is an ounce of prevention. If your eye-teeth are as yet at an immature stage of development, you will order five bottles of potted tongue, beef, and herring,--small stone jars, each one holding, judging from your experience of meats, enough to last through two lunches. Opening them, you find them packed with salted fire, of which you can endure a morsel only by spreading it on a cracker with the tip of your fruit-knife to the last degree of imperceptibility. If
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any person is designing to provision a fleet for Arctic explorations, let him apply to the publishers of this book before purchasing elsewhere, and he will hear of something very much to his advantage.
Beguiled by pleasant memories, you will order also three dozen spiced and pickled lambs' tongues; and believe me, gentle reader, you have no conception till you see them together, how many tongues thirty-six spiced and pickled lambs have! When you reflect that these are to be carried about with you till they are eaten, you see that lambs are not the only innocents which are in a pickle, and the situation becomes appalling. But I forbear.
Let us suppose now that your various viands are snugly bestowed, and yourself fairly started on your journey. The first thing you know, your basket bounces off the car-seat, and rolls over and over down the aisle. There is a rattling of crockery, and a sudden suspicion that your whole basket has turned into a cholera mixture. You are too much ashamed to take account of stock in public, but now and then put your nose down furtively to the crack of the lid to ascertain what smell seems
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to be uppermost, and are relieved at the absence of any prevailing perfume. By the time your series of observations are conducted to a satisfactory conclusion you are in Albany, the capital of the State of New York, the seat of a Legislature remarkable in an age of general uprightness for the purity of its morals and the incorruptibility of its legislation.
Here we stop for the night. The best house in Albany is said to be the Vandal House. You are shown into a room that has not been opened since its occupant left it, and is unsavory and untidy to the last degree. An appeal to the gentlemanly clerk secures a change for the better; but there is a hole by the fireplace in Number Two that looks suspicious. You cross-examine the porter, who assures you that it has no significance whatever. A mouse in that room is an event of which history gives no record. Nevertheless, you take the precaution to stuff the hole with an old New York Herald, and are awakened at midnight by the dreadful rustling of paper. A dreadful gnawing succeeds the dreadful rustling, and away goes a boot in the direction of the sound. There is a pause broken only by heart throbs! Then
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another gnawing, followed by a boot till the supply is exhausted. Then you begin on the pillows. A longer pause gives rise to the hope that order is about to reign in Warsaw, and you are just falling asleep again, when a smart scratching close to your ear, shoots you to the other side of the room with the conviction that the mouse is running up the folds of the curtain at the head of your bed. In a frenzy you ring violently, and ask through the door for a chambermaid.
"Can't have no chambermaid this time o' night," drawls the porter sleepily.
"Then send up a mouse-trap."
"Aint no mouse-trap in the house."
"Then bring a cat!"
"Dunno nothin' about it," and he scuffs his slippered feet down the long gallery, growling audibly, poor fellow, half suspecting evidently that he is the victim of a joke; but alas! it is no joke.
You mount sentry on the foot of the bed, facing the enemy. He emerges from the curtain, runs up and down the slats of the blind in innocent glee, flaunts across the window-seat, flashing every now and then into obscurity; and this is the worst of all. When you see him he is in one place, but
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when you do not see him he is everywhere. You hold fast your umbrella, and from time to time make vigorous raps on the floor to keep him out of your immediate vicinity, and so the night wears wearily away. Your refreshing sleep turns into a campaign against a mouse, for which agreeable entertainment you pay in the morning three dollars and a half; and the gentlemanly clerk, with a pitying smile, informs you, "O, we cannot help that! There are mice all over the house!"
Moral reflection: If ever the education of a soaring human boy be intrusted to my care, I will endeavor to model his manners on those of a clerk in a hotel. For conscious superiority, tempered with benevolence and swathed in suavity; for perfect self-possession; for high-bred condescension to the ignorance and toleration of the weakness of others; for absolute equality to circumstances, and a certain grace, assurance, and flourish of bearing,--give me a clerk in a hotel. We may see generals, poets, and philosophers, indistinguishable from the common herd; but a true hotel clerk wears on his beauteous brow, and in his noble mien, the indubitable sign of greatness.
