Chapter XI: Part 11

I wondered what Irving would think of the scene. Some people profess that they are disappointed with the first sight of Niagara. There are also people who look upon the ocean without surprise; and some who see the curtain go up on a great play, or a grand opera, for the first time in their lives, without experiencing one throb of the sensation which Bulwer, in one of his novels, describes with pathetic eloquence. The Rev. Dr. Thomas, a popular preacher in the Prairie city, went to his first play while Irving was at Chicago, and was greatly impressed; although he half confessed that, on the whole, he liked a good lecture quite as well. A colored man and his wife, at Philadelphia, told me they had always considered the play wicked, and would never have thought to go to a theatre had not one of their clergymen done so. “But,” said the husband, “I see noffin’ wicked nor wrong, and it did my heart good to see all dem white folk bowing to de colored gentleman and making much of him.” It was the casket scene in “The Merchant” that had most delighted these people.

Almost the first thing I did on arriving at Niagara was to send Irving a telegram, asking if he had settled where to stay, advising him that for a brief visit the Prospect House was most conveniently placed for seeing the falls. My response was a request for rooms. This was followed by an inquiry if the house could provide a dinner for seventy; and from that moment I found myself actively engaged, not in reviving my former recollections of Niagara, but in preparing to receive the Irving Company. The landlord of the Prospect House is a land-owner in Manitoba. He was looking after his interests in those distant regions. The landlady, a bright, clever woman of business, however, undertook to “run the dinner.”

“The house is partially closed, as you know,” she said, “and it is small. We have only a few servants during the winter, and it is difficult to get provisions at short notice. But we have the Western Union telegraph in the house, and a telephone. We will do our best.”

The intelligent colored waiter found it impossible to seat seventy persons in the dining-room.

“They must dine at twice,” he said; “that’s the only chance; no help for it.”

It was night before the order for dinner was really closed and settled, many telegrams passing between Detroit and Niagara; and, as I found to my consternation, between Niagara and many adjacent towns.

“Not a turkey nor a chicken to be got for love or money,” said the landlady. “I have telegraphed and telephoned the whole neighborhood,—just going to try Buffalo, as a last resort. You see the hotels here are closed, and it is very quiet in the winter.”

“As good a dinner as can be provided,” was one of Stoker’s latest telegrams, “and it must be ready at half-past three to the minute.”

The excitement at the Prospect House was tremendous. The falls were quite discounted. They were of no moment for the time being, compared with the question of turkeys and the seating of the coming guests.

“You have beef, mutton, ham, you say?”

“Yes, and we can make some excellent soup,—a nice lot of fish has come in from Toronto, lake fish,—but turkeys, no; chickens, no; though I have telegraphed everywhere and offered any price for them. Ah, if we had only known two days ago!” said the landlady.

“Never mind, let it be a plain English dinner, horseradish sauce with the beef,—can you manage that?”

“Yes! Oh, yes!”

“And boiled legs of mutton, eh?”

“Yes, with caper-sauce.”

“Capital. And what do you say to plum-pudding?”

“I fear there will not be time to stone the raisins; but I’ll telephone into the town at once and see.”

While she was gone I surveyed the dining-room once more. “If you moved the stove, and placed forms against the walls, instead of chairs, how would that be?” I asked.

It was a great problem, this. My colored ally and his two assistants set to measuring with a foot-rule. They had their woolly heads together when I looked in upon them an hour later.

“Yes, I believe it can be done,” said the chief waiter; and before midnight the tables were arranged, the stove cleared out, and the room almost ready for the feasters. As he was leaving for the night he said, “The people of my race honor Mr. Irving. He knew our great actor, Ira Aldridge. There was a letter from Mr. Irving about him, and a Dramatic Club started by our folk in the New York papers. Rely on me, sir, to have this dinner a success.”[50]

III.

WEDNESDAY morning was ushered in with a blizzard from the north-west. The roads that had been slushy the day before were hard as adamant. There was ice in the wind. The air was keen as a knife. A traveller who had come in from Manitoba said that during the night it was “as much as your life was worth to pass from one car to another.” Towards noon the weather moderated. The sun came out, the wind changed, the spray from the falls fell into the river. A rainbow stretched its luminous arch over the American falls.

“I have often thought,” I said to Irving, “during this tour, how surprised any English traveller who knew London well would be, if he encountered the Lyceum Company by accident at some wayside American depot, not knowing of this visit to the States.”

“Yes,” he said, “do you remember the people at Amsterdam, in Holland, who followed us in amazement to the hotel there, one of them, a German, making a bet about us, the others ridiculing the idea that I could be out of London, when he had seen me acting there a few days before?”

We were on our way to the falls, driving in a close carriage, Irving, Miss Terry, and myself, and I think we talked on general topics a little, while they were trying to take in the approaches to the great scene of all.

“Toole and his dear boy, Frank, lost their way, one night, about here,” said Irving. “I remember his telling me of it—couldn’t get a carriage—were belated, I remember. There was no fence to the river then, I expect,—a dangerous place to lose your way in. How weird it looks!”

“Oh, there are the falls!” Miss Terry exclaimed, looking through the glass window in front of us. “Surely! Yes, indeed! There they are! How wonderful!”

I had told the driver to pull up at the bend of the river, where we should get the first view of them. Irving turned to look.

