The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 11, September, 1858

The vicinity of Chicago is all dotted with beautiful villa-residences. To drive among them is like turning over a book of architectural drawings,—so great is their variety, and so marked the taste which prevails. Many of them are of the fine light-colored stone found in the neighborhood, and their substantial excellence inspires a feeling that all this prosperity is of no ephemeral character. People do not build such country-houses until they feel settled and secure. The lake-shore is of course the line of attraction, for it is the only natural beauty of the place. But what trees! Several of the streets of Chicago may easily become as beautiful drives as the far-famed Cascine at Florence, and will be so before her population doubles again,—which is giving but a short interval for the improvement. No parks as yet, however. Land on the lake-shore is too precious, and the flats west of the town are quite despised. Yet city parks do not demand very unequal surface, and it would not require a very potent landscape-gardener or an unheard-of amount of dollars to make a fine driving-and riding-ground, where the new carriages of the fortunate might be aired, and the fine horses of the gay exercised, during a good part of the year.

To describe Chicago, one would need all the superlatives set in a row. Grandest, flattest,—muddiest, dustiest,—hottest, coldest,—wettest, driest,—farthest north, south, east, and west from other places, consequently most central,—best harbor on Lake Michigan, worst harbor and smallest river any great commercial city ever lived on,—most elegant in architecture, meanest in hovel-propping,—wildest in speculation, solidest in value,—proudest in self-esteem, loudest in self-disparagement,—most lavish, most grasping,—most public-spirited in some things, blindest and darkest on some points of highest interest.

And some poor souls would doubtless add,—most fascinating, or most desolate,—according as one goes there, gay and hopeful, to find troops of prosperous friends, or, lonely and poor, with the distant hope of bettering broken fortunes by struggling among the driving thousands already there on the same errand. There is, perhaps, no place in the world where it is more necessary to take a bright and hopeful view of life, and none where this is more difficult. There is too much at stake. Those who have visited Baden-Baden and her Kursaal sisters in the height of the season need not be told that no "church-face" ever equalled in solemnity the countenances of those who surround the fatal tables, waiting for the stony lips of the croupier to announce "Noir perd" or "Rouge gagne." At Chicago are a wider table, higher stakes, more desperate throws, and Fate herself presiding, or what seems Fate, at once partial and inexorable.

But, on this great scale, even success fails to bring smiles. The winners sit "with hair on end at their own wonders," and half-fearing that such golden showers have some illusion about them and may prove fairy favors at last. Next to this fueling comes the thirst for more. Enlarged means bring enlarged desires and ever-extending plans. The repose and lightness of heart that were at first to be the reward of success recede farther and farther into the dim distance, until at last they are lost sight of entirely, confessed, with a sigh, to be unattainable. How can people in this State wear cheerful countenances? When one looks at the gay and social faces and habits of some little German town, where are cultivated people, surrounded by the books and pictures they love, with leisure enough for music and dancing and tea-garden chat, for deep friendships and lofty musings, it would seem as if our shrewd Yankee-land and its outcroppings at the West had not yet found out everything worth knowing. Froissart's famous remark about the English in France—"They take their pleasure sadly, after their fashion"—may apply to the population of Chicago, and it will be some time yet, I fancy, before they will take it very gayly.

At a little country-town, the other day, not within a thousand miles of Chicago, a family about leaving for a distant place advertised their movables for sale at auction. There was such a stir throughout the settlement as called forth an expression of wonder from a stranger. "Ah!" said a good lady, "auctions are the only gayety we have here!"

Joking apart, there was a deep American truth in this seeming niaiserie.

Chicago has, as we have said, with all her wealth, no public park or other provision for out-door recreation. She has no gallery of Art, or the beginning of one,—no establishment of music, no public library,—no social institution whatever, except the church. Without that blessed bond, her people would be absolute units, as independent of each other as the grains of sand on the seashore, swept hither and thither by the ocean winds.

But even before these words have found their way to the Garden City, they will, perhaps, be inapplicable,—so rapid is progress at the West. The people are like a great family moving into a new house. There is so much sweeping and dusting to do, so much finding of places for the furniture, so much time to spend in providing for breakfast, dinner, and tea, lodging and washing, that nobody thinks of unpacking the pictures, taking the books out of their boxes, or getting up drives or riding-parties. All these come in good time, and will be the better done for a little prudent delay.

