第58章 I Return to My Muttons(2)

Manifestly a glory that once was had dissolved and vanished away in these twenty-one years.

When I went up to my room,I found there the young man called Rogers,crying.

Rogers was not his name;neither was Jones,Brown,Dexter,Ferguson,Bascom,nor Thompson;but he answered to either of these that a body found handy in an emergency;or to any other name,in fact,if he perceived that you meant him.He said--'What is a person to do here when he wants a drink of water?--drink this slush?'

'Can't you drink it?'

'I could if I had some other water to wash it with.'

Here was a thing which had not changed;a score of years had not affected this water's mulatto complexion in the least;a score of centuries would succeed no better,perhaps.It comes out of the turbulent,bank-caving Missouri,and every tumblerful of it holds nearly an acre of land in solution.I got this fact from the bishop of the diocese.

If you will let your glass stand half an hour,you can separate the land from the water as easy as Genesis;and then you will find them both good:the one good to eat,the other good to drink.

The land is very nourishing,the water is thoroughly wholesome.

The one appeases hunger;the other,thirst.But the natives do not take them separately,but together,as nature mixed them.

When they find an inch of mud in the bottom of a glass,they stir it up,and then take the draught as they would gruel.

It is difficult for a stranger to get used to this batter,but once used to it he will prefer it to water.This is really the case.

It is good for steamboating,and good to drink;but it is worthless for all other purposes,except baptizing.

Next morning,we drove around town in the rain.

The city seemed but little changed.It WAS greatly changed,but it did not seem so;because in St.Louis,as in London and Pittsburgh,you can't persuade a new thing to look new;the coal smoke turns it into an antiquity the moment you take your hand off it.The place had just about doubled its size,since I was a resident of it,and was now become a city of 400,000inhabitants;still,in the solid business parts,it looked about as it had looked formerly.Yet I am sure there is not as much smoke in St.Louis now as there used to be.

The smoke used to bank itself in a dense billowy black canopy over the town,and hide the sky from view.This shelter is very much thinner now;still,there is a sufficiency of smoke there,I think.

I heard no complaint.

However,on the outskirts changes were apparent enough;notably in dwelling-house architecture.The fine new homes are noble and beautiful and modern.They stand by themselves,too,with green lawns around them;whereas the dwellings of a former day are packed together in blocks,and are all of one pattern,with windows all alike,set in an arched frame-work of twisted stone;a sort of house which was handsome enough when it was rarer.

There was another change--the Forest Park.This was new to me.

It is beautiful and very extensive,and has the excellent merit of having been made mainly by nature.There are other parks,and fine ones,notably Tower Grove and the Botanical Gardens;for St.Louis interested herself in such improvements at an earlier day than did the most of our cities.

The first time I ever saw St.Louis,I could have bought it for six million dollars,and it was the mistake of my life that I did not do it.

It was bitter now to look abroad over this domed and steepled metropolis,this solid expanse of bricks and mortar stretching away on every hand into dim,measure-defying distances,and remember that I had allowed that opportunity to go by.Why I should have allowed it to go by seems,of course,foolish and inexplicable to-day,at a first glance;yet there were reasons at the time to justify this course.

A Scotchman,Hon.Charles Augustus Murray,writing some forty-five or fifty years ago,said--'The streets are narrow,ill paved and ill lighted.'

Those streets are narrow still,of course;many of them are ill paved yet;but the reproach of ill lighting cannot be repeated,now.The 'Catholic New Church'was the only notable building then,and Mr.Murray was confidently called upon to admire it,with its 'species of Grecian portico,surmounted by a kind of steeple,much too diminutive in its proportions,and surmounted by sundry ornaments'which the unimaginative Scotchman found himself 'quite unable to describe;'and therefore was grateful when a German tourist helped him out with the exclamation--'By ----,they look exactly like bed-posts!'

St.Louis is well equipped with stately and noble public buildings now,and the little church,which the people used to be so proud of,lost its importance a long time ago.Still,this would not surprise Mr.Murray,if he could come back;for he prophesied the coming greatness of St.Louis with strong confidence.

The further we drove in our inspection-tour,the more sensibly Irealized how the city had grown since I had seen it last;changes in detail became steadily more apparent and frequent than at first,too:changes uniformly evidencing progress,energy,prosperity.

But the change of changes was on the 'levee.'This time,a departure from the rule.Half a dozen sound-asleep steamboats where I used to see a solid mile of wide-awake ones!

This was melancholy,this was woeful.The absence of the pervading and jocund steamboatman from the billiard-saloon was explained.

He was absent because he is no more.His occupation is gone,his power has passed away,he is absorbed into the common herd,he grinds at the mill,a shorn Samson and inconspicuous.

Half a dozen lifeless steamboats,a mile of empty wharves,a negro fatigued with whiskey stretched asleep,in a wide and soundless vacancy,where the serried hosts of commerce used to contend!Here was desolation,indeed.