“Drive on,” I said, and in a few minutes we pulled up in full view of both falls.

“Very marvellous!” said Irving. “Do you see those gulls sailing through the spray? How regularly the water comes over! It hardly looks like water,—there seems to be no variety in its grand, solid-like roll; and, do you notice, in parts it curls like long, broken ringlets, curls and ripples, but is always the same? What a power it suggests! Of course, the color will vary in the light. It is blue and green in the summer, I suppose; now it is yellowish here and there, and grey. There have been great floods above,—yonder are the rapids above the falls, I suppose? How wonderfully the waters come leaping along,—like an angry sea!”

He stood for some time watching the scene, and noting everything that struck him. Miss Terry joined some members of the company, and went driving. Later a party of us went to the rapids and the whirlpool, where Webb was drowned. Irving discussed the fatal feat, for a long time, with one of the men who saw the swimmer take his courageous header and go bounding through the rapids.

“It was there where he disappeared,” said the man, pointing to a spot where the waters appeared to leap as if clearing an obstruction; “he dived, intending to go through that wave, and never was seen again alive. It is believed his head struck a sunken rock there, which stunned him.”

Irving stood for a long time looking at this part of the river, discussing the various theories as to its depth. “A bold fellow!” he exclaimed, as he left the place; “he deserved to get through it. Imagine the coolness, the daring of it! He takes a quiet dinner, it seems, at his hotel, rests a little, then hires a boat, rows to the place where the rapids fairly begin, strips and dives into this awful torrent,—a great soul, sir, any man who has the nerve for such an enterprise!”

We walked back to the falls, and on our return observed a great change in the color of the scene.

“Quite a transformation in its way, is it not?” said Irving; “let us take in the picture, as a painter might. The horizon, you see, is a bluish-purple; the Canadian falls have a grayish-blue tint, except where the positive golden yellow of the water comes in; then, as it plunges below, the foam is of a creamy whiteness; the mist and spray rise up a warmish-gray in the half-shaded sunlight; the snowy rocks are white against it. The sun is about to set, I suppose, and these are some of its premonitory colors. The river, you see, is now a deep blue,—it was muddy-looking this morning,—and the trees on the banks are a warm greyish-brown. Beyond the American falls, above there, where it is like a lake, the white houses are whiter still, the red ones redder, and the country looks as if it had quite changed its atmosphere. A great stage-manager, Nature! What wonders can be done with effective lighting!”

Then, turning away to go into the house, he said, “Do you remember the lighting of the garden scene in ‘Romeo and Juliet,’—the change from sunset to night, from sunset to moonlight, from moonlight to morning, and the motion of the sunlit trees, as if a zephyr had touched them?”

“I do, indeed!”

“Well, let us talk of something else. Niagara must offer to artist or poet a continual study. Did you notice how the fir-trees on the little island close to the Canadian falls are twisted and warped, as if they had tried to turn away from the tempest, and had been beaten down with the wind and snow? You were telling me one day about a scholarly hermit, who had spent his life at a lonely place on the Hudson. That is also a curious story,—the life and death of Francis Abbott, ‘the hermit of Niagara,’ as they call him in one of the old guide-books. He first appeared here, it seems, on a summer day in 1839,—a young man, tall, well-built, but pale and haggard. He carried a bundle of blankets, a portfolio, a book, and a flute; went to a little out-of-the-way inn and took a room; visited the local library; played his flute, and rambled about the country; got permission to live in a deserted log-house near the head of Goat Island; lived there in a strange seclusion during two winters, then built himself a cabin at Point View, near the American falls, and did not appear to shun his fellow-man so much as formerly. A local judge became quite friendly with him; they would meet and have long talks. Sometimes, too, he would enter into conversation with the villagers, and others whom he encountered on his rambles. He talked well, they say; spoke of Asia and Greece with familiarity, and liked to discuss theological questions. His religious views were akin to quakerism. He was a fine figure, had a sorrowful face, and was attended by a dog, which trotted at his heels always. During the summer he lived in his cabin at Point View; he went down the ferry-steps and bathed in the river, and, on June 10, 1841, he lost his life there,—after two years of this strange solitude. The body had been in the water ten days before it was found at the outlet of the river. The villagers brought it back and buried it. They went to his cabin. His dog guarded the door, a cat lay asleep on his rough sofa, books and music scattered about. There was no writing to be found, though the local judge said he wrote a great deal, chiefly in Latin, and, as a rule, burned his work, whatever it was. In later days friends and relatives of the poor young fellow came to Niagara, and identified him as the son of a Quaker gentleman of Plymouth. Rather a sad story, eh?”

“Yes, very, and there are others, less romantic, but more tragic, in connection with the falls.”

“None more sad, after all, than the death of poor Webb. It is true, he deliberately risked his life. I have seen it stated that the rapids where he dived are by some persons estimated as only twenty or thirty feet deep. Of course nothing can be more absurd. The channel is only three hundred feet wide, and through this gorge rush the waters of five great lakes. Calculating the volume of water, and the velocity of it, the scientists who estimate the depth at two hundred and fifty feet are nearer the mark. The most surprising thing to me about Niagara is the fact—it must be a fact—that this mighty torrent, after falling into the river, ploughs its way along the bottom,—the surface being comparatively calm,—drives along for two miles, and then leaps up from its imprisonment, as it were, into the general view, a wild, fierce torrent, with, further down, that awful whirlpool. Webb knew the force of it all; he had surveyed it,—the cruellest stretch of waters in the world, I suppose,—and yet he took that header, and went along with it hand-over-hand, as the man told us, and with an easy confidence that was heroic,—one would have thought the water would have beaten the life out of him before he had time to rise and fight it!”

