LETTER XXIV.
Chicago, Illinois, Sept. 15th.
Here, upon the south-western shore of Lake Michigan, sits your sister, my little Agatha, not, however, upon the sandy shore, but in a pretty villa, built in the Italian style, with Corinthian pillars, surrounded by beautiful trees and flowers.
It was in the market of Buffalo, amid horses and carriages, and throngs of people buying and selling, passing hither and thither, amid chests and all sorts of baggage, amid crowds and bustle, that I parted from my young friends, who had become dear to me almost as brother and sister. There was neither time nor space to say many words in, the smoking iron-horse which was to speed them away along the iron-road stood ready; iron-road, iron-horse, iron-necessity, all were there; the warm heart had neither time nor language; thus we kissed in silence from our inmost hearts, and parted—perhaps, for ever! The Lowells intend to make a journey to Italy next year. I saw them no longer, and was conducted out of the throng in the market to an hotel by a respectable old gentleman. Judge B., under whose care I am to continue my journey. He had presented himself to me at Niagara with a letter of introduction from Mr. E.
This excellent, vigorous, old gentleman, yet quite youthful in spirit, one of the oldest pioneers of the West, and who had taken part in the founding or laying out of many of its most flourishing cities, as Rochester, Lockport, and many others, was quite at home in all the districts through which we were to travel, as far even as Lake Michigan, and for that reason, and also because he was evidently a good and cordial man, I was well-satisfied to have him for my companion.
At the hotel at Buffalo I was again tormented by some new acquaintance with the old, tiresome questions, “How do you like America?” “How do you like the States?” “Does Buffalo look according to your expectations?” To which latter question I replied, that I had not expected anything from Buffalo; but yet, that I must say it struck me as being one of the least excellent cities which I had seen in America. Business! business! appeared to me to be the principal life and character there. But the truth is, that I did not see much of Buffalo.
Towards evening I went on board “The Ocean,” a magnificent three-decked steam-boat, which conveyed me across Lake Erie, frequently a very stormy and dangerous lake; its billows, however, now resembled naiads sporting in the sunshine.
“Erie,” says M. Bouchette, a French writer, describing this part of the country, “may be regarded as the great central reservoir from which canals extend on all sides, so that vessels from this point may go to every part of the country inland, from the Atlantic Ocean on the east and north, to the countries and the sea of the south, and bring together the productions of every land and climate.” Emigrants of all nations cross Lake Erie on their way to the colonies west of those great inland seas. But to too many of them has Erie proved a grave. Not long since a vessel of emigrants, mostly Germans, was destroyed by fire on Lake Erie, and hundreds of these poor people found a grave in its waters. Among those who were taken up were seven or eight couples, locked in each other's arms. Death could not divide them. Love is stronger than death. The helmsman stood at the helm steering the vessel towards land till the flames burned his hands. The negligence of the captain is said to have been the cause of this misfortune. He too perished. Only between thirty and forty passengers were saved.
For me, however, the sail across Lake Erie was like a sunbright festival, in that magnificent steamer where even a piano was heard in the crowded saloon, and where a polite and most agreeable captain took charge of me in the kindest manner. My good old pioneer related to me various incidents of his life, his religious conversion, his first love and his last, which was quite recent; the old gentleman declaring himself to be half in love with “that Yankee-woman, Mrs. L.;” and I do not wonder at it. It convinced me that he had good taste. He declared himself to be “first and foremost a great ladies-man.”
At four o'clock in the afternoon—that is to say, of the day after we went on board, we reached Detroit, a city first founded by the French upon that narrow strait between the Lakes Erie and St. Clair, which separates Michigan from Canada. The shores as seen from the vessel appeared to be laid out in small farms consisting of regular allotments, surrounded by plantations. The land seemed to me low but fertile, undulating hill and valley. Detroit is, like Buffalo, a city where business-life preponderates, yet still it looked to me pleasanter and more friendly than Buffalo. I saw at the hotel some tiresome catechisers, and also some very agreeable people, people whom one could talk well and frankly with, and whom one could like in all respects. Among these I remember in particular the Episcopal Bishop of Michigan, a frank, excellent, and intellectual man; and a mother and her daughters. I was able to exchange a few cordial words with them, words out of the earnest depths of life, and such always do me good. The people of Detroit were for the rest pleased with their city and their way of life there, pleased with themselves, and with each other. And this seems to me to be the case in most of the places that I have been to here in the West.
