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Our ambition growing by what it feeds on will be satisfied with no home sights and sounds, however fine. St. Paul shining in the blue distance, the foam of the laughing water breaking in mist beyond, and all the new country lying around this inland city,
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--we must see it all. All! in a life-time would fail us before we could see all the wonders of this great country of ours. The farther we go, the more wondrous it seems. This Mississippi River of itself is a revelation. Its glory might celebrate a continent. Still, Nature shall not cow us with her marvels. She is mighty here. She pours out her rivers, and piles up her mountains, and deftly fashions her gentle plains; but she knows that man is her king, and cannot be ousted from his possessions. So we will look and linger, and enjoy all we can,--never thinking of the years that have gone into all this "mighty maze,"--knowing that one conscious year of intelligent enjoyment is more than a thousand years of unintelligent process. Having thus made all square with our self-respect, we start betimes on a fresh campaign in a travelling tent. This is the zenith of cosey content. This combines the comforts of home and the charms of motion. Hampers, portmanteaus, shawls for cold, parasols for heat,--it is housekeeping on wheels. No slavish subserviency to clocks and watches, but rise, dine, sup, sleep, travel and tarry, hasten and loiter, as you like. Is the Indian summer
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delicious, the scenery charming? Throw wide open the curtains of your travelling tent, lean back in your luxurious divan, and take it all in. Is the prairie a little tiresome? You have but to dispose yourself for a nap. Is the air stinging? There are plenty of defences against it, and the horses' hoofs will ring all the more merrily upon the hard-trodden roads. O, this is freedom and independence! It is a return to first principles. It is health and happiness. Evil to him who first thought out the steam-car, shrieking, snorting, red-hot, dragging you, will you nill you, through the land of Beulah, and over the Delectable Mountains, with as fierce a haste as through Vanity Fair and the Wilderness.
Now, as we trot cheerily along, we have leisure to take broad surveys. We breathe this heavenly air, we luxuriate in these fields stretching out to meet the far horizon, and our narrow Eastern minds and eyes are rapidly expanding to take them in,--yes, and overleaping them, clamorous for more. Already, I never look south but I see the Gulf waves washing the Louisiana shores. Northward, the deep blue of the Polar sea lies dark behind its glittering icy wastes.
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From the east comes the ceaseless whirr of Lowell spindles, and westward rolls the Oregon, and hears many other sounds than his own dashings. Well may we carry ourselves loftily, for our high position is no seeming. We are riding in sight of the whole country; Minnesota is the highest table-land of the continent, they say, and I believe them, for I have been there! California, Massachusetts, South Carolina, do you see us? Elevate your glasses a little, for we are hundreds of feet above you.
All rivers run down from Minnesota, as needs they must if they run at all. In fact, the stanch Mississippi seems to be running away, if reports be true. The oldest inhabitants assert that it is losing ground, and we shall perhaps one day, a few billion years hence, have the spectacle of a spectral, silent river such as we crossed the other day. Well, I am glad I am alive now, and have seen it in its prime; and you, respected posterity, will stand puzzling your brains in turn on its gaunt, unwashed banks,--and see how you like it! Meanwhile, we will comfort ourselves with reflecting that the ground which Mississippi loses Minnesota gains. The explana-
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tion of its subsidence is, that cultivation softens the soil. The ploughshare tears up the hard, matted roots that have grown and strengthened themselves here time out of mind, and the rain that falls no longer runs off the surface into the streams, but sinks into the mellowed earth. I assent to this plausible theory with my lips, but in my heart I know a reason worth twenty of it. The lordly old river fails because he is faint-hearted. Never, never again shall he go "unvexed to the sea." Late monarch of all this land of lake and mountain and wilderness, he is now reduced to the condition of a broad-shouldered porter, trudging along always with a pack on his back. Pert little villages have stuck themselves down under the shadow of his mightiest mountains, and not one so insignificant but it will fling its sack of wheat or its bundle of boards into the common burden. No wonder the old River-God shrinks from the change. Did the captive kings--"pampered jades of Asia"--wear their most august mien when they drew the chariot of great Tamburlaine? and shall the ancient Mississippi bear himself royally in the service of a thousand petty sovereigns, in
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slouched hat and dusty coat, not to say shirt-sleeves,--let alone those dishonest Satraps, who put poor wheat into the middle of the bags, and good wheat at the top, and so make the honorable river an accomplice in their petty trickery? O, if the angry water could only suck into his deepest vortex every such sample of man's cupidity, and administer to the guilty one himself a smart sousing every time he tempts him with his knaveries, what an unpopular river the Mississippi would be!