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From Albany to Niagara is a pleasant day's journey, and the Niagara mice are not quite so large, nor quite so lively, as those of Eastern New York. They do not appear till the second day. Then, resting quietly after a walk, you see a mouse creep timidly from under the bureau. You improvise a sort of pontoon bridge to the bell, out of your chairs and tables, and, as it is day-time, secure a chambermaid and superintend a mouse-hunt. She whisks about the room enthusiastically, peers under all the furniture, assuring you the while that it is four years now she has been in the house and never saw a mouse in the chambers, though she confesses to having seen them in the kitchen, and, being hard pressed, well, she has seen them in the passages; but in the chambers, no! never! and you are led to believe that, though a mouse might stand shivering on the brink of your room, he would fear to step foot over the threshold. No, there is no mouse here, not a sign of a mouse.
"No sign of a mouse, except the mouse itself," you suggest.
"Ah! but you must have been mistaken. It was a shadow. Why," (with a grand flourish
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of the valance with her right hand, and in the air with her left,) "you can see for yourself there is no mouse here,"--and she thinks she has made her point.
You look at her, debating within yourself whether it is worth while to attempt to acquaint her with the true province of negatives, the proper disposition of the burden of proof, and the sophistry of an undue assumption of the major premise, and decide that it is not.
Moral and philological reflection: We see now the reason why trunks and travelling-bags are called traps. Synecdoche: Because the mouse-traps are the most important part of your luggage.
There is said to be a very fine waterfall at Niagara, but I do not know much about it. I remember that I did hear a sort of rushing and roaring under the window.
I will now tell you a story. At Erie, a decently dressed young woman, with a pale, fragile-looking little girl entered the car, and attempted to go past a gentleman to an inside seat. He told her that seat was occuped by a person who had just stepped out. She pushed against him, still determined to enter, and he had to put up his arm to
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keep her out, but only resisting, not pushing her. Some one then told her that it was the gentleman's wife who occupied the seat. "O, if it was a lady, she begged pardon! She did not know it was a lady," and went a few steps away to take an outside seat by a young girl. The latter told her that also was engaged. "Engaged!" in a loud voice. "Who engaged it? How much did he pay for it extra?" And she flounced into it in a state of high indignation. After the cars started, the occupant of the seat came in, looked at her doubtfully, and then spoke. Her reply was not audible to the other passengers, but it evidently startled him. He glanced around upon the others, half questioning, half smiling, whispered to his young companion, and retreated, taking his stand by the door. The woman then began to laugh, in a loud, boisterous manner, and a gentleman behind her beckoned to the one whose seat she had taken, and, after consultation, removed the girl from her unpleasant proximity to the woman, and gave her his own seat. They then tried to induce the little girl to sit with her mother, but she, poor child, refused, and no one could find it in his heart to force her. Thus,
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by her evil behavior, the woman had dispossessed of their seats two men and one woman, and had secured three seats for herself. When the conductor came in she gave him a ticket to Buffalo, although she was on a Cleveland train. He told her she was on the wrong train, must get out at the next station, and wait for a Buffalo train. No, she had changed her mind, and was going back to Cleveland. Then she must pay the fare. But the fare was just what she refused to pay, proffering only her Buffalo ticket. The brakeman was ordered in at the next station, and told to take her out. She was so strong and so spirited, both literally and figuratively, that he could not do it, and the conductor had to take hold; between them both they hustled her out, the little girl crying and clinging to her, and calling, "O mamma! mamma!" Fairly off the train, and seeing herself reduced to the necessity of paying or staying, she consented to pay, and entered the car again. At a small station a little farther on she changed her mind once more, and got out. The last seen of her, as the train moved on, she was brandishing her fist, and shouting, "I've got fifty dollars in my pocket,--yes, a hundred,--
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and I'll bet the whole of it I'll have that conductor licked, the minute I get to Cleveland!"