There is, to the stranger, an appearance of extreme hurry in Chicago, and the streets are very peculiar in not having a lady walking in them. Day after day I traversed them, meeting crowds of men, who looked like the representatives of every nation and tongue and people,—and every class of society, from the greenest rustic, or the most undisguised sharper, to the man of most serious respectability, or him of highest ton. Yet one lady walking in the streets I saw not; and when I say not one lady, I mean that I did not meet a woman who seemed to claim that title, or any title much above that of an ordinary domestic. Perhaps this is only a spring symptom, which passes off when the mud dries up a little,—but it certainly gave a rather forlorn or funereal aspect to the streets for the time.

There is, nevertheless, potent inspiration in the resolute and occupied air of these crowds. Hardly any one stays long among them without feeling a desire to share their excitement, and do something towards the splendid future which is evidently beckoning them on. Preparing the future! It is glorious business. No wonder it makes the pulse quicken and the eye look as if it saw spirits. It may be said, that in some sense we are all preparing the future; but in the West there is a special meaning in the expression. In circumstances so new and wondrous, first steps are all-important. Those who have been providentially led to become early settlers have immense power for good or evil. One can trace in many or most of our Western towns, and even States, the spirit of their first influential citizens. Happy is it for Chicago that she has been favored in this respect,—and to her honor be it said, that she appreciates her benefactors. Of one citizen, who has been for twenty years past doing the quiet and modest work of a good genius in the city of his adoption, it is currently said, that he has built a hundred miles of her streets,—and there is no mark of respect and gratitude that she would not gladly show him. Other citizens take the most faithful and disinterested care of her schools; and to many she is indebted for an amount of liberality and public spirit which is constantly increasing her enormous prosperity. Happy the city which possesses such citizens! Happy the citizens who have a city so nobly deserving of their best services!

AN EVENING WITH THE TELEGRAPH-WIRES

My cousin Moses has made the discovery that he is a powerful magnetizer.

Like many others who have newly come into possession of a small tract in those mysterious, outlying, unexplored wildernesses of Nature, which we call by so many names, but which as yet refuse to be defined or classed, he has been naturally eager to commence operations, and exploit and farm it a little. He is making experiments on a narrow border of his wild lands. He is a man of will and of strong physique, with an inquiring and scientific turn of mind, which inclines him chiefly to metaphysical studies. It is not to be wondered at, that, having lately discovered that he possesses the mesmeric gift, he should not sufficiently discriminate as to its application. Later he will see that it is an agent not to be tampered with, and never to be used on healthy subjects, but applied only to invalids. To-day he is like a newly-armed knight-errant, bounding off on his steed at sunrise, in search of adventures.

One afternoon, not long since, he was telling me of his extraordinary successes with somnambulists and somnoparlists,—of old ladies cured of nervous headaches and face-twitches, and of young ones put to sleep at a distance from the magnetizer, dropping into a trance suddenly as a bird struck by a gun-shot, simply by an act of his volition,—of water turned into wine, and wine into brandy, to the somnambulic taste,—and so on, till we got wandering into crooked by-paths of physics and metaphysics, that seemed to lead us nowhere in particular,—when I said, "Come, Cousin Moses, suppose you try it on me, by way of experiment. But I have my doubts if you'll ever put me to sleep."

My cousin yielded to my request with alacrity;—every subject for mesmerism was for him legitimate;—and I relinquished myself to his passes with the docility of a man about to be shaved.

The passes from the head downward were kept up perseveringly for half an hour, without my experiencing any change, or manifesting the least symptom of drowsiness. At last the charm began to work. I began to be conscious of a singular trickling or creeping sensation following the motion of his passes down my arms. My respiration grew short. I experienced, however, no tendency to sleep, and my mind was perfectly calm and unexcited. My cousin was satisfied with his experiment so far, but we both concluded it had better end here. So he made the reverse passes, in order to undo the knot he was beginning to tie in my nerves. He did not, however, entirely succeed in untying it. I was a healthy subject, and the magnetism continued to affect my nerves, in spite of the untangling passes.