Miles upon miles we travel without coming upon any village, scarcely upon any settlement. There are plenty of lager-beer saloons,--rough structures enough, and not over inviting, but unmistakable on the point of lager-beer,--and we infer, either that there are more people hereabouts than are dreamt of in our philosophy, or that the land supports a very thirsty population. Occasionally we pass a substantial but rude log-house; sometimes a stone cottage, perhaps with no visible windows,--blank to the road, blank east and west, and with a certain squat, uncomely tidiness that indicates Dutch origin. Here is a toy that goes back beyond Holland,
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a Scandinavian swing, the swing supported in and by a wooden frame, and instead of a rope two long wooden poles, connecting the seat with the pole at the top. "These wooden swings are plenty enough all round," says my friend. "How do you know they are of Scandinavian origin?" Because I saw them in Scandinavia! The Scandinavian is no inconsiderable element in the population of this vicinity, and a valuable and promising element it is. Here again, strangely enough, when we look only for the new, we come suddenly, and, if it did not seem to savor of the sensational, I should say thrillingly, upon the old. Eight hundred years vanish with a word, and we stand face to face with the Vikings. Out of the pioneer's cabin into the pirate's cave. It is the self-same race that swooped down upon England with the raven on their banner and the dragon at their prow. It is the last spent spray of the flood that overwhelmed her. The fierce old Sea-King whom every school-boy knows,--"Thus far shalt thou go and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed. A king is but a man, and a man is but a worm. Shall a worm assume the powers of the Great God, and think
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that the elements will obey him?"--this pirate prince lives still in our far-off Western world, but lives with the wisdom of his later rather than the ferocity of his earlier years. The pirate's cave is but a tame and comfortable affair. The pirate himself is an honest, thrifty farmer, who came hither quietly, with some placid womanly face for figure-head of his ship, and with many peaceable families in his company,--yet borne by a power which, with all its seeming and real quietude, would have sent the Great Dragon of his great ancestor to the bottom of the sea, with one puff from its iron throat. Ah well! we were all pirates then, only some were up and some were down. We have all grown graver and wiser since, and Canute is much more worthily employed in breaking wild land in Minnesota, with a span of horses and a good plough, than he was in breaking skulls with his battle-ax eight hundred years ago. The old name is contracted into Knute, and among these new settlements of the old races, Knutes and Knutesons abound. They are but scantily supplied with family names, and Mr. Knute's son is distinguished from his father by the suffix of son to
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the paternal name,--and John's heir is of course Johnson. Here we can see the language going through its processes. It is a leaf of the world's history, taken from the book of the past, and happening all over again under our own eyes. That figure is rather unmanageable, and I respectfully hand it over to the Gentle Reader for what it is worth. But I am not without hope that the theory of "The Stars and the Earth" may yet be found true, so that by travelling far enough we may one day see Adam and Eve trimming apple-trees in the Garden. It would be no stranger than for me to be thus set shaking hands with Canute, Harold, and Hardicanute.
Our Western Scandinavians have given up the vices of their roving ancestors, and have not yet learned our own, so that they are in some respects in a state of touching innocence. They have a most uncivilized horror of debt. A company of them, lately arrived, began their farming-work almost without tools. Their money had been spent in the voyage and the farms. Offers were made to sell ploughs, and other equally necessary implements, on credit, but they refused, choosing to remain their own masters, and work
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under great disadvantage, rather than become the servant of the lender. I sigh to think how little time it will take to overcome these scruples. In politics, the old Norse instinct heads them straight to freedom. Strangers in the country, strangers to the language, strangers necessarily for the most part to the issues of our politics,--they are almost sure to come up to the polls and vote right, in solid phalanx. One of our public men tells a pleasant story of his own attempt to reach the minds of a group that he saw in his audience at a political gathering. Hale, sturdy men, they stood steadfastly through it all, laughing when others laughed, but with a certain blank look that all his argument, eloquence, and humor, launched directly at them, failed to remove. After exhausting his resources in vain, he inquired at the close of the meeting who they were, and learned that they were Scandinavian new-comers, who had probably not understood one word of what he had been saying. But, noble men, they had adopted their new country, and were determined bravely to "accept the situation."
We dine on the shores of a beautiful lake,
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such as one finds dropped into the dells anywhere in Minnesota. A little knoll partly covered with low bushes, and partly "open to sunshine and the birds," is our dais. With the brilliant background of autumn foliage, and the brilliant foreground of blue lake, we cluster on the open slope around our commissary, and feast at a better than Roman banquet,--with the soothing or inspiriting music of the wind in the neighboring tree-tops, and with solid comfort represented in the horses standing by the carriage at the lakeside, and munching their oats, as, unnumbered ages ago, Homeric horses munching white barley and rye stood by their chariots and waited for the bright-throned morning. But the thousand watchfires by the streams of Xanthus were not so beautiful as the soft haze of this Indian summer, warming us to the soul with its delicious glow. And then we resume our journey, winding again picturesquely through the same oak openings,--oak closings I should call them, for they close you in among clumps and groves of trees, about as large as apple-trees, and a little way off looking very much like them, well splashed with scarlet, so that we have a
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constant sensation of riding through some gentleman's grounds. I suppose they are called openings because there is no entangling undergrowth, but only the bare, hard ground,--sward I could hardly call it, for there is no greensward in Minnesota that I can find,--only little fairy circles and patches of green, soft New England grass, that has sprung up in the wake of civilization. The native sod has no turf. The grass seems to spring up like rye and other grain, with no velvety inviting foundation; but the little flecks of green that appear of themselves wherever the settler plants his foot give hope that the tame grasses will one day subjugate and supplant the wild. So, after all, the poet's fancy is a fact of science. Quicquid calcaverit, hic rosa fiat!