Can anything be more sad than this? Yet the scene was not without its pleasant features. There was much good, honorable, manly feeling shown, much sympathy by those who only saw the expulsion, and not its causes. In a world where women suffer so much without pity, it is a vexatious thing to see pity lavished upon a woman who does not deserve it; but it is good to know that the warm heart is there. A party of drovers, I should think, men rough of beard and gruff of voice, shook their heads. They "hated to see a man lay hands on a woman." They "never wanted to see a woman shoved about that way, no matter what she did." A crowd was continually gathering about her; a crowd closed in around the scuffle; a crowd listened to her haranguing on the platform; but the only violent words I heard were those which came from her own lips. There was every disposition to give the woman her own way, simply because she was a woman, yet there was no disposition to interfere with the legal right of the conductor. Some, who thought the woman was put out for having taken the wrong train,
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maintained earnestly that the conductor was in the wrong. She had a right to change her mind. No matter if she did buy her ticket in the morning for Buffalo; if she wanted now to go back to Cleveland she had a right to go, and the conductor had no right to stop her.
Moral reflections: So doubly a pity is it when a woman misbehaves, pity for the wrong she does to herself, but pity a thousand times more for the wrong thus put upon those to whom she should be the embodiment of beneficence. The deference which men show to women is no mere chance, civility, custom, or compliment, however they intend it. It is instinctive, and it shows where a woman has vantage-ground to work upon humanity. When she fails to meet this outcoming reverence with a corresponding worthiness, her failure is man's loss. Gentle or vulgar, his soul is wounded in its most delicate susceptibilities, although he may not know it. The harsh blow blunts his sensibility to the soft touch. What cruel training had wrought a coarse, violent woman from a tender little girl I do not know, but I do know that the cruel training had builded worse than it knew. Beyond all its consequences
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as an intelligent act, every woman's fault is every man's misfortune.
Let me tell you another story. We are in no hurry to reach our journey's end, and if you were not reading this, the chances are you would be doing something worse.
A pleasant hotel piazza, never mind where. A sunny Indian-summer evening. Guests sitting about in careless conversation. Children playing in the yard below. A woman, the most striking of all the company, not exactly beautiful, but with a certain comeliness, an elegance of dress and demeanor, that give a far stronger sense of beauty than does beauty without them. She is sitting with that attractiveness in repose that bespeaks grace in motion, her wise, white fingers gleaming and glancing in the silken meshes of some fine, feminine work. A young man drives bravely by with a young woman at his side. A little boy, the son of the beautiful woman,--on the whole, she is beautiful,--with a boy's carelessness, lets fly his arrow straight at one of the high-spirited horses. He prances and curvets up the street, and the mother chides her boy for his heedless act. The young man, as soon as he can curb his startled
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horses, whirls them about, drives back furiously to the hotel, reins them in suddenly, and with flashing eyes and angry color begins,--"I should think some of you gentlemen,"--but he never tells his thought. Sweeps down upon him a vision of grace and grandeur; for the mother had seen him as he turned, divined the
"Thunder gathering on his brow, Lightning flashing from his eye,"
flung aside the light entanglements of her hands, rose quickly as a goddess might have risen, glided--no, swept--I have used the word before, but I know no other to express the dignity of her movement--swept down the path, and flooded and drowned his angry questioning with her full, clear, melodious voice, "Will you permit me, Sir, to apologize?" The change in the young man's feelings and demeanor was so sudden and complete, as to be almost ludicrous. He had, as he supposed, run full tilt against some evil-minded men, and found instead a beautiful woman at his feet. He had waged war, and peace smothered him with flowers. His coat of mail melted off from him and left him defenceless. He could hardly permit her to tell her story. He blushed,
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he hesitated, he apologized! and I rather think he rode away with a vague conviction that he had shot a fine woman.
There is no moral to this story. I told it because it is so pretty a picture in my memory that I like to unfold it.
All this time we have been rushing on through the interminable wild rain, and the interminable tame prairies, broad levels of marsh and field,--Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,--fertile and fair in the sunshine perhaps, but inexpressibly dismal and water-soaked now. And here is a little Western baby, who puts us all to shame with his philosophy. A handsome little fellow is he, scarcely two years old, travelling with a stranger, a man whom he has seen but for a day. Yet he left grandmother, and Kitty, and the old homestead, with only one little wail at parting, and now rides away munching his "fancy-cake" like a stoic. He plays, he chatters with his stranger friend, he lies down on the seat and sleeps, and when there is a stir among his colors and his friend says, "Waking up, Freddy?" Freddy pipes out his little "ish" cheerily, and rubs his little fist in his black eyes, and stares about content. I do not know Freddy. Such
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equanimity is suspicious. Is it suppression or destitution of feeling? Is it your good training or your defective organization? Cry a little, Freddy, shy a little, Freddy, for very shame. I am afraid there is a cold little heart under your scarlet frock, and that by and by the cold little heart will grow and grow,--out of the memory of the scarlet frock, out of the sight of bright black eyes; and somewhere there will be a bad, hard man to wife and child. But let us not take time by the forelock.
