An Englishman in Yankeedom.
George Augustus Sale--one of the most spirited of all the British periodical writers, and editor, or was the last time we saw a copy, of Temple Bar, is in Washington. He writes for the London Telegraph. In a recent communication. which we find quoted in the Cincinnati Gazette, he touches up several of the "notables" in clever style. Hear him on that "red-mouthed cyprian of fanaticism, cant, and blasphemy,"
Anna Dickinson:
At the termination of my last letter I was sitting down to table in the immediate neighborhood of the heroine of the hour--Miss Anna Dickinson. I wonder whether some nursery discipline of a gentle sort might not be beneficial in curbing the passionate proclivities of young ladies who have a mania for spouting polities.But Miss Anna Dickinson is from any point of view a great fact "Joan of Arc," scream the enraptured Chronicle, "never was grander and could not have been better in her mall of battle than was this Philadelphia maid in her statesmanlike demand that this war do not cease until slavery He dead and buried under the feet of the North, and its epitaph is traced with the point of a bayonet dipped in the young blood of the nation. " There are other little items for which Miss Anna Dickinson is understood to have made a "statesmanlike demand."
She requires that the "territory wrenched back from the rebellion be used to 'underlay' the development of the blacks in America into full citizen ship, with the ownership in fee of agricultural land." Finally, Miss Dickinson is said to ‘ "have shoved to, with her Lilly white hand, the doors of the Supreme Court of the United States, as at present constituted, and to have forbidden the adjudication therein of the proclamation of freedom to the slaves of rebels."’
Yes, this is the burden of Miss Dickinson's chant, and of the faction of which she is the mouth piece. She does not advocate nor ask for anything more preposterous than they do. Blood, blood, blood ! dominion, spoliation and confiscation ! She will be content with nothing less. It is one of the stalest and sorriest devices of the Americans when a foreigner is astounded at their many madnesses, and makes their frenzy public in Europe, to tell him that what he has seen or heard is held as of so account by sensible persons in America — is ephemeral, and is valueless.
If this crazy Jane in a red jacket had uttered her nonsense in some Dissenting chapel, or lecture hall, or mechanics' institute, this plea might hold good. But she comes accredited by persons in authority; the council chamber of the country is placed at her disposal; she speaks ex cathedra; she is handed to her rostrum by the second personage in the republic; and the Speaker of the House is her gentleman usher. The chief of the State and his Ministers swell the number of her auditors.
Either all this means something or nothing. If the Legislative Assembly of the United States is to be considered in the eyes of the world a mere mountebank's booth, and the Senators and Representatives only so many mimes and mummers supplied by Mr. Nelson Lee to tumble during fair time, let the Americans have the honesty at least to admit that their legislation is horse play and their debates a farce.
But if the American Congress be really composed of wise and able and patriotic men, alive to a sense of their vast responsibilities, and intent on the solution of a tremendous problem, how grotesque, how unworthy does it appear to grace such an exhibition as took place on Saturday night with the stamp of official applause. At least the Jacobins did nat suffer the tricoteuses to mount the tribune.--They kept them in the galleries. At least the Hall of the National Convention was never "loaned" to Theroigne de Mericourt.
The irrepressible Train.
George Francis Train, who is called in courtesy a speculator, but who is in reality a thief as some of the British journals hint, has his place thus niched out in Mr. Sale's letter:I was looking with much admiration and much pity on the Philadelphia maid, and with much amazement at the state of things in which her public antics could be possible, when a voice, very familiar to me struck upon my ear, and I found my self in close proximity to the irrepressible George Francis Train. As unabashed as voluble, as incoherent as ever, the speculator who thought that by means of champagne and lobster salad he could force horse railroads upon the London public, has turned up at Willard's.
The other day he was in Nebraska, "stumping" that territory in the interest of the Pacific Railroad. They say that he has been "operating" largely in gold, and winning as largely, and that he intends returning to England, with many hundreds of thousands of dollars, to recommence his campaign in trainways. He had better let them alone. He must have had enough of England, and England has surely had enough of George Francis Train.