"From the meadow your walks have left so sweet
That, whenever a March-wind sighs,
He sets the jewl-print of your feet
In violets blue as your eyes."
"Here," we might say of civilization,--as Œglamour said of his
"drowned love,
Earine! the sweet Earine!
The bright and beautiful Earine!"--
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"Here she was wont to go! and here! and here! Just where those dais[i]es, pinks, and violets grow: The world may find the spring by following her, For other print her airy steps ne'er left. Her treading would not bend a blade of grass, Or shake the downy blow-ball from his talk! But like the soft west-wind she shot along, And where she went the flowers took thickest root, As she had sowed them with her odorous foot."
For daisies and pinks and violets read grasses, and we have a succinct statement of fact,--with a sad exception, for the airy steps of man leave many other prints than these cheering oases,--some for weal, some, alas! for woe.
Very often our road is bordered, and sometimes broken, with gullies, which at home we should be inclined to call dangerous, and convene town-meetings over, and write to the county papers about, and guard with rails by day and lanterns by night. The soil seems to be loose and easily washed away. Sometimes you drive along by the edge of a rugged precipice twenty feet deep, and a precipice that seems to give no sort of reason for its being there. In places the rushing waters have whirled in, and swept away great veins of the road directly across the wheel-track, till you can look straight
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down, perhaps half a dozen feet; and the traveller just turns out and makes a new track around the hole. I never heard of any accident at these places. Perhaps it is like the story they tell us at the White Mountains, of the woman who thought it was not worth while to go to the expense of putting a curb around the well, as they never lost but two children in it! Certainly, I never saw more haggard-looking roads than some of these in Minnesota.
Nearly all the way to Saint Paul we have an escort of hawks and owls, and other fowl,--no very sentimental troop to be sure,--but a bird is a bird even if it is an owl perching on a bough and staring at you in his stupid owl-fashion. Hawks I have a spite against on principle, remembering the impudence with which they have swooped and soared again before my very eyes, with my own little downy chickens in their fierce jaws,--if jaw that can be called which jaw is none. But these hawks have none of my property on their consciences, and I am free to admire their beauty, grace, and strength. Indeed, they are not only innocent of my chickens, but they are a positive help to the farmer,
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doing more good than harm. They rarely enter his farm-yard, but they prey upon the squirrels and mice. When a hawk comes near, you will hear the short, sharp whistle of the squirrels in every direction. This is just as they enter their holes and feel themselves safe. But now and then one is a little too late, and finds himself in the condition of the Discontented Squirrel we used to read of in the school-book. Well he may be a a Discontented Squirrel, squirming in mid-air in the talons of a hawk. So is kept up that pretty round of internecine warfare, which we all descant upon with so much complacency when we are on the outside of its circle. Occasionally, we scare up immense flocks of blackbirds, which seem to fill the air, and after fluttering awhile settle again on the ground, thick and black as flies,--or they perch on the fence in one long black line till we come up, and off they wheel. Or a group of prairie-chickens sails overhead, or a prairie-lark starts up, hardly yet familiar with the spectacle which has so lately presented itself to the eyes of these wilderness-dwellers. Wild birds of the woods, I wish we could go our ways without disturbing
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them,--but if we scare the wild birds away, we know the dear little tame sprites that now we sorely miss, sparrows and robins and bluebirds, will follow us and hover around us, and haunt our orchards,--the orchards we are going to plant for them,--and the homely brave little snow-birds will flock to us in winter to pick up the crumbs that fall from our tables.