And here, in a dingy little village, in the cold, clouded early morning, comes a Western woman, driving a two-horse wagon up to the dingy little station, with a baby in her arms, and another at her side. She sits in the wagon holding the horses, while her mother, an old, gray-headed woman, climbs out over the high wheel alone. She has come in that wagon, she tells us, more than seven miles before eight o'clock, through this comfortless morning, on her weary way, a hundred miles, to visit a sick daughter; and the other daughter, whose husband is also ill, must drive home alone with her babies. They are energetic women, and I praise their energy; but I do not praise that state of things which writes its story in
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deep lines of toil and anxiety on brow, and cheek, and lip. Until it can be helped we must bear it, but we have not learned our best life so long as we have weather-beaten faces of women.
And now we thunder over the vast plain nearing the great city of the West. The blue lake, lord at once and vassal, lies tranquil and splendid at her feet. The sun comes out to do her honor, and give us a triumphant entrance. Roof and spire and dome are gilded with his shining, and she sits proudly in a state befitting her royal name. It is the city of the future, holding out welcoming hands to the wanderers of the past. It is Peace and Plenty and Prosperity, crowned on their happy shore, inviting all comers to such princely cheer as changes want into wealth, and for the silence of stagnation gives songs of a thousand-stringed lyre.
But when you get into it! Lyre indeed! The word has an ominous echo. O say my Queen, the diadem shines glorious on your brow, but woe is me for your draggled petticoats! Through slimy street after slimy street the sluggish train creeps on. The track is wellnigh buried in liquid mud. The unhappy houses are all set down all
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struggling in a huge mud-puddle. The back yards are mire, and mire oozes up to the front door. Cholera! one might pray for its advent as an angel of mercy.
Through the Slough of Despond, the train trails reluctantly into a barn, as I judge in the dull twilight of noonday. There is no discoverable waiting-room, and we cross the city at once to the Milwaukee Station, and spend the laggard hours in a state of desperate homesickness, in a desolate, comfortless, cold room. A forbidding, leaden sky, cold, fierce winds, streets heavy with mud, cars, carriages, carts, steamer and sail-craft crammed together under the station windows, all struggling and all muddy; and when the struggle becomes too severe, the very bridges begin to writhe, and the whole earth seems a-squirm. And this is Chicago, and alas! I know a girl who, besides being just married, must go to Chicago, and live all the days of her life! The longer we stay in this cheerless room, the more and more gloomy seems Chicago, and it spreads and spreads, and enshrouds the whole West. But here are the human beings that bring their own story with them. There is a pretty young Irish girl, with
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her tall, awkward, blushing bridegroom, not any more at ease for his unwonted black broadcloth and his high, stiff hat. They are both perfectly fresh, and life is full of new sensations. There is a family,--the father red-faced, sandy-haired, very ugly, deformed in one arm, defaced in one eye, and shabbily dressed,--the mother plain, and dressed with a sort of easy decency, as if she might have had finer clothes if she had chosen, but her clothes are good enough,--one bright little girl, and one baby. They have managed somehow to get at the heart of things. They are full of content. The husband and wife are absorbed in each other and in the children, without any silly or selfish demonstration of affection. The woman's position is exactly what it ought to be. She is the centre of interest, the motive power, the final cause. She constitutes the home. He is the strong wall round about, sheltering and fending. She is the fire on the hearth, warming and lighting. He takes care of the children with that wisdom that bespeaks habit and tact. He fondles the little one till it crows with delight. She looks on smiling, calm, and restful, and pleasant. He too is restful. He is at peace. They came together,
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not at first from any overpowering attachment, but both felt an inward yearning for home and care and love. Both had felt the world's rough side. Both were outwardly unattractive, and each was a little grateful as well as glad for the other's attention. They had the sense to discern each other's good qualities, and to appreciate the happiness of companionship and confidence. They learned to value each other,--yes, and to love each other, and are a thousand times happier than many who marry for love, but have not wisdom to see what love needs to keep its fires burning.