Soon after, I rose and took my leave. I was strangely excited, but it was a purely physical, and not a mental excitement. Thinking that a walk would quiet me, I went through street after street, until I reached the outskirts of the city. It was a mild September evening. The fine weather and the sight of the trees and fields tempted me to continue my walk. It was near sunset, and I strolled on and on, watching the purple gray and ruddy gold of the clouds, until I had got fairly into the country.

As I rambled on, I was suddenly seized with a fancy to climb a tree which stood by the roadside, and rest myself in a convenient notch which I observed between two of the limbs. I was soon seated in among the branches, with a canopy of leaves around and over me,—feeling, in my still nervous condition, as I leaned my back against the mossy bark, like a magnified tree-toad in clothes.

The air was balmy and fragrant, and against the amber of the western sky rose and fell numberless little clouds of insects. The birds were chirping and fluttering about me, and made their arrangements for their night's lodging, in manifest dread of the clothed tree-toad who had invaded their leafy premises.

The peculiar nervousness which had taken possession of me was now passing off, to be replaced by a species of mental exaltation. I was becoming conscious of something approaching semi-clairvoyance, and yet not in the ordinary form. Sensation, emotion, thought were intensified. The landscape around me was dotted with farm-houses, pillowed in soft, dark clumps of trees. One by one, the lights began to appear at the windows,—soft rising stars of home-joys. The glorious September sunset was fading, but still resplendent in the west. The landscape was pervaded with a deeper repose, the glowing clouds with a diviner splendor than that which filled the eye. Then thronging memories awoke. My remembrances of all my past life in the crowded cities of America and Europe rose vividly before me. In the long strata of solid gray clouds, where the sun had gone down, leaving only a few vapory gold-fishes swimming in the clear spaces above, I could fancy I saw the lonely Roman Campagna and the wondrous dome of St. Peter's, as when first beheld on the horizon ten years ago. Then, as from the slopes of San Miniato at sunset, gray, red-tiled Florence, with its Boboli gardens, full of nightingales, its old towers and cathedrals, and its soaring Giotto Campanile. Then Genoa, with its terraces and marble palaces, and that huge statue of André Doria. Then Naples, gleaming white in the eye of day over her pellucid depths of sea. The golden days of Italy floated by me. Then came the memories, glad or sad, of days that had passed in my own native land,—in the very city that lay behind me,—the intimate communings with dear friends,—the musical and the merry nights,—the trials, anxieties, sorrows–

But all this is very egotistical and unnecessary. I merely meant to say that I was in a peculiar, almost abnormal state of mind, that evening. The spirit had, as it were, been drawn outwards, and perhaps slightly dislocated, by those mesmeric passes of my cousin, and I had not succeeded as yet in adjusting it quite satisfactorily in its old bodily grooves and sockets. The condition I was in was not as pleasant as I could have wished; for I was as alive to painful remembrances and imaginations, as to pleasant ones. I seemed to myself like a revolving lantern of a light-house,—now dark, now glowing with a fiery radiance.

I asked myself, Is it that I have been blind and deaf and dull all my life, and am just waking into real existence? or am I developing into a medium,—Heaven forbid!—and the spirits pushing at some unguarded portal of the nervous system, and striving to take possession? Shall I hear raps and knockings when I return to my solitary chamber, and sit a powerless beholder of damaged furniture, which the spirits will never have the conscience to promise payment for, when my landlady's bill comes in? (By the way, have the spirits ever behaved like gentlemen in this respect, and settled up fair and square for the breakages they have indulged in by way of exemplifying the doctrine of a future state?)

As I soliloquized thus, I was attracted by a low vibrating note among the leaves. Looking through them, I saw, for the first time, that two or three telegraph-wires, which I had observed skirting the road, ran directly through the tree in which I was seated. It was a strange sort of sound, that came in hurried jerks, as it were, accompanied with a corresponding jerk of the wire.