But rolling prairie and doubtful road and heavy woods have brought us to the busy city. Out from haunt of hawk and blackbird into the thronged and noisy street. There is no easy transition of suburban cottages and comfortable farm-houses; but from the depths of a thirty-mile wilderness we look down upon a stone city, apparently not a quarter of a mile away. As we tarry on the summit of the hill to feast our eyes with the beauty and magnificence of the picture,--the westward hastening sun glorifying even this glorious river, touching the wide, wild, splendid woods to a bewildering radiance,--the city lies below us, a lovely dream in stone, a fairy charm, the beautiful fretwork of the frost which a night has created, which the day shall dissolve. But it is no dream-work now. She
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had her dream-life, this wilderness city, as many a one knows to his cost. Men went mad, as men do, with the accursed hunger for gold, and great fortunes were made, not by the steady labor of the hands, or the wise work of the brains, but by empty breath of the lips. All the luxuries of old civilization, all the extravagance of newly gained wealth, were brought into this forest, so little was its lesson learned, so eager are we to grasp the shadow without being careful to possess the substance, without which the shadow is not even a specious seeming, but only a vain and vulgar pretence. The bubble sparkled and sailed as long as a bubble may, and then the honest air-currents puffed it, and the honest motes struck it, and there was no longer a brilliant graceful bubble, but there was still a useful drop of water and the solid earth beneath, which is much. So sudden the doom, that costly garnishings, ordered from the East in the height of prosperity, arrived in the depth of adversity, and were reclaimed by the seller as the sole possible form of payment. Women who went to parties luminous with twenty-thousand dollars' worth of diamonds now go to market selling vegeta-
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bles, and very likely are just as happy with their turnips as they were with their jewels, since a turnip that represents a good thing is far more valuable than a diamond that stands only for a bad thing. Now, there seems to be laid the foundation of a true prosperity. The process is that of natural, gradual, and still remarkable growth. Values are real, and not fictitious. Yet this great Western country is so wonderful, so alluring to the eye, so rich in promise of every good, so strange and vast and uncomprehended, that I do not wonder men's heads were turned.
The Mississippi has somehow given the law of the land. As the river winds along under its steep bank, so our road winds under overhanging cliffs; but the people seem sometimes to have forgotten that their cliffs have not the stability of the Mississippi's, and they have set their houses on the edge, so near, so high, that it makes one dizzy to look up at them. In this easily crumbling soil, it seems to me that their rolling down fifty feet into the road is but a question of time. Occasionally, I see a house set down on a shelf of the river-bank, half-
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way between the water and the top of the bank. Indeed, the inhabitants seem purposely to dare danger, and, wherever they find a bank, go and build a house on the edge of it. Above our heads here is a beehive, which report says netted to its owner last year two thousand dollars, and the fortunate man doubtless sings among his flowers the pleasant refrain,--
"And still by me shall hum the bee,
Forever and forever."
The St. Paul side of the Mississippi is higher than the western bank, and the bridge is consequently a considerable ascent. The piers are of stone, and look solid enough to resist the action of time. There is nothing particularly beautiful about it, but the interlocking and supporting timbers, a little way off, have a delicate, lace-work look, spanning the broad river. The bridge is more than seventeen hundred feet long, and is ninety feet above low water. Once over the bridge, we are in the city, which is largely built of light, soft-colored stone, quarried here. The most marvellous thing bout the city is, that it is here. These massive stone piles, that look as if they were built for ages, and would
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stand flood and fire and earthquake, these ornate façades wrought out with patient skill, this whirl and whirr of human life, springing up in the forest primeval, is a standing wonder of the world, or would be if the world but knew of it. There are wofully dusty streets, and shabby plank sidewalks, and shabby shanties; but these are evidently the remnants of early poverty, and the makeshifts of necessity. There is a tendency to truth in building, which looks hopeful for the future. It will not be long before the solid rock will crowd out the débris, and the city will shape itself into stately symmetry.
Our hotel arrangements must be supposed to represent a transition stage. We have Brussels carpets, and lace curtains, and linen sheets, and--hatred therewith. Also, the house-builders failed to set their foundations firm, and the house has settled here and there at an alarming rate. We have plenty of waiters and plenty of dishes, but everything is somehow marred in the cooking. I know of a surety that the onions for yesterday's dinner were boiled in the tea-kettle, and the scent of the roses hangs round it still. It is as if everything was well meant and well
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begun, but blighted in the process. When shall some genius arise in his mailed might, and impress upon landlords the great truth, that three dishes perfect in flavor are more acceptable than a whole octavo volume of B flats,--that cleanliness without tapestry or draperies or Brussels is great gain? Why should Minnesota turn away from the delicious repasts of her own farms, to dabble with unskilful hands in greasy foreign messes? Let the old States flounder in old ways if they will, but let the brave new States turn over a new leaf.