This is all theory, to be sure, but it is more true than many facts, and you might spend your time to worse account in a dismal railroad station.
There is another family group whom I fancy to be typical Western people,--father, mother, daughter, and granddaughter. They are comfortably and plainly, but not shabbily nor fashionably dressed. They are of country stock. They are not awkward, nor self-conscious, nor forward. They simply mind their own business and do not stare. (Neither do I! I am absorbed in lambs' tongues.) They are intelligent; they know what is going on in the world. They have a
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keen relish for and perception of humor, and a big tin lunchon-pail with a light cover, holding "goodies" enough to last a week,--chicken, and white bread, and pies. The grandmother is an invalid. Her pale, wasted face tells of suffering, but it is sweet, and motherly too, and it has by no means lost its shrewdness and its fun. The wife, her daughter, is tired and worn, but the fun is in her black eyes too. The father is pale and bent, but cheerful. They have had a hard life, but it has not been an unhappy one on the whole. Affection has warmed it, and a sense of the ludicrous has lighted and relieved it.
There is another old woman, with a prominent Roman nose, sharp chin, and eager, anxious eyes. The difference between the two old ladies is really striking. They are both in the same position in life; but one has character, the other has none. One is refined, the other unrefined, but nothing more,--not positively coarse, but without enough cohesion to take a polish. One would be at home and respected anywhere, the other nowhere. The latter is so full of anxiety that one pities her, and would gladly give her aid, but no aid avails. It is impossible to relieve her. Her restlessness is be-
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yond reach. She attaches herself to every one that comes in. She has, as we say in the country, a finger in every pie. I saw her first in company with the pleasant family, and supposed she belonged to them. The granddaughter came in bearing the invalid's pillow. "Here, set that down here," said the anxious old woman, with an air of being one of the family. When they lunched she drew up and lunched with them, but from her own bag. Of all that came in she asked the same question, in a harsh, dull, monotonous voice,--"You going to Milwaukee?" Generally she queried further, if they knew what cars they were going to take, and how they were going to know. She is in a fever lest the train should go without her, though assured that it is still two hours before the time of starting, and that we are all going in the same train. If a person on the other side of the room looks at his watch, she calls out to know what time it is, and if it is not most time to go. The young girl leaves the room, and she bids her be back soon, as it is most time to go. She thinks the husband is gone a long time, and tells the wife she is afraid she wont find her father! "O yes!" says the wife, with a smothered twinkle
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in her black eyes, "I think I shall be able to find my father!" She informs the assembly generally, without addressing any one in particular, that she is on her way to visit her daughter; that she is not accustomed to travelling, and has already gone one day wrong; but she is right now. She has to go from Chicago to Milwaukee, from Milwaukee to Sheboygan, and from Sheboygan to Wisconsin.
"Where in Wisconsin do you go?" asks some one disposed to assist her.
"Go from Chicago to Milwaukee, from Milwaukee to Sheboygan, and from Sheboygan to Wisconsin."
"Yes, but Sheboygan is in Wisconsin. When you get to Sheboygan, where do you go next?"
"Yes, that 's where I am going,--from Chicago to Milwaukee, from Milwaukee to Sheboygan, and from Sheboygan to Wisconsin. Yes."
Who can give help to such a muddled brain?
In due time the train is pushed up, and the station empties itself into the cars. "I should like to sit with you," says the old woman to the wife; but the wife intimates that she is hoping to have a seat by herself, and get a little sleep.
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"Well, I 'll sit on this side then." (Assuringly,) "I 'll keep close to you!"