A gigantic fancy flashed across me:—This State of New York is a great guitar; yonder, at Albany, are the legislative pegs and screws; down there in Manhattan Island is the great sounding-board; these iron wires are the strings! The spirits are singing, perhaps, with their heads up there in the sweet heavens and the rosy clouds,—and this vibration of the wires is a sort of loose jangling accompaniment of their unpractised hands on earth. The voice is always above the strings.—This I thought in my semi-mesmeric condition, perhaps. I soon laughed at my Brobdignagian nonsense, and said,—There is a telegraphic despatch passing. Now if I could only find out what it is!—that would be something new in science,—a discovery worth knowing,—to be able to hear or feel the purport of a telegraphic message, simply by touching the wire along which it runs!

So, regardless of any electric shock I might receive, I thrust out my hand through the leaves of the tree, and boldly grasped the wire. The jerks instantly were experienced in my elbow, and it was not long before certain short sentences were conveyed, magnetically, to my brain. In my amazement at the discovery, I almost dropped out of the tree. However, I kept firm hold of the wire, and my sensorium made me aware of something passing like this:—"Market active. Fair demand for exchange. Transactions from five to ten thousand shares. Aristides railroad-stock scarce. Rates of freight to Liverpool firm. Yours respectfully, Grabber and Holdham."

Upon my word, said I, this is rather dry!—only a merchant! I expected something better than this, to commence with.

The wire being now quiet, I fell into a musing upon the singular discovery I had made,—and whether I should get anything from the public or the government for revealing it. And then my thoughts wandered across the Atlantic, and I remembered those long rows of telegraphic wires in France, ruled along the tops of high barrier-walls, and looking against the sky like immense music-lines,—and those queer inverted-coffee-cup-like supports for the wires, on the tall posts. Then I thought of music and coffee at the Jardin Mabille. Then my fancy wandered down the Champs Elysées to those multitudinous spider-web wires that radiate from the palace of the Tuileries, where the Imperial spider sits plotting and weaving his meshes around the liberties of France. Then I thought, What a thing this discovery of mine would be for political conspirators,—to reverse the whispering-gallery of Dionysius, and, instead of the tyrant hearing the secrets of the people, the people hearing the secrets of the tyrant! Then I thought of Robespierre, and Marat, and Charlotte Corday, and Marie Antoinette,—then of Delaroche's and Müller's pictures of the unfortunate Queen,—then of pictures in general,—then of landscape-scenery,—till I almost fell into a doze, when I was startled by a faint sound along the wire, as of a sigh, like the first thrill of the AEolian harp in the evening wind. Another message was passing. I reached my hand out to the iron thread. A confused sadness began to oppress me. A mother's voice weeping over her sick child pulsed along the wire. Her husband was far away. Her little daughter lay very ill. "Come quick," said the voice. "I have little hope; but if you were only here, I should be calmer. If she must die, it would be such a comfort to have you here!"

I drew my hand away. I saw the whole scene too vividly. Who this mother was I knew not; but the news of the death of a child whom I knew and loved could not have affected me more strangely and keenly than this semi-articulate sob which quivered along the iron airtrack, in the silence of the evening, from one unknown—to another unknown.

I roused myself from my sadness, and thought I would descend the tree and stroll home. The moon was up, and a pleasant walk before me, with enough to meditate upon in the singular discovery I had made. I was about to get down from my crotch in the tree, and was just reaching out my dexter leg to feel if I could touch a bough below me, when a low, wild shriek ran along the wire,—as when the wind-harp, above referred to for illustration, is blown upon by some rude, sharp northwester. In spite of myself, I touched the vibrating cord. The message was brief and abrupt, like a sea-captain's command:—"Ship Trinidad wrecked off Wildcat's Beach,—all hands lost,—no insurance!"

Do you recollect, when sitting alone sometimes in your room, at midnight, in the month of November, how, after a lull in the blast, the bleak wind will all at once seem to clutch at the windows, with a demoniac howl that makes the house rock? Do you remember the half-whistles and half-groans through the key-holes and crevices,—the cries and shrieks that rise and fall,—the roaring in the chimney,—the slamming of distant doors and shutters? Well, all this seemed to be suggested in the ringing of the iron cord. The very leaves, green and dewy, and the delicate branches, seemed to quiver as the dreary message passed.