By way of comparison, we presently try another hotel. It is an improvement in point of rooms, which are fresh and tidy, and well stocked with a remarkable number and variety of spiders. The mode of attendance is peculiar, indicative of independence and individuality of character. At the entrance two boys appear to take charge of ourselves and our carriage, but the division of labor seems not very distinctly defined; both make love to the carriage, and display a very perfect indifference to ourselves. Boy Number One climbs upon the driver's seat, seizes the reins, and directs boy Number Two to attend to
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the parcels. Boy Number Two has a noble ambition for horses, and a noble disdain for parcels, and a very pretty skirmish ensues. Between them our parcels receive scant courtesy,--shawls are straggling from carriage to pavement,--travelling-bags shake their plump sides wildly. Edibles and potables are jumbled together as fate wills, and we stand on the sidewalk taking a lively interest in the brisk conflict, and regretfully putting an end to it when forbearance ceases to be a virtue. The same energetic Young American spirit characterizes the service throughout,--or rather those boys seem to be the chief managers. The rooms are destitute of water, and unfortunately of bells also. We prowl about the house, and finally discover a bell-rope in the parlor. Pull and wait, wait and pull. Presently behold a boy! He makes fair promises, but no water comes to our rooms. Another exploration discovers a pitcher of water in a hall below. Probably the boy has again been seized with a spirit of adventure, and is fighting it out somewhere on that line. The pitcher is at once appropriated, but what is a single pitcher among so many?
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Then there is no tumbler, mug, or goblet. Our party is resolved into a rotary committee,--a sort of living chain-pump, revolving between the parlor and our rooms, in a constant endeavor to bring up water. Whenever a boy becomes visible to the naked eye, he is caught and collared, and commissioned to bring water. The tumbler boy is encountered after half an hour's absence, and protests he has been diligently occupied all the while in a vain search for tumblers. Boy answering the parlor-bell coolly passes you a well-used goblet, on the parlor-table, for your private delectation. Evidently there has been no such stir-about among the glasses, at least within the memory of these youngest inhabitants; and when comparative order reigns in Warsaw, and you are collected in the parlor in a state of quiescence, a suspicious snickering outside the door, and a furtive eye or two through the cracks, indicate that the enterprising boys, released from their arduous duties, are taking observations on their strange guests.
From St. Paul, the natural order of things takes us to St. Anthony, over broad, high, ex-
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cellent roads, running through a country well laid out, cultivated, and settled, and bordered by large, comfortable, and often elegant houses enclosed in pleasant gardens. Saint Anthony as a town seems very well adapted to his Saintship, if we may believe the tradition which ascribes to him a chronic dislike of water, a taste for hair-shirt costumes and fighting with devils. A large stone building, with centre and wings, on a slightly eminence facing the river, is the only place that looks like a hotel, and we meditate the propriety of making arrangements for the night, before going farther. To sve the trouble of mounting the embankment, we inquire, at a grocery below, if we shall be likely to find accommodations there.
"Wall, Sir," is the reply, with a "knowing" look, "you 'll find plenty of Graham bread and Bloomers!"
Excellent for entrées, but not absolutely desirable for the pièce de résistance; so we go on, resolving to run for luck in the matter of inns. Shall we laugh at Saint Anthony? Let them laugh that win. While the pen is in my hand, writing this paragraph, comes the morning paper,
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and says: "The various mills and manufactories at St. Anthony's Falls, Minnesota, produced last year 77,419,548 feet of lumber, valued at $1,885,000; 172,000 barrels of flour, worth $1,661,500; 166,500 yards woollen cloth, valued at $104,000; and pails, tubs, paper, machinery, building materials, furniture, &c., sufficient to carry the aggregate up to $4,348,150. The capital invested amounts to $1,951,000." This I can vouch for; I saw them at it! I saw the logs parting into boards, and the wheat travelling up stairs and down stairs till it lost heart, and fell into flour. I saw the pails whirling themselves smooth, and the slats setting up to be tubs, and vats of pulp smoking hot with the frantic effort to become paper, and hundreds of threads skipping across the floor in transports of delight at the prospect of promotion into cloth. The fact is, Saint Anthony stands on one side of the river, and Minneapolis on the other, and between them both a sorry life they lead the poor Father of Waters. His back is broken with mills, and his throat is choked with logs, and what with the rocks and the sluices and the splinters, it is as much as he
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can do to get along at all. Never was there such an over-worked river. It is an unceasing hand-to-hand conflict between man and nature, and man gets the upper hand, at least for a while. Not a current steals through till it has turned its tub, or sawed its board, or spun its piece: and then it creeps away with a sort of shamefaced air, as if it felt itself what it looks, a swash of used-up soap-suds, and not at all the great Mississippi River!
The Falls of Saint Anthony have disappeared in the general mêlée, and there is little left but the rush and roar of rapids. The royal astronomer, Alphonso, was it, who thought he could have given the Creator of the universe some important suggestions, if he had been present at the making of it? Our Western friends do not content themselves with a modest, hypothetical suggestion, but, believing that it is never too late to mend, have actually gone to work tinkering up the Mississippi. From what seemed to be the main relic of the fall--of St. Anthony I mean, not of man in general--they have turned away the river in order to bandage up the stone or something, I cannot make out precisely what.
