 Chapter 1 of East by West, Volume 1. Chapter 1. There are a few phrases in the English language more familiar than Off Sandy Hook. It is a standing headline in most English newspapers, and the fact recorded in the court-circular that the queen walked out yesterday is not a more frequently reiterated piece of information than that yesterday such and such great steamers were Off Sandy Hook. Like many other familiar phrases it conveys to the mind no definite idea of the thing itself. It is only in the mighty leisure of a voyage across the Atlantic that one has time to formulate the question, What is Sandy Hook? Why Rookery, as Miss Betsy Trotwood sharply asked David Copperfield when he mentioned the postal address of the Steppe Eternal Home? Is Sandy Hook a curved instrument with which a great and friendly nation seizes incoming ships, and gives them a pull onto New York after ascertaining the precise quality of the assisted emigrants on board? Is it a hook at all? And is it in any obtrusive way Sandy? The questions must remain unsolved as far as this record is concerned, for when we passed Sandy Hook it was midnight, and only two beacons indicated the world-famed spot. It was a magnificent night, with the moonlight shining over a smooth and glassy sea. About half past eleven, when most of the passengers had retired to their staterooms, the stillness was broken by strains of music coming nearer and nearer. Presently a tug bore down upon us, and an excited crowd began to call on Brown. We had on board an inoffensive gentleman of that name travelling with his wife and young daughter. I now learned, with the feeling of regret that fills the mind when one finds too late he has been entertaining angels unawares, that Mr. Brown was the state printer of New York, and that this was the Democratic Party who had worked ungrudgingly to obtain for him the office, and now welcomed his return from European travel. They had come to bear Mr. Brown off, an undertaking not without difficulty seeing that we had not yet passed quarantine. But the Democratic Party of New York, when it puts its hand to the plow, makes its furrow straight and deep. It had obtained a special permit from the ordinarily inflexible city authorities to allow Mr. Brown, Mrs. Brown and Miss Brown forthwith to land, in case there were no sickness on board the Britannic. They engaged a doctor at a special fee to visit the ship, and give the necessary certificate. And so, with the band playing home, sweet home, the Democratic Party madly cheering and violently shaking hands with the rescued passengers, the tug faded out of sight over the moonlit sea, and we were bereft of Brown. Fancy Mr. Hansard, who prints our parliamentary reports, or one of the firm of Spotswood, the Queen's Printers, coming home from a trip to Antwerp or Australia, and either the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party running down to Graves End with a string band to bear him home in triumph. I am afraid there is no doubt that by comparison we as a nation are lethargic in politics. We were over a thousand souls on board the Britannic, a fearful charge for the undertaking of any one man. For the first few days it weighed heavily on the spirits of our captain, and left him no time for those frivolities by which some captains of big passenger ships round off the sharp edge of official duty. No little tea-parties in the captain's room, no attentions to the fair, no chatting with the brave, and no assumption at the table of the cheery attitude of host. Till we were in mid-Atlantic, the captain's place at the head of the table was, in truth, rarely filled, except in the sense that Banquo sometimes sat at the banqueting-board. Occasionally the passengers at dinner became aware of the presence of a tall figure carefully wrapped up, standing by the doorway, surveying the festive scene. Sometimes it sat in the chair at the head of the captain's table, gloomily ate a dish, and disappeared. At others it shook its head, and stalked forth, wondering how two hundred men and women could eat and drink when the wind was south-east by east-half-east, and at any moment something might happen at the lee scuppers. This is our captain, as he appears when the stormy winds do blow, and we are near land, in the track of ships, and of danger. But when fine weather comes, he thaws out, and though always preserving the self-recorded characteristic of the Duke of Wellington, in as much as he has no small talk, proves himself a pleasant gentleman, as popular with the passengers as he is with the more critical company of officers and crew. Of our precious freight of a thousand souls, only a little over two hundred are saloon passengers. The day before we left Liverpool, the city of Rome sailed on the same voyage, having on board four hundred and sixty-four saloon passengers. That means an immense amount of discomfort through all stages of the day. Overcrowded decks, a scramble in the lady's saloon, a block in the smoking-room, and two courses of meals, one half waiting, while the other half breakfasts, lunches, and dines. It is a great temptation to ship-owners to make hay while the sun shines, and in the American passenger department it shines pretty hotly from April to September. On the day the Britannic left the Mersey, with her modest compliment of two hundred and fourteen saloon passengers, the White Star Company had upon their books applications for an additional nine hundred passages. But the company have a rule which is kept at all costs. The spacious dining-room will seat two hundred and twenty guests, each having his or her appointed arm-chair and cubic measurement of table-room. Accommodation elsewhere being in proportion, there is no possibility of overcrowding. I heard a good story of two well-known Americans. They had been accustomed to visit Europe in May, and had competed with each other for the best births on the Germanic or Britannic. A, having been done by B two years in succession, thought he would be all right in 1884. Accordingly, in March 1883, he wrote, engaging the captain's room and three of the best state-rooms, for the first voyage of the Germanic in May, 1884. Flushed with the certainty of triumph, he in cautiously mentioned the circumstance to a friend. Pleased with this stroke of real smartness, the friend spread the story, which came to the ears of B, who immediately cabled to Liverpool, to secure for himself the captain's room and three best state-rooms on the Germanic's first voyage out from New York in May, 1884. When, in due course, A's letter arrived by mail, an answer was sent by return expressing profound regret that the births named had been already allotted. This is the simple record of a business transaction, and I have seen both the telegram and the letter. There are very few English among the saloon passengers, only a score as far as I can count. One, a member of the House of Commons, who, whilst doubtful as to the future leadership of his party, is pretty certain the bankruptcy bill will fail. There are two Italians who seep themselves outside the saloon, picturesquely draped in party-coloured silk rugs, and look unutterable woe. There are many Germans and one Swede. There is a pretty Servian and a grim Montenegrin, who have settled one phase of the Eastern question by marrying each other. They have brought with them a middle-aged servitor, who, if his tact were equal to his devotion, would be invaluable. The pretty Servian sits for the most part on deck, her fair face standing even the cruel test of seasickness. The one conviction deeply rooted in the mind of the middle-aged retainer is that if madame will only eat, all will be well. He is always turning up with trays of refreshment, chiefly of a fatty substantial kind. He has tried these himself and is well and happy. Why should not madame try them? By a providential arrangement, madame is spared sight of nearly fifty percent of the vines, owing to their premature dispersal over the deck. As soon as the faithful servitor reaches the deck by the companion-way, his eyes search out the object of his devotion, and his face lights up with a knowing smile. But a middle-aged servitor cannot fix his eyes on his lady's face, and at the same time see the legs of projecting chairs, or be prepared for a sudden lurch of the ship. Over he goes, vines and all, and thus accident blasts the fruition of hope. This has come to pass so frequently that the approach of the middle-aged servitor with the inevitable plate of meat has come to be the signal for a general gathering up of skirts, and his passage is watched with an anxiety that could not be excelled by a crowd watching blonding wheel a barrow across a tightrope. But he sees and knows nothing of this, his eyes being always fixed on the loved face, and his mind in a tremor of delicious anticipation of her delight, when she discovers that under the metal plate cover he has a pork chop. Sometimes virtue is its own reward. Having in despair one day brought up an ice-cream, and this too being gently but wearily declined, he publicly ate it, with many signs and gestures of immense satisfaction, a little accentuated by the facial contortions that follow upon in cautiously eating ice in large spoonfuls. Of all nationalities Americans vastly predominate, coming home singly or in families having done Europe. With Americans of the present generation, European travel is a business undertaking seriously gone into, without too carefully counting the cost, but with fixed resolve to have the money's worth. Four months is the correct time to take, and between May and September the American leaves untrodden few notable spots, whether on the Continent or Great Britain. He, as it were, takes a series of half hours with our best cities. The sailing of the male steamers from Queenstown gives Americans an opportunity of seeing Ireland, which they are not slow to avail themselves of. Many cross over some days before the steamer starts, and having seen Dublin, the Phoenix Park, the Giant's Causeway, the Lakes of Killarney and the Blarney Stone, contentedly step on board at Queenstown, humming Nunk Dimitus. Short of making this special tour, they avail themselves to the fullest extent of the opportunities of seeing showplaces afforded by the detention of the male steamer at Queenstown. Yes, I guess I did pretty well. A young man from Troy said in the smoking-room on the night of sailing from Queenstown, I took the boat to Cork, saw Queenstown harbour, took train to Blarney, went over the castle and kissed a stone, came back to Cork and did the exhibition, took an outside car, drove all over the city, and whilst we were waiting for the males to be put aboard, bought a carved-out walking-stick and a chalely. This seemed pretty well for a chance-flying visit, but there was a discontented tone in the young man's voice and a look in his face that indicated a suspicion there was something he had omitted. I gathered from wide conversation among these frank and hearty people that for them the chief attractions in England are the Tower of London, the City of Chester, Westminster Abbey, Shakespeare's Tomb and the Royal