The following evening we were at Anne Arbour, a pretty little rural city. Here also I received visitors, and was examined as usual. My good old pioneer did not approve of travelling incognito, but insisted upon it that people should be known by people, and could not comprehend how any one could be tired, and need a cessation of introductions and questions. In Anne Arbour also the people were much pleased with themselves, their city, its situation, and way of life. The city derived its name from the circumstance that when the first settlers came to the place they consisted principally of one family, and whilst the woods were felled and the land ploughed, the labourers had no other dwelling than a tent-like shed of boughs and canvas, where the mother of the family, “Anne,” prepared the food, and cared for the comfort of all. That was the domestic hearth; that was the calm haven where all the labourers found rest and refreshment under the protection of Mother Anne. Hence they called the tent Anne's Arbour or Bower, and the city, which by degrees sprung up around it, retained the name. And with its neat houses and gardens upon the green hills and slopes the little city looked indeed like a peaceful retreat from the unquiet life of the world.
We remained over night at Anne Arbour. The following morning we set off by railroad and travelled directly across the State of Michigan. Through the whole distance I saw small farms, with their well-built houses, surrounded by well-cultivated land; fields of wheat and maize, and orchards full of apple and peach trees. In the wilder districts the fields were brilliant with some beautiful kind of violet and blue flowers, which the rapidity of our journey prevented me from examining more closely, and with tall sunflowers, the heads of which were as large as young trees. It was splendid and beautiful. My old pioneer told me that he never had seen anywhere such an affluence of magnificent flowers as in Michigan, especially in the olden times before the wilderness was broken up into fields. Michigan is one of the youngest States of the Union, but has a rich soil, particularly calculated for the growth of wheat, and is greatly on the increase. The legislation is of the most liberal description, and it has abolished capital punishment in its penal code. Nevertheless I heard of crime having been committed in this State, which deserved death, or at least imprisonment for life, if any crime does deserve it. A young man of a respectable family in Detroit, during a hunt, had shot clandestinely and repeatedly at another young man, his best friend, merely to rob him of his pocket-book. He had been condemned, for an attempt to murder, which he acknowledged, only to twenty years' imprisonment. And in prison he was visited by young ladies, who went to teach him French and to play on the guitar! One of these travelled with me on the railroad. She spoke of the young prisoner's “agreeable demeanour!” There is a leniency towards crime and the criminal which is disgusting, and which proves a laxity of moral feeling.
The weather was glorious the whole day. The sun preceded us westward. We steered our course directly towards the sun; and the nearer it sank towards the earth, more brightly glowed the evening sky as with the most transcendent gold. The country, through the whole extent, was lowland, and monotonous. Here and there wound along a lovely little wooded stream. Here and there in the woods were small frame-houses, and beside one and another of them wooden sheds, upon which a board was fastened, whereon might be read in white letters, half a yard high, the word “Grocery.” The cultivated districts were in all cases divided regularly, scattered over with farm-houses resembling those of our better class of peasant-farmers. The settlers in the West purchase allotments of from eighty to one hundred and sixty or two hundred acres, seldom less and seldom more. The land costs in the first instance what is called “government price,” one dollar and a quarter per acre; and will, if well cultivated, produce abundant harvests within a few years. The farmers here work hard, live frugally, but well, and bring up strong able families. The children, however, seldom follow the occupation of their fathers. They are sent to schools, and after that endeavour to raise themselves by political or public life. These small farms are the nurseries from which the north-west States obtain their best officials, and teachers, both male and female. A vigorous, pious, laborious race grows up here. I received much enlightenment on this subject from my good old pioneer, who, with his piety, his restless activity, his humanity, his great information, and his youthfully warm heart, even in advancing years, was a good type of the first cultivators of the wilderness in this country. He parted from me on the journey in order to reach his home in the little city of Niles.
In company with an agreeahle gentleman, Mr. H., and his agreeable sister-in-law, I went on board the steamer which crosses Lake Michigan. The sun had now sunk; but the evening sky glowed with the brightest crimson above the sea-like lake. We departed amid its splendour and in the light of the new moon. The water was calm as a mirror.
On the morning of the 13th of September I saw the sun shine over Chicago. I expected to have been met at Chicago by some friends, who were to take me to their house. But none came; and on inquiring, I learned that they were not now there. Nor was this to be wondered at, as I was two months after the appointed time. I now therefore found myself quite alone in that great unknown West. And two little misadventures occurring just now with my luggage made it still less agreeable. But precisely at the moment when I stood quite alone on the deck, for my kind new acquaintance had left the steamer somewhat earlier, my gladness returned to me, and I felt that I was not alone; I felt vigorous, both body and mind. The sun was there, too; and such a heartfelt rejoicing filled my whole being, in its Lord and in my Father, and the Father of all, that I esteemed myself fortunate that I could shut myself up in a little solitary room at an hotel in the city, and thus be still more alone with my joy.
