A very sepulchre of a town, into which, if a would-be voyager in the
stream of earnest life be cast away and stranded, he is as much lost to
the really _living_ world, as if he were embalmed with oriental spices,
and shelved away in the darkest tomb of the Pharaohs.
A town whose future greatness exists only in the imagination of its
deluded habiters, whose enterprise and public spirit are as fabulous as
the Ph[oe]nix.
A town which will never be a city, save in name, until telegraphs,
railroads, colleges, churches, libraries, and busy warehouses become
indigenous to the soil of the Wolverines, and spring like mushrooms from
the earth, without the aid of human mind to plan, or human will to urge
the work, or human hand to place one single stone.
For, sooner than this dormant town shall be matured into a flourishing
city by the men who now doze away their time within its sleepy limits,
the dead men of Greenwood shall rise from their mossy graves and pile
their marble monuments into a tradesman's market-house.
A town, where, in former days, some few short-sighted business men did
congregate, who commenced great stores, hotels and warehouses, and the
other tools by help of which the world does "_business_," but which said
men, too wise to remain faithful to a place which all their toil would
ever fail to permanently rouse from its persevering sleep, soon left for
ever, after, by united effort, they had galvanized it into a spasmodic
life, and taken advantage of its transient vitality to hastily sell
their property, before its slumber should come on again. These men are
now remembered by the great hotel their enterprise erected, and which is
to this day unfinished, and the warehouses (now deserted, save by rats,)
which they put up, and the other massive structure, the work on which
was going bravely on, until the drowsy genius of the place congealed the
energy of the founders, and left the unroofed walls and rotting timbers
a crumbling landmark in the desolate dearth, to show where another
business man was wrecked.
A rusty village which has not enterprise enough to keep its public
buildings in repair, and whose very Court-house, now in the last
decrepit years of a slothful life, has for years leaked dirty water on
the heads of the sleepy lawyers who burrow in its dingy lower rooms; and
which, in a soaking rain, could not boast a dry corner to protect the
dignified caput of the supreme judge from the aqueous visitation.
A town where every one is poorer than his neighbor, and no one man is
rich in this world's goods, save those few treacherous pilots, who,
being charged to guide the vessels of their fellows, have placed false
lights on hidden rocks, run the confiding craft to ruin, and fattened on
the plunder of the wreck.
A distant and remote extreme of the hurrying world, which is so
separated from the "heart of business" that no single drop of its vital
life ever reaches this defunct and amputated member.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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