Stables. Amongst the sites of Queenstown not entered in any recognised guidebook, what moved the Americans most was the process of getting the royal males on board the tender. The arrangements for the transmission of the males are in the same primitive condition they were when the males first went by the Queenstown route. Possibly things go right up to Cork, but thereafter follow arrangements that would be incredible, except from the lips of an eyewitness. The distance from Cork to Queenstown by the direct line is fifteen miles, which in the case of the royal male would be covered in as many minutes by the English-Midland or Great Western Railway. The Irish train carrying the males, with a colossal steamer and a thousand passengers impatiently awaiting them, stops at nearly every station on the way down, and arrives breathless and puffing in thirty-five minutes. Then the screaming part of the farce begins. Instead of swift, well-horsed male carts that would cover the intervening space between the railway station and the wharf in a few minutes, a melancholy procession of heavy one-horse carts are backed in, and when loaded leisurely meander down to the wharf. As the yard and entrance admit of only one cart at a time, an empty one has to be cleared out before a full one is brought up. A gang of about a dozen men are ready to shoulder the sacks and trot off with them to the tender, a force sufficiently strong. But there is only one man on the cart to place the sacks on the men's shoulders, and the stream is constantly damned, three or four men regularly waiting till they can be loaded. It seems so obvious a thing to take off one of the gang of porters and put him on the cart to help to load, that it is presumable the step is not taken only because such increase of expedition would be out of keeping with the general arrangements. When, as happened on the day we sailed, the Australian and New Zealand males swell the consignment up to nearly four hundred sacks, a delay ensues equal to a considerable money value. An American of a statistical turn of mind calculated that if the loss in the value of time to the owners of the Britannic, to the consignees of freight, and to the thousand passengers were added together, it would amount to a sum sufficient to pay the cost of telegraphing all the letters in the mailbags. That is a calculation evidently made upon in perfect data by a man deeply moved at this evidence of the ineptitude of a played out nation. But the amount of mere money loss would be sufficient in a year to cover any reasonable expenditure upon obvious ways of improvement. In packing up for a long journey, the question of books presents itself with persistency. But books take up much room and weigh heavy. Moreover, it is well known that in the United States you can buy it, prices varying from seven pence eight meter ten pence, the choicest works of modern English literature. It is not without some feeling of shame-facedness that one purchases at this rate the works of dear friends, knowing that they are being robbed of their dues. But what would you, when you go to Rome, you must do as the Romans do, and similarly in the United States, soothed by the certainty that a great and enlightened people would not systematically pursue a particular practice if it were actually dishonest. With this prospect at an early stage of the journey of an unlimited supply of books in cheap and portable form, it seemed sufficient, if one could take from home, a compendious little volume with something in it for all possible emergencies. This is to be found in English as she is spoke. That precious volume with which Senor Pedro Carolino has doured the world. Turning up the page where instructions are given for embarking oneself, I find the hints brief but to the point. Don't you fear the privateers? asks the inquiring mind. I jest of them, answers the dauntless traveller. My vessel is armed in man of war. I have a vigilant and courageous equipage, and the ammunitions don't want me its. Never have you not done rec. The inquirer proceeds, determined to make his friend as uncomfortable as possible on starting. That it has arrived me twice. And here the conversation ends, it being plainly possible to flutter this calm, courageous soul. There is, however, one danger of the deep not here alluded to, which I have found in the realisation more terrible than pirates, storm or fog. This is the presence of an infant of tender years in an adjoining stateroom. That a passenger should chance to be thus situated is not a matter of great surprise, nor would it in ordinary circumstances be one of just complaint. The ship is swarming with children from infants in arms to a lusty contingent who, when the deck is wet, as not infrequently happens, take possession of our chairs and run them up and down the slippery boards. It seems to be the correct thing for American infants to be teased on the Atlantic, or weaned on a white-style liner. During the first days of the voyage I looked for a sensible diminution of numbers among the elder children owing to natural causes. The boundless hospitality of the ship concentrates itself in a succession of mighty efforts at half-past seven in the morning, at noon and at five o'clock, to fill these children up. To see them at breakfast, dinner, or tea, it would be reasonably supposed that the effort would be more than successful. But ten minutes after any meal you shall behold a cluster of small boys and girls at the foot of the staircase, wheedling the second steward, a man of infinite, if mistaken, kindness, into giving them handfuls of gingerbread, pocketfuls of nuts, or plates loaded with a dubious confection highly popular in this community under the name of Eccles Cakes. I never passed this ever-changing group at the foot of the staircase without apprehension of coming in contact with fragments of a burst boy or an exploded girl. But nothing ever happens of a fatal kind. They eat all day, sleep all night, and turn up on deck early in the morning to escape the chairs, which, in addition to running the risk of breaking them, has the recommendation of waking up any one asleep in the berths below. These are general blessings diffused throughout the ship's company. My particular boon is something over and above, a special addition to the common lot. My baby never leaves the stateroom to go on deck. Sometimes, in the dead unhappy night, I find it hard to resist the wish that it were otherwise. One might volunteer to take him for a while from the wearied nurse's arms, show him over the side of the vessel the wild joy of the Atlantic waves, and then, who knows, a babe is never safe in inexperienced hands, and on the following night an unwonted peace might brood over one quarter of the ship. This terrible infant is not only always in his cabin, but is always wailing, after all, not the most serious part of the infliction. His entourage is German, and everyone who has met Germans travelling is painfully aware of their vocal peculiarities. I remember one quiet autumn evening sitting on the terrace of an hotel at Baveno, far away across the broad Lago Maggiore, shone the white walls of Palanza with its big hotel. Suddenly the stillness was broken by a murmur, as of a distant multitude engaged in deadly conflict. What's that? I asked my companion. An Immurt? Oh, no! he answered carelessly. They've finished dinner at the hotel over there, and the Germans have come out on the terrace for a little friendly conversation. Palanza has come alongside Baveno now, and sometimes when the family are conversing, there is a difficulty in hearing the shrill wail of the infant, but only then. Two or three sessions ago a question was raised in the House of Commons as to the steerage accommodation in Atlantic Steamers outward bound. Statements were made, purporting to be the result of personal experience, which greatly shocked public opinion. And, though discredited by a report subsequently made at the instance of the Board of Trade, something of that impression doubtless still lingers. It occurred to me that the present was a favourable opportunity of making investigation. On Thursday, being just a week out, I found a quiet and full opportunity of spending some time in the steerage. There are seven hundred and eight steerage passengers on the Britannic, apparently exiles from all the kingdoms of Europe. As far as possible they camp out in nations, the Scandinavians having their quarters, the Germans theirs, the Finns theirs, the Irish theirs, and so on through the record. With the exception of married couples who have their special quarters, the women are all aft and the men all forred. Where the married couples live their births are set out in blocks, each decently curtained from the other. In none of the births is bedding provided, immigrants bringing what they deem requisite in that way, which in some cases, notably that of the Finns, does not reach extravagant proportions. The single women sleep on bunks, each containing five births, one tier above the other, as in the saloon staterums. The arrangements for the single men are of the same character. Both forred and aft there are broad gangways providing free circulation, and portholes wide open at the time of my visit giving abundant light. The floor was neatly sanded, and the planks still preserved the severely scoured condition in which they left port. One of the things which most strikingly divide new and old order in the matter of ocean steamships is the care for ventilation. We had a rough time of it for the first five days out of Liverpool, and our stateroom was once occupied for forty hours at a stretch. In the fortieth hour it was as fresh as in the first. The system here adopted is on the broad principle in vogue in the House of Commons, the best ventilated chamber in the world. A constant supply of fresh air is pumped in just above the level of the floor, and working its way upward as it becomes warmed passes out through an open cornice in the ceiling. In the steerage and ford on board the Britannic there is an automatic ventilating apparatus which I will not attempt to describe, but which in conjunction with the wind sails, always freighted with fresh air blowing over the Atlantic, keeps up a supply that must be subtly invigorating to the denizens from crowded cities, and perhaps a little embarrassing to the Finns. As to food, the boundless hospitality which rains in the saloon is here diffused. Perhaps for the first time in their lives these seven hundred men, women, and children live in a land where it is always mealtime. There are three regulation meals on the day of my visit thus provided for breakfast, Irish stew, fresh bread and butter, tea and coffee, dinner, soup, fresh beef and potatoes, stewed apples and rice, tea, fresh bread and butter, tea and gruel. It is, as a pale-faced man said to me with a gleam of tender recollection in his eyes, cut and come again. Everyone can have as many helpings as he pleases, and towards the middle of the voyage when they find their sea-legs they please in a matter truly appalling. Lest they should feel hungry between wiles there are three large open