Up we go swiftly into Wisconsin. It rains and rains and rains; what is the weather thinking about? But the rain is drenching and downright and wholesome, not sulky and non-committal; and there are hills and deep woods, a gentle, smiling verdure, a fresh, clear, pleasant country, and we take courage again. Even through the rain Wisconsin looks homelike, as if one might bring hither heartsomely his household gods; and I marvel why, with so much land in the country, it should have been thought advisable to tuck in Indiana and Illinois. They seem but huge quagmires, stale, flat, and unprofitable, that one must traverse from solid ground to solid ground. They could so well be spared from the face of the earth, and would agreeably simply the geography.
But our anxious friend, who subsided a little when she was fairly in the car, is again rapidly working herself up into a violent ferment. At every station she asks her neighbor in front if this is Milwaukee. "O no! we shall not get to Milwaukee this long while." Straightway she
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appeals to her neighbor behind, "This is n't Milwaukee, is it?" And hardly waiting for a reply, she trots to the other side of the car to inquire eagerly if this is Milwaukee. After being told, perhaps six times, that it is not Milwaukee, she begins to harbor a suspicion that it is not, and trots back to her seat and places herself on the edge of it, with her hand on the back of the one in front, ready to start in case the village should pop up at any time and declare itself Milwaukee. Her semi-quiescence continues till the conductor comes in. Him she plies with questions by the time he stops within four feet of her. She improves the time while he is examining her ticket. She twists around, and continues the consultation till he is hopelessly past her. Then she springs up, and follows him down the aisle, talking in the same monotone till the door closes behind him, when she comes back murmuring abstractedly, "Milwaukee to Sheboygan, Sheboygan to Wisconsin,"--and everybody looks at each other with a great show of sobriety. Whenever a new passenger enters she impresses him into her service. He thinks she is a lonely, unprotected woman, and kindly and impressively tries to make
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the route clear to her, to the amusement of the other passengers; but he presently discovers the impracticability of his attempt, and quietly falls into the ranks of the initiated. "I 'm alone and I ain't accustomed to travelling," she occasionally meditates aloud, in her deep, hard, uncadenced voice.
"Yes," says another, making one more attempt to soothe her, for her trepidation is so extreme as to be quite pitiful, although so ridiculous; "but there are plenty of people who know all about travelling, and they have promised to see that you get out and get in at the right places, and--"
"But they did n't tell me how I should go from Milwaukee to Sheboygan, and She--"
"Because you ask so many questions so many times that you become confused, and do not know what is said to you. Now" (soothingly) "you will be quite tired out if you keep walking around, and worrying all the time."
"Yes," from the very bottom of her poor old heart.
"Well, then, be quiet and rest till we get to Milwaukee, and you shall certainly be put safely on your way to Sheboygan."
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And by the time her friendly adviser is fairly seated, I turn my head to see the evil spirit of unrest entering into the woman, and driving her down the aisle, head forward, in her bootless quest for Milwaukee.
When the baggage-agent enters the car, some one requests him to take charge of the wanderer. He may be a kind-hearted man and glad to do it, but if he is hard-hearted and loath he cannot very well help himself. She tells her story with zest, and he promises to take care of her. At the station a lively little colloquy springs up. One says the boat does not go, and the wanderer must stay at a hotel; another says the boat does go, and at any rate it is lying at the wharf, and she can stay on board; another says she should not be in Milwaukee at all,--that she should have taken boat at Grand Haven and gone directly across to Sheboygan; and a fourth affirms that she was right to come around, as it would not have been safe to cross the lake in such a storm;--all of which is very quieting to the disturbed lady. It is decided at length that she shall go to the boat, and the baggage-agent brings a man to take her thither. But she believes in the baggage-agent,
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and does not believe in the boatman, and with woman's devotion she clings to her first love. The first love, as is usual in such cases, finds her clinging decidedly troublesome, and has almost to push her away. Finally, the boatman walks off indifferently in one direction, the baggage-man in another, and the unhappy woman writhes a moment, turning towards each in an agony of doubt, but at length follows the boatman. My last picture of her is a silhouette: a man with a lantern, walking off with easy strides through the rain and the darkness; a woman hurrying after him, with long, uneasy strides, in lank, dripping skirts,--hurrying madly from Milwaukee to Sheboygan, and from Sheboygan to Wisconsin.
Girls, this is every word true, or rather every incident true. Be careful, then, to exercise what little sense you have while you are young, lest when you become old you find suddenly that you have no sense to exercise.