But my solitude was not of long continuance. Handsome, kind people gathered round me, offered me house and home and friendship and every good thing; and all in Chicago became sunshine to me.
In the evening I found myself in that pretty villa, where I am now writing to you, and in the beautiful night a serenade was given in the moonlit gardens, in which was heard the familiar
Einsam bin ich nicht allein.
It was a salutation from the Germans of the city.
September 17th.—Prairies! A sight which I shall never forget.
Chicago is situated on the edge of the prairie-land; the whole State of Illinois is one vast rolling prairie (that is to say, a plain of low, wave-like hills); but the prairie proper does not commence until about eighteen miles from the city. My new friends wished me to pass a day of prairie-life. We drove out early in the morning, three families in four carriages. Our pioneer, a dark, handsome hunter, drove first with his dogs, and shot, when we halted by the way, now and then, a prairie hen (grouse) on the wing, the day was glorious; the sky of the brightest blue, the sun of the purest gold, and the air full of vitality, but calm; and there, in that brilliant light, stretched itself far, fax out into the infinite, as far as the eye could discern, an ocean-like extent, the waves of which were sunflowers, asters, and gentians. The plain was splendid with them, especially with the sunflowers, which were frequently four yards high, and stood far above the head of our tallest gentleman.
We ate our dinner in a little wood, which lay like a green shrub upon that tree-less flowery plain. It was an elevation, and from this point the prairie stretched onward its softly waving extent to the horizon. Here and there, amid this vast stretch, arose small log-houses, which resembled little birds' nests floating upon the ocean. Here and there also were people making hay; it looked like some child's attempt, like child's play. The sun-bright soil remained here still in its primeval greatness and magnificence, unchecked by human hands, covered with its flowers, protected and watched alone by the eye of the sun. And the bright sun-flowers nodded and beckoned in the wind, as if inviting millions of beings to the festival set out on the rich table of the earth. To me it was a festival of light. It was a really great and glorious sight; to my feeling less common and grander even than Niagara itself.
The dark hunter, a man of few words but evidently of strong feelings, leaned upon his gun and said softly, “Here I often stand for hours and gaze on creation!”
And well he might. That sight resembled an extacy in the life of nature. It was bathed in light; it reposed blissfully in the bosom of light. The sunflowers sang praises to the sun.
I wandered about in the wood and gathered flowers. The asters grew above my head. Nearly all the flowers which now cover the prairies are of the class syngenesia, and of these the Solidago and Helianthus predominate. The prairies are covered each different month with a different class of flowers; in spring white, then blue, then purple, and now mostly of a golden yellow.
In the course of the day we visited one of the log-houses on the plain. A nice old woman was at home. The men were out getting in the hay. The house was one year old, and tolerably open to the weather, but clean and orderly within, as are houses generally in which live American women. I asked the good women how the solitude of this great prairie agreed with her. She was tired of it, “It was so monotonous,” she said. Yes, yes, there is a difference between seeing this sight of heaven and earth for one day and for a whole year! Nevertheless I would try it for a year.
We did not see a cloud during the whole of this day, nor yet perceive a breath of air; yet still the atmosphere was as fresh as it was delicious. The Indian summer will soon begin. The whole of that little prairie-festival was cloudless, excepting that the hunter's gun went off and shot one of our horses in the ear, and that a carriage broke down, but it was near the end of the journey and was taken all in good part, and thus was of no consequence.
Chicago, Sept. 27th.
I have heard a great deal about the Indians from Mr. and Mrs. K., in whose extremely agreeable family I have now my home. Mr. K. is the Government Agent in all transactions with the Indian tribes in these North Western States, and he and his family were among the earliest settlers in the Wilderness there. Mrs. K. who writes with facility and extremely well, has preserved in manuscript many incidents in the lives of the first colonists, and of their contests with the Indians, and among these many which occurred in her own family. The reading of these narratives is one of the greatest pleasures of the evenings; some are interesting in a high degree; some are full of cruel and horrible scenes, others also touchingly beautiful, and others again very comic.