barrels set by the main gangway. One contains biscuits, another asks, and a third butter. At any hour of the day or night these may be dipped into. There is always throughout the day tea and coffee always going. From time to time a barrel of herrings is opened, and anon a barrel of apples into which all are free to dip. How all this can be done at four guineas ahead, the current rate of steerage passage, is a problem which I trust the owners have satisfactorily solved. At the time of my visit the passengers were all on deck, all but seven. These were a wandering white kitten, two canaries in a cage in the steerage, three thrushes in a large wicker cage ford, and in one of the births a lusty infant, six weeks old, laughing and crowing, and evidently in a state of profound satisfaction with the world as far as he had yet seen it. CHAPTER II It is a pity that the first consideration forced upon the attention of the foreign visitor on landing at New York is the state of the roads. As far as I know no civilized town, certainly no capital city, has thoroughfares in such a condition as those which disgrace New York. It is urged in extenuation that the tram-cars make good roads impossible, and that as everybody travels by cars the state of the roads outside the rails does not much matter. But neither of these assertions will bear consideration. New York is not the only city in the world that has trams. We have them in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and most English towns, yet the roads are kept in good condition. The tram lines in New York would of themselves make a British vestu-man stare. In London the lines are laid with the flange on one side level with the road, and the groove as narrow as possible, with the object of preventing wheels of cabs and carriages from locking. Here, in the centre of mechanical activity and ingenuity, are found the old open rails of the time of George Francis' train, pitfalls for the unwary hackney coaches, traps for the hapless omnibuses. Outside the rails the roadway is in a pitiable condition. To drive from the White Star Wharf to the Windsor Hotel is a transit more perilous than a voyage across the Atlantic. In respect of the condition of the roads there is not much to choose between uptown and downtown. Fifth Avenue is admittedly the principal street in New York, yet I can see out of the window at which I write, immediately in front of the Windsor Hotel, within a stone-throw of the Vanderbilt Mansion, in the middle of the thoroughfare along which the welson fashion of New York daily drive, a hole in the roadway two feet long, a foot broad, and from three to four inches in depth. Skibarine does not shine in the matter of roadways, but if opposite the hotel in Main Street there were a hole of this kind, the population would turn out in a body and denounce the taxon government. The whole question of street locomotion in New York is curious and interesting. The elevated railroad, familiar at least by name to all Englishmen, offers the fullest facilities for getting about a city of the peculiar construction of New York. It seems at first blush a monstrous proposition that a company of private speculators should seize upon the streets of a capital, run up iron posts, sling girders across, and run a railway along the level of the first floor windows. But the streets of New York are so bad that there is a not unnatural feeling on the part of the inhabitants that they could not be made worse. Now the railway is made and is in working order, it is gratefully accepted as one of the institutions of the city. The trains run frequently to all places where men most congregate. The carriages are comfortable and airy, the roadway benefitting by the spring of the girders is exceptionally easy, and the price of a journey, whether long or short, is fiefdence. Whilst the trains run overhead, the cars run below at half-price, and morn, noon and night in rain or sunshine, both are crowded. A New Yorker rarely walks. A proposal that having a visit to pay to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, I should walk, nearly had serious consequences to the whole porter at the Windsor. Why, he said, gasping, I guess it's twenty blocks off. He could not have been more taken aback if I had proposed to company Sergeant Bates, who having utterly regardless of danger carried the American flag through England, is now about to walk through the United States with the object, as he explains, of consolidating north and south and stamping out the last embers of an ancient feud. Across the river in New Jersey there are means of locomotion more startling to the insular mind than the elevated railroad. Travelling to South Orange, the train winds its way at full speed through the main streets of whatever towns or villages lie in its route. From time to time there are outbursts of indignation in England because of some accident at a level crossing. Here is a level crossing miles in length, with an occasional signalman to wave the alarm where the thoroughfares bisect the track. The company think they have done enough if they adapt the ordinary cow catcher to the exigencies of the human population, and at regular intervals of space entreat infants in arms to look out for the locomotive. In addition to these precautions the engine tolls a subpulcral bell, which, just after another man or woman has been killed, has a most impressive sound. This arrangement of the railway, whether travelling on the level of first floor windows or along the main street of a populous town, is characteristic of the American's notion that the world was made for man and not man for the world. To have railroads right there is the handiest thing and is accordingly done. On the same principle an American lounging on a chair in a smoke-room will put his legs on a table, if it be within reach. The table was not made for legs, any more than the main street of Orange or Newark was made for railways, but there's the table and there are the main streets, so the legs go on one and the railroads run along the other. This spirit of utilising whatever lies nearest to hand is shown again in the matter of advertisements. The ugliness of New York is in places accentuated by the upheaval of lumps of sandstone rock standing on bleak bits of cleared land. If this were Paris the opportunity would be seized to make a bright spot in the heart of the city. Beds of flowers would bloom on velvety turf and the bare rock would be covered with climbing plants. The practical mind of the American is struck with the excellent position of these stones for advertising purposes and they are accordingly covered with imperative injunctions to buy your dry goods for cash or to lose no time in ordering the rising sun stove polish. On the outskirts of the city advertisements are planted out like cabbages or celery along the field skirting the lines of railway. Down by the city hall some building is going on which necessitates the putting up of scaffolding, the poles of which stand in barrels full of earth. These barrels had not been fixed an hour before they were hired to display the advertisement of a Piano Forty maker. For several seasons the hotel keepers at Coney Island who have their private advertising connections have been driven wild by a small boat with a large sail that tacks up and down off the crowded beach. On the sail is printed in gigantic letters, give Batty's soap a show. There is no escaping this. People go down to Coney Island to be near the life and freshness of the Atlantic, and looking out seaward there is ever in view this small boat with its large mainsail bearing the strange device give Batty's soap a show. There is little doubt that had the Ark happened to be stranded on Jersey Heights instead of on Ararat, Noah on stepping out in the morning would have found the structure plastered over with injunctions to use gastrine for dyspepsia or to give gargling oil a turn. The condition of the thoroughfares and the facilities afforded by the elevated railroads and the endless chain of tramways combined to banish cabs from the daily use of the New York citizen. But there are times when a cab must be taken, and then the driver has his revenge for long neglect. Eight and fourpence is practically the lowest fare taken by a New York hack driver. From the White Star Wharf to the Windsor Hotel a distance certainly not exceeding three miles I paid twelve and sixpence. Moreover a gentleman who introduced himself to me as the boss demanded the fare before starting. A procedure resented as an imputation upon my solvency. But long before the hotel was reached I perceived that it was simply a shrewd business transaction, for the odds were heavily against arrival at our destination. If the horse lived so long the rattle-trap convents would surely come to grief over the Corduroy Road. Twice the horse stopped in protest against this sort of thing on a Sunday morning. The second time the driver got down and humoured him by taking off one of his shoes, after which he did better and covered the three miles in forty-eight minutes. I wanted to argue with the driver in favour of a reduction on account of the economy affected in the matter of shoes. The case seemed very clear. I had hired a horse with four shoes. We had started with four shoes and we arrived with three, a saving to the proprietor of twenty-five percent in which the fare had a right to participate. But it was no use talking. The boss had my three dollars paid in advance, and if we had reached the hotel with only one shoe, as would probably have happened had it been a few blocks farther off, or if we had never arrived at all, he would have regarded the financial incident as closed. This same peremptoriness in the matter of securing payment is strongly marked in the customs department. America is a free country, and when a man is egregiously overcharged for customs duty he is at liberty to protest. Nothing can exceed the earnestness with which a New York customs house officer invites the angered traveller to pay under protest. A fellow voyager on the Britannic, had on the outward voyage played poker, till on arriving in the Mersey he found himself, after many vicissitudes, the winner of eight pounds. After the manner in which equally pious men of old used to build a church, or endow a shrine, after a prolonged bout of wickedness, our young friend finding in an old furniture shop in Durham a piece of carved wood, certified by the second-hand furniture man to have formerly been a part of the altar of the cathedral, bought it with intent to present it to his parish church. When others roofily counted up the cost of facing the customs officials with their importations the reformed poker player complacently eyed the case containing his altar piece. That's real 16th century work, he said. It goes through as an antiquity duty free. I met him in the customs shed two hours later. What's the matter? I asked, noticing his flushed face and angry mean. Has the antiquity come out broken? Antiquity be darned, he answered with painful profanity. Twenty dollars duty says the fellow to me when I showed him the invoice. 