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At any rate, there is the bare, brown, wet rock staring out in full view,
and workmen fitting some kind of wooden frame-work into the river-bed. This
rock is shaped thus:
,
and appears to be a
broad fence, considerably higher than the heads of the workmen. It looks as
if it must have been somehow hewn or blasted into shape, but I am assured
that, like Topsy, it only growed. The water has cracked and rent away the
rock from year to year. Huge masses of fragments, cleaved off in squares
and oblongs and irregular shapes, lie heaped and tilted in every imaginable
posture of confusion. Add to this the refuse of the saw-mills, swept along
however and wherever a raging current could sweep or set them; piles of logs
intertwisted at every possible angle, where the river has lodged them, or
lying across half the stream, awaiting their turn at the mills; a constant
stream of boards running down the sluices, the never-ceasing snarl of horses
and carts, the shouting of men, the whiz of the saws, the whirr of the
machinery that from island to island, and from bank to bank, nearly spans
the river; and over all and through all, the rage of the mad waters,--and
you have a scene
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of tumult that might make our patron Saint fancy the devils were fighting each other, and had no need that he should lend a hand. If his much-belabored Excellency could leave his deserts, his demons, his caves hollowed in the sand,--could come out of these woods with bell and crutch, to see what manner of place it is that has named itself with his name,--he would doubtless think it but a sorry scene to nourish his saintliness withal. Remembering the wealth and fame and fashion, that he renounced for scourgings and solitude, and all manner of diabolical society, in the cause of holiness, he must be somewhat at a loss to fix upon the especial feature of his life and character which gave its christening to this busy, money-making community, and we can imagine him sighing in half despair, "Who knoweth what is good for man in this life, all the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow? for who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?" But I feel quite sure that if the holy man, with the experience of all his heavenly years added to that of his earthly life, would but reflect that here is the best water-power in the known
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world; that it is the head of navigation on the Mississippi River, and a navigation two thousand miles long; that there is a great country of farms and timber lying behind us; that with our machinery we can convert a whole tree-trunk into boards at one fell swoop, and then, turning the river into a dray-horse, can send them floating down hundreds of miles wherever they are wanted; that a swarm of islands have been dropped into the river on purpose to raise mills on, and that the earth has been stuffed with rock on purpose to build them with,--he would never be so unreasonable as to ask all these people to lay down their tools, and put on a hair-cloth shirt, and dig a hole in the woods, and go and sit in it twenty years. He could not fail, one must suppose, to see that, however adapted such a course might have been to the Egyptian character, it suits not at all with the American genius; and doubtless he would be well content if these workers in wood and woollen but make as good saints as can be fashioned out of the raw material of millers and mechanics, which I take to be quite as good a kind as the Alexandrian variety.
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And as I stand here in the midst of the uproar, half daft with the rush and whirl, I can but see how curiously and how completely the promise has been fulfilled to good Saint Anthony. We know how pluckily he defied the demon, when, at his own request, he had been taken back to the cave, whence he had been borne senseless from the conflict. "'Ha! you arch tempter! didst thou think I had fled? Lo, here I am again, I, Anthony! I challenge all thy malice! I spit on thee! I have strength to combat still!' When he had said these words, the cavern shook, and Satan, rendered furious by his discomfiture, called up his fiends, and said, 'Let us now affright him with all the terrors that can overwhelm the soul of man.' Then hideous sounds were heard; lions, tigers, wolves, dragons, serpents, scorpions, all shapes of horror, 'worse than fancy ever feigned, or fear conceived,' came roaring, howling, hissing, shrieking in his ears; scaring him, stunning him;--but, in the midst of these abominable and appalling shapes and sounds, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light, which fell upon Anthony, and all these terrors vanished at once,
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and he arose unhurt and strong to endure. And he said, looking up, 'O Lord Jesus Christ! where wert thou in those moments of anguish?' And Christ replied, in a mild and tender voice, 'Anthony, I was here beside thee, and rejoiced to see thee contend and overcome. Be of good heart; for I will make thy name famous through all the world.'"
Minneapolis is just opposite Saint Anthony,--in fact they come so near touching noses, as the children say, across the river, with their mills and machinery, that we are half the time in a maze, and hardly know which is which. Between the two cities is the first suspension bridge ever thrown across the Mississippi, and a work of no small pride, it may well be supposed. One can tolerate a little pride in the structure. It swings in the air as light and graceful as a spider's web, and in its beauty is the hiding of its strength. On the right as we cross is fair Hennepin's Island, in all the glory of its gold and scarlet autumnal robes. With its fine trees, its quiet drives, its shady walks, its brilliant sunshine, it lies like a dream of peace, undisturbed by all the clash and clamor of trade.
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If Father Hennepin himself gave it his name, choosing his own monument more durable than brass, he certainly showed good taste, though he did sometimes draw a long bow! Yet I can easily conceive that the adventurous priest became a little bewildered by all the marvels of his journeyings, and, mingling his imagination with his memory, perhaps really thought in his old age that he had traversed the whole length of the Great River, and seen wonderful things. I would not insure myself against a similar result; and as my thoughts have a Northern rather than a Southern tendency, I am not at all confident that I shall not presently write a treatise on the discovery of an open Polar Sea, and the Northwest Passage, founded on my personal observations.