“Not long since,” I said, “there was a picnic party on Goat Island. A young fellow, I think the father of the child itself, picked up a little girl, and in fun held it over the rapids above the falls. The child struggled and fell; he leaped in after it, caught it, struggled gallantly in presence of the child’s mother and the distracted friends, but went over the falls. I read the incident in a newspaper chronicle, and have it put away at home with many other notes about the falls, which I hoped to use in this book. Our critics will, of course, recognize the difficulties attending the preparation of these Impressions. We have worked at them in odd places, and at curious times. One wonders how they will come out.”

“Oh, all right, I am sure!” Irving replied: “they are quite unpretentious, and it is delightful to note how they grow up and assume shape and form. I think it was a happy idea.”

IV.

BUT nobody will ever know, except those who took part in the work, how much ingenuity, patience, and enterprise were expended on that dinner. It was ready to the minute. The guests all sat down together. There were turkeys and there were chickens, too. Horsemen had ridden hard half the night to bring them in. There were plum-puddings, also. Lovely maidens at Buffalo and Niagara, had been pressed into the service of stoning them. When Stoker, at midnight, in order to smooth the way, had telegraphed that “rare flowers and hot-house fruits can be dispensed with” (he was thinking of New York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia), the landlady had looked at me in dismay. “There isn’t a flower in the whole neighborhood! I’m afraid they are expecting too much,” she said. “Not at all; it is only Mr. Stoker’s little joke,” I replied, fearing that at the last moment the entire business might fall through. As the reader already understands, it did not fall through; but, on the contrary, was a great and surprising success; for, when Mr. Howe got up to propose the health of the founder of the feast, he said, “This has been the first English dinner we have had since we left home, and, what is more, we have eaten it off English plates,—not those little dishes and saucers they give us everywhere in America. Not, ladies and gentlemen, that I have a word to say against the American food,—not I,—because it is good and abundant; but I do like large plates, and I love to see the joints on the table and carved before our eyes.” Everybody laughed at this and applauded; but the cheering increased, and was followed by “three times three” and the chorus, “He’s a jolly good fellow!” when Mr. Howe thanked their “host and chief, Mr. Irving, for his hospitality and kindness that day, and for his energy and courage in bringing them all from the old country on a tour in the New World.”

It was nearly six when we left Niagara for the railway station, in every kind of vehicle, omnibus, buggy, brougham, and carriage. Mr. McHenry and a party of ladies and gentlemen came to see us off. The members of the company were loud in their expressions of wonder at the falls. “So strange,” said one, “to be sitting down to dinner in view of them.” “What a day to remember!” exclaimed another. Tyars, Andrews, Terriss, Arnot, and some others, had donned the water-proof dress, known to every visitor, and explored the regions below the falls. Terriss had a narrow escape. There were special dangers to be encountered, owing to the accumulations of ice; and, at the hands of a party of Englishmen, the dangers were of course duly attacked. Terriss slipped upon an icy descent, and saved himself from going headlong into the torrent by clutching a jagged rock, which severely lacerated his right hand. He played with his arm in a sling for several nights afterwards.

One of the saddest stories of the falls is the history of a calamity that occurred almost at this very spot, in the autumn of 1875. Miss Philpott, her two brothers, a sister-in-law, and Miss Philpott’s lover, Ethelbert Parsons, went through the Cave of the Winds, and climbed over the rocks towards the American falls. They were residents of Niagara, and knew the ground. The sheltered eddies in the lighter currents under the falls are pleasant bathing-places. The Philpott party took advantage of them. Miss Philpott was venturesome. She bathed near one of the strongest currents. Mr. Parsons, seeing her in danger, went to her rescue. Seeking for a firm foothold for both of them, the girl slipped and fell. Parsons sprang for her, and both were carried into the current. He caught her around the waist. The young lady could swim, and Parsons was an expert; they struck out for the rocks on the other side of the current. The torrent carried them out. By and by Parsons swam on his back, the girl cleverly supporting herself with her hand upon his shoulder. Then she suddenly pushed him away from her,—the inference being that she discovered the impossibility of both being saved,—flung up her arms and sank. Parsons turned and dived after her. They were seen no more until some days afterwards, when the bodies were recovered at the whirlpool.

Terriss and his friends had more reason than they quite realized to congratulate themselves upon the fact that they were enabled to comply with the kindly and considerate programme of the holiday, which arranged that they should sleep that night in Toronto.

XIX.

FROM TORONTO TO BOSTON.

Lake Ontario—Canadian Pastimes—Tobogganing—On an Ice Slide—“Shooting Niagara, and After”—Toronto Students—Dressing for the Theatre—“God Save the Queen”—Incidents of Travel—Locomotive Vagaries—Stopping the Train—“Fined One Hundred Dollars”—The Hotels and the Poor—Tenement Houses—The Stage and the Pulpit—Actors, Past and Present—The Stage and the Bar-room—The Second Visit to Boston—Enormous Receipts—A Glance at the Financial Results of the Tour.

I.