16th century work says I goes through as an antiquity. You bet it don't, says he. Antiquities don't begin till 14th century. Twenty dollars duty, but you can pay under protest. So I had to pay for a mean matter of two centuries. If I'd only known the regulation I guess that altar would have been made two centuries earlier. Still he had had the satisfaction of paying under protest. A luxury which unlike some others is not of a fleeting character. The manager of the leading English insurance company in the United States tells me that a similar joy has lingered with him for six years. There is published here for the use of insurance managers a wonderful series of maps showing at a glance the height, breadth, depth and form of construction of every house and public building in the principal towns. The English directors having heard of this asked for the loan of one of the maps. Being returned in due course the Custom House officers at New York pounced upon it and in spite of clear evidence that it was in all respects of American manufacture heavily taxed it. Payment of duty was made under protest and upon communication with the Treasury repayment was promised, but it has never come and there remains only the subtle satisfaction of having lodged the protest. Mention of this insurance map a monument of patience and labour recalls another evidence of the completeness with which Americans carry a project through. Foremost among the drawbacks of holiday time with the British householder is the anxiety as to what will become of his house whilst he is away. The New Yorker is relieved of this care and of some other domestic ones by a regularly constituted company. His very godmother connecting his abode by telegraph wires with her own central domain will upon the ringing of a bell send a messenger prepared like the British Marine to go anywhere and do anything. A second signal will as if by magic bring a carriage to the door. A third will bring a policeman. A fourth sounds a fire alarm and I do not doubt that there are other signals that will call anything or anybody likely to be required in any well-regulated household. When the householder goes away to Newport, Longbranch or other holiday resort the godmother takes entire charge of the house farsens windows and doors connecting them with her own rooms where upon the slightest attempt to enter the closed house a bell rings and by the time that the pleased burglar has settled down to his work the police arrive. But a house shut up for a month in summertime would grow insufferably musty. The fairy godmother thinks of this and once a week sends down has all the windows thrown open and thoroughly airs the house. It is gratifying to know that the godmother makes a handsome income out of this beneficial enterprise. When one thinks of the houses in London left tenantless for five or six months in the year with the attendant expenses of housekeeping and the constant fear of malpractices from without and within one wonders whether there are no terms of a strictly commercial character upon which the fairy godmother could be induced to care for London as she does for New York. Owing to convenient contiguity to a rich stone quarry it has come to pass that New York is one of the somberest looking cities in the world. The dream of the rich New Yorker realized in the case of Mr. Vanderbilt is to live in a brownstone fronted house that is to say to show a bold veneer of brownstone to the world that passes more neighbors at the back with ordinary brick. No words can adequately convey a notion of the depressing shade of a New York brownstone house. It is something of the color of chocolate without the red tint which relieves it from absolute dullness. It gives the passerby the idea that here is a house once strong and healthy now sickening with a vague disease. It is impossible to conceive any color on the palette that would set off or even harmonize with this sickly hue. To do the New Yorker justice no ordinary canons of art deter him from experiments. The brownstone fronts are backed with brick painted a brilliant red pointed in black. Add to this bright green and sun blinds of crimson stripes and you will get a result joyously achieved in many of the streets of New York. Sometimes, whilst the shutters remain a brilliant green, there are calico blinds of a deep blue, but I am not sure that this is an improvement. In Fifth Avenue and streets akin to it there is some general toning down of these colors that they break out here and there and scarcely anywhere is the eye relieved from the depression of the deadly dullness of the brown. In New York politics efforts are sometimes made to bring about what are called the primary elections in July because in that month as it is said the brownstone fronts are out of town. If this were literally true it would be a great deliverance to New York. But the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb and New York has an architectural glory perhaps too which cover a multitude of brownstone fronts. The lesser one is the white marble cathedral in Fifth Avenue the finest modern building of the kind I ever saw. The other a marvel of combined beauty and strength is Brooklyn Bridge which is worth a journey across the Atlantic to see. Looked at from a distance whether near or far it seems to span the broad river with gossamer web yet an army might march across it or the population of a small town might live upon it without fear of the yawning gulf below. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of East by West this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Ruth Golding East by West by Henry W. Lucy Chapter 3 Some Western Towns When I said I would die a bachelor I never thought I would live to be married," says Benedict when reminded of earlier perversity. When with equal confidence I wrote of New York as the most unpaved of civilized cities I had not been to Chicago. In this respect the metropolis of the West certainly beats the chief town of the Republic. Here and there New York can show a street or portion of a street as bad as anything in Chicago. There is, for example, a thoroughfare leading out of Broadway in the direction of Nassau Street which will maintain the reputation of New York against the world. I forget the name of this slough of despond but it is in the very centre of the busiest parts of the city answering pretty much to our old jury. Thousands of busy feet thread it in the course of a day and cabs lumber through it jolting and splashing around the plentiful mud. In the country districts where the roads are occasionally bad, though infinitely better than in the centre of civilisation they have a pretty expressive name for sudden abysses or unexpected upheavals. Thanky-moms they call them because people in cab or car passing over them involuntarily make obeisance as if acknowledging the receipt of a favour. New Yorkers do not hesitate to attribute the prevalence of thanky-moms in their principal roadways to corruption in municipal affairs. They pay rates for road-making and road mending they say, but the money melts away before it reaches the streets. In Chicago the mayor is personally saddled with the responsibility of the shameful condition of the city both in respect of its wrecked roadways and its general aspect of dirt. Every morning the local newspapers, with the iteration that seems to pass through parts of America as currency for humour, ask when the mayor will have the city cleaned. I believe that disregard of this communist public convenience is innate in the American character. They are still a young people pioneers in a new country where the first thing a settler did was to clear a space, run up a shanty and let the road grow of itself. In town's farther west like St. Louis and Kansas City the principal can be more clearly seen in practice. Kansas City in particular a rapidly growing town apparently builds houses in such haste that it forgets the customary appanage of streets by which they may be approached. In Chicago this peculiarity is the more striking by comparison with the palatial houses and shops that line the ditches along which the vehicles flounder and through which men and women pick their perilous way. It is amongst the proudest records of Chicago that it was bodily raised several feet from a swamp. With the customary national neglect of the roads these were not lifted to the full height of the general level. The consequence is that except at crossings where there is a kind of planking it is necessary to take a leap off the pavement into the road. This is awkward for the pedestrian but the advertiser sees his opportunity and all along the edge of the pavement advertisements are pasted and are very conveniently seen from the roadway. Talking about advertisements and the ingenious methods created for their display I think the palm must be worn by the agent of a tobacco manufacturer whom I saw at work in Kansas City. He had with him a stock of green adhesive labels in joining the public to use legacies tobacco. Observing a horse hitched to one of the rings which stud the pavements in western cities he stuck one of the labels on its haunch carefully selecting the offside. Presently the owner a portly well-to-do citizen came out of the store where he had been transacting business and mounting his cob rode off gratuitously and unconsciously advertising a tobacco brand. Unless people have a fancy for seeing pigs killed there is nothing in Chicago to keep a traveller familiar with Liverpool or Manchester. It is curious when we come to think of it that no one regards a visit to Chicago as completed till he has seen a pig killed and cut up. In itself the process is not attractive. It could be seen any day in London, if not in the scientific and wholesale manner practised in Chicago at least complete enough for the pig. Yet I never heard of anyone having an hour or two to spare in London who went to see a pig killed. Fortified by these reflections I did not go. But Lord Coleridge making his famous semi-official tour through the states did, and so did nine out of any ten visitors who passed through Chicago. It would be idle to attempt to disguise the growth of a slight coolness between the Lord Chief Justice and his hospitable and enthusiastic hosts because having seen a pig killed and dismembered he would not go the whole hog and be present at the process of sausage-making. Apart from its pig-sticking and packing regarded as a fine art to be visited by the stranger as rare pictures and stately cathedrals are elsewhere sought out, Chicago is a place of which America may well be proud. It is a monument raised by human energy, skill, and pluck. Burned down to the ground in 1871 in 1873 it was rebuilt a city ten times handsomer and more substantial than that out of whose ashes it was raised. At the time the building was going forward it was stated in a local journal that beginning on April the 15th 1872 and ending December the 1st 1872 excluding Sundays counting two hundred working days and each day of eight hours there will be completed one brick, stone, or iron building twenty-five feet front and from four to six stories high for each