Past the island, across the bridge, and we are in Minneapolis,--a city that seems to have shot ahead of St. Anthony, and already makes no small display of solidity and comeliness in architecture. Four hundred houses, we are told, have been built the past season, and everybody is as busy as if he meant to put up four hundred more. It is the great centre of lumber-trade,
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they tell us exultantly, and the land round about is the very garden of Minnesota. Better still, I may modestly add, the population of the city and vicinity is largely of New England origin, and therefore we hope not to be ashamed in this same confident boasting.
But I have another thought in Minneapolis.
Some years ago I wrote--perhaps I shall be pardoned for quoting the passage, which has doubtless been long forgotten--of a young woman who bore at school, "in her mean and scanty dress, her thin cheeks, and hard hands,--the marks of poverty and toil. . . . . Conscious as she must have been that she served a hard taskmaster, no word of complaint ever passed her lips. Always cheerful, modest, happy, willing to be pleased, grateful for kindness, and patient of any chance neglect, you might have supposed her entirely insensible to the motives and feelings that influence ordinary girls, were it not for the occasional quiver of the lip, the quick, nervous gesture, the moistened eye, and faltering tone. She left school with disease lurking in her system, slowly and surely undermining the citadel of life; but she kept up her courage. She had
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no idea of dying till her hour should come, and, as long as she should live, she determined that her living should bring forth fruit. She earned money enough to transport herself to a climate which was pronounced favorable to her health; there, in a wild backwoods, among a rough people, who had forgotten, if they ever knew, the common refinements of life, she opened a school. From her rude home she wrote merry letters, describing her adventures and her circumstances. There was no talk of self-denial, the greatness of sacrifice, the hardship of missionary life. Over all the harsh outline, and the harsher filling in, she threw the veil of her playful fancy, and few heard the mournful undertone that thrilled through the gay, sprightly song. The new scenes and the softer air did not have the desired effect, and a short time since she wrote to a friend:--'I have moved from a small, quiet school to a large, rollicking, frolicking, fun-loving one. I am happy; I think I ought to be. Every one is kind. But I am quite puzzled, I don't know just what to do. If I am to teach much longer, it would be better for me to return to New England, and go to school
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awhile. I have earned enough to keep me at school a year or so, and I do believe I am willing to exert myself to the utmost to improve. But, then, this cough increases. It may not be long before it will have an end. If I go to New England, I may spend all the life left me in acquiring knowledge, and so lose the opportunity for usefulness that I might have if I remained here. Now the question is, which will bring the largest pile of wood,--the dull axe for six hours, or the sharp one for two?'"
It is over now. Dull axe and sharp axe are alike laid aside, and on the highlands of Minnesota there is a lonely grave.
Two or three letters have come into my hands, which seem to me to illustrate a character of no common strength, purified by no common experience.
"I earnestly desire to write you one more letter, and I am afraid that it will soon be forgery to sign myself A---- B----. Not that I meditate changing my name; but I have a conviction that what you once knew as A---- B---- is gradually slipping away, and an entirely
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different individual is . . . . assuming her name. . . . . I can see that circumstances have made me what I would not be, and that continued living in Egypt, with its debasing influences, has had its effect on me, in spite of resistance on my part. Once my ignorance of the world, and blind trust in it, was my safety. I called black white, and covered with my charity a multitude of sins. Now, my eyes are open, and is it my fault that I see? It is because I see, and cannot bring myself to the hypocrisy of pretended blindness, that I have feared to write you. I could not write a cheerful, happy letter, simply because it would not be true, and moreover I knew that you would detect the false ring of the metal. Once I wrote a real 'cry-baby affair,'--a home-sick, heart-sick, self-sick effusion; but before I found time to finish it, I remembered of reading somewhere: . . . about hanging upon other people's sympathy until they considered you a sort of mental clog. . . . . So into the fire went that letter. You will never know how many letters I have composed to you in my solitary walks to and from school. . . . . I feel a little desperate now, or I should not dare
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to tell you that school-teaching is drudgery. It has been growing plainer and plainer to me, until now I am convinced of the fact. I have nothing to say for myself. You will likely think I am not doing my duty. I have said the same thing to myself, and yet I believe I was never more successful in school. People don't know that it is not my joy and delight, and you will not tell them. . . . .
"We never came to an explanation, and at last the news came that he was married one day, and went to war the next. I never heard from him again. . . . .
"After the first day of stupor, the second of pain, and the third of dull headache, I thrust it out, and when it came back to me, at first like a knife-thrust, I held my breath till it passed; then, later, when it came like some unpleasant remembrance, I turned my back upon it, and now the subject gives me very little emotion of any kind. But still, in the face of all, I know of nothing so sweet as human love. I am not one bit afraid that you will sneer at this. I know you will not. I am afraid I should say it again, if the whole world cried, 'For shame!'