He spoke of his escapade at Boston with much nonchalance and self possession. He spoke of having been mobbed in several places, shot at in a half a dozen, and expelled by the military authorities from at least fifty, all because he spoke up for the Union. it was certain, however, that he is still unchanged; but I could not obtain from him the admission that he had been tarred and feathered, and he yet cherished the hope of becoming one day President of the United States.
A remarkable man is George Francis Train; perhaps "one of the most remarkable men in the country." He will go further, I think, and fare worse. Yet he seems to have his clique here, his set, his coteries, his "crowd," and is a personage.--But the clerk at Willard's — and an American hotel clerk is about the most trustworthy critic of human character whom you can well consult — when he told me that Mr. Train was considered a "dreadfully smart man," significantly tapped his forehead as he spoke.
Lunacy.
Cela n'empes hepas. Lunacy in an American politician does not seem to count, and we may be approaching the dark millennium foreshadowed by the poet of the "roughs," Wait. Whitman; the time when there is to be nothing but "money, business, railroad, exports, imports, custom precedents, pallor, dyspepsia, smut, ignorance, and unbelief;" when judges and criminals shall be transposed and the prison keepers be put in prison, and insanity have the charge of sanity.You will excuse me for quoting a bard who is considered by many of his brethren to be himself as mad as a March hare, but there is much method and not a little wisdom in "Wait. Whitman, one of the roughs, a cosmos, disorderly, fleshly, sensual," who lounges and loafs at his ease, and sounds his "barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."
Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Mr. Nathaniel Hawthorne, of Concord, Mass., author of "The Scarlet Letter," "The House with the Seven Gables," "Transformation," and many other charming and deservedly popular works, when you took upon yourself to hold up to obloquy and ridicule our English matrons — to sneer at their "streakiness" and "beefiness," and to allude, not very delicately, to the large space of their Maker's footstool they occupied when they sat down — there were those who thought you did a stupid and an ill mannered thing. But let that pass.We are not angry with you, dear Mr. Hawthorne. We like your books too well; and, besides, if you laughed at us, are we not always laughing at our-selves? You have but done with the pen, in some what of a clumsy form, that which John Leech is doing every week, and gracefully and wittily, with the pencil; and if the offence of making money at our own expense were indeed rank, the humble individual who indites these lines would have been clapped into the pillory and egged and stoned to death many years since.
But, Mr. Hawthorne, if the British mater families be fond of good cheer, she has at least-something to show for it. Her appearance does credit to her feeding and breeding. The Cokes of Holkham, that Babrahams, would have found much comfort in her condition. There are blood and bone there as well as flesh; symmetry as well as weight; muscle rather than surplusage of adipose matter. But what physical return do your ladies make for the goods the gods provide? Do they thrive on their abundant provender? Does the enormous quantity of sold food they consume do them any good?
Yankee men and Women.
I grant the prettiness of your very young girls; they are really trim little damsels; but yonder mater familias, who having disposed of pork chops, sauce kobut and fried potatoes, has now thrown herself, with desperate ardor, on to tenderloin steak and scrambled eggs — she, bony, integuminous, and high-dried, with a beak like the prow of a Roman galley, and a countenance like old John Zisea's skin, which he had tanned and made into a drum — what benefit has she derived from high feeding?She eats and does not fatten. The Moorish speculators, who raise girls for the matrimonial market by cramming them with kouscousson, could make nothing of this lank but insatiate dame. --What is it? The climate, or the vast potations of iced water she imbibes? There must be some cause for the people who eat so much looking so very unhealthy.