I thought,—This is a little too much! This old tree is getting to be a very lugubrious spot. I don't want to hear any more such messages. I almost wish I had never touched the wire. Strange! one reads such an announcement in a newspaper very coolly;—why is it that I can't take it coolly in a telegraphic despatch? We can read a thing with indifference which we hear spoken with a shudder,—such prisoners are we to our senses! I have had enough of this telegraphing. I sha'n't close my eyes to-night, if I have any more of it.

I had now fairly got my foot on the branch below, and was slipping myself gradually down, when the wire began to ring like a horn, and in the merriest of strains. I paused and listened. I could fancy the joyful barking of dogs in accompaniment. Ah, surely, this is some sportsman,—"the hunter's call, to faun and dryad known." This smacks of the bright sunshine and the green woods and the yellow fields. I will stop and hear it.—It was just what I expected,—a jolly citizen telegraphing his country friend to meet him with his guns and dogs at such a place.

And immediately afterwards, in much the same key, came a musical note and a message babbling of green fields, from a painter:—"I shall leave town to-morrow. Meet me at Bullshornville at ten, A.M. Don't forget to bring my field-easel, canvases, and the other traps."

If there is more of this music, I said, I think I shall stay. I love the sportsmen and the artists, and am glad they are going to have a good time. The weather promises well for them.

There was a little pause, and then a strain of perfect jubilation came leaping along the wire, like the flying song of the bobolink over tracts of blowing clover and apple-blossoms. I expected something very rare,—a strain of poetry at least. It was only this:—"Mr. Grimkins, Sir, we shall expect rooms for the bridal party at your hotel, on the side overlooking the lake, if possible. Yours, P. Simpkins."

Ah, I said, that's all Greek to me,—poor, lonely bachelor that I am! I wonder, by the way, if they ever wrote their love-letters by telegraph.—But what is this coming? I am clearly getting back to my normal condition:—"Miss Polly Wogg wishes to say that she has been unable to procure the silk for Mrs. Papillon for less than five dollars a yard."—Nonsense! I'm not in the dry-goods, nor millinery, nor young-lady department.

And here was another:—"I have found an excellent school for Adolphus in Birchville, near Mastersville Corners. Send him up without delay, with all the school-books you can find."

And another,—important, very:—"I find that 'One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin' is in 'Troilus and Cressida.' Don't send the MS. without this correction."

But what's this, accompanied with a long, low whistle?—"The cars have run off the track at Breakneck Hollow. Back your engine and wait for further orders."

We are getting into the minor key again, I thought. Listen!—"Mr. S. died last night. You must be here to-morrow, if possible, at the opening of the will."

Well, said I, I have had plenty of despatches, and have expended enough sympathy, for one night. I have been very mysteriously affected,—how, I can't exactly tell. But who will ever believe my evening's adventure? Who will not laugh at my pretended discovery? Even my cousin Moses will be incredulous. I shall be at least looked upon as a medium, and so settled.

And here allow me to remark,—Have you not observed how easily things apparently difficult and mysterious are arranged in the popular understanding by the use of certain stereotyped names applied to them? Only give a name to a wonder, or an unclassified phenomenon, or even an unsound notion, and you instantly clear away all the fog of mystery. Let an unprincipled fellow call his views Latitudinarianism or Longitudinarianism, he may, with a little adroitness, go for a respectable and consistent member of some sect. A filibuster may pass current under some such label as Political or Territorial Extensionist;—the name is a long, decent overcoat for his shabby ideas. So when wonderful phenomena in the nervous system are observed,—when tables are smashed by invisible hands,—when people see ghosts through stone walls, and know what is passing in the heart of Africa,—how easily you unlock your wardrobe of terms and clap on the back of every eccentric fact your ready-made phrase-coat,—Animal Magnetism, Biology, Odic Force, Optical Illusion, Second Sight, Spirits, and what not! It is a wonderful labor-saving and faith-saving process. People say, "Oh, is that all?" and pass on complacently. There are such explanatory labels to be met with everywhere. They save a deal of trouble. All the shops keep these overcoats,—shops ecclesiastical, medical, juridical, professional, political, social.