“Now, all is changed:  the roads are slushy, and the water stands in deep pools all over the streets.  There is a dense fog, very little wind, and that from the east.  The thermometer above thirty-six.

“[Mails arrived February 3, and our steamboat left February 5.]”

CHAPTER IV

1857

SOUTHERN TOUR

In 1857 Miss Mitchell made a tour in the South, having under her charge the young daughter of a Western banker.

“March 2, 1857.  I left Meadville this morning at six o’clock, in a stage-coach for Erie.  I had, early in life, a love for staging, but it is fast dying out.  Nine hours over a rough road are enough to root out the most passionate love of that kind.

“Our stage was well filled, but in spite of the solid base we occasionally found ourselves bumping up against the roof or falling forward upon our opposite neighbors.

“Stage-coaches are, I believe, always the arena for political debate.  To-day we were all on one side, all Buchanan men, and yet all anti-slavery.  It seemed reasonable, as they said, that the South should cease to push the slave question in regard to Kansas, now that it has elected its President.

“When I took the stage out to Meadville on the ‘mud-road,’ it was filled with Fremont men, and they seemed to me more able men, though they were no younger and no more cultivated.

“March 5.  I believe any one might travel from Maine to Georgia and be perfectly ignorant of the route, and yet be well taken care of, mainly from the good-nature in every one.

“I found from Nantucket to Chicago more attention than I desired.  I had a short seat in one of the cars, through the night.  I did not think it large enough for two, and so coiled myself up and went to sleep.  There were men standing all around.  Once one of them came along and said something about there being room for him on my seat.  Another man said, ‘She’s asleep, don’t disturb her.’  I was too selfish to offer the half of a short seat, and too tired to reason about the man’s being, possibly, more tired than I.

“I was invariably offered the seat near the window that I might lean against the side of the car, and one gentleman threw his shawl across my knees to keep me warm (I was suffering with heat at the time!).  Another, seeing me going to Chicago alone, warned me to beware of the impositions of hack-drivers; telling me that I must pay two dollars if I did not make a bargain beforehand.  I found it true, for I paid one dollar for going a few steps only.

“One peculiarity in travelling from East to West is, that you lose the old men.  In the cars in New England you see white-headed men, and I kept one in the train up to New York, and one of grayish-tinted hair as far as Erie; but after Cleveland, no man was over forty years old.

“For hundreds of miles the prairie land stretches on the Illinois Central Railroad between Chicago and St. Louis.  It may be pleasant in summer, but it is a dreary waste in winter.  The space is too broad and too uniform to have beauty.  The girdle of trees would be pretty, doubtless, if seen near, but in the distance and in winter it is only a black border to a brown plain.