hour of that time. The energy and dauntless enterprise which thus grappled with the great calamity of 1871 throbs through the city today in pursuit of the ordinary avocations of business. Chicago is one of the liveliest towns I have seen. In whatever part of the city one walks he is sure to be jostled by a crowd moving at high pressure. The city covers a wide area but its business capacities are nearly doubled by the heights of its buildings. Nothing under six stories is to be seen even in what may be called its back streets whilst seven or eight is the average in the main thoroughfare. Chicago is the model to which all western cities turn with natural expectation of some time equalling or even rivaling its splendid growth. We reckon here that Kansas City will someday show Chicago the way a citizen of that thriving place said to me as he sat on the pavement in his shirt sleeves and a chair with his legs a considerable distance up the lamppost. Certainly the growth of Kansas City within the last few years makes this expectation a little less wild than it will appear in Chicago. It is estimated that during the last four years Kansas City has nearly doubled itself and is still rapidly growing. St. Louis looks on with something of jealousy at the strides taken by its lusty younger brother and some spiteful talking goes on between the newspapers of the rival towns. Just now St. Louis is sneering at the theatrical and dramatic taste of Kansas City and recommends an opera company playing there to meet the tastes of the community by interspersing a breakdown by Buffalo Bill between the acts of Maritana. Where two Kansas journals vigorously respond by quoting well authenticated instances where St. Louis having declared in favour of an operatic or dramatic company the company has hopelessly failed elsewhere. Or where St. Louis having dammed with faint praise public opinion in more advanced cities has enthusiastically approved the efforts of players or singers. Unlike Chicago neither St. Louis nor Kansas City shows outward signs of the press of business. The gentlemen of Kansas City are much addicted to sitting in their shirt sleeves on the shady side of the pavement with a cigar and their heels in the air. There is great competition for lamp posts eased off a little since the introduction of telegraphs which are carried by posts along the footways of the main streets. But appetite grows with what it feeds upon and the passion of Kansas men for getting their feet above the level of their heads is not slaked even by combination of telegraph posts where not thus carrying on business on the pavement the male inhabitants of Kansas City play billiards or sustain their drooping energies by imbibing a whiskey cocktail or to use latest imagery born with the completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad driving a golden spike. Work must be done here or Kansas City instead of forging ahead would fall out of the race. Only it seems to be done by stealth and with an ostentatious appearance of leading a lazy life. The only earnest workers visible from a street survey are the news boys who rush about from mourn till eve with ever fresh editions of the Daily Papers. Whilst New York journalism is suffering the lack of reduction in price and from two hundred and fifty pounds a day downwards is being sacrificed by enterprising proprietors anxious as the Tribune puts it that their readers shall share in their prosperity. Kansas City goes on its way demanding and receiving tough and tapiny for its morning sheets. Here as throughout the States there is notable the distinction as against English custom that everyone buys his own paper. There is neither borrowing nor lending and an hotel would as soon think of providing its customers with the free use of the latest three volume novels as a furnishing a gratuitous supply of the morning papers for common reading. To such extent is this care of the interest of newspaper proprietors carried that in the larger hotels where there is a newspaper reading room there will be no copies of the local journal. Guests cannot buy the Chicago papers, the southern papers the Canadian journals or the spicy sheets from the far west therefore the hotel will provide them. But guests can buy in the vestibule of the hotel the local papers at a cent advance on their published price and if they want to read them they must buy them. It's a dream that Tuppence Haipney is the regular price of a morning paper out of New York. It is astonishing to see how many people and what class of people buy their morning newspaper going into town and supplement it with one or more evening papers on their way home. St. Louis stands on the banks of the Mississippi, a muddy stream beside which the Thames of Westminster is a silver tide. There is no small-minded or ill-judged attempt on the part of the Mississippi to hide its real character. It is simply a solution of yellow mud and it flows downward to the sea rather proud of the fact than otherwise. People wash in Mississippi water and drink it after undergoing a process of filtering but no filtering will take out the stain of mud and it is appalling to think of the wholesale transactions in real property which daily go forward in cities where the Mississippi furnishes the water supply. One other thing the two eager young towns have in common is flies. In St. Louis it is said that Kansas City has more flies than any town in the world but Kansas City is not to be outdone in this unwonted burst of generosity and magnanimously insists upon the preeminence of the more southern city. As a sojourner in both I should say the matter was not worth quarreling about. A fly more or less is of no consequence where they are counted by tens of thousands. In neither city have I sat down to meet with less than five hundred guests at a single table. Two righteously paying their bills and four hundred ninety-eight not only settling down without saying by your leave but insisting upon being the first to taste every dish that comes to the table. The only means by which a fair share can be secured for the paying guests is for the waiter to stand and fan the dishes not on the table. This is rough on a plate of mutton chops or a cut of roast meat not very hot when it came to the table but there are compensations even for this drawback. The colored gentleman assigned for the duty of fanning starts off exceedingly well and plays havoc with the flies. Gradually the breeze subsides. The flies return in increasing numbers the white cloth darkens bread and meat are rapidly disappearing. You look up to ascertain the cause of the cessation of the breeze and behold the colored gentleman with eyes half closed is mechanically fanning himself. I observe that the proper thing to do in these circumstances is to thrust your elbow sharply into his ribs when he wakes up makes the flies believe the wind called Urocladon had visited Kansas City. But even when you have learnt the knack of catching him in the right place it is evident that the flies get a fair share of what is going. At St. Louis we had for companion at breakfast in addition to the flies a Roman Catholic priest travelling west on a distant mission. He told me a pitiable story of the sudden dashing of high hopes. He had been personally interested in the conversion of Sitting Bull a sturdy old Indian chief whose name usually comes to the front in any negotiation between the American government and the Indians who still hang like a shadow on the western frontier. Sitting Bull had been brought to see the error of his ways and after a long siege had capitulated to the good priest. His admission to the church was to have been made the occasion of a ceremony befitting so great a conquest. A day was named for the admission. A bishop had undertaken to officiate. The Indians themselves were looking forward to the certainty of a big show and the possibility of a little fire-water. When the whole business was upset by an unexpected difficulty. Sitting Bull had at least two wives. The church could recognise only one. The wily old Indian declared himself positively incapable of deciding which wife he should forsake and after being pampered for three months living on the fat of the land he broke off the negotiations on this point and retired to his wigwam. It was a terrible blow to our friend, a simple-hearted honest enthusiast who had prayed by night and worked by day to lay this precious offering in the bosom of Mother Church. He was too low-spirited to take note of things near at hand so his waiter dozed and fanned himself whilst the flies ate his breakfast. As the thermometer is now only a trifle under eighty degrees in the shade, Kansas men snuff scornfully at complaints of heat. I saw a youthful negro leaning against a row of molasses barrels eating a great slice of watermelon. The air around him was thick with wasps buzzing and bustling apparently resenting this intrusion on their domain. Young Washington, however, didn't mention to the wasps but went on crunching with white teeth into the rosy pulp and looking as if he had discovered a new joy in having a few hundred wasps battling around his woolly head what time he ate a melon. I had a great hankering for a watermelon and asked him where he had bought it. Right there, he answered shortly, waving his hands toward the swelling streets of Kansas City with an indefiniteness convenient if it should turn out that he had stolen the fruit. I went on a pilgrimage in search of a watermelon and had great difficulty in finding it. I guess it's too cold for watermelons, one fruturer said, with that downright sententious manner with which Americans casually met shut off efforts on the part of strangers to enter into conversation. I had to go a long way before I found a watermelon. Then it was too big to carry back to the hotel so I sat in the shop and fed bountifully upon a twentieth part of it dispensing huge slices to the colored population who gathered round the spectacle. The watermelon cost five pence and was the only thing not absolutely dear that I have purchased in the United States. On sunny afternoons the rank, fashion and beauty of Kansas City come out in gala attire. Rank and fashion of the male sex is a little monotonous in its dress, being, as already hinted, addicted to shirt sleeves and feet up a telegraph post. But female beauty here as elsewhere is not to be coerced into deserbie by any exigencies of weather. Between four and five in the afternoon is the fashionable hour for the Kansas Bell to go shopping or to take the air. And then indeed Main Street presents a dazzling kaleidoscope of beauty ever shifting but always rare. Some of the dress materials warn seem a little out of place at eighty degrees in the shade but then passing visitors know nothing of the normal condition of Kansas City in summer time with the thermometer at a hundred and forty degrees. As it is too cold for watermelons it is not too warm for velvet and plush of cool refreshing purple or brilliant red. But white dresses are chiefly in vogue not the simple white muslin frock girls too rarely wear but a thick white material made heavier with