There is material for the most beautiful drama in the history of the captivity of Mrs. K.'s mother and her free restoration. I know nothing more dramatic than the first terrible scene of the carrying off of the little girl; then the attachment of the Indian-chief to the child, the affection which grew up in his heart for her as she grew up in his tent, and was called by the savage tribe “the White Lily;” the episode of the attempt to murder her by the jealous wife of the Chief, and lastly the moment when the chief, after having for several years rejected all offers of negociation and gifts, both on the part of the parents and the Government for the restoration of the child, yielded at length to prayers, and consented to a meeting of the mother and daughter, but on the express condition that she should not seek to retain her; and then, when arrived at the appointed place of meeting, with all his warriors in their complete array, he rode alone—spite of all their remonstrances—across the little brook which separated the camp of the Whites from that of the Indians, and saw the young girl and her mother throw themselves into each other's arms with tears of joy, he stood overpowered by the sight and exclaimed, “The mother must have her child!” turned his horse, recrossed the brook and rejoined his own people without a glance at the darling of his heart, “the White Lily,” who now, in the fifteenth year of her age, returned to her family! What an excellent subject for dramatic treatment! I hope that Mrs. K. will some day publish this beautiful narrative, together with several others which I heard during these evenings.
The massacre of Chicago belongs to the unpleasing portion of the chronicle, and Chicago still retains fresh traces of this event. Yet even that is ennobled by beautiful human actions.
The wooing of my noble and gentlemanly host by the Indian Chief Fourlegs for his daughter, and the arrival of the fat Miss Fourlegs on her buffalo hides in the city, where she met with a refusal, belong to the comic portion of the chronicle, and very much amused me. For the rest, the gentle and refined Mr. K., like many others who have lived much among the Indians, has a real attachment to them, and seems to have an eye rather for the virtues than the failings which are peculiar to this remarkable people. The K.'s resided long in Minnesota, and only within the last few years at Chicago (Illinois), where they have a handsome house with a large garden.
Chicago is one of the most miserable and ugly cities which I have yet seen in America, and is very little deserving of its name, “Queen of the Lake.” For sitting there on the shore of the Lake in wretched déshabille, she resembles rather a huckstress than a queen. Certainly, the city seems for the most part to consist of shops. One sees scarcely any pretty country houses with their gardens either within or without the city—which is so generally the case in American towns—and in the streets the houses are principally of wood, the streets formed with wood, or if without, broad and sandy. And it seems as if, on all hands, people came here merely to trade, to make money and not to live. Nevertheless I have here in Chicago, become acquainted with some of the most agreeable and delightful people, that I ever met with anywhere; good people, handsome and intellectual; people to live with, people to talk with, people to like and to grow fond of, both men and women; people who do not ask the stranger a hundred questions, but who give him an opportunity of seeing and learning in the most agreeable manner which he can desire; rare people! And besides that, people who are not horribly pleased with themselves and their world, and their city, and their country, as is so often the case in small towns, but who see deficiencies and can speak of them properly, and can bear to hear others speak of them also.
To-day and last evening also, a hot wind has been blowing here, which I imagine must be like the Italian sirocco. One becomes quite enervated by it; and the air of Chicago is a cloud of dust.
September 23rd.—But in the evening when the sun descends and the wind subsides, I go to some higher part of the city, to see the sun set over the prairie land, for it is very beautiful. And beholding this magnificent spectacle melancholy thoughts arise. I see in this sun-bright western land thousands of shops, and thousands of traders, but no temple of the sun, and only few worshippers of the sun and of eternal beauty. Were the Peruvians of a nobler intellectual culture than this people? Had they a loftier turn of mind? Were they the children of the light in a higher degree than the present race who colonise the western land of the New World?
September 24th.—I must now tell you of some agreeable
Swedes who reside here. They are Captain Schneidanu
and his wife, and Mr. Uneonius, now the minister of the
Swedish congregation of this district, and his wife. They
were among the earliest Swedish emigrants who
established themselves on the banks of the beautiful lake,
Pine Lake, in Wisconsin, and where they hoped to lead
an Arcadian, pastoral life. The country was beautiful,
but the land, for the most part, was sterile.
These Swedish gentry, who thought of becoming here the cultivators and colonisers of the Wilderness, had miscalculated their fitness and their powers of labour. Beside this, they had taken with them the Swedish inclination for hospitality and a merry life, without sufficiently considering how long it could last. Each family built for itself a necessary abode, and then invited their neighbours to a feast. They had Christmas festivities and Midsummer dances. But the first year's harvest fell short. The poorly tilled soil could not produce rich harvests. Then succeeded a severe winter, with snow and tempests, and the ill-built houses afforded but inadequate shelter; on this followed sickness, misfortunes, want of labour, want of money, want of all kinds. It is almost incredible what an amount of suffering some of these colonists must have gone through. Nearly all were unsuccessful as farmers; some of them, however, supported themselves and their families by taking to handicraft trades, and as shoemakers or tailors earned those wages which they would have been unable to earn by agriculture. To their honour it must be told that they, amid severe want, laboured earnestly and endured a great deal with patient courage without complaining, and that they successfully raised themselves again by their labour. Neither were they left without aid from the people of the country when their condition became known.
