Complete Prose Works: Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My FancyWhitman, Walt
History
Complete Prose Works: Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy
Whitman, Walt
American literature
PRESIDENT HAYES'S SPEECHES
_Sept. 30_.--I see President Hayes has come out West, passing quite
informally from point to point, with his wife and a small cortege of
big officers, receiving ovations, and making daily and sometimes
double-daily addresses to the people. To these addresses--all impromptu,
and some would call them ephemeral--I feel to devote a memorandum. They
are shrewd, good-natur'd, face-to-face speeches, on easy topics not
too deep; but they give me some revised ideas of oratory--of a new,
opportune theory and practice of that art, quite changed from the
classic rules, and adapted to our days, our occasions, to American
democracy, and to the swarming populations of the West. I hear them
criticised as wanting in dignity, but to me they are just what they
should be, considering all the circumstances, who they come from, and
who they are address'd to. Underneath, his objects are to compact and
fraternize the States, encourage their materialistic and industrial
development, soothe and expand their self-poise, and tie all and each
with resistless double ties not only of inter-trade barter, but human
comradeship.
From Kansas City I went on to St. Louis, where I remain'd nearly three
months, with my brother T.J.W., and my dear nieces.
ST. LOUIS MEMORANDA
_Oct., Nov., and Dec., '79_.--The points of St. Louis are its position,
its absolute wealth, (the long accumulations of time and trade, solid
riches, probably a higher average thereof than any city,) the unrivall'd
amplitude of its well-laid-out environage of broad plateaus, for
future expansion--and the great State of which it is the head. It fuses
northern and southern qualities, perhaps native and foreign ones, to
perfection, rendezvous the whole stretch of the Mississippi and Missouri
rivers, and its American electricity goes well with its German phlegm.
Fourth, Fifth and Third streets are store-streets, showy, modern,
metropolitan, with hurrying crowds, vehicles, horse-cars, hubbub, plenty
of people, rich goods, plate-glass windows, iron fronts often five or
six stories high. You can purchase anything in St. Louis (in most of the
big western cities for the matter of that) just as readily and cheaply
as in the Atlantic marts. Often in going about the town you see
reminders of old, even decay'd civilization. The water of the west, in
some places, is not good, but they make it up here by plenty of very
fair wine, and inexhaustible quantities of the best beer in the world.
There are immense establishments for slaughtering beef and pork--and I
saw flocks of sheep, 5000 in a flock. (In Kansas City I had visited a
packing establishment that kills and packs an average of 2500 hogs a
day the whole year round, for export. Another in Atchison, Kansas, same
extent; others nearly equal elsewhere. And just as big ones here.)
NIGHTS ON THE MISSISSIPPI
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account