embroideries and with ribbons and laces sewn on wherever on completion of the costume it had been found that a few square inches of the material have inadvertently been left plain. The hat is usually of straw almost absolutely flat and secured on the top of the head by a combination of pins and ribbons. This flat shape is designed with the object of displaying the coiffure a wonderful arrangement where the regarded from the rear where it bursts out in a series of unexpected and unaccountable knobs or gazed upon from the front where it is combed and trimmed over the brow in a kind of sublimated fringe. The Kansas girl has heard that in Paris and London which owing to the accident of elder birth are perhaps a little ahead in the matter of fashions crinoline has partially resumed its empire but if Paris and London have been first in the field it does not follow that they shall keep their place when Kansas City enters into competition a Kansas girl does not do things by hearts it is understood that in Europe crinoline is worn only at the back a cage being as it were cut in two and attached a Kansas bell takes a whole crinoline hitches it on behind and serenely conscious of a fluttering at the hearts of eligible young men with their coats off and their feet up the lamppost sails slowly up and down Main Street till it is time to go in take off the finery and fix up supper End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of East by West by Henry W. Lucy this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Ruth Golding Chapter 4 Life and Death in the Far West the boarding of a railway train at Coolidge an attempted robbery of an established murder have awakened the West out of a pleasing dream of security these attacks upon railway trains are by no means a frequent occurrence though when they happen they are talked of so much and for so long a time that they grow to be familiar to stop and rob a train is an exploit that obviously demands united force well-ordered plans for the outage it is the Waterloo of the Rowdies campaign which works its level way through the year by petty larceny, horse-stealing and an occasional shooting in 1874 the Union Pacific Road was the scene of the first of these outrages when the train bound East was boarded by seven men who got clear off with two thousand pounds a few years later this same Santa Fe line on which Coolidge stands was the scene of an attempted robbery by a famous gang which takes its name from its leader Big Mike Rock and only last year the anniversary within a day of the Coolidge affair the Santa Fe train was captured by four men who compelled the expressman to open the safe and robbed it of its contents which did not happen to exceed a thousand pounds the fame of Jesse James's exploits filled England at the time that they aroused the United States they were marked by an audacity a resource and a ruthless barbarity which placed their leader on a pedestal where even now he is regarded through the West with a kind of sorrowful admiration Jesse James was hanged and his body now rests in the little front garden before his mother's house his brother is in jail the gang is broken up and people had grown into the belief that they might go about their business along the great high roads to the West with the assurance that they were in a civilized and law-abiding country then comes this affair at Coolidge and all is excitement and apprehension it was curious to note on leaving Kansas City this morning October 4, 1883 the tearful groups bidding farewell to friends going out West it is a far journey and the average of accidents on a run of 634 miles must be taken into account but over and above this is the new terror of the night journey and the possibility of being weakened up by pistol shots and roughianly demands for your portable property the scene of the murderous outrage of Saturday was admirably chosen Coolidge is a small village a few miles distant from the borderline of Colorado and Kansas there is a roadside station with a telegraph office and a shed that passes for a refreshment bar the village itself consists of a drinking saloon and a gaming-house neither held in favour by the police the train reached Coolidge about one in the morning and made a brief stoppage the conductor was about to start it when he noticed a man climbing up behind the express car he thought it was a tramp engaged in the not-unfrequent enterprise of securing a free ride he called out to him to come off but the fellow pressed forward and entered the express car this was in charge of a man named Peterson who is the hero of the day wherever the story has reached Peterson was lying on his back upon some sacks and was just dropping off to sleep when he was awakened by the conductor's challenge of the supposed tramp he looked up and saw by the dim light of the oil-lamp a man standing by the open door the stranger covered him with his pistol and fired the bullet passing close by his head and lodging in the floor of the van Peterson dropped his hands as if he were mortally wounded and the stranger turning round fired at the conductor who was standing on the platform watching him this shot also missed him Peterson, before lying down had placed his revolver by his side when he dropped his hands he felt out cautiously with his right for the pistol a double-action colt he touched the muzzle first and with his half-closed eyes fixed on the robber he slowly moved his hand along till he got a firm hold of the butt and his finger on the trigger meanwhile the robber concluding that he had slain the express man moved towards the rear of the van in search of anybody else that wanted killing the baggage man had been seated by the doorway when the first shot was fired but by this time he was comfortably located under the table in the refreshment shed he has subsequently explained that not being armed and feeling rather in the way when shots were flying round he had concluded he would be better under the table as the robber moved towards the rear of the van Peterson sitting up and covering him with his revolver fired the robber had taken a back at this liveliness on the part of a corpse returned the fire but his pistol went off before he could cover his man at this moment Peterson saw another man climbing in at one of the side-doors and setting his back against the side of the car prepared for the newcomer but panic had already seized upon the robbers the first one jumped out by the door through which the baggage man had already beat a strategic retreat the second disappeared without firing and the van being now cleared Peterson proceeded to barricade the doors in readiness for an expected siege the gang which consisted of only three men were divided two being told off to seize the express van to secure control of the engine their plan was to get the train drawn out of the station when they could proceed with their work at leisure stopping the train when the booty was secured and pulling up where they pleased with pistol pointed at his head and with horrible oaths they ordered the engineer to pull out the unfortunate man does not seem to have had time either to refuse or to obey turning sharp round on hearing this injunction he was straight way shot dead the murderer described as a very tall man about thirty years of age immediately wheeled about and shot the fireman who was in the act of jumping off the engine the whole thing took place within three minutes but the two men routed in the express car were already in full flight and there remained nothing for the desperado on the engine but to follow them the passengers in the train were by this time aroused and one or two had come out on the platform but it was all over the bandits had vanished in the darkness and there remained to tell the story only the dead body of the engineer the wounded fireman the gallant Peterson barricaded in the express baggage car and the judicious baggage man under the table in the dining shed Dick Liddle is inclined to snare at the business as the blundering work of amateurs Dick is a bandit retired from business who, with old age creeping over him has taken to farming the monotony of which he relieves by visiting Kansas City once a week for a big drunk he happened to be in the city on Saturday when the news came and opportunity was gladly seized to consult so great an authority if the fellows had known their business Dick grunted drowning a fly at five paces with a squirt of tobacco juice they would not have gone three on a job of that kind three men could not hold up and go through a long train anyway two would be short hands enough to look after the engineer the conductor and the express messenger and that would only leave one to go through the train and chow down the passengers it's been a blind muddle all through said Dick with a far away look in his eyes that spoke regretfully of a good chance missed while some people who would have brought it through were fooling their time away farming in Missouri this professional opinion as to the bungling tactics which resulted in failure is pretty generally shared by the western public who, if this kind of thing must be done like to see it carried through in workmen like fashion but it is obvious that failure resulted from an accidental circumstance which no foresight could have averted had the conductor not happened to have been walking past the express at the precise moment the first robber would have got on unobserved and would have had Peterson at his mercy it was the conductor's rough hailing of the intruder that roused him and it was the necessity for the simultaneously dealing with Peterson and the conductor on his flank that shook the robber's aim this first miscarriage led to everything that followed the premature discharge of pistol shots before the tall man had mounted the engine and covered the engineer with his pistol led to his mad firing just as the engineer, all unbidden was about to do what the gang wanted and pull out once mastery obtained of the engine and the express wagon rifled with Peterson either killed or cowed the turn of the passengers would come and a pretty haul would be made Dick Liddle was asked to consider these things to which he grunted an incredulous may be but reiterated it was a blunt model anyhow whatever else remains in doubt it is generally agreed that the murders were committed by cowboys the cowboy is a person indigenous to the western states and except that sometimes he looks after cows he has nothing in common with his English prototype I read in a newspaper a special dispatch from Salt Lake City so strangely touching that I cut it out it runs thus sixteen shots were fired at a cowboy in the streets of Salt Lake last night but he escaped not a man in the city will acknowledge the shooting the ingenuous mind instantly conjures up the moving scene here is a small boy in a smock frock with his trousers generously turned up and his hands in his pockets fresh from the Arcadian simplicity of rustic labour he enters the city perhaps for the first time and wonderingly looks around a gang of loafers observe him and per adventure half drunk begin to pot him sixteen shots are