THE blizzard was in full possession of Toronto, but the air was dry, the sky blue and sunny. There was a brief interval for a snow-storm. But it came in a bright, frosty fashion. The sidewalks were hard. Sleighs dashed along the leading thoroughfares. Lake Ontario was a vast plain, upon which disported skaters, walkers, riders, drivers, and that most fairy-like of “white-wings,” the ice-boat. Did you ever fly across the silvery ice on runners, with sails bending before the wind? It is an experience. You may spin along at sixty miles an hour, or more. If you are not wrapped to the eyes in fur you may also freeze to death. The sensation of wild, unchecked motion is intensely exhilarating; but, if you are a novice, want of care or lack of grip may send you flying into space, or scudding over the ice on your own account. A secure seat is only obtained by accommodating yourself all the time to the motion of your most frail, but elegant, arrangement of timbers and skating-irons.

The leading characteristic winter sport of Canada is Tobogganing. The word “toboggan” is Indian for “sled.” The French call it _Traine sauvage_. Two or three light boards deftly fastened together, a mattress laid upon them, a sort of hollow prow in front, into which a lady thrusts her feet,—that is a “toboggan.” It is like a toy canoe, or boat, with a flat bottom and no sides. The lady passenger sits in front; the gentleman behind. He trails his legs upon the ice-slide, and thus guides the machine. It is not necessary, of course, that there should be two passengers; nor, being two, that one of them should be a lady. The contrivance was invented by the North American Indians. They used it for the transportation of burdens. The squaws sometimes made it available for hauling along their children. The pioneer troops of Courcelles, Tracy, and Montcalm, made a kit carriage of it.

There is a famous Tobogganing Club at Toronto. It has a slide of half a mile in length, down the side of a hill in a picturesque suburban valley. The slide starts at an angle of about forty-five degrees; then it runs along a short flat; then it drops, as if going over a frozen Niagara, to shoot out along a great incline, that might be the frozen rapids. To stand at the summit and watch the gay toboggans slip away, and then disappear down the Niagara-like precipice, to shoot out as a bolt from a gun along the remainder of the pass, is to realize the possible terrors of a first trip.

Miss Terry watched the wild-looking business with amazement, and built up her courage on the experiences of the ladies who took the flying leap with delight. They were dressed in pretty flannel costumes, and their faces glowed with healthful excitement. But they were practised tobogganers. Some of them could not remember when they took their first slide. A sturdy officer of the club explained the simplicity of the sport to the famous actress, and offered to let her try half the slide, beginning at the section below Niagara.

“I ought to have made my will first; but you can give my diamond ring to your wife,” she exclaimed, waving her hand to me, as she drew her cloak about her shoulders and stepped into the frail-looking sled.

As she and her stalwart cavalier, in his Canadian flannels, flew safely along the slide, her young English friend and admirer followed. They had not been upon the wintry scene ten minutes, in fact, before both of them were to be seen skimming the mountain-slide at the speed of the Flying Dutchman of the Midland Railway, and at one point, much faster, I expect.

“Oh, it was awful—wonderful—magnificent!” Miss Terry exclaimed, when she had mounted the hill again, ready for a second flight. “I have never experienced anything so surprising,—it is like flying; for a moment you cannot breathe!”

And away she went again, followed at respectful distances, to avoid collision, by other excursionists, the slide fairly flashing with the bright flannels and gay head-dresses of the merry tobogganers.

“Yes,” she said, on her return, “it is a splendid pastime. The Canadians are quite right,—it beats skating, ice-boating, trotting, everything in the way of locomotion; what matters the cold, with such exercise as tobogganing?”[51]

“The Montreal Daily Star,” during this Toronto week, had a brief description of tobogganing, _apropos_ of the winter carnival that was being held in the neighboring city, during our too brief visit to Canada. A proper slide is constructed on “scientific principles, and blends a maximum of enjoyment with a minimum of danger.” “The Star” has a picture of the enjoyment and the danger. It depicts an enormous mountain slide by torchlight. Many sleds are coming down in fine, picturesque style. There are wayside incidents of spills, however, which suggest a good deal of possible discomfort. “Try your luck on one of these sleds,” says the descriptive text. “Take two or three girls with you. That is indispensable; and there is a shrewd suspicion that much of the popularity of tobogganing comes from its almost essential admission of ladies. Let them be well wrapped up. Take a firm seat on the cushions, never stir an inch, and all will be right. They may shut their eyes and utter their little shrieks; but, at their peril, they must not move. You occupy your station at the rear. The position is optional. The general mode is to lie on the left side, propped on one arm, with right leg extended; but some sit, others kneel, and on short, easy inclines some venture to stand. One invariable rule is to hold on to your girl; an occasional squeeze may be allowed; indeed, there are critical moments when it cannot be helped. All is ready; the signal is given, and the descent begins. At first it is gradual, and one might fancy that he could regulate it; but, like a flash, the grand propulsion is given; like an arrow’s, the speed is instantaneous and resistless. A film passes before your eyes; your breath is caught. One moment you feel yourself thrown into space; the next you hear the welcome crunch of the firm snow, and then comes the final tumble, topsy-turvy, higgledy-piggledy, in the fleecy bank at the foot. There is the crisis of the fun, and you must take particular care of the girls just then. The weary ascent next begins, to be followed by another vertiginous descent, and still another, till the whole afternoon, or the whole of the starry evening, is spent in this exquisite amusement.”

