NANTUCKET.
THOMPSON and I had a fortnight's holiday, and the question arose how could we pass it best, and for the least money.
We are both clerks, that is to say, shopmen, in a large jobbing house; but although, like most Americans, we spend our lives in the din and bustle of a colossal shop, where selling and packing are the only pastime, and daybooks and ledgers the only literature, we wish it to be understood that we have souls capable of speculating upon some other matters that have no cash value, yet which mankind cannot neglect without becoming something little better than magnified busy bees, or gigantic ants, or overgrown social caterpillars. And although I say it myself, I have quite a reputation among our fellows, that I have earned by the confident way in which I lay down a great principle of science, æsthetics, or morals. I confess that I am perhaps a little given to generalize from a single fact; but my manner is imposing to the weaker brethren, and my credit for great wisdom is well established in our street.
Under these circumstances it became a matter of some importance to decide the question, Where can we go to the best advantage, pecuniary and æsthetical?
We had both of us, in the pursuit of our calling,—that is to say, in hunting after bad debts and drumming up new business,—travelled over most of this country on those long lines of rails that always remind me of the parallels of latitude on globes and maps; and we wondered why people who had once gratified a natural curiosity to see this land should ever travel over it again, unless with the hope of making money by their labor. Health, certainly, no one can expect to get from the tough upper-leathers and sodden soles of the pies offered at the ten-minutes-for-refreshment stations, nor from their saturated spongecakes. As to pleasure, I said to Thompson,—"the pleasure of travelling consists in the new agreeable sensations it affords. Above all, they must be new. You wish to move out of your set of thoughts and feelings, or else why move at all? But all the civilized world over, locomotives, like huge flat-irons, are smoothing customs, costumes, thoughts, and feelings into one plane, homogeneous surface. And in this country not only does Nature appear to do everything by wholesale, but there is as little variety in human beings. We have discovered the political alkahest or universal solvent of the alchemists, and with it we reduce at once the national characteristics of foreigners into our well-known American compound. Hence, on all the great lines of travel, Monotony has marked us for her own. Coming from the West, you are whirled through twelve hundred miles of towns, so alike in their outward features that they seem to have been started in New England nurseries and sent to be planted wherever they might be wanted;—square brick buildings, covered with signs, and a stoutish sentry-box on each flat roof; telegraph offices; express companies; a crowd of people dressed alike, 'earnest,' and bustling as ants, with seemingly but one idea,—to furnish materials for the statistical tables of the next census. Then, beyond, you catch glimpses of many smaller and neater buildings, with grass and trees and white fences about them. Some are Gothic, some Italian, some native American. But the glory of one Gothic is like the glory of another Gothic, the Italian are all built upon the same pattern, and the native American differ only in size. There are three marked currents of architectural taste, but no individual character in particular buildings. Everywhere you see comfort and abundance; your mind is easy on the great subject of imports, exports, products of the soil, and manufactures;—a pleasant and strengthen-