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"Let it go. There is another world. You will want to know about my health. . . . . I do not know: I am sometimes sick and sometimes well. I have had chills and fever and night sweats this summer, and still a skilful Doctor told me the other day that . . . . there is no need of my dying of consumption. All I want is Minnesota. I had made up my mind to go home and die, but I don't know but it is my duty to make another trial. . . . . I have decided to go to St. Paul. I do not know one person there, and yet I mean to get a situation as teacher. It requires all my courage to take this step."
The step was taken, the situation secured, but health did not come. Another date is:--"St. Paul, May 22. . . . . Dr. ----- told me to-day that no earthly power could save me. . . . . He told me to do what pleased me best, for I had not long to live. I have been keeping my courage and my strength up, on ale and oranges, for the last month. I am still in school. The salary is necessary to keep me going, and the excitement is necessary to keep me awake. . . . . I am so tired! This climate of Minnesota is per-
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fectly charming, but Dr. ----- says, while it will prolong my life, it will not cure me. . . . . If I could afford the expense, I would stay here through July and August, and go to the pine woods, and make one more effort for my life. I would breathe, eat, and drink pine, but it would cost a hundred dollars. I am so much more comfortable since warm weather came (one week since) that I almost disbelieve the Doctor,--especially as another one told me yesterday, that there was hope if I could by any means gain strength before Fall. This climate is superb. . . . . School closes in five weeks. Every one is kind to me, and every one wants me to get well; but I am ashamed that I can excite no better feeling than pity in the hearts of those I meet. I feel as I did when Mr. ----- gave me easy questions at school."
Again:--"Minneapolis, October 1. When some people are 'set on their feet' they can keep the balance, and you have the satisfaction of saving a life by one little act of kindness; but others may be set just as firmly, and just as fairly started, and the first thing you know they are down. You have to turn and pick them up
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until you are tired. I am on my feet at present, and am 'wound up' for the winter; and I do hope that I shall not tumble, but there is no telling. You will be glad to know that I am engaged . . . . in Minneapolis. . . . . My salary is not determined yet. I think they mean to make it depend on the work I do. I have been teaching one month, and have gained in health since I began. So that is encouraging, is it not? I teach everything taught in school but Latin and Greek and music. I have the care of the school one third of the day. If I were only strong enough I could teach drawing, and so help my salary. I was so very miserable last spring, I think I came near death. . . . . Dr. Hunter's Inhalation . . . . was the first thing that seemed to help me. It may possibly cure me. I have gained strength, but no flesh--as yet.
"But I begin the winter with good courage, and very fair health. . . . . Dr. ----- says he believes I will die if I stay in Minnesota this winter, but I don't think so.
"I don't read any. Saturdays I rest. I walk round in this glorious air."
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And still another note, dated November 23, traced with a feeble pencil:--"I am just rising from what every one called a bed of death. The Doctor said I must die, or rather would die, but I never believed it. They urged willingness, and I was willing, but I prayed, If it be thy will, let me live. Five weeks have passed, and I can walk, ride, and eat. I have the best of care,--every whim gratified. I sat by an open window this morning. The air rivals June. . . . . I can't write more now. I need nothing."
A few weeks longer she stayed, bravely fighting for life, yet holding herself in readiness to relinquish it. "I am ready when God shall call. It does not trouble me to talk about dying. If my time is to-night, I am ready." One longing, lingering look she had, through the eyes of a beloved kinsman, into the dear family circle from which she had been so long and so widely separated,--and then as she had lived in the world so she left it, with courage, calmness, and decision.
"By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed, By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed, By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned, By strangers honored, and by strangers mourned!"
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Happy hearts will not grudge this little record from the short and simple annals of the poor. I know it is no strange story. A young woman, unsheltered, struggling for life and for a living,--it is a common form of sainthood in our country. A saint? Hardly. We are rather short of saints in this busy community, and she has undoubtedly her faults. A positive nature like hers could hardly be without them, and the mellow growth of ripened years had not softened them away. But if there be indeed some
"Bright reversion in the sky
For those who greatly think, or bravely die,"
perhaps our tutelar Saint Anthony will not be the only one to find it. If it be a saintly thing to dwell in deserts and fight with devils, I think she is also not unsaintly who, homeless, friendless, and forlorn, lives in society, and works for humanity, fighting all the while the devils of illness and poverty and heart-ache and sore solitude, keeping throughout a good courage, a smiling face, and a cheery voice.
The sunshine lies very bright above her grave. The city's voices do not reach the silent sleeper
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there. No feet of love will wear a pathway to that distant spot. But in a pleasant land I doubt not she has found warm welcome home, and her rest shall be glorious.