II.

THE short season at Toronto was very successful, in every way. A great body of students filled the gallery of the Opera House every night. Stalls, boxes, and dress-circle were crowded, the audience being in full evening dress. The house looked like a London theatre on a first night. Boston and Philadelphia were the only cities that had shown anything like an approach to uniformity in dressing for the theatre in America, though New York made a good deal of display in regard to bonnets, costumes, and diamonds. New York copies the French more than the English in the matter of dressing for the theatre, consulting convenience rather than style,—a very sensible plan.

On the Saturday night, after repeated calls and loud requests for a speech, Irving, in his “Louis XI.” robes, stepped down to the foot-lights, amidst thunders of applause.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I regret that I have to appear before you as somebody else, though I feel quite incompetent in my own person to respond to your kindness at all as I could wish, or in such a way as to make you understand how keenly I feel the compliment of your enthusiastic welcome. I thank you with all my heart for myself and comrades, and more especially for my co-worker, Miss Terry, for the right-royal Canadian, I will say British, welcome you have given us. I can only regret that the arrangements of this present tour do not enable me to extend my personal knowledge of Canada beyond Toronto.”

“Come again!” shouted a voice from the gallery, quite after the manner of the London gods; “come again, sir!”

“Thank you very much,” Irving replied, amidst shouts of laughter and applause. “I will accept your invitation.”

“Hurrah!” shouted the gallery; and the house generally applauded Mr. Irving’s prompt and gratifying repartee.

“I would have liked,” said Irving, pulling his “Louis XI.” robes around him, “to have travelled right through the Dominion, and have shaken hands with your neighbors of Montreal, Quebec, and Ottawa. That, however, is only a pleasure deferred. In the Indian language, I am told, Toronto means ‘The place of meeting.’ To you and me, ladies and gentlemen, brother and sister subjects of the English throne”—

A burst of applause compelled the speaker to pause for some seconds.

“To us, ladies and gentlemen, to you before the curtain, to us behind it, I hope Toronto may mean ‘The place of meeting again and again.’”

His last words of thanks were drowned in applause. The students tried to recall him again, even after he had spoken. The band struck up “God save the Queen,” and a few minutes later the audience was on its way home, and Irving was conducting a rehearsal of scenes in “Much Ado,” and “The Merchant of Venice,” rendered necessary by the illnesses which are referred to in another chapter.

III.

TWO hours after midnight we were once more on the cars, bound for Boston.[52]

“These long journeys,” said Irving, “are most distressing. I wonder what sort of a trip this will be. We ought to arrive at Boston, on Sunday, at about six, they say.”

“The agent of the road,” replied Mr. Palser, “tells me he hopes to make good time. But I told him that the only occasion when we have done a long journey on time has been when we had no railroad agent to take care of us. They are very good fellows, and anxious to help us, but they have been unfortunate. Our flat baggage car is a trouble. You will remember that the Erie could not take it, and some of the other companies consider it an extra risk. It affords an excuse for not exceeding a certain speed. Besides this, we have not had so much snow in America for over twenty years as this winter. Our trains have been snowed up, and this has occasioned all sorts of delays, as you know. But I hope we will get through to Boston in good time.”

We did not, “by a large majority,” as Bardwell Slote says. It was a tedious and unsatisfactory journey. So soon as we left the West Shore line we began to have trouble. It was on a short section of an unimportant road that we encountered most delay, the character of which will be best illustrated by a brief conversation between Irving and several other persons:—

“Well, what is the matter now, George?” Irving asked the colored conductor of the private car.

“Oh, this is the third time he’s stopped in the woods to tinker up his darned old engine,” said George; “seems it needs it!”

Everybody laughed at this rough criticism of the engineer and his locomotive.

“Stops in the woods, eh?” says Irving,—“that nobody may see him? But suppose another train comes along?”

“If the brakeman should neglect to go back and flag it, there might be no performance at the Boston Theatre on Monday,” said Palser. “That is how Wagner, the car-builder, lost his life. He was killed in one of his own cars, on the New York Central. The train stopped suddenly,—it is said somebody on board pulled the check-string in joke,[53]—and an oncoming train, not being warned, ran into them, and Mr. Wagner was killed.”

“Ah,” Irving replied, “there must have been a good deal of flag-signalling done on this journey of ours, seeing how often we have stopped.”

“Yes, that’s so; yah, yah!” remarks the privileged colored servant.

“I don’t think any of the tracks we have crossed are as good as the Pennsylvania,” said Irving; “they are certainly not as good as the Midland or Great Western in England. The West Shore road is evidently a fine one; but I have more than once during our travels been reminded of a story I came across recently, relating to a passenger’s question: ‘We’ve struck a smoother strip of road, have we not?’ The Arkansas railway conductor replied, ‘No, we’ve only run off the track.’”

“Yah! yah!” shouted George, as he disappeared to tell the story to Peter in the kitchen.

“The newspaper that told the story added, as American journals are apt to do, a line or two of its own, to the effect that the Arkansas conductor’s reply was almost as uncomplimentary as that of an Eastern conductor, who, upon being discharged, said, ‘Well, I was intending to quit anyway, for there is nothing left of your old road but two streaks of iron rust and a right of way.’”

IV.

DURING one of the very long delays in question Irving and I talked of many things.