Margaret Fuller (Marchioness Ossoli) made a journey
into the Western States, in company with Mrs. Clarke
(the mother of those tall sons). Providence led her to
the colonists on Pine Lake. Captain Schneidanu was
then lying on his sick-bed with an injury of the leg,
which had kept him there for some months. His handsome
young wife had been obliged, during that severe
winter, to do the most menial work; had seen her first-born
little one frozen to death in its bed, in the room
into which snow and rain found entrance. And they
were in the midst of the wilderness alone. They had no
means of obtaining help, which was extremely expensive
in this district; the maid-servant whom they had for a
short time had left them, and their neighbours were too
far off, or were themselves also suffering under similar
want. And now came the two ladies from Boston.
Margaret Fuller thus writes of her visit, in her “Summer on the Lakes:”
“In the inner-room the master of the house was seated; he had been sitting there long, for he had injured his foot on shipboard, and his farming had to be done by proxy. His beautiful young wife was his only attendant and nurse, as well as farm-house keeper; and how well she performed hard and unaccustomed duties, the objects of her care showed; everything belonging to the house was rude but neatly arranged; the invalid, confined to an uneasy wooden chair (they had not been able to induce anyone to bring them an easy chair from town), looked as neat and elegant as if he had been dressed by the valet of a duke. He was of noble blood, with clear, full blue eyes, calm features, a tempering of the soldier, scholar, and man of the world, in his aspect; he formed a great but pleasing contrast to his wife, whose glowing complexion and dark mellow eye bespoke an origin in some climate more familiar with the sun. He looked as if he could sit there a great while patiently, and live on his own mind, biding his time; she, as if she could bear anything for affection's sake, but would feel the weight of each moment as it passed.
“Seeing the album full of drawings, and verses which bespoke the circle of elegant and affectionate intercourse they had left behind, we could not but see that the young wife sometimes must need a sister, the husband a companion, and both must often miss that electricity which sparkles from the chain of congenial minds. . . . .
“I feel very differently about these foreigners from Americans; American men and women are inexcusable if they do not bring up children so as to be fit for all necessities; that is the meaning of our star, that here, all men being free and equal, all should be fitted for freedom, and an independence by his own resources, wherever the changeful wave of our mighty stream may take him. But the star of Europe brought a different horoscope.” . . . .
I must now add that which Margaret Fuller has not
related, but which was told me; namely, how nobly she
exerted herself with her friend on behalf of the
unfortunate Swedes, and how in time a complete change was
wrought in their circumstances. They removed from that
solitary farm in the forest, to Chicago. Schneidanu obtained
adequate surgical aid; recovered, and is at this moment
the most skilful daguerreotypist, probably, in the whole
State, and as such has made considerable gains. He
is just now returned from New York, where he has taken
a large and excellent daguerreotype of Jenny Lind. He
is universally liked here. His lively, pretty wife now
relates, laughing and crying at the same time, the
occurrences of their life in the wilderness in a kind of medley
of Swedish and English, which is charming. Uneonius
and his wife removed hither also, but in better
circumstances than the former.
Uneonius is just now at New York; he is gone to see Mademoiselle Lind, and obtain from her money for the
completion of the Lutheran church at Chicago. I spent
an evening with his wife. That gay, high-spirited girl,
of whom I heard when she was married at Upsala to
accompany her husband to the New World, she had gone
through severe trials of sickness, want, and sorrow. She
had laid four children to rest in foreign soil. She had one
boy remaining. She was still pretty, still young, but her
cheerfulness—that was gone; and her fresh, courageous
spirit was changed into quiet patience. She had now a
small, new-built house, in a more healthy situation than
where they had formerly lived, and very near to the little
Lutheran church. The church is very ornamental, but
as yet unfinished internally. Here I saw somewhat
above thirty children, Swedish and Norwegian, assembled
to hear a lecture; a little company of kindly-looking,
fair-complexioned, blue-eyed children! They were for the
most part children of persons in low circumstances, who
lived about the neighbourhood on small farms. They
learn in the school to read and write as well in English
as in their mother-tongue. There are very few Swedes
resident here. At Millewankee, and in that part of
Wisconsin there are a great many.