As for the appetite of the men folks, there is little to be wondered at in it. They have always in view at meal times a high moral purpose. They have a duty to perform. They pay three dollars a day for their board at Willard's and they are determined to have their money's worth for their money. Thus, there is breakfast from half past 7 to eleven, dining from half-past 1 to three, dining again at five, tea at half-past 7, and supper at nine. You may be always eating, and there do seem to be guests at Willard's who never miss a meal, but are continually gorging. Some art is requisite, some finesse has to be exercised, however, to obtain a meal to your liking. There is nothing on the table save the knives, forks, and glasses, the castors and the condiments, such as delay, anchovies, dried smalls, cod's sounds, olives. salted cucumber, beet boat, and cold stanch.
No ditches are handed to you, and unless you've fond of voice and authoritative in gesture, you will not find the wetters very attentive to you. But a prodigious bill of fare lies before you, and from it you mentally select such dishes as you think will suit your palate. Then you beckon a black waiter, and in a deliberate and determined tone tell him what you want. He going from car to car, rolls his eyes, and glides away. If you have feed him, or you look good naturedly, and he thinks you will fee him, or he has taken a fancy to you, he speedily returns with a tray full of oval white dishes, containing the viands you have ordered
If he does not care much about you, or is engrossed in attending to a regular boarder who has bribed him to be attentive all through the winter months, you may have to wait many minutes — perhaps half an hour — before you obtain anything at all; and then very probably the waiter has been oblivious, and brings you the wrong things. There is, in all cases, one peril against which the stranger should be warned. Order but a few dishes and you are lost. The negro will put you down as a "mean cause," a "one horse" sort of a person, and systematically neglect you. But order half the dishes set down in the bill of fare, and he will at once entertain an exaggerated notion of your importance, and almost fly to execute your commands.
A good Story.
The first time I breakfasted at Willard's I said, modestly, that I should like a cup of tea, some dry toast, an egg, and a little toasted bacon. It struck me that the waiter regarded me with a very contemptuous look, and that he retired from my presence in a very slow and superstitious manner. I waited, and waited, and waited, but no tea, no toast, no egg, no bacon came. There was sitting opposite to me a dapper little man with a large beard and embroidered shirt front, with diamond studs, cut velvet vest, and a pea jacket. "Here, you," he cried to the nearest Ethiop, "bring me some fried oysters, some stewed oysters, some tenderloin steak and onions, some scrambled eggs, pork cutlets, some fish balls, some dipped toast, some Graham bread, some mashed turnips, some cold ham, some buckwheat cakes, some hot coffee, and some plane mange. I've paid my money, and by — I mean to see the show!"The only way to get on in America is, having once paid your money, to insist on seeing the show. If you don't the people will think you are mean spirited, and trample on you. See it; see the show; have the animals stirred up with the long pole; pinch the spotted girl to see if it is real flesh, or only tights she has on; pick the kangaroo's pouch, make the pelican bleed again for your gratification You have paid your money, don't be imposed upon, halloo with stringent voice; curse and swear in a land where execrations are rife; brag louder than the greatest braggadocios in the world. If need be lie — lie with face of brass and lungs of leather; crack up your own country, to the detriment of all others; vow that we won the battle of Fontenoy; swear that Peter Morrison was the greatest philanthropist of the age; declare that Mr. Roebuck is ninety feet high. If a man spits on your boot spit on his waistcoat, and then "guess that you did not aim low enough."
If you find his letters lying about, read them; if he tells you anything in confidence, publish it in a newspaper; keep on moving; go ahead; go into business; smash; recuperate; drink with everybody; talk dollars from sunrise to midnight. Do this, and the Americans will admire you, and you may admire them. They will say you are a "smart man," and at last you will be spoken of as a "remarkable" man. But if you pay your money and don't walk up to the booth; if you are nervous and not abashed, if rudeness pains and bestial manners disgust you if you strive to substitute temperate argument for frothy declamation, and national proof for impudent assertion; if you tell the truth and are modest and a gentleman — you can never hope for success in this young, adventurous and astonishing country. You had better "clear out" before you are "run out." You had better go home by the next Cunard steamer, for you are clearly not fitted for the institutions and people of the United States.