“You were speaking of the waste of food at hotels and restaurants one day,” Irving remarked. “I am told that at some of the best houses in Chicago the clean scraps that are left on dishes after each meal are collected and given to poor families every day. Children with large baskets call for them. Another class of scraps go to charitable institutions, more particularly Roman Catholic establishments. These are the leavings of the carver’s tables in the kitchens. One is glad to know this, for I, too, have often been struck with the abundance that is taken away untouched from tables where I have dined; though I have seen nothing of the public breakfast and dining rooms. It is quite a system in England, I believe, the collection of food for the humbler ‘homes’ and charities; but one does not see in America any poor of the abject, poverty-stricken class that is familiar at home. Life to many must, nevertheless, be a bitter struggle.

“There are many who are well off; thousands who would be happier even in the most wretched districts of Ireland. An Irish friend of mine, in New York, said to me only the other day, ‘The worst hut in Connemara is a palace to some of the tenement-house dens where my countrymen herd together in New York.’”

“They don’t go West, I am told, as the Germans and Swedes and Norwegians do. It is a little odd that they do not take full advantage of the unrestricted freedom of the West, and the gift of land which can be obtained from the American government. Sixty acres, is it not?”

“Yes, that is the endowment America offers to settlers in some of her finest territory; and it is true that, as a rule, the Irish do not become farmers on this side of the Atlantic. They prefer city life, even with its disabilities. When I was in America one hot summer, two years ago, children of the poor, who live in the common tenement-houses down-town in New York, were dying of the heat at the rate of hundreds a day. In her most crowded alleys London has nothing to compare with the lodging-houses in the poorer districts of New York for squalor and misery. But human nature is alike all the world over; more than one rich man collects heavy rents from these death-traps.”

“Just as a few of our fellow-countrymen in London supplement their rents by the contributions of infamous tenants. I dare say some of these hypocrites make speeches against the stage, and go ostentatiously to church; otherwise they would be found out by their associates. Religion is, indeed, a useful cloak for these gentry. It is gratifying to find that in some American cities, that are noted for their church discipline, the preachers are not afraid to tell their flocks that, properly used, the stage, as a moral teacher, is not unworthy of alliance with the pulpit.

“Did Mr. Beecher talk about the morality of the stage, or its relations to the public?”

“No, but one of the writers for a Brooklyn journal asked me some questions on the subject. I told him that the world has found out that they live just like other people, and that, as a rule, they are observant of all that makes for the sweet sanctities of life, and they are as readily recognized and welcomed in the social circle as the members of any other profession. The stage has literally lived down the rebuke and reproach under which it formerly cowered, and actors and actresses receive in society, as do the members of other professions, exactly the treatment which is earned by their personal conduct. He asked me about the morality of attending the theatre, and I said I should think the worst performances seen on any of our stages cannot be so bad as drinking for a corresponding time in what you call here a bar-room, and what we term a gin-palace. The drinking is usually done in bad company, and is often accompanied by obscenity. Where drink and low people come together these things must be. The worst that can come of stage pandering to the corrupt tastes of its basest patrons cannot be anything like this, and, as a rule, the stage holds out long against the invitation to pander; and such invitations, from the publicity and decorum that attend the whole matter, are neither frequent nor eager. He informed me that the clergy, as a rule,—he used the term dissenting clergy, I suppose, as an explanation to me to denote the class who are not Episcopalians, that I might the better compare them with the ministers at home,—he told me that they are opposed to theatres. He asked me what I felt about this. I told him I thought that both here and in England the clerical profession are becoming more liberal in their views. Some people think they can live and bring up their children in such a way as to avoid all temptation of body and mind, and be saved nine-tenths of the responsibility of self-control. But that seems to me to be a foolish notion. You must be in the world, though you need not be of it. The best way for the clergy to make the theatre better is not to stay away from it, and shun the people who play in it, but to bring public opinion to bear upon it,—to denounce what is bad and to encourage what is good. When I was a boy I never went to the theatre except to see a Shakespearian play, and I endeavored to make my theatrical experiences not only a source of amusement, but of instruction.’”

V.

“IT was a glorious audience,” said the “Boston Daily Globe,” of February 26, “that welcomed Irving and Terry back to Boston last evening. No better evidence of the great popularity of the English artists could have been given than that which was implied in the presence of such an assemblage. The Boston was thronged, and the gathering represented the best class of our play-goers,—a company that accorded the stars a cordial greeting both, and that was appreciative of all the excellences that marked the entertainment.”

The theatre was crowded in all parts. “Louis XI.” and “The Belle’s Stratagem” were played. “Much Ado” closed the engagement. It was received by the audience as if it were a revelation of stage work, and criticised in the press in a similar spirit. At the end of the play the audience summoned the leading actors before the curtain over and over again. It was a scene of the most unaffected excitement. At last there arose cries of “A speech!” “A speech!” to which Irving responded, visibly moved by the enthusiasm of his Boston admirers and friends. He said:—