fired and the terrified little fellow running hither and thither wild with fear somehow escapes that is the picture presented to the ingenuous mind on reading the newspaper dispatch I have seen the reality since and heard a good deal of his habits and aptitudes his age varies from sixteen to forty-five he is invariably dressed in a white soft wide-awake grey or blue shirt and rough woolen or canvas trousers tied in over the ankle he has a pistol pocket and when out of the limits of towns where it is forbidden to carry arms ostentatiously displays it his language is chiefly composed of an endless chain of oaths and imprecations he does not mean to swear and is not even aware that he is doing so people in cities have in their dictatorial way laid down the rule that certain words and phrases shall be called swearing and their use must be avoided by all decent people to the cowboy these interdicted words and phrases are ordinary parts of speech like our adjectives and adverbs it is the language that has been brought up in from early childhood and human speech would be woefully barren if he were not allowed to introduce two oaths in every sentence this said in extenuation it must be admitted that a cowboy's conversation is apt to shock the unaccustomed ear of course there are cowboys and cowboys all swear terribly but some honestly and deciduously labour others going altogether to the bad hang on the skirts of society rob and if need be murder with no more compunction than they would lawsuit a straying ox on the distant and lonely ranches where they have been brought up human life is held as scarcely of more account than that of oxen they instinctively regard a stranger as an enemy and at sight of one their hand closes on their pistol and their finger feels for the trigger a story told me by the owner of one of the largest and wealthiest ranches of Texas illustrates with grim simplicity the rules of life by which the cowboy is guided a little child died on the ranch and the mother desired with piteous entreaty that it should have Christian burial at the hands of the clergyman the ranchman though now one of the wealthiest men in Texas was born and bred a cowboy with another lad he had at the age of twelve gone into business on his own account with a stock of a dozen cattle he had never been to church as indeed he had scarcely ever lived a day off the ranch he had the vaguest idea of what a clergyman was or did but he loved this woman very much and saddling his horse he rode straight off fifty miles to the nearest hamlet and brought back a preaching man almost literally at his saddle-bow the ranchman assembled all his cowboys to witness this strange ceremony as they stood by the open grave the preaching man whilst offering up prayer knelt and closed his eyes the ranchman was aghast he had brought this man over and felt personally answerable for his safety and here he was on his knees with his eyes shut and scarcely two paces off a score of the blackest rascals in Texas not one of whom had ever been known to miss his aim this kind of a target he felt would with the best intentions be irresistible and as sure as the preaching man knelt there he would be shot without loss of a moment's precious time the ranchman quietly placed himself behind the kneeling preacher and whilst the unfamiliar prayer went up to heaven over the open grave of the child he, with finger on the trigger of his pistol, covered the congregation and at the first movement of a hand towards pistol-pocket would have shot the man as certainly and with as little sense of wrongdoing as if he were killing a wasp whilst the cowboy the ishmael of the western states thus has his hand against everybody everybody's hand is ready to be lifted against him with or without occasion a dispatch published in Kansas City papers dated Tucson, Arizona, September 25th relates much in the style of a market report what befell a party of four cowboys a sheriff's party of 25 men says the report met a party of four cowboys and ordered them to throw up their hands kid Lewis the leader of the cowboys was in front and pulled his pistol when the posse fired upon them Lewis received several balls at the first fire and was instantly killed Frank Leonard was wounded and crawled off into the hills nothing has since been seen of him and he is believed by many to be dead McNamara and Veynel were unhurt the latter riding away amid a volley of bullets it will be observed that no reference is made to any crimes the cowboys may have committed or been suspected of they were simply a party of two cowboys one was shot on the spot one crawled off with two wounds and the other two like the charmed cowboy of Salt Lake City rode off unhurt it does not appear that any inquiry will follow or that this active sheriff will be called upon to justify his exploit the explanation if called for will doubtless be that he acted in self-defense Lewis, kid Lewis would have shot him and in a nicely balanced affair of that kind preference must of course be given to a representative of the law life west of Kansas City is literally the survival of the fittest that is of the man who can fire first efforts are being made to put down this evil by passing laws prohibiting the carrying of weapons about the person last week a man in Kansas City caught flagrante delicto was fined twenty pounds but this law excellent in its purpose is practically a dead letter the only circumstances in which it operates is where a man is arrested for being drunk he is then in a position to be legally searched and in nine cases out of ten he is found with a loaded weapon in his pistol pocket in this way the law works in the temperance cause but only indirectly for the protection of life the city editor of the evening journal in Kansas City is at the present moment serving a period of twenty five years in the penitentiary for having shot his man the incident has been the making of the newspaper but it is awkward for the city editor it is probable that he might have served his journal and preserved his liberty but for the accidental position in which the man stood when he was shot the bullet entered his back which prevented the prisoner from pleading that he had acted in self-defense there is a story told in Denver which illustrates the readiness with which this plea is existable with a western jury is urged when a man gets into difficulties three citizens of Denver were drinking in a little room off the bar one of them suddenly fell dead from heart disease the other two conscious of a shady record and certain that they would be accused of killing him went into the bar ordered some cigars and whilst the barman was away they carried the dead man in put him on a chair with his head between his hands as if he were sleeping off drink he'll pay for the cigars they said to the barman and walked out the bartender waited a reasonable time and then going up to the supposed sleeper shook him roughly and demanded payment the man rolled off the chair and then he saw he was dead at this moment two fresh customers entered and the barman recognising his peril as the other two had done said with an oath I did it in self-defense that is a Denver story for which I do not vouch though I do personally vouch for the literal truth of the story about the kneeling clergyman and his protector with one more story also true for it is written in the prezeic record of the police court I will conclude this budget of episodes in western life at Blue Rock Springs Kentucky three brothers named Rogers met to complete some formalities in the match of their father's will they were all men well to do in the world Samuel was the president of a bank William was a lawyer and Thomas a farmer as the business proceeded Samuel according to his own account thinking his brothers were about to draw their weapons whipped out his revolver shot Thomas in the head and William in the stomach William died at four o'clock on the next morning Thomas lay for weeks at the gate of death brother Samuel when I left the district was in jail he had already put in his plea it was that he acted in self-defense End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of East by West by Henry W. Lucy this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Ruth Golding Chapter 5 in the Rocky Mountains to persons who have heard of Denver as the headquarters of a mixed population of miners and cowboys the city itself is an agreeable surprise its most striking feature is its extreme respectability its streets being laid out in broad boulevards flanked on either side by rows of trees it is to some extent reminiscent of Feasvarden or Barden-Barden but these towns are associated with gambling dancing and other frivolities and it is impossible to connect Denver with anything of the kind perhaps Lemmington comes nearer to likeness with Denver than most towns and it is not easy to overrate the respectability of Lemmington it is quite true that only three nights before our arrival a gentleman walking home through these broad and pleasant streets was as the newspapers have it held up that is to say he was knocked down strange to say at this critical moment a policeman happened to come in sight whereupon the footpad fled the policeman fortuitously had a loaded revolver in his pocket this he drew and blazed away through five blocks hitting nobody not even the man who had been held up this however is a mere breaking out of the old atom and cannot be held seriously to vary the general tone of respectability that pervades the place there is nothing lacking to complete the handsomeness and desirability of Denver the roads are broad and well made terribly dusty when the wind blows but that is not every day the houses are substantially built and tastefully designed from one of the mountain ranges that circle Denver with a band of purple and gold is quarried a rare and beautiful building stone tinted with veins of pink on ground of grey there is too much reason to fear that if New York had this stone it would at considerable expense have it worked so as to present a smooth surface to make it worthy of a place by the brownstone fronts Denver leaves the mark of the honest chisel upon its stonework which is pleasant to look upon accordingly most of the principal buildings and residences are built with this stone the rest being made with red brick of which there seems abundant supply somewhere in the neighborhood there are trees everywhere for the most part cooling their feet in the mountain streams that run down the side of the street in early October the cotton trees were turning a beautiful yellow not altogether but here and there one stood out clothed in soft transparent yellow the trees do not wither away leaf by leaf as in London parks till nothing is left of what was once a tree but the blackened limbs and a few shriveled leaves here the leaves hold on to the last full of sap and colour till the yellow dresses put on and then after a quieter phase of existence in these new robes a snap of winter comes and they fall in a day but the day before death they were still beautiful over Denver in these early October days is spread a sky of the clear