I heard a good deal from Mr. Schneidanu and his wife
respecting Eric Jansen, and the circumstances which
occasioned his death, but shall defer speaking of them
till we meet. The man seems to have been of an
enigmatical character, half a deceiver, and half deceived
(either by himself or his demon).
I saw, one evening which I spent with Mrs. Schneidanu
at her house, my “Belle of Baltimore,” Hannah Hawkins;
she is a pretty, quiet young girl, of that class of women
who are capable of the most beautiful actions, without
having the least idea that they are doing anything
beautiful. They are themselves moral beauty, and they
follow the impulses of their nature as flowers follow theirs.
There is a great number of Germans in Chicago, especially among the tradespeople and handicraftsmen. The city is only twenty years old, and it has increased in that time to a population of twenty-five thousand souls. A genuine “baby” of the Great West! but as I have already said, somewhat unkempt as yet. There is, however, here a street, or more properly speaking a row of houses or small villas along the shore of the lake, standing on elevated ground, which has in its situation a character of high-life, and which will possess it in all respects some day; for there are already people here from different parts of the globe who will constitute the sound kernel of a healthy aristocracy.
Chicago bears on its arms the name of “the City in the Garden.” And when the prairie-land around it becomes garden, there will be reason for its poetical appellation.
I have seen here, also, light and lofty school-rooms, and have heard the scholars in them, under the direction of an excellent master, sing quartetts in such a manner as affected me to tears. And the children, how eager, how glad to learn they were! Hurrah! The West builds light school-rooms where the young may learn joyfully, and sing correctly and sweetly! The West must progress nobly. The building of the Temple of the Sun has already commenced.
My friends here deplored the chaotic state, and the want of integrity which prevails in political affairs, and which may be principally attributed to the vast emigration of the rudest class of the European population, and the facility with which every civil right is obtained in the State. A year's residence in the State gives the immigrant the right of a citizen, and he has a vote in the election of the governors both of the city and the State. Unprincipled political agitators avail themselves of the ignorance of immigrants, and inveigle them by fine speeches to vote for the candidate whom they laud, and who sometimes betrays them. The better and more noble-minded men of the State are unable to compete with these schemers, and therefore do not offer themselves; hence it most frequently happens that they are not the best men who govern the State. Bold and ambitious fortune-hunters most easily get into office, and once in office they endeavour to maintain their place by every kind of scheme and trick, as well as by flattering the masses of the people to preserve their popularity. The ignorant people of Europe, who believe that kings and great lords are the cause of all the evils in the world, vote for that man who speaks loudest against the powerful, and who declares himself to be a friend of the people.
I also heard it lamented that the Scandinavian immigrants not unfrequently come hither with the belief that the State-church and religion are one and the same thing and when they have left behind them the former, they will have nothing to do with the latter. Long compulsion of mind has destroyed, to that degree, their powers of mind; and they come into the West very frequently in the first instance, as rejectors of all church communion and every higher law. And this is natural enough for people not accustomed to think greatly; but is a moment of transition which cannot last very long in any sound mind, and in a hemisphere where the glance is so clear and alive to everything which contributes to the higher life of man or of society.
Illinois is a youthful State, with a million inhabitants, but is able, with her rich soil, to support at least ten millions. The climate, however, is not favourable to immigrants from Europe, who, during the first few years suffer from fever and other climatic diseases.
In the morning I leave Chicago and cross Lake Michigan to Millewankee in Wisconsin. An agreeable young man came last evening to fetch me there.
I have been merely a few days in Chicago, and yet I have seen people there with whom I should like to live all my days.
But these feelings for amiable people whom I meet with now and then during my pilgrimage, are to me as “a tent of one night,” under which I repose thankfully; I would fain linger yet longer; but I must the next morning remove my tent and proceed still farther,—and I do so with a sigh.
Farewell, ye charming people in that ugly city! Receive my thanks, warm hearts of Chicago!
P.S.—Jenny Lind is in New York, and has been received with American furor—the maddest of all madness. The sale by auction of the tickets for her first concert is said to have made forty thousand dollars. She has presented the whole of her share of profit from that first concert to benevolent institutions of New York. Three hundred ladies are said to besiege her daily, and thousands of people of all classes follow her steps. Hundreds of letters are sent to her each day. Ah! poor girl! Hercules himself would not be equal to that.