“Gentlemen and Ladies,—I have no words in which to express my thanks for your kindness; ‘only my blood speaks to you in my veins.’ A few weeks since we came here, and you received us with unbounded hospitality, and gave us a welcome that touched us deeply,—a true Boston welcome. (Applause.) We come back, and you treat us not as strangers, but as old friends. (Applause.) Again, I say, I can find no words adequately to convey our thanks. I need not tell you that this is to us a matter of the deepest gratitude and pleasure, for it is a proof that we have perhaps realized some of your expectations, and have not absolutely disappointed you. (Applause.) I say ‘we,’ because I speak in behalf of all,—not for myself alone, but for my comrades, and especially for one who has, I am sure, won golden opinions; you know to whom I allude (Applause, and cries of ‘Yes!’ ‘Yes!’)—my friend, and fellow-artist, Miss Ellen Terry. (Applause and cheers.) When we have recrossed the Atlantic, and are in our homes, we shall ever bear you in our kindliest memories. I hope to be here again. (Applause, cheers, and shouts, ‘Come again!’ ‘That’s right!’) Even before the present year closes I hope to be with you. (Cheers.) Once more I thank you with all my heart, and bid you good-night, only hoping that your memories of us may be as agreeable as those we shall cherish of you.” (Applause and cheers.)

This second visit, it is agreed on all hands, brought more money into the treasury of the Boston than had ever before been taken during one week at that or any other theatre in the city, namely, $24,087,—and this was the largest sum that had been received during any previous week of the Irving engagement.

It will be interesting, at this period of the tour, to glance at its financial results. The following figures are taken from the cash-book of Mr. J. H. Palser, the business manager and treasurer, who supplied them to the “Boston Herald,” and “vouched for their absolute accuracy”:—

New York—first week $15,772 00
New York—second week 18,714 00
New York—third week 18,880 00
New York—fourth week 22,321 50
Philadelphia—first week 16,128 50
Philadelphia—second week 16,780 50
Boston—first week 18,845 50
Boston—second week 16,885 00
Baltimore—one week 9,952 00
Brooklyn—one week 12,468 00
Chicago—first week 17,048 75
Chicago—second week 19,117 50
St. Louis—one week 13,719 00
Cincinnati—one week 11,412 00
Indianapolis (4 nights) and Columbus (2 nights) 8,700 50
Chicago (return)—one week 18,308 75
Detroit (2 nights) and Toronto (3 nights)[54] 13,430 50
Boston (return)—one week 24,087 00

The total receipts in cities where Mr. Irving has played more than one week were as follows:—

New York—four weeks $75,687 50
Boston—three weeks 59,817 50
Chicago—three weeks 54,475 00
Philadelphia—two weeks 32,909 00

The total receipts of the tour, thus far, have been $292,571.

XX.

WASHINGTON, NEW ENGLAND, AND SOME “RETURN VISITS.”

From Rail to River.—Once more on Board the “Maryland.”—Recollections of President Arthur.—At the White House.—Washington Society.—An Apt Shakespearian Quotation.—Distinguished People.—“Hamlet.”—A Council of War.—Making Out the Route of a New Tour.—A Week in New England Cities.—Brooklyn and Philadelphia Revisited.

I.

WE left Boston at about two o’clock in the morning of the 3d of March, and after breakfast, at half-past ten, some of us turn out to stretch our legs on the railroad track by the side of the Harlem river. Once more we are shunted on board the “Maryland,” that is to convey us “down stream, to connect with the Pennsylvania road.” At about eleven o’clock we are afloat. Presently we pass Blackwell’s Island. The pretty villas on the opposite bank are in notable contrast with the hard, prosaic buildings of the island. The morning is grey and cold. The snow is falling lightly and is full of crystals. Most of the company are on deck, which stretches right over the snow-covered cars. Some are promenading and enjoying the change from railway to river travel. Others are breakfasting in the steamer’s spacious saloon. Howe and his wife; Terriss (his hand in a sling); Tyars (in his long Scotch ulster, which was evidently new to the gamins of Philadelphia, where they said, as he passed, “Here’s a dude!”); Mrs. Pauncefort, and others, are defying the sharp weather at the bows of the vessel, which, with its freight, is a continual surprise to them. Miss Millward, the picturesque Jessica of “The Merchant,” is romping merrily with the children of the company, who are quite a feature in the garden and church scenes of “Much Ado.”

We steal quietly along the river without noise, but with a steady progression. Blackwell’s Island prisons are enlivened in color by a little company of women, who are being marched into the penitentiary. They turn to look at the “Maryland” as they enter the stony portals. As we creep along, villas on our left give place to lumber-yards, with coasting-vessels lying alongside. Leaving Blackwell’s on the right, the shore breaks up into picturesque wharfage, backed, in the distance, by the first of the steeples of Fifth avenue. The eye follows them along; wharves and river-craft in front; the spires against the grey sky, until they are repeated, as it were, by forests of masts,—first a few, and then a cluster. We meet another train coming up the river, then another; and now we get glimpses, through the haze, of distant ferry-boats ahead. There is a dull mist on the river, and here and there it hangs about in clouds. We pass Long Island railroad pier. It is very cold; but the children of the company still trot about, ruddy and merry.

“You don’t say so!” exclaims somebody. “Is it true, the train we saw at Harlem, which we thought full of poor emigrants, was the Opera Company on their way to Boston,—the chorus?”

“Quite true.”

“Then I can now understand,” is the rejoinder, “that the passengers on board the ‘Rome,’ when we came out, thought us a most respectable crowd.”

“That has been remarked before,” says the buxom Martha of “Louis XI,” “and in far more complimentary terms.”