blue pailing away to pearly grey on the horizon that is seen in summer days in Switzerland the air is singularly pure and bracing blowing in from the north and east over the far-reaching prairie and by the south and west from the Rocky Mountains whose snow-clad peaks standing beyond the purple band of the lower hills catch the light of the rising sun long before he can be seen from the housetops of Denver at a time within the memory of travellers to be met with on the railway today the trains between Kansas City and Denver rarely completed their journey without having killed a buffalo the herds crossing the track disdained to get out of the way of the strange monster and it was so much the worse for the buffalo but the buffalo like the Indian is a stranger now on the prairies that were once his home like other towns out west Denver has grown very rapidly and is daily growing new building is being pushed forward more particularly by Capitol Hill where there are clusters of handsome residences the city abounds in churches and chapels the Baptists seeming to have obtained a firm footing in the place one of the handsomest of the chapels is theirs there are however some signs of the market being overstocked one chapel bearing a placard announcing that it is for rent here as in other American cities one is struck by the frequency of ladies driving unattended sometimes alone sometimes with a lady friend they dash about holding the reins at arms length one in either hand they serve to make walking lively for they habitually drive round corners at full speed and with the evident conviction that the other street is depopulated there are more dogs in Denver than in New York and Chicago put together Americans do not seem to have carried with them the old country love for dogs it is the rarest thing to see a dog in New York and then they are exceedingly poor specimens they're not particularly good in Denver but there are more of them and they feel a larger place in social esteem than in eastern cities there is a fair sprinkling of Chinese in the city and they have as usual appropriated the laundry business passing along a street outside through an open window of a pretty domestic scene Lee Chung in spotless white linen trousers and jacket was standing at one table pensively ironing a shirt at another table stood Lu Qi goffering the frill of a petticoat for which he would presently charge one and four pence whilst seated on a low stool in the rear of the laundry sat our sin strumming on a three-stringed instrument a melody from Fatherland the Chinese do not willingly confine their energies to washing linen they jump at an opportunity of doing a little washing out in golden silver mines when Leadville was still in its infancy the Chinese picked up several good things and did not loose their hold until they had picked them clean it is invigorating to hear a Leadville minor talking about the shameful audacity of the Chinese in presuming to labour in his fields it is a wonder the Chinese are not often held up but somehow they managed to glide along and make money Denver has one of the handsomest theatres I ever saw we went to the play the night before leaving it was a fearful inflection the audience did not in any wise come up to the expectations of society in a comparatively new mining centre they were well dressed and even painfully quiet no English audience would have stood the inane ponderosity of the heavy father the flatulent goody-goodiness of the young man who married the girl or the pitiful posturing of the girl who married the young man once when the angry father got his daughter down on her knees and with his teeth set and eyes rolling proceeded to manipulate the back of her neck as if he were inserting a gimlet there was a titter from the gallery but it was immediately suppressed and the audience sat out the inanity with marvellous patience Lord Rosebury, who was one of them explains these phenomena on the ground that Denver conscious of a shady record in the past really likes to be bored in this way under the impression that respectable people are always bored and that being bored a Denver audience is respectable at Castle Rock, a roadside station halfway between Denver and Colorado Springs our train was boarded by a comfortably stout gentleman in a surge suit with a knitted woolen vest and a low crowned felt hat he might have passed without notice but for the circumstance that he carried in his hand a red brief bag unmistakably the property of a QC looking again I recognized in the sun-brown stranger Mr. Charles Russell who with his red bag made his way through the crowded car as if he were pushing through a blocked passage in the new law courts it is in truth somewhat difficult to recognize friends and acquaintances on these long journeys where you get in at one station and don't get out till you have covered 600 or 1000 miles and dress for hard living coming from the cave of the winds at Niagara I met a figure a tired in the costume necessary for making the expedition behind the waterfall a suit of yellow Macintosh is not usually seen at Westminster still less a suit of which the jacket is made for one figure the trousers for another and the headpiece for a third when the figure addressed me by name the voice was familiar and memory struggled to recall the portions of face visible if Mr. Bourlaise could have delivered from its imprisonment beneath the yellow waterproof that silken beard so familiar in the House of Commons flashing like the plume of Henry of Navarre in the van of battle when the farmer's union is attacked I should have recognized him but in this masquerade he might have lingered in Mr. Chaplin's company with impunity Mr. Charles Russell had been spending a couple of days on a ranch riding cokeless 30 miles a day over the prairie which in these parts is more interminable than the belt case since he landed at New York towards the end of August he has covered many thousand miles travelling through Canada west to Portland with the Northern Pacific Party by sea to San Francisco and now on the long railway journey to New York he stayed at Colorado Springs for the train East the same that was attacked at Coolidge and in the afternoon we had a pleasant drive to Manitou and the Garden of the Gods Manitou is nearly empty now but a few guests still lingered in the little hotel with the large veranda at the foot of Pike's Peak the Garden of the Gods is not quite so big as its name would imply but it is a pretty place with curious blocks of red sandstone rising up in unexpected places these take fantastic shapes two resembling human heads and one it was agreed being singularly like the massive front of Sir William Harcourt when seen in profile others looked like ruined castles and one rises to a height of 120 feet whilst its base does not exceed 10 feet and from some points a few is considerably less Colorado Springs is apparently so called because it has no springs there are several at Manitou one producing a liquid that would pass excellently well for soda water it is doubtless from proximity to these that the little town gets its name it is a health resort of growing repute especially in cases of affection of the lungs there are 16 doctors in the place and as far as I observed only one undertaker as elsewhere throughout Colorado the air is splendid warm by day cool at night always dry and bracing it is said that the only things that can't live here are mosquitoes this is a very healthy town I observed to one of the oldest inhabitants I guess it's pretty well he replied when we built a schoolhouse we made a cemetery but we had to shoot a man to start it the streets here are broader even than in Denver and on the south and west the view down the Long Avenue is bounded by the same stupendous hills railway travelling in the United States just now is hampered by a special difficulty on the 1st of October it occasionally becomes clear that the summer is over and gone and that the time for the lighting of stoves is come they are lit accordingly without strict regard to the temperature outside and as there seems to be no borderland between having the pipes cold or nearly red hot the sensation on entering one of the cars from the fresh air is akin to what might be experienced on walking into an oven but the Americans like it especially the women and attempts made by foreigners to avert asphyxia by opening the ventilators are undisguisedly frowned upon the Denver and Rio Grande railway between Denver and Leadville through some of the finest scenery in the world the public today have been educated to the belief that with the railway engineer nothing is impossible standing on the prairie at the eastern foot of the Rocky Mountains this faith is shaken for it seems incredible that any train could either tunnel or scale these heights as far as Salida where a branch line goes off for Leadville the Denver and Rio Grande railway has found itself singularly favoured by fortune just beyond Canyon City the mighty mountains have by some slow process of nature been rent in twain through this aperture the river Arkansas flows and where the river goes it was determined that the railway should run the rocky walls of the river mountains rise up to a sheer height of three thousand feet and look down in silent amazement at the busy smoky train passing through a solitude which for countless years was broken only by the voice of the Turbulent River for several miles there is just room enough for these two the river and the railway and at one point the way is so narrow that the railway is obliged to run over the river for a few yards at Canyon City an open car provided with benches is attached and here those who can brave the hideous smoke sit and look upward at the wall of rock which in some places seems toppling to a fall that would bury the railway train and dam up the river it is a curious sensation to sit in this open car and watch the train ahead making its snake-like progress the curves are innumerable and perilously sharp from time to time whilst a portion of the middle of the train is hidden behind a curve you can see the engine dashing ahead apparently by itself the line runs so near the jagged rock that by reaching out you could tear your hand against it and often it seems that this time the carriage really is about to take a header straight into the rock but it is only turning another sharp corner and does it with the assured safety which marks the whole of the journey along this wonderful line leaving the average of accidents a trifle under that of other lines of similar extent out of this chasm justly known as the Grand Canyon the train emerges upon a peaceful valley where the sunlight breaks through on patches of vegetation and where our railway stations comprised of two or three wooden huts which minister to the convenience of mysterious populations located in lateral valley or mining in the heart of the hills themselves then comes the steeper scent to Leadville, the latest and lustiest of American mining camps where men live and labour all through the year in a town pitched 2,000 feet above the range of everlasting snow End of Chapter 5