Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866-7Dilke, Charles Wentworth, Sir
History
Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866-7
Dilke, Charles Wentworth, Sir
Great Britain -- Colonies -- History -- 19th century; United States -- Description and travel; Voyages around the world
The difference between the Mormon and Gentile papers is strongly marked
in the advertisements. The _Denver Gazette_ is filled with puffs of
quacks and whisky shops. In the column headed “Business Cards,” Dr.
Ermerins announces that he may be consulted by his patients in the
“French, German, and English” tongues. Lower down we have the card of
“Dr. Treat, Eclectic Physician and Surgeon,” which is preceded by an
advertisement of “sulkies made to order,” and followed by a leaded
heading, “Know thy Destiny; Madame Thornton, the English Astrologist and
Psychometrician, has located herself at Hudson, New York; by the aid of
an instrument of intense power, known as the Psychomotrope, she
guarantees to produce a lifelike picture of the future husband or wife
of the applicant.” There is a strange turning toward the supernatural
among this people. Astrology is openly professed as a science throughout
the United States; the success of spiritualism is amazing. The most
sensible men are not exempt from the weakness: the dupes of the
astrologers are not the uneducated Irish; they are the strong-minded,
half-educated Western men, shrewd and keen in trade, brave in war,
material and cold in faith, it would be supposed, but credulous to
folly, as we know, when personal revelation, the supernaturalism of the
present day, is set before them in the crudest and least attractive
forms. A little lower, “Charley Eyser” and “Gus Fogus” advertise their
bars. The latter announces “Lager Beer at only 10 cents,” in a “cool
retreat,” “fitted up with green-growing trees.” A returned warrior heads
his announcement, in huge capitals, “Back Home Again, An Old Hand at the
Bellows, the Soldier Blacksmith:--S. M. Logan.” In a country where
weights and measures are rather a matter of practice than of law, Mr.
O‘Connell does well to add to “Lager beer 15 cents,” “Glasses hold Two
Bushels.” John Morris, of the “Little Giant” or “Theater Saloon,” asks
us to “call and see him;” while his rivals of the “Progressive Saloon”
offer the “finest liquors that the East can command.” Morris Sigi, whose
“lager is pronounced A No. 1 by all who have used it,” bids us “give him
a fair trial, and satisfy ourselves as to the false reports in
circulation.” Daniel Marsh, dealer in “breech-loading guns and
revolvers,” adds, “and anything that may be wanted, from a cradle to a
coffin, both inclusive, made to order. An Indian Lodge on view, for
sale.” This is the man at whose shop scalps hang for sale; but he fails
to name it in his advertisement; the Utes brought them in too late for
insertion, perhaps.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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