Presently, through the mist on the larboard side, we catch a glimpse of the Brooklyn bridge. A few gulls are sweeping down the river before us. On both banks there are wharves and ships. One of the vessels flies the British flag, which is greeted with a cheer from some of our people. On the left bank of the river is a great sugar factory, with a picturesque red brick tower. We have now left the Harlem river, and for some little time have been steaming down the East towards the North river, with Bedloe’s island—a dot in the distant Sound—and Sandy Hook somewhere in the mist beyond. We now pass Hunter’s Point, and slue gradually round towards the North river. We glide along beneath the wonderful bridge, and look up among its net-work of roads and rails; past Piers 50 and 51 on our right, with freight-cars and steamers ready for the river; past the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railway quays, hugging the South-street docks and ship-repairing yards, Governor’s Island at our bow. Ships and steamers stretch along to Battery Point, which we round into the North river, and pass Castle Garden. It is here that we catch sight of Bedloe’s and other distant islands, and look far in the direction of Sandy Hook, whence fierce tug-boats are steaming along, with great barges in tow. Now we cross the river to Jersey City. It is two o’clock. Our cars are once more on the rails, and, at about nine o’clock that night, we ran into Washington.

II.

“YOU know the President,” said Irving, while we were travelling from Boston to Washington.

“Yes; I met him once or twice during the contest when he was ultimately returned as Vice-President with General Garfield. His likeness had become very familiar to me before I saw him. Candidates for the high offices of state are not only photographed, but their pictures are painted in heroic proportions. You see them everywhere,—on flags and banners, in shop-windows, in the newspapers. But you will be in the thick of it next autumn, since you have really decided to return this year.”

“Oh, yes!—but tell me about your meeting with the President,—what is he like?”

“Tall and handsome; frank and genial in manner; an excellent conversationalist; well read,—a gentleman. I became acquainted with him on the eve of his election to the vice-presidential chair. At his installation hundreds of his personal friends and admirers from eastern and western cities made ‘high festival,’ in his honor at Washington. Two years later I saw him, with sorrowful face and head bowed down, start for the capital, to stand by the bedside of the dying President, with whom he had been elected. Soon afterwards the friends, who had metaphorically flung up their caps for him on the merry day of his installation with Garfield, went, ‘with solemn tread and slow,’ to assist at his inauguration into the chair which, for a second time, the hand of the assassin had rendered vacant. My recollection of Mr. Arthur pictured a stout, ruddy-complexioned man, with dark hair and whiskers, and a certain elasticity in his gait that betokened strong physical health. I remember that we sat together by the taffrail of a Sound steamer, and talked of the vicissitudes of life and its uncertainties, and that I was deeply moved with sympathy for him in regard to the death of his most accomplished and amiable wife, of whom he spoke (_apropos_ of some remark that led up to his bereavement) with a quivering lip and a moistened eye. The day had been a very pleasant one; the bay of New York was sleeping in the sun; the air was balmy; the time gracious in all respects; but, while doing his best to enliven the passing hour, Arthur’s thoughts had wandered to the grave of his wife. She was a very accomplished woman, I am told; musical, a sweet disposition, refined and cultivated in her tastes. Friends of mine who knew her say that she, above all others, would have rejoiced in her husband’s victory; and, while inspiring him with fortitude under the calamity that lay beyond, would have lent a grace to his reign at the White House that alone was necessary to complete the simple dignity of his administration, social and otherwise, which will always be remembered at Washington in connection with the presidentship of Chester A. Arthur.”

“I have letters to the President, which I shall certainly take the first opportunity to deliver,” said Irving.

When I met Mr. Arthur again in his own room, at the Executive Mansion, I was struck with the change which the anxieties and responsibilities of office, entered upon under circumstances of the most painful character, had wrought upon him. His face was careworn; his hair white; his manner subdued. He stooped in his gait; the old brightness had gone out of his eyes, and there was what seemed to be a permanently saddened expression about the corners of his mouth. He did not look sick; there was nothing in his face or figure denoting ill-health or physical weakness; but in the course of four years he appeared to me to have aged twenty. I had not been in Washington a day before he sent for me and my family, with a pleasant reference to the time when last we met. Looking back over these four years, and considering its record of trouble and anxiety, I could well have forgiven him if he had forgotten my very existence. That he recalled the occasion of our meeting, and was still touched with the spirit of it, I mention to do him honor, not myself; though, had it pleased Providence not to have afflicted me with a never-ending sorrow, I could have felt a high sense of personal pride in the homelike reception which the President of the United States gave to me and my family, in his own room at the Executive Mansion, sitting down with us and chatting in a pleasant, unconstrained, familiar way, that is characteristic of American manners, and eminently becomes the chief of a great republic.

Were this book only intended for English readers I would hesitate (even with the friendly approval of my collaborator) about publishing these few sentences, so personal to myself, lest it should be thought I might be “airing my connections”; but a President _per se_ is not held in such profound estimation or reverence in America as in England, where we rank him with the most powerful of reigning monarchs, and give him a royal personality. Moreover, I should be ungrateful did I not take the best possible opportunity to acknowledge a conspicuous act of kindliness and grace on the part of one who, since I last met him, had stepped from the private station of mere citizenship to the chief office of state over fifty millions of people, wielding an individual power in their government that belongs to no constitutional sovereign, nor to any prince or minister in the most despotic